Disclaimer: I don't own anything Marvel. Just Anna and Rey.

Chapter 28

The First Lead

The Avengers were due to arrive back at the Avengers Compound any moment. The place was busies than it had been in months, and not in a good way. Anna had been up extremely early that morning, before the sun had even risen in New York, monitoring the progress of the mission Steve had taken Nat, Sam, and Wanda in Lagos, Nigeria to capture Brock Rumlow, aka Crossbones, the Hydra traitor that was still causing an immense headache for SHIELD and the Avengers.

What made things worse was that Rumlow wasn't just doing the bidding of Hydra anymore. He was a terrorist for hire, practically. He was a highly trained fighter, and a man with no ethics, and that made him obsenly dangerous.

Nobody had expected the mission to go smoothly, but they hadn't expected it to turn so sour so fast either. They'd managed to stop the men from getting away with the biological weapon that they'd broken into disease control to get. While Sam and Natasha took care of the men that split off from Rumlow, Steve fought Rumlow. After some comment that Anna was still yet to know, Rumlow triggered a bomb that was strapped to his chest.

Had Wanda not been there to stall the blast with her powers, hundreds of people would have been dead on the ground, Cap and herself included. However, holding control of Rumlow as the bomb irreversibly ticked onward to destruction, she lifted him up into the air to try and minimize the destruction. Before she could get it away from the tall hotel building they were standing next to, it went off and took out several floors of the building.

Not only was Anna dealing with the mission that morning, she was now dealing with the press. The media was having a field day tearing the Avengers a new one. There were already seven casualties, four in critical condition, and many more injured due to the blast. There were plenty of videos online and on the news on what happened exactly, and every way Anna saw it, Wanda was the hero.

The news reporters were focusing on her out of the four that had been physically present in Lagos. The poor girl didn't deserve any of that. If anything, she needed to be praised for how quickly she'd acted. If anyway was to blame, clearly it was Rumlow. And if they needed an Avenger to pin it on, Steve was a far better candidate. Not that Anna was condemning him either. He was human, just like the rest of them. He'd been thrown off. He couldn't have known what Rumlow was going to do. But if there was one person on their team that could handle the blame, it was Steve, even if it was unwarranted.

Anna was already out on the tarmac when the Quinjet finally touched down. The team slowly started to come out, glancing at Anna as she stood there, her expression blank. They half expected her to pull a Maria Hill on them and start going on about the press, and how they were going to handle the incident, etc. It wasn't until Wanda stepped out that Anna moved forward. She grabbed her hand and started to drag the young girl into the compound.

"Anna, hold on a minute," Steve protested.

Anna just ignored him and dragged along a distraught Wanda behind her. They only stopped once they were secured in Wanda's room. Anna shut the door behind them securely and moved back to Wanda to seat her on the edge of her bed. The brunette sat down on the white ottoman, looking up at Wanda as she held her hands.

This reaction wasn't exactly what Wanda had expected. She thought she was going to get chewed out by the woman, not escorted to her room. Then again, maybe she was going to try and break it gently that she was getting kicked out of there. None of this really seemed in character to Anna, however, but then again, she had been extremely busy and stressed behind her desk the last few months. Everyone knew deskwork was not what Anna excelled at, and it was clear it was getting to her. Maybe with this she'd finally snapped.

"I know absolutely nothing I or anyone else will say is going to make you feel any better about what happened, but I'm going to say it anyway," Anna told her, squeezing her hands tighter. "This. Is. Not. Your. Fault." She said her words slowly, and emphatically. "You did everything you could, Wanda. And don't you let anybody else tell you differently, even yourself. You saved so many lives by what you did, and though reminding yourself of that doesn't make the ones that were lost feel any better, but you have to keep telling yourself that. You. Saved. Lives. There are hundreds of people that are going home tonight to their families because of you."

"Seven people aren't because of me," she muttered.

"No, that's because of Rumlow," Anna corrected. "That was not you. And if I were you, I would've done the same thing. I would feel the same way you're feeling. It's going to feel really bad for a long time, but it does get better. You'll still feel some responsibility for what happened, but you'll accept that you did what you could, and this feeling won't consume you like it is right now. It will get better.

"You just need to keep reminding yourself of a few things, okay? You're not alone. All of us here back you up completely. We know you did nothing wrong. You saved lives. You did your job. Now it's your turn to take care of yourself. We're here for you to help you move past this. And Pietro would be so proud of you right now. Just think of what he'd say, or do if he were here right now."

"He would kiss me on the forehead, and turn on a movie for me to watch to distract me," Wanda said, a soft smile on her lips as she remembered the blond haired goofball. "He'd say what you are, just less eloquently."

"Yeah, but Pietro definitely had his own way of doing things," Anna said.

"He did."

"Okay, now what movie should we watch?"

The month that followed the incident in Lagos was hectic, to say the least. If Anna hated desk work before, she detested it now. People just loved to turn on people that were once "idolized" at the first sign of anything hard to deal with. What was more frustrating was the fact that they were turning on Wanda, a young girl that wanted nothing more than to help make the world a better place. Had she not done what she had back in Lagos, there would've been a far bigger death toll.

Anna sat against the side of Steve's desk as their attention was drawn to the monitor on his desk playing MSNBC. The Caption under the newsreel read "Avengers Indictment? World reaction to violence."

"Eleven Wakandans were among those killed during a confrontation between the Avengers and a group of mercenaries in Lagos, Nigeria last month. The traditionally recursive Wakandans were on an outreach mission in Lagos when the attack occurred."

"How convenient they leave out the fact you were stopping mercenaries from stealing a biological weapon to sell to terrorists," Anna grumbled. "Or that the estimated death toll of how any people on the ground would've been far higher had-" Steve glanced up at her, telling her this was all no new news to him, and that vocalizing it to him wouldn't change anything. "Sorry," she muttered.

The screen change to show King T'Chaka of Wakanda, his caption reading: Demands accountability from Avengers. "Our people's blood is spilled on goreign soil, not only because of the actions of criminals, but by the indifference of those ledged to stop them. Victory at the expense of the innocent is no victory at all."

"The Wakandan King went on to-"

Steve seemed to be fed up with the news now as well. He glanced up at Anna, his expression tired and unsure of what to do. Anna placed her hand on his shoulder, and he placed his hand over hers to squeeze. How horrible is it of me to wish some disaster or scandal happens so that they have something else to focus on, Anna asked herself.

Even though Steve had turned the news off the sound of news anchors still rang in their ears. It took them only a moment to realize someone else had the news on nearby. The two got up and left the office to find out what was going on.

"They are operating outside and above the international law because that's the reality, if we don't respond to acts like these." The two followed the sound of the television, and found themselves in Wanda's room. "What legal authority does an enhanced individual like Wanda Maximoff have to operate in Nigeri-"

Steve turned the television off. She looked almost worse than the night they'd returned to the compound the very day of the incident. Anna had tried to get her mind off of everything, but clearly it wasn't working. Watching the news definitely wasn't going to help either. Especially not when they were unjustly pinning all of the blame on the Sokovian.

"It's my fault," Wanda stated.

"That's not true," Steve corrected.

"Turn the TV back on. They're being very specific," she insisted.

"I should've clocked that bomb vest long before you had to deal with it," Steve said, as he slowly made his way over to sit on the bed beside Wanda.

Anna leaned against the doorframe, watching carefully in case she needed to jump in and assist. She doubted she would though. Steve always had a way with words. She couldn't count how many times he'd managed to make her feel better with just a few true words. Anna just hoped that she could just help him a fraction of how much he helped her. After all, he had so much going on in his life too.

"Rumlow said "Bucky: and, all of a sudden, I was a sixteen year old kid again in Brooklyn," Steve went on. "And people died. It's on me."

"It's on both of us," Wanda corrected.

At least she's not putting it all on herself anymore, Anna thought.

"This job," Steve began again, "we try to save as many as we can. Sometimes that doesn't mean everybody. But if we can't find a way to live with that, next time maybe nobody gets saved."

"It's the hardest part of the job," Anna said. "We've all had to learn how to deal with it. We all do it in different ways. If you can't do it on your own that's okay. But you're not alone."

"Than-"

Without any warning, Vision materialized through the wall and joined the group. Anna was starting to get used to it a little, but it still weirded her out quite a bit. She was used to expecting danger, watching the doors and windows wherever she went, but now she had to remember to watch the walls, floors, and ceilings as well. It was a tad overwhelming.

"Vis, we talked about this," Wanda scolded.

"Yes, but the door was open so I assumed that…" He gestured to the door where Anna was leaning against the frame, and then turned back to Wanda and Steve. "Captain Rogers wished to know when Mr. Stark was arriving."

"Thank you, we'll be right down," Steve said.

"I'll…" Vision hesitated before continuing, "use the door. Oh, and apparently, he's brought a guest."

"Were we executing him to bring someone?" Anna asked.

Steve shook his head. "We know who it is?" Steve asked.

"The Secretary of State."

AND SO IT BEGINS! Civil War, Bucky, here we come! I'm so excited for you guys to read this. I'm so excited to write it!

Thanks to the following for their review on the previous chapter:

Jedi Jesla777- Yeah, it was kinda hard to read all the names, except for Tadashi, but I did a lot of digging around and research for the others. I just liked Tasashi the best out of them all. I loved writing Bucky's thoughts. Having him torn between love and anger was so much fun. I find it hard sometimes to write Bucky and Anna's interactions, but his thoughts and whatnot aren't as difficult.