The Spider and the Witch
They argued about it because they were the Avengers and they argued about everything. Natasha thought the Avengers should stick around and help settle the displaced Sokovians who would be placed in a UN/SHIELD refugee camp until other arrangements such as relocation could be seen to. Tony argued that it wasn't the Avengers job to play nursemaid, they were there to protect the world. Pepper was already setting up a fund that would give each survivor money and resources to start over, what would sticking around to handout sandwiches and cots do for anyone?
"It would show the world that we actually give a damn about the chaos and destruction we tend to cause." Natasha had replied angrily.
"It will just come across as a publicity stunt, Nat." Tony shot back.
Rhodey nodded his agreement. "The talking heads will twist…"
"Fuck the talking heads." Natasha cut in, glaring the men down. "This isn't about the talking heads, this is about the everyday people we're meant to protect from the extraordinary threats. If we want them to trust us, then we need to show them we're more than just dangerous weapons to be unleashed when the world's going to shit."
"Nat's right." Steve said from where he sat in the meeting room off the bridge of the helicarrier. Though Tony liked to tease that he was the leader, he wasn't seated at the head of the table, no that place was currently occupied by the stoically quiet Peggy Carter. And since Peggy had been the one to ride to their rescue in an old SHIELD helicarrier Fury wouldn't miss, no one said anything about her presence. In fact those who had been at the Tower before they left to rescue Natasha and face Ultron were still in awe of the fact that Peggy had picked up Thor's hammer as easily as one would pick up a kitten. "There's enough fear and distrust in the world without us living in the shadows of it and making it worse. I'm staying to help Nat."
"Me too, obviously." Clint chimed in.
"Dr. Banner." Peggy's voice was firm but not harsh. "If you feel as if you have yourself under control your medical expertise would be welcome."
Bruce squeaked softly when Peggy first said his name, which his teammates would never stop finding amusing, and then replied once she'd made her offer. "I'm good, Director. The other guy is actually really content at the moment. I don't see him being an issue, and if something were to be triggering, I'll extract myself as quickly as possible."
Peggy nods her acknowledgement of that. "Colonel Rhodes, given your ties to the U.S. military, it's best you sit this one out. Anthony, if you're helping you'll do it out of the suit. The people need to see the man not the armor right now."
"Fine." Tony pouts. "We can stay and help for a little while. The little witch stays on the ship though, if she gets down there she could slip away and we'll never find her, she's too much of an unknown…"
"Wanda stays with me and Clint." Natasha says firmly.
"You're in an argumentative mood today." Tony grumbles at her. "You'd think you'd be a little more appreciative of us coming to rescue you."
"Clint and Wanda got me out of the cell your murder bot put me in, Anthony." Natasha replied. "Wanda just lost everything of what little she had left, including her twin brother, if she wants to help her people then she'll come with me and Clint. She seems to trust Clint. If she's not up to it, then she can stay here with my Mum. She doesn't know any of you, and she hates Tony, so just leave her be."
Outside in the hallway Wanda listens, confused. While they'd been in the castle she and Pietro had heard tales whispered by frightened soldiers about the infamous Black Widow. Wanda could remember thinking how powerful this woman must be to frighten war hardened men like that. When her brother returned to her side after fighting the Avengers in the forest outside the castle, he told her all about what he had seen and done, the enjoyment he had gotten out of playing with the archer. "What of the Black Widow?" Wanda had asked him. He'd whistled in that way that meant he'd been impressed by something. "She fights like a she-devil. I didn't mess with her." After the castle fell and Hydra defeated, Wanda and Pietro lurked in the shadows of the city and watched as that she-devil helped to rescue people from the aftermath left behind long after the rest of her team had returned to the extravagance of their privileged American lives. It had been the first time they'd heard her true name, "Agent Carter, over here! There's crying, we can't quite reach…" Wanda had watched as the Black Widow, Agent Carter, shimmied her way into a building about to collapse without a second thought and emerging with a small boy several long minutes later. Wanda had watched as the red haired woman helped an old man shift through rubble to find something that had belonged to his dead wife, and help a young woman set right the toppled over gravestones of her parents. That's when Wanda's confusion started, and it only grew when Ultron told them the Avengers needed to be destroyed in order to save the world.
She hadn't lingered in their minds long enough to see what played out once she'd triggered their fears, but Wanda did know that the older woman with the chestnut hair starting to streak with strands of silver had played a part in both Captain America's illusion as well as the Black Widow's. It wasn't until Captain America had taken her and Pietro to Avengers' Tower to try and stop Stark from making another robot overlord that Wanda discovered the woman's connection to the Black Widow. Wanda understood the kind of grief that came with mourning your mother, and she'd made Natasha live through that. The guilt was almost unbearable. The fact that the older woman had comforted her as they left the ruins of her home, and had gone with her to see her brother's body, and was now seemingly protecting her from the others, made Wanda's guilt and confusion a hundred times worse. When Wanda heard movement inside the room that sounded like people moving around and coming towards the door she quickly made her way back down the hall to the room she'd been left in to wait.
"Hey kid," Clint says a few minutes later as he and Natasha walk in. "You need anything? Food? Water? I know where Nat's stash of chocolate is on these things. You good?"
"No, thank you." Wanda replies in heavily accented english. "I'm fine."
Natasha walks over to sit beside the girl. "We're going to be arriving at a refugee camp soon. There will be plenty of beds, food, and water for the survivors while the U.N works out what to do next." Natasha paused for a moment before continuing. "Because of your powers and how you got them, you'll be staying with us, Wanda, but don't worry, you're not under arrest or anything like that. We haven't worked out the details yet, but for now you'll stick with me and Clint. Understand?"
"My powers make me too big of a threat to be left alone and live my life in peace." Wanda replies as she stares down at her hands.
"I'm not going to disrespect you by trying to downplay that." Natasha says honestly. "Your powers and abilities are a dangerous unknown, not only to us, but I get a feeling to yourself as well. We're going to do our best to help you figure them out, and learn how to control them."
"How you use them is up to you." Clint adds. "I meant what I said back there. The moment you and Pietro stepped out and started fighting along said us, you were Avengers, whether you wanna stay one or just be a normal kid, that's up to you."
"I have not been a normal kid since I was ten." Wanda replies.
"I know the last five years must feel like a lifetime." Natasha says. "But it's not too late to get a little normal out of what's left of your childhood." She could tell Wanda was about to argue so she continued quickly. "But that's something we can work out later. Clint and I wanted to know if you felt up to being a part of our team." She smiles at the girl. "We're going to be sticking around with SHIELD to help settle the refugees. We'll understand if you're not feeling up to it, but I figured these are your people and you might want to help."
Wanda nods. "I do. I have too." She lowers her voice to barely a whisper and speaks in her nativie language, forgetting Natasha can understand her. "This is all my fault."
"It's not, little witch." When Natasha says it, little witch sounds the same as when her Néni would call her little star, and not like the nearly insulting way the others used it. "It's not your fault. You were a lost, angry little girl full of pain and grief and fear. You were taken advantage of, offered a way to make all of that hurt go away, so of course you and Pietro took the chance to be free of it."
"How can you say that this isn't my fault?" Wanda asks as she looks into Natasha's eyes. "After what I did to you, to your friends, the things I made you see."
"We all make mistakes, Wanda." Natasha replies. "And sometimes, some of us, make mistakes that get others hurt. You and your brother, you realized that you'd made a mistake, and you did your best to make up for it. You paid far too high a price making up for it. As far as I'm concerned, there's a clean slate between us."
Wanda stares at Natasha for a long time before looking over at Clint who chuckles and shrugs his shoulders. "You think she's good at that kind of speech, wait until you get one from her mothers, they could teach a masterclass."
Although it doesn't turn into an argument, there is a lot of chattered and debate about what to do with Wanda after they return to New York. According to the records they were able to find she was only fifteen, and would need a legal guardian. Natasha quickly stepped in and once again reinforced the fact that Wanda trusted Clint and now her, so they would be taking care of her.
With that settled, Natasha lays claim to an entire section of the compound and has it converted into a common living area and kitchen with three bedrooms, one for Wanda, one for Clint, and the last one she moved all of her personal things into from her apartment at the Tower.
They have a funeral for Pietro and bury him in the cemetery used by the Episcopal cathedral Natasha attended as a child with her mothers. Wanda withdraws a bit after that. Natasha does what she can, but she doesn't want to push. While Clint is around Natasha decides to spend the weekend at May's, and stops at her mothers and the market on her way back to the compound. That evening while Wanda is video chatting with Laura, who is helping them home school the girl while she's getting reacclimated to being a kid, Natasha makes dinner.
Stepping out of her room into the common space shared by herself, Natasha, and Clint, Wanda's eyes go wide at a familiar scent. Walking across the open floor plan towards the kitchen she watches Natasha move gracefully around the room as she cooks and hums softly to the music playing. "Is that, is that paprikash?"
Natasha looks up and smiles warmly at the girl. "I thought with all the new experiences you've been having lately, you might like something familiar. I hope that's ok?"
Wanda isn't sure if it is but she nods anyway as she picks up a spoon to taste what's in the pot. Again her eyes go wide. "This is wonderful!"
Pride and affection flood Natasha's blue-green eyes as she smiles. "My godmother, Ana, she was Hungarian. When she passed away Tony gave all of her and my Uncle Jarvis' recipes to my Ma. I asked her to make copies for me and picked them up on my way back from Queens." She indicated the oven and beamed, "I made Uncle Jarvis' apple torte for dessert."
With a stunted expression on her face the girl simply stood there staring at Natasha.
"What?" Natasha asked nervously, worried that she'd pushed a little too much by making what she thought might be comfort food for the girl.
"Nothing, sorry." Wanda replies, snapping out of her surprise. "I just, well, who knew the Black Widow could cook is all."
Natasha laughed. "My Ma had me in the kitchen helping as soon as I was dexterous enough to hold a spoon."
After that Wanda began to relax and over the next few weeks she and Natasha really began growing close. Wanda appreciated that the older woman wasn't trying to become anything more to her than a friend, a protector, and a guardian. It was nice, Wanda thought, to have someone looking out for her, and that maybe she wasn't as alone as she felt. She still missed her parents, and she physically ached for her brother, but she felt a little less alone now. She hoped that was ok.
One night a few months after she started living in America at the Avengers compound, Wanda is awakened by muffled cries coming from Natasha's room. She isn't sure what to do at first, it doesn't sound as if Natasha is being attacked, it sounds more like she's having a nightmare. Getting up from her to soft bed, under her fluffy comforter, Wanda carefully makes her way out of her room, and next door to Natasha's. She knocks on the older woman's door gently, softly calling out the redhead's name. When Natasha doesn't respond she carefully opens the door and steps inside. Natasha is twitching on her bed, hands fisted into her blankets, a thin sheen of sweat on her skin, and her face twisted up in pain caused by whatever she was dreaming. She's muttering something, a name? Names?
Wanda doesn't know what to do and she's trying not to panic. Clint isn't there, so she doesn't know who to go to for help. Finally she just decides to try and wake Natasha. She'd been staying with the other woman long enough to know that just walking over and shaking Natasha was probably a bad idea, so she used her powers to gently nudge the woman while she called out her name.
When Natasha wakes it's with a soft gasp as she sits up wide eyed, taking in her surroundings. When she sees Wanda standing a few feet from her bed, she calms herself and tries to relax. "Wanda? Sweetheart, are you alright?"
"I'm fine." Wanda replies while trying not to roll her eyes in a very teenage fashion. Natasha was the one in distress, and yet her first concern was about Wanda's well being. It was both very sweet, and such a lame parental thing to do. Wanda smiled just a little before saying, "You were having a nightmare."
"It happens sometimes." Natasha scrubs her hands over her face as she shifts so she's sitting cross legged. Then she pats the space beside her, inviting Wanda to sit with her. "I'm alright."
"You were calling out for your mothers." Wanda tells her softly as she walks over and sits on the edge of Natasha's bed. She glanced over at the framed picture Natasha had in the room of the two women, one Wanda had met on the helicarrier that rescued them from Sokovia, the other she has not met yet. Natasha had allowed her to set her own pace as far as what she was and wasn't ready for, and meeting more new people she just wasn't ready for yet. Turning her attention back to Natasha, Wanda said, "I don't know the details of what I made you see but I know it had something to do with them. I saw their faces in your memory when I set the vision into motion."
"You only brought to the surface what I've had nightmares about since I was a little girl, Wanda." Natasha reassured. She had promised Wanda that she would always be honest and up front with her, so Natasha tried not to hold back when they talked about what happened. She was quiet for a while and then took a deep breath and said, "There's always been this thorn of fear in me that worries I'm going to lose them."
"Why?" Wanda asks gently.
Natasha shrugs. "I really don't know. Maybe because I was adopted and I was afraid they would leave me the way my birth parents did. Maybe because I lost a lot of people I loved along the way. It's just something that's a part of who I am, I guess."
"Don't you wish it would go away?" Wanda asks as she shifts on the bed so she's sitting beside Natasha, getting closer to her to offer comfort, and perhaps to take a bit as well.
"This particular fear or fear all together?" Natasha asks in return as she puts her arm around the girl.
Wanda thinks about that and replies, "Fear in general. It is a boulder around your neck when you are trying not to drown."
"It can be." Natasha agrees. "But, fear isn't a bad thing. Fear helps keep you alive. My Mum used to tell me to make fear a companion that helps give you strength, not a weight that makes you weak."
"What does she say about grief?" Wanda whispers.
Natasha tightens her hold on the girl, and kisses her temple. "That it fades over time but never really leaves. That it's like a scar left behind on your heart, and that our scars are there to remind us that we're strong enough to keep carrying on."
A few days after Wanda falls asleep in Natasha's bed as she runs her finger over one of Natasha's physical scars, her thoughts turning over what the older woman had said, she walks into their compound apartment after training with Steve to find Natasha video chatting with a woman with caramel colored hair and a local accent.
"It's been too damn long, angel." Angie says from the device Natasha is holding up. "I want you home for dinner on Sunday."
Natasha sighs. "I can't Ma. I need to…"
"Is that her?" Angie asks, spotting the girl coming into the room over Natasha's shoulder and smiling. "Is that your little Wanda?"
Natasha groans and rolls her eyes. "She isn't little, Ma, she's fifteen not five, and yes, that's Wanda."
Wanda's eyes went a little wide at being called out. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt."
"You're not, little witch." Natasha reassured the girl with a warm smile. "And even if you were it would be alright. It's not like an interruption wouldn't stop her from nagging me, she's done it while I was in the middle of a fight before."
Angie huffed from the screen. "I wouldn't nag you if you'd come home and have dinner with your mother and me, Natasha Elizabeth."
That actually made Wanda smile. She'd never really heard anyone speak to the Black Widow that way before, even the English woman's tone had been different while they were on the helicarrier and in the refugee camp. Wanda had figured it was because they'd been there on official matters, and she hadn't been around the two during any personal moments to notice if they interacted differently.
"See, look, Wanda likes the idea." Angie beamed, catching the girl's small but genuine smile. "So it's settled, you two will come to dinner on Sunday. Nothing big, just us, and Clint if he's around."
"Ma!" Natasha scolded. They'd just spent twenty minutes talking about not pushing Wanda into things she wasn't ready for. The girl was still grieving and Natasha didn't want to hurt her by exposing her to something, like a family get together, that would just be a painful reminder of what she'd lost.
"It's alright, Nat." Wanda says as she comes closer. She bits her lip, her thoughts and emotions swirling a bit, and then says, "I wouldn't mind going."
Natasha blinked, surprised. "Are you sure, Wanda?" The girl nods, and Natasha looks at her for a long moment to make sure before she smiles proudly at her. "Alright then, I guess we'll be there, Ma."
"Great!" Angie cheers. "Wanda, baby, tell Natasha what you like to eat and I'll see if I can make it. Whatever you want hun, just let her know so she can tell me."
Wanda blinked in surprise this time. "Um, ok?"
"Absolutely ok!" Angie was beaming. "We will see you both on Sunday! We're looking forward to finally meeting Wanda in person!"
"Angela Carter did you bully our daughter into coming to dinner?" Called out an English voice from off screen.
"One of us had to do it, English." Angie replied as she turned her head to look at the woman who'd spoken.
Natasha was laughing and shaking her head. "I'm hanging up now. Bye Ma. Bye Mum!" After ending the video call she turned to Wanda and said, "You don't have to go if you're not ready, Wanda."
Wanda smiles softly. "I know. I want to. I promise."
"Ok little witch, if you're sure." Natasha smiles and playfully tugs at the girl's ponytail. "Go take a shower kiddo you stink. Steve must have gone hard on you guys today. I'll order dinner and you can pick which movie we watch tonight as long as it's not Hocus Pocus for the twenty-fifth time this month."
"Stark keeps calling me Sabrina." Wanda frowned. She still wasn't Tony's biggest fan, and might never be, but she at least stopped outwardly hating him once she was made aware of his connection to Natasha. If Natasha liked him then he couldn't be completely evil, right? "Can we watch why he calls me that?"
Natasha chuckled. "Sure, but it's not a movie it's a t.v. show so that's going to require binge watching snacks." Swiping her finger across her tablet Natasha started making a list of snacks to order along with dinner. "Do you want to try a new ice cream or do you want Chunky Monkey again?"
"I think something new." Wanda replied as she made her way towards her bedroom and her ensuite bath to shower and change into a pair of the comfy lounge pants and t-shirt Natasha had bought for her.
It was cute the way Wanda worried about what to wear to dinner, even though Natasha repeatedly told her to just wear what made her most comfortable. The girl ended up going with a simple black pleated skirt and a nice sweater. She bounced her leg nervously in the car on the drive to Brooklyn, and Natasha did her best to reassure her. When they pulled up in front of the faded red brick brownstone Natasha turned to the girl and asked, "You good, kiddo? We don't have to do this, my moms will understand if we cancel."
Wanda nodded with a warm smile. She was a little nervous sure, but Natasha didn't need to be so overprotective. "Are your mothers dangerous, Natasha?"
"What? No, of course not." Natasha replied quickly with a bit of a confused look on her face.
"Then stop, what is the phrase Clint uses, oh, stop mother henning me about it." Wanda huffed at her.
Natasha held up her hands in a gesture of surrender and laughed. "Ok, ok, I'll chill."
The pair heads into the house after Natasha unlocks the door and shoves her keys, which still hang from the black widow keychain Peter had given her years ago, into the pocket of her black leather jacket before she hangs it up. Natasha calls out to her mothers just as she always does as she takes Wanda's red leather jacket and hangs it beside her own on the rack beside the door. As they walk into the living room together it's Peggy who greets them first, and Natasha smiles as her mother hugs her hello.
"Alright then, poppet?" Peggy asks as she eyes her daughter carefully despite the fact that she knows Natasha hasn't been out in the field much since taking on the responsibility of looking after Wanda.
"I'm good, Mum." Natasha smiles at her mother.
Stepping back from her daughter Peggy nods her approval after she finishes looking her over, then she turns her attention to the girl and smiles at the young woman hiding behind Natasha. "Hello Wanda, it's nice to see you again."
"Hello Director Carter." Wanda replies softly. "Thank you for inviting me over."
Peggy smiles warmly. "You're welcome dear, and please call me Peggy if you're comfortable with that, if not Mrs. Carter is fine." She chuckles softly. "Peter still calls me Mrs. Carter."
Natasha laughs as she flops into her mother's reading chair. "If I weren't dating his aunt he'd still be calling me Ms. Natasha." Reaching over to grab the paper from the side table her mother must have been reading before their arrival she crinkles her nose. "The Daily Bugle? I thought you gave up on reading fifty papers everyday? Especially the crap ones."
"Wanda, dear, make yourself at home." Peggy tells the girl hovering near Natasha nervously in a warm and welcoming tone while indicating the sofa for the girl to sit. "Can I get you something to drink, dear? Natasha says you've become quite fond of orange soda, so we made sure to pick some up."
"You didn't have to go through any trouble." Wanda replies.
"No trouble at all, sweetheart." Peggy says as she moves to the sidebar to fetch the girl a glass of soda while responding to her daughter who now has her legs thrown over the arm of her chair, which makes Peggy rolls her eyes. "I never read fifty papers a day."
"We had a basket on the front porch just for all the papers we'd get every morning." Natasha snorted as she picks up the china cup on the side table and downs whatever's in it. She crinkles her nose both because her mother never put enough sugar in her tea for Natasha's liking, and because of the headline of the trashy newspaper. "Spider-Man: Hero or Menace?"
"What's a spider man?" Wanda asks from where she's perched on the end of the sofa closest to Natasha.
"A new vigilante in Queens." Peggy replies as she hands Wanda a glass with ice and her soda in it.
Wanda smiles warmly at Natasha's English mother. "Thank you."
"Looks like a kid in a costume." Natasha comments as she examines the pictures in the paper closely.
"I'm a kid in a costume." Wanda teases.
"You're an Avenger in training with a uniform." Natasha replies as she tosses the paper back down on the side table once she's finished looking it over. "I don't like the idea of civilians putting on homemade costumes and going out into the streets to fight crime. It's dangerous."
"It's not unexpected." Peggy says as she retrieves her tea cup, her favorite tea cup which Natasha had given her when she was a girl, from the table where Natasha set it after draining it. "Once the Avengers went public, it was only a matter of time before things like this started happening. I'm sure Nicholas has an eye on the matter." Natasha snickered and Peggy rolled her eyes again. "Really Natasha?"
"It will never not be funny." Natasha replies.
"That had better not be shop talk I hear." Angie scolds as she comes into the room with a dish towel over her shoulder and her apron on. "I have a damp dish towel and I'm not afraid to use it on the both of you."
Natasha pops out of the chair to hug her Ma hello and then smiles as she introduces her to Wanda. "Ma, this is Wanda, live and in the flesh. You can stop trying to sneak a peek at her when you video call me now. Wanda, this is my Ma, Angie."
Wanda stands to greet Natasha's other mother and is quickly pulled into a hug that leaves her a bit wide-eyed. When she looks over at Natasha all the redhead does is smirk and shrug. Natasha had warned her ahead of time that her American mother was a hugger, and a bit more than she might be used to.
"Nattie said you would be ok with anything so I made lasagna." Angie said as she pulled back from the hug and smiled at the girl. "It's pretty basic and simple."
"That sounds wonderful." Wanda returned the smile. "Clint is jealous, he says you cook better than his wife, and that I shouldn't say that around Laura."
Natasha laughed. "Hell, even Laura says it."
"Laura admitting it and Clint saying it in front of her are two differant things." Peggy chuckled. "He knows it's best to keep his wife happy."
"Happy wife, happy life, right Peg?" Angie teased.
"Absolutely my darling." Peggy replies as she kisses her wife's cheek.
Natasha rolled her eyes but she was smiling. Any show of annoyance over her mothers displays of affection were purely playful teasing. Natasha took a lot of comfort and a great amount of pride in the fact that after so long together her mothers were still in love with one another. She was also grateful that her mothers were making sure that the evening was as relaxed and normal as possible, and were able to get Wanda to smile and laugh more than once during the evening.
"Wait, hold up," Natasha says, eyes wide as her gaze darts between Wanda and Peggy as the four of them sit around the dining room table. Wanda had been telling them about her first time at Avengers' Tower with Steve when Natasha cut in. "What the hell do you mean she just picks up Thor's hammer and hands it to him?"
"Natasha Elizabeth, watch your mouth at the dinner table." Angie scolds.
Natasha rolls her eyes and then turns and stares at her mum in awe.
Peggy chuckles. "Nattie, darling, why are you looking at me like a suffocating fish?"
"You know why." Natasha replies.
"I don't." Angie says as she looks between the others.
Natasha turns to her ma and explains, "There's a spell or an enchantment or some such shit,"
"Strike two, Natasha." Angie warns. "Don't get to three little girl."
Again Natasha rolls her eyes. Wanda looks amused as hell.
"Anyway," Natasha goes on. "Thor's hammer can only be lifted by someone deemed worthy enough to wield the powers of a god. No one else on the team has ever been able to lift it, not even Steve."
Peggy hadn't known that, the part about not even Steve being able to lift it, she did know about the enchantment because she was aware of what happened in New Mexico. Now she understood the looks of awe and wonder she'd gotten when she'd picked up Thor's hammer then, and the look Natasha had given her just now, and it made her blush.
One of the best parts of the evening was when Wanda laughed over a story about Natasha as a child. Natasha didn't see the flicker of guilt that so often followed light hearted, happy moments. Watching her mothers with Wanda, and watching Wanda open herself up to their easy affections, sent a rush of warmth through Natasha that started deep in her heart and spread quickly to every cell in her body. The look of pure bliss on Wanda's face when she tried Angie's tiramisu for the first time was the cherry on top of an evening that went better than Natasha could have expected, but probably should have because of course her mothers would be up to the challenge of connecting with a child in need of love and security.
By the end of the evening there were plans made to do it again, and the promise of Peggy making a traditional English roast dinner. On the way back to the compound Natasha glances over at Wanda to find her smirking. "What's so funny, little witch?"
"I don't think those Hydra soldiers who used to guard us, the ones who were so terrified of the famous Black Widow would be afraid as much if they knew she liked to cuddle with her mothers while she watched a movie or pouted whenever they scolded her." Wanda teased.
"Sure they would, because that back there wasn't the Black Widow, that was just Natasha Carter." Natasha replied with a smile. "It's important to find a balance between who we really are in real life, and who we are as Avengers, Wanda. I'm always Natasha Carter, but I'm not always the Black Widow, I can't be. I'd lose myself if I were."
With the dinner with mothers having gone so well Natasha decided to set up an evening for Wanda to meet May and Peter. May had played a big part in convincing Natasha that she was capable of giving Wanda what she needed, and now that the girl was a permanent fixture in her life, it was long past time that she met the other people who mattered to Natasha. They kept it simple, they went out to dinner and a movie. Peter being Peter was excited to meet Wanda, and wanted her to like him. Wanda for her part, was a little leery, especially around Peter. He was her age, which meant he was her brother's age, and being around him was difficult at first. But Peter was persistent without being overbearing, and eventually he and Wanda became good friends.
Steve had told Wanda about his list, all the things he'd missed out on while frozen that he wanted to experience, and she'd started making her own list. While Wanda was in no way a fan of Natasha's opera and ballet music, she very much wanted to experience Broadway. Of course this was something Angie had to be apart of and promised to take Wanda to any and every show she wanted to see.
Natasha wasn't sure what had started it. Perhaps it was hearing her Mum explain to Wanda why she was wearing a red poppy pin back in November, the part about the poppy flower blooming so beautifully out of something so horrific and giving people hope. It reminded Natasha of the way Wanda was blooming out of the darkness she'd living through, and how the girl was growing more bright and hopefully with each passing day. Perhaps it was also because Natasha remembered the way Wanda's powers felt, the sleepy, dazed, feeling that was remanence of the effects poppies could have on the body. Maybe it even had something to do with the color of the flower and Wanda's preference for red. There was also the fact that Natasha had been called poppet by her mother her whole life, and whether she realized it yet or not, poppy was very close to poppet. For all of these reasons, though Natasha was unaware of them at the moment, she'd started calling Wanda, "Poppy, are you sure about this?"
"Yes." Wanda said excitedly. "I've been wanting to see Wicked for a long time."
"I know." Natasha replied as they got ready to head out to the theater with her mothers, May, and Peter. "But, honey, you didn't exactly have the best reaction to the Wizard of Oz."
"Peter says this will help me understand the witch better." Wanda insists.
"Ok, baby, if you're sure." Natasha gives in.
"Nat." Wanda glares at the older woman. "You're mother henning me again."
"I get to mother hen you all I want." Natasha huffed. "I have the legal paperwork to say I'm allowed."
There had been an issue with Wanda's legal status and guardianship a few months back. Some asshats in immigration and the state department wanted to deport her out of fear of her powers. Natasha was ready to handle things but she didn't have to once her mother found out. After Peggy Carter descended on state department in all her Peggy Carter glory not only was Wanda's residency safe, but she was on track for adoption and citizenship because, "No one bloody railroads my granddaughter out of some damn bigoted fear of her being different!"
Wanda rolls her eyes at Natasha, but she's also smiling. She smiles a lot more and a lot easier these days. While she will always miss those she lost, she was also grateful for those she'd found, and she knows in her heart that her parents and her brother would be grateful too. Wanda isn't alone, she has people who love her, and in time she will come to realize she has a family again.