From the Ashes

by Boltstrike58


Chapter 20: Therapy

Equis, Ponyville

All any of the Avengers or the ponies could do now was try to recuperate. Discord had managed to teleport the wounded team back to Twilight's castle, where many of them stumbled, or dripped blood from fresh wounds onto the crystal floor, to the shock of Bruce Banner. Spike had sent out several letters, calling for multiple Canterlot mages, along with Sunburst and Cadence, to perform healing spells, and they were on their way now. Most of the superficial wounds could be easily patched up, though Discord's very nature disrupted the magic, forcing them to bandage him up the old fashioned way, and put him in a guest bed.

Of course, the physical damages held nothing over the mental ones. Celestia, still in a state of emotional shock, had been placed in bed as well. The Avengers were a different story. Once they'd woken up, they'd angrily sat down, refusing to even look at each other. Tony had ripped off all the rest of his barely functioning armor, throwing it into the corner, ignoring Twilight's protests. Steve had done the same with his shield and mask in the opposite corner. Spider-Man, Rhodey, Clint, Thor, and Bruce, all of whom hadn't been affected by Sombra's spell, were left just as speechless, looking almost as miserable as the others. The ponies weren't exactly happy, either, and none of them knew what to do. Pinkie's mane was stuck in its deflated state, and Lyra was so nervous she hid in one of the closets.

"Tony, please," Twilight begged, placing her hoof gently on his arm. Tony pushed it away rather aggressively.

"I wouldn't talk to him," Steve angrily spat. "If you offend him by accident, he might decide to kill you, too."

"Cap!" Applejack scolded, but he ignored her.

Tony rose to his feet. "Funny, coming from a guy who decides that killers should go free just because he likes them. I guess we're lucky you didn't think Hitler was an okay guy, huh?"

Steve shot up, storming angrily back at Tony, until they stood face to face.

"Remember when I said you were just a big man in a suit of armor?" he snapped. "I was wrong. You're a piece of trash in a suit of armor."

"And you're nothing but a lucky scientific accident," Tony retorted. "If Erskine hadn't been shot, you'd be a serial number, Rogers."

Both men moved forward, presumably intending to attack once more, even without their weapons, but found themselves impeded. Twilight had flown down in front of Tony, pushing him back by the shoulders with her front hooves. Applejack galloped over to the front of Steve, performing the same action.

"Tony, please!" Twilight begged. "Sombra brought out the worst things in your mind! I know you don't really want to do this! Friends don't fight friends!"

"Come on, Steve!" Applejack pleaded. "You told me! You don't wanna hurt your friends! Your a hero, not a monster! No more fighting!"

Steve and Tony stopped, not fighting against the ponies, but not taking their eyes off each other. The remaining affected Avengers looked somberly down at the floor, lost, angry, and afraid. It was more than Rainbow Dash could take.

"Okay, that does it!" she shouted, flying into the air, despite an injured wing. "What is wrong with you guys? You've been acting all grumpy around each other since we started this, and we need to know why! It's making it impossible to fight as an effective team, and it made us get our butts kicked by Sombra!"

Applejack swallowed deeply, before looking up at Steve again. She had no other choice.

"Steve," she mumbled. "You gotta tell 'em. Tell 'em what you told me. It's the only way to fix this."

"Couldn't even keep your mouth shut, Rogers?" Tony growled. "Yet another broken promise?"

"Alright, enough!" shouted Clint, before Steve could react. "You wanna know what happened to us? We'll tell you."

Rhodey took over. "Back on Earth, the Avengers' battles against global threats resulted in a lot of collateral damage. Hundreds of people died. We never directly caused any of those, but they seemed to increase in number as the years went on. The governments of Earth passed the Sokovia Accords, a set of laws that placed the Avengers under their control. If we wanted to stay Avengers, and operate all over the world, we had to sign, which declared that we'd only be allowed to act if a panel decided we could. Those who didn't sign would retire. We..." he looked at the assembly, "...disagreed on it, to say the least. Steve's faction chose not to sign and basically became outlaws."

"You forgot a few details, Rhodey," said Tony. "Rogers' buddy..." he pointed to Bucky, "...was framed for murder at the conference. But when we finally figured it out, what do I find out the good Captain didn't tell me? Barnes murdered my parents."

Most of the ponies gasped with shock. Bruce was stricken as well, staring at the metal-armed man. Applejack and Luna were the only Equestrians that didn't at least flinch. Neither of them had known, but they'd suspected something of this nature. Bucky himself had no reaction, but sat quietly in the crystal chair.

"And you left out the fact that you didn't try to arrest him or anything altruistic like that," Steve retorted. "You tried to kill him. Not to mention that fact that he'd been a brainwashed assassin for a terrorist organization for the past seventy years."

Twilight was shocked, unable to comprehend the weight Bucky carried on his shoulders. A glance at Applejack told the princess that her friend already knew this, or at least parts of it, from Steve. Luna apparently did as well, as she placed a comforting hoof on Bucky's shoulder.

"Sergeant Barnes," Twilight began, hesitantly, "I'm sorry, but...is this true?"

"All of it," Bucky replied simply. He got to his feet, shrugging off Luna's hoof, and left the room. Nobody dared to try and stop him.

"Coward," Tony growled under his breath,

"Right back at you," Steve snapped at him.

"What is wrong with you?!" Thor shouted, wringing both hands. "How can all of you be so petty?! You're throwing away years of fighting together, protecting Earth for nothing! This is worse than when we met!"

"Glad I wasn't around for that one," Sam snorted. "It'd have driven me more crazy than you psychos."

"Oh, name-calling," Vision scoffed. "Truly, the highest form of debate."

"Yes, you prefer to just lock up those who disagree with you," Wanda growled.

"Maybe we wouldn't have to if you didn't give us reasons," said Natasha.

"Earth's Mightiest Heroes my ass," Scott grumbled to nobody in particular.

This continued on, with each insult followed by another, angrier one. The voices of the Avengers started to slowly increase in volume, until they were shouting at each other. Twilight and the others kept trying to get a word in, but would be cut off before they could finish a sentence. Rhodey, Clint, and Spider-Man all kept trying to calm them down, but couldn't get a word in over the noise. T'Challa was the only one left who didn't speak, apparently too consumed with something in his head. A screaming match and eventually a fist fight would've broken out, had not a red light, depicting a familiar red-masked face with white eyepieces, begun flashing across the room. The beam of light reflected off the crystalline surfaces, nearly blinding some of the Avengers. That was enough to shut them up.

"Okay! Alright!" shouted Spider-Man, moving into the middle of the room with his arms raised. "Everybody calm down!" He looked around the room, seeing that the voices had died down for the moment. "Okay, good. Sorry about that, it's just...we were never gonna get anywhere like that."

"Whatever, kid," Tony grumbled. "You shouldn't even be here. You don't have the intelligence to comprehend this."

Spider-Man's eyepieces widened, and his confidant stance fell. "B-but Mr. Stark..." he stumbled over his words, "I-I just wanted...to help..." His voice faltered, and he backed down slowly, slumping against a wall.

"Tony, stop!" Twilight screamed, her horn blaring with loose magic. "I know you! And you're smart enough to know that this is wrong!"

"She's right!" Rarity chimed in. "From the time you arrived on our planet, you showed yourselves to be compassionate! To be heroes! You can't truly be this hateful! Especially towards your friends!"

"Sometimes, it's not that simple, Rarity," Natasha said, a hint of remorse creeping into her words. "We're not friends anymore. That spell just made us say and do what we'd been thinking—"

"That's not true," Starlight cut her off. "Sombra's spell might bring out the worst in you, but combined with Phobos and Deimos' magic of fear and dread, it could drive you to do things you wouldn't normally do. Even if you had those thoughts, you never would've tried to act on them. Everypony has dark thoughts about others in moments of rage, but we don't actually do those things, and we forget them as soon as the rage burns out. Those people who tried to murder each other...that wasn't you guys."

"Yeah!" Rainbow agreed. "And if you had these problems before you got here, why didn't you deal with them when you realized you'd have to work together again on our planet? Didn't you realize how much they'd impede you?"

For the first time during the conversation, Steve's face fell from the enraged state he'd assumed. "We..." he mumbled, "we thought it was more important to just get it over with. We decided to just push our affairs to the side and get this done. It's worked before."

"But all this time..." Fluttershy finally spoke up, "all this time you've had those feelings buried deep down, where they wore you down and made it harder to just function?"

"And the longer you put it off," said Spike slowly, "the more afraid you get to finally fix everything. Or when you're angry with somepony," he gave a quick glance towards Owlowiscious on his perch, "and the resentment just builds and builds, eventually becoming hate for somepony you cared about. Or worse."

"And the burden of those feelings," Pinkie chimed in, her mane regaining some of its poof. "It must've weakened you mentally, making it harder to resist Sombra's spell."

"He must've known about it," Luna deduced. "From the scrying when he spied on you. He must've learned about it. He planned to use those feelings against you from the beginning."

Twilight, filled with empathy, flapped her wings until she was at eye level with Tony. She placed both hooves on his head, forcing him to look at her. The billionaire was still angered, but without the spell, that rage was just a mask for the despair that had built up inside him, barely able to keep himself from crumbling. Twilight saw that, above all, he felt hurt by Steve, one he'd considered a friend. None of the Avengers truly hated each other, this was a case of wounded pride, driving them to lash out to hide their pain.

"Tony," she started, "my view on this might seem simplistic, but I stand by it. In friendships, things can begin to get to you, irritate you, or even hurt you. It's just a fact of life. These things can be dealt with with honest conversation and compromise, but you just avoided the problem. And by ignoring it, you make it worse and worse over time. I know that the mission in front of you seems to take all precedence, but if you don't take care of yourself and your friendships, you'll never finish that mission." She looked over at a certain journal. "Believe me, I've had experience with that."

Applejack wasn't in a position to get to Steve's eye level, at least without uncomfortably getting on her hind legs again, so she just reached up, putting her hoof on his hip. Try as he might, Steve couldn't look away from the earth pony.

"Cap—no, Steve," she said, "I know you think you don't need to deal with this. Or you think you can deal with it by yourself." She gave a small chuckle. "I'm stubborn like that, too. It took me almost passing out from lack of sleep to get me to ask the others to help with harvesting Sweet Apple Acres. We could've helped you with this, if you'd only asked."

"But it wasn't your problem," Steve answered weakly.

"So what if it wasn't?" answered Rainbow, swooping in to float in front of Steve's face. "You guys are super heroes! You go around helping strangers all the time! Heck, you were so awesome you protected Ponyville with no incentive when you first arrived." She flew over to Sam, resting her hoof on his shoulder. "You even saved my flank. Thanks for that." Sam managed a weak smile at that.

"Solving's the friendship problems of others is what we do," Fluttershy chimed in. "It's what the map is for. You're not any different."

"We've had plenty of practice!" Pinkie chimed in. "I once assumed all my friends didn't like me anymore because they were avoiding me. I assumed the worst of ponies I should've trusted."

"I've been a hard head more times than I can count," Rainbow added. "Like when my ego got bigger than Twilight's Castle, and my friends had to pull that Mare-Do-Well stunt just to wake me up."

Fluttershy spoke again. "I let my efforts to become more assertive drive me to insult my friends over nothing."

"I accidentally got Rarity possessed by a dark magic spell book, and she turned Ponyville's streets into gold and stuff," said Spike. "Boy, that took a long time to clean up."

"I am not without fault, darling," Rarity said. "I nearly abandoned my friends, on Twilight's birthday no less, because of high class society connections I wanted in Canterlot. For practically nothing."

"I...er..." Starlight mumbled, "kinda took the Cutie Marks of an entire small village, then used a time travel spell to get revenge on Twilight, which nearly destroyed Equestria." At the shocked looks, she grinned sheepishly. "It's a long story. I'm still working on making up for it." Wanda gave her an empathetic look.

"And nearly all of us turned against Twilight at her brother's wedding," Applejack said, ashamed. "Cadence got replaced, and Twilight was the only one who realized it, but we didn't believe her—"

"Applejack, I forgave you all for that a thousand times over," said Twilight. "But I've assumed the worst plenty of times. Of myself, of my friends that I should've trusted, of everypony, of the future. My point is, none of us are without mistakes. But we have to forgive each other for those mistakes, and we have to learn from the ones we've made so that we don't make them again. All of you," she indicated the Avengers, "aren't that much different from us. You can do the same thing."

"Um, can I cut in?" came a quiet voice. Everyone in the room turned to Spider-Man, who awkwardly raised his hand. "There's something I think I...no, not like this." He reached for his neck, grabbing the ends of his mask with both hands. Hesitantly, he began to pull up, removing the mask and revealing his true face.

Steve actually gasped. A lot of the other Avengers did as well, considering that, outside of Tony, none of them had seen Spider-Man's real face before. Scott and Clint's hands instinctively flew to their pockets, where their wallets, filled with pictures of their own children, were held.

Steve had guessed that Spider-Man wasn't very old, maybe younger than Wanda, but this person in front of him was practically a kid. He clearly wasn't even out of high school. His first thought was to chew out Tony again, for bringing a kid into what was basically a war zone, but Spider-Man already began talking again.

"Growing up, I...I looked up to you guys. Cap, every kid learns about you in history class, and Mr. Stark was my idol since I could read, because I was into science so much. And then, when the Avengers became a thing, it was even more amazing. Even saved my life once. Mr. Stark, you probably don't remember, but back in 2010, at the Stark Expo, there was this kid...with an Iron Man mask, and you saved him from a Hammer Drone."

"When I first got these powers, I did think about using them to be like you guys, but then I looked at my aunt and uncle...My parents died when I was really young, and they raised me from that age, but they never had a lot of money. So I thought I could use my powers to help make up for that, y'know, help those close to me before starting on a bigger scale. I went to a place, tried to earn some extra cash, but the guy cheated me. So, when he got robbed, I let the burglar go. I wouldn't have even needed powers, I could've just stuck my foot out and sent him face-first into the floor. But I didn't, because hey, how was that my problem. He deserved what he got. Then, a few days later, that burglar broke into our house, and murdered my uncle."

Spider-Man sniffed, tears threatening to drip from his eyes, but he didn't let them flow.

"I caught the guy, but it didn't make a difference. My uncle was dead, and my aunt suffered, he suffered, everybody who cared about him suffered, all because I couldn't be bothered to stick my foot out. That's what taught me why you guys do what you do, and how selfish I'd been. Because with power comes responsibility, and not acting and allowing a bad thing to happen, makes you just as much of a monster as the person who does it."

He finally looked up, his gaze directed towards the Avengers. "But this...I know you guys know that this is wrong. Because if you can't work properly without fixing your own problems, then you have a responsibility to fix those problems. I've seen you fight, I saw how you protected people during the invasion of New York. People need you to start being the Avengers again, and so do the ponies of this planet. I-I just..." But he was out of words. Spider-Man stumbled out to one of the balconies, alone.

Luna watched the costumed teenager go, before she stood up herself.

"If I may, Mr. Stark," she began, trotting over to Tony. The billionaire, looking miserable, barely managed to make eye contact with her. "Sergeant Barnes—Bucky—may have killed your parents, and I understand that may cause you great pain. But it wasn't his intention to do so, he couldn't stop himself, and it's one of the things that haunts him to this day. I know. I've looked into his mind, into his soul. He has nightmares about all the people he was forced to kill. He's not the monster you think he is."

She placed her hoof on his arm. "Hydra controlled him, but he blames himself more than you do. Whatever you may have done to him back on Earth, it's probably a fraction of what he thinks he deserves." She motioned to the door Bucky had used to exit. "I implore you, please...talk to him. Try to understand."

With those words, Luna turned and headed to Celestia's room, leaving a room full of anxious Avengers.