[A/N]: I heard Taylor Swift's Bad Blood today, and couldn't resist. This is more angsty than I originally planned, but here you go.
It had all happened so fast, yet so excruciatingly slow, that she was startled she hadn't seen it coming.
The Winter Soldier had been found, and Steve had insisted that his best friend stay at the Tower to recover. Many of the team didn't like it, but it was allowed nonetheless.
Slowly, it started. The loud arguments. The screaming matches. The slamming of doors and the storming out of rooms. The team was falling apart, and she was helpless to do anything but watch. All she could do is go to the man she'd started to think of as an uncle and tell him how she felt about it all.
He assured her that they'd gone through rough spells before, they'd do it again. But she couldn't believe him, not completely, not with the slight expression on his face that told her that the rough times had never been this bad before.
Then, it happened. She still wasn't sure how, but somehow the tension spilled over. Steve and Tony were screaming at each other, drawing the others into the room. Accusations were thrown, insults were slung. Then Tony said something quietly that made Steve's eyes turn to ice. He simply said, "I'm leaving."
And he did. Followed by Bucky, he gathered his things into a duffel bag and left, leaving Wanda feeling like her first real home since Sokovia had just split in half, along with her heart.
After Steve moved out, arguments got worse without him there to moderate. Even Clint and Natasha started fighting, something Wanda had never experienced before. Their fighting was brutal, and worse than shouted insults. They fought quietly, in fierce whispers and offhand comments that turned each other's eyes cold. They ignored the other's presence, and then didn't speak at all.
It was one of the saddest things Wanda had ever seen, and that was just the two of them.
xXx
She tried to stay on good terms with Vision, and succeeded for a while. But the tension from the rest of the Tower started to interfere. Wanda defended Clint, who in turn defended Steve, and Vision tried to remain neutral but it was apparent that he sided with Tony. Wanda didn't want to fight with him, and slowly they stopped hanging out, leaving her with only Clint to talk with.
She'd lost someone else important to her because of this, and she didn't want to lose anyone else. She was losing so much to what started as simple misunderstandings. She just wanted it to stop, even if it was for selfish reasons.
xXx
When Clint moved out, saying he couldn't take it any more, Wanda went with him. If she stayed at the Tower, she'd feel isolated, she reasoned. So she packed up and followed him home to the farm, awkwardly hovering in the doorway as Clint introduced her to his wife, Laura. Laura was very nice to her, and finding out that Nathaniel's middle name was Pietro nearly brought her to tears. Despite the circumstances, she enjoyed her stay with the Bartons.
Steve showed up on the porch one day, in his full gear, shield on his back. He babbled out something about, "they have Bucky", and Clint was running to grab his uniform and bow. Wanda stood there with Steve without saying a word while the archer gathered his things, rejoining them in less than five minutes with a mere, "Let's go."
She didn't know who had the Winter Soldier, but the pit in her stomach, so similar to Sokovia, told her that they were going to have to fight, and that the outcome wouldn't be good. No, not good at all.
xXx
Inspired by Taylor Swift's song 'Bad Blood'.
