Three is Better than Two Part 2: Rescue and Reunion
A/N: The continued adventures of Captain Spy Witch, starting at the very end of Civil War.
As Steve Rogers and King T'Challa looked out towards the giant black panther statue, a lithe figure walked up and stood on Steve's right, staring out into the wilderness with them. Steve's eyes never left the window, but he could see the newcomer's reflection in the window.
"Romanov."
"Rogers."
After a moment, King T'Challa said, "I will give you two a moment alone," and he turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
The clang of the door shutting echoed in the room for a moment, before lapsing into silence, as Steve and Natasha continued to stare out the window.
After a few more seconds of silence, that seemed to stretch on for an eternity, Steve spun to face Nat and pulled her into a passionate kiss.
"What are you doing here?" he asked as soon as he had broken away and caught his breath.
"King T'Challa told Ross I helped you escape at the airport," replied Nat, arms wrapped around Steve's neck. With a smirk she added, "Still think you're the only wanted fugitive on the team?"
Steve just responded with an eye-roll and a light chuckle.
"Anyway, did you really think I would leave you entirely to Wanda?"
This earned her a groan from the supersoldier, and an exasperated shake of his head as he turned to look back out the window. Nat leaned into his side, and he wrapped his arm around her.
"So where to, Captain?" asked Nat after a while.
"I'm flying to the Raft tonight to rescue everyone."
Natasha gave a short nod. Steve turned away from the window to face her again.
"And don't call me Captain. I lost that name when I left the shield behind in Siberia."
"So once we rescue them, where to then?" asked Nat, ignoring his self-deprivation, and always thinking several steps ahead.
"We go on the run. We've got the Quinjet, so we can easily travel. Never stay in one place too long. Try to save the world where we can. That's the whole reason I refused to sign the Accords, so that we can do what we always do, wherever we need to, regardless what anyone else says."
"So no actual destination in mind?"
"One thing at a time, Nat. First we have to rescue them out of the most secure prison in the world."
"Iceland," Nat said to herself, nodding her head slightly. "We should go to Iceland. I've got a safehouse there. Highly secluded and not a long flight from the Raft. Money, weapons, and a less obvious cat-suit for me. Weather should be pretty nice this time of year, too."
"Won't Ross be monitoring it?"
"It's not a SHIELD safehouse. It's technically KGB, but it conveniently disappeared off all their records a few decades ago. I've got several all around the world; should hold us over for a while."
"All right then. Iceland it is."
Steve piloted the Quinjet away from the Raft.
He turned on the autopilot, programming in the location in Iceland that Nat had told him about prior to leaving Wakanda. They had just finished rescuing the others from the maximum security prison, and everyone was noticeably exhausted; after all, it was no easy task breaking into, and then out of, the most secure prison on earth.
Steve looked over his shoulder, towards the back of the jet. Clint and Sam, the SHIELD agent and the Paratrooper, were sound asleep where they sat. Scott Lang sat fidgeting, looking at one of the onboard iPads. Wanda sat as far away from everyone as possible, in the very back of the jet, her legs pulled up tight against her chest, head buried in her knees.
During the rescue, Steve had noticed how Wanda had stayed as far away from Natasha as possible; and no surprise. She had thrown the redhead rather hard into a baggage cart during the airport battle, and the former Russian spy didn't take being beaten very well. Now, Steve knew that Nat held nothing against the youngest member of their rogue team, but it was easy to understand why the youngster would believe that she might. And beyond that, the redhead had seemingly betrayed Steve and taken the opposite side on the Accords and the ensuing fight, and yet Steve clearly hadn't held that against her, leaving Wanda to wonder where exactly she still figured into everything. She highly doubted that if she'dbeen the one to choose the opposite side, that Steve would have welcomed her back so readily. After all, she was the intruder in their three-way relationship.
"Go see Wanda," said Steve in a low voice, turning back to where Nat sat next to him in the co-pilot chair. "She's afraid you hate her for hurting you in the airport fight."
Nat nodded, grabbing a change of clothes from her bag, as Wanda was the only one not to have changed out of her Raft prison suit yet.
"Hey, sweetie," Nat said softly as she sat down next to the witch, placing her hand lightly on the girl's shoulder. After a few moments, Wanda hesitantly turned her head slightly to look at the older woman. Nat gave Wanda what she hoped was a comforting smile.
"You okay?"
Wanda nodded slightly, before turning back to stare at her knees.
"Hey, I'm not mad at you for anything that happened between us during the fight. It was a battle we were unfortunately on the opposite sides of, things were bound to happen. None of us were hurt, and the three of us are together again."
Nat quickly looked around to make sure no one had been listening; it would be bad enough if Sam or the new guy found out about the three of them, but Heaven forbid Clint find out; she would never hear the end of it. She already never heard the end of it since he'd found out she was dating Steve.
"Go change and join Steve and me in the cockpit," she added, rubbing the girl's back lightly.
Wanda slowly unfolded, and took the clothes proffered to her, before heading to the small onboard bathroom to change. Nat walked back up front, and leaned against the back of Steve's chair.
Tilting his head back to look up at her, he asked quietly, "You two okay?"
"Better. I told her to come up here after she changed to help fly the jet."
Steve nodded, looking back out the window at the darkness. A minute later, Wanda plopped down in the open chair, still looking small.
"Hey kid," greeted Steve, smiling brightly at her. "You're not left out just because Nat's here. Nothing's changed between us."
Wanda managed to return a weak smile, and Nat, who had moved to stand behind Wanda's chair, ran her hand through the brunette's hair.
The rest of the flight went smoothly, Steve teaching Wanda more of the controls, distracting the younger girl's attention from worrying about whether she still belonged or not.
When they landed at the safehouse and went inside, Nat pushed Steve and Wanda upstairs with a meaningful look, before turning back to the other three to show them to their rooms on the ground floor.
When Steve and Wanda got upstairs, they found two bedrooms; one smaller bedroom first, and then what was obviously the master bedroom. It was really more of a safemanshion than a safehouse, Steve thought to himself. As Wanda hesitated slightly outside the first bedroom, Steve gently, but firmly, placed his hand on her lower back, guiding her down the hall and into the master bedroom. As he led her through the bedroom, he threw their bags on the bed, before guiding her into the master bathroom. As soon as they reached the safety of the bathroom, Steve kicked the door shut behind them, and spun her around, kissing her soundly. After a few seconds, Wanda melted into the kiss, her body melting against his body as well.
They had just come up for a breath, oxygen becoming a pressing matter they couldn't ignore any longer, when there was short rap on the door, followed immediately by, "It's just me," followed immediately after that by the redhead pushing open the door and walking through with three sets of sleep clothes in her arms.
"Never mind me," she smirked as she saw them standing a breath-width apart still breathing heavily, kicking the door closed again behind her, and setting the pile of clothes on the counter.
Steve rested his chin on the top of the brunette's head and held her closely, watching Nat strip off her clothing, as Wanda snuggled into his embrace.
"I'm taking a shower if anyone wants to keep me company," said the redhead as she flipped on the shower.
Steve looked down at Wanda, who nodded her head slightly sleepily, and they both stepped out of their clothes and joined Natasha under the stream of hot water.
As Steve finished drying off and changing a while later, he noticed Natasha pull out a bottle of hair dye. Noticing his notice, she smiled at him softly, and said, "Go join Wanda in bed, I'm going to go ahead and dye my hair; I'll join you guys soon."
~A~
When Steve was awoken the next morning by sunlight streaming into his face, he was also greeted by a sheet of white-blonde hair, shorter than he'd seen since the very first time he'd met her on the helicarrier. He knew she was dyeing it blonde and cutting it shorter, but actually seeing it gleaming in the morning light was still quite a shock.
But before he could think anything else about it, he felt a thump against his back as the girl on his other side rolled over in her sleep. Knowing he wasn't going to fall back asleep (and leaving Nat to get hit by any stray limbs of the sleep moving youngster), Steve slipped out of bed to go explore the safehouse they had holed up in.
When he got downstairs, it seemed that the other three were all still asleep, as nobody was in the spacious living room or kitchen. Turning the coffee maker on, Steve went to look out the windows. Several minutes later, he heard the soft, slow patter of feet that could only belong to a still half asleep nineteen year old. Turning, he saw Wanda standing in front of the coffee maker yawning, staring at it like it was some kind of alien artifact left over from Loki's Chitauri invasion four years prior.
Walking over, Steve grabbed two mugs out of the cabinet. He filled the first one half full of hot water, pouring in a packet of hot chocolate mix, before filling the rest up with coffee. Sticking a spoon in it, he handed it to the girl, hoping she was awake enough to stir it up on her own, before pouring his own cup of coffee. Then he joined Wanda at the table, where she had successfully mixed it on her own, and was now sipping it.
"You seem awfully tired to be out of bed already," he said as he brushed a stray hair out of her face. "Never known you to get out of bed before you had to, and certainly not before Nat."
"I accidentally hit her in my sleep, and she threw me out of the bed," grumbled the brunette. "Physically threw me out of the bed, and I don't even think she woke up doing it."
Steve chuckled lightly, not doubting in the least that Nat had done exactly that.
Clint found them sitting there in comfortable silence ten minutes later when he walked into the kitchen.
"Don't think I've ever seen you up before Tasha before, kid," he commented to Wanda as he headed for the coffee machine.
"That's making the rather major assumption that I'm actually up," mumbled Wanda, as she leaned sideways, resting her head on Steve's shoulder.
Clint didn't bat an eye at this as he joined them at the table; the girl had always been affectionate towards the Captain, ever since she joined the Avengers after the Ultron debacle. He knew Steve had brought her into the Avengers in much the same way he had brought Tasha into SHIELD, helping her fit into a world she didn't think she fit into. What he was blissfully ignorant of was that Steve (and Nat) had brought Wanda in a little more intimately than he had Tasha.
Steve ran his hand lightly through Wanda's tousled hair, gently straightening out some of the knots that had worked their way into it as she slept. He knew Nat would be mad at him if she saw him risking exposing their secret, but he also knew everyone else on the team thought he and Wanda had a father/daughter relationship, and this wouldn't be out of the ordinary for that. He had spent enough time early on in the relationship building up the image that Wanda was close to him in a father/daughter kind of way that he could be "romantic" towards her in public without anyone noticing. It wasn't the same romantic that he shared with Nat, but it was a subtler romantic that just he and Wanda had.
"Not out for a run?" came Sam's voice, pulling Steve out of his thoughts.
"Not this morning," replied Steve, running his hand through Wanda's hair one last time, before resting it on the back of her chair; Wanda left her head resting on his shoulder. "I figured I should let Nat give me an overview of the area before I went for a run. Just in case General Ross has a summer house just over the hill."
Chuckling lightly, Sam, along with Scott Lang, who'd come walking in at the same time as Sam, joined the merry gang at the table with their own cups of coffee, and enthusiastically joined in the near complete silence, only occasionally broken by a stifled (or unstiffled, they weren't particular) yawn.
Steve was pretty sure Wanda had fallen back asleep using his shoulder as a pillow, when Nat suddenly sat down on the other side of him, surprising them all; none of them had seen or heard the super spy come downstairs, or go into the kitchen. Steve leaned over and they pecked lips, before Nat said, "We're surrounded by miles of empty land, with nothing but farm houses beyond that, so feel free to explore all you like."
After breakfast, everyone meandered away from the kitchen, eventually leaving just Steve, Nat, and Wanda sitting at the table.
Once she was sure everyone was out of hearing distance, Nat turned on Steve. "What was that when I walked in?" she demanded in a harsh whisper.
"Relax, Nat," replied Steve calmly. "Like I've said before, everyone thinks Wanda is basically our daughter by now. No one thinks it's anything unusual for her to sleep on my shoulder, especially when she was clearly still half asleep, and just got rescued from several days in the Raft."
Nat glared at him in response, but didn't say anything more about it. Instead she pulled several sheets of paper out of her pocket and said, "Here's my ideas on our long term travel plans, as well as shorter term training plans. Your whole point of not signing the Accords was so that we could continue doing what we need to do, and we can't do that if we don't stay in peak shape."
Steve and Nat spent the rest of the morning completing short and long term plans for the team, while Wanda contentedly watched her boyfriend and girlfriend work, thankful that their odd relationship was back together again after everything that had gone down with the Accords.