A/N: As I'm writing this I just finished chapter 26 I think, and like we're moving very quickly forwards now which is kinda exciting. I'm 40k words in this new part of this fic. Total over 110k words, and I think that's madness. Never far from home has been my longest project until now with 120k words, but I know this one will pass that in a matter of days.
I'm very thankful for you all reading. I have a "new job" now. It's the same job I had before, but because I have moved to another city I just started at a new location which does give me some anxiety not going to lie. But that probably will mean more writing because that is usually how I cope with my feelings anyways.
Again, kinda Black Widow spoilers and they will be in full effects soon so BE AWARE.
Red
Laura lifted her head when she heard voices again. She and Pepper were moving everything from the boxes in the living room when Maria came walking into the room with Steve and Clint following close behind.
"Cameras and sensors installed. Only the things around the houses left now." Clint said with a small smile, leaning his bow he had brought, up against the wall. He had dirt on his shoes and up his legs. It almost looked like they had all walked into a three or climbed one just judging by the state they were in.
"How was it?" Laura asked slowly, watching Steve and Maria both wipe off their shoes before taking them off to leave by the door. Maria had a small stick in her hair that she slowly picked out, while Steve had a small cut, probably from a branch up his arm.
"Big." Maria said with a grimace making Laura laugh softly. "But the process was simple, and it works great. Course, installing everything is always a question about how to make it most seamless with the environment, but happy we could make it work." She added with a smile looking at Laura as she spoke. Laura nodded back turning to Steve who was walking towards them.
"Do you need any help here?" Steve asked politely looking around in the room with a curious look. She could see his eyes had landed on the list Natasha had left with all of the details about what was where. He was definitely observant.
"Well, we have all of the beds that need to be built, all of the beds are put in their respective rooms but maybe if you and Clint could start with those?" Laura said as she put down the vase she had in her hand. Pepper and she had moved everything into the house, but she had to admit, she rather wanted the boys to do all the screwing and hammering. It wasn't that she couldn't do it. It was more that she didn't want to.
Steve nodded at her with a smile before picking up a toolbox leading the way out the door.
The boys disappeared while Maria sat down on an empty box looking around in the room thoughtful. They had reopened most of the boxes and moved all of the kitchen supplies to the kitchen. Laura was happy they had gone through them again, because it was a lot of things that had gotten saved from the old house, meaning they didn't need to be replaced.
They were now looking through the last of the decorative living room items and had already moved a lot of the kids' things. They were close to finishing now, which was a good thing because Laura was starting to get bored of all of the cardboard boxes.
The main thing left now was furniture which they were hopefully going to go look at the upcoming week. Plus, that part Laura was partly looking forward to.
"I looked around Natasha's shooting rage. It's tucked away, and mainly harmless. Only old targets and such, no equipment floating around." Maria said as Laura continued to look through the box in front of her. Laura lifted her head, looking at the woman who smiled at her softly.
"Thank you, Maria," Laura said with a smile thankful that Maria had even thought about that in the first place. The idea of having a shooting range on their property had been scary, but as long as the kids couldn't hurt themselves it was fine.
"Are they still out?" The woman asked looking at Laura before turning to Pepper slowly.
"Natasha texted me saying they are coming back soon. They just left a store and was gonna drive back soon, so maybe 15 minutes?" Pepper said, inspecting a kitchen towel she had found.
Natasha had done like she said and took the kids and Wanda out for lunch before she would take them to do some food shopping so they all would have some food in the house. They had been gone for 3,5 hours already. And of course, while that was counting the lunch part, it had been a while.
Laura was wondering how Natasha was dealing with it all herself. She had clearly already been tried, driving most of the day. And then having to take three kids, including a toddler out for lunch and shopping. Laura couldn't say she thought it was a great idea, that was for sure.
Maybe she should have suggested going instead of Wanda, or at least ask if Natasha was even up for it, but she hadn't gotten a chance to ask. And just judging by how Natasha had left the room it didn't really seem like she wanted to talk about it either.
Maria nodded back before standing up. "Do we have some glasses or something here? Dying for a glass of cold water." Maria said, looking through the cupboards in the kitchen.
"Second from the left of the sink!" Pepper yelled back as she dove into another box making Laura laugh softly before returning to her own things.
They ended up waiting for another 50 minutes. With Laura, Pepper and Maria now all working they had more or less finished the whole unpacking in 30 minutes, leaving them to only wait.
Laura had already started to feel uneasy when they passed the 15 minutes mark, but when she closed the last empty box after 30 minutes, she was really scared. The group started to get worried now, and both Pepper and Laura were walking nonstop back and forth over the floor.
Natasha had texted Pepper over an hour ago saying they were on their way home and even if they didn't drive right away, they should have been here by now. None of the women had been able to contact Natasha nor Wanda at all in the 20 minutes they had tried. Messages went through but both phones went straight to voicemail, which didn't help Laura's pounding heart.
"Are the girl back yet or?" Clint walked into the room with Steve, both looking somewhat tired as they entered. Still, they both were wearing a happy face, not aware of how much worry that had been floating between them. Both Pepper and Laura sent them a worried look, both immediately losing the smile they had been wearing.
"I can't get through to Natasha. She said they were on their way an hour ago." Pepper said with a worried voice, giving Steve a scared look.
"What about Wanda?" Clint said with a concerned voice, walking over to the closes window to him looking out of it.
"I've tried to call her 10 times already, it stopped going through 15 minutes ago," Laura said shaking her head. She had a bad feeling, and she didn't like it, not at all. One thing was Wanda and Natasha. They could both handle a bad situation, and especially when they even were together. But the kids were with them. All of them.
"Wait. I hear a car." Maria said suddenly lifting her head from her phone. The woman had been quiet the last few minutes but was now on her feet before Laura even registered her sentence properly.
"What?" Pepper hurried across the floor followed by both of the boys and Laura close behind.
A car was driving slowly towards them, and Laura quickly recognized it as theirs. All of them hurried down the road towards the car and to Laura's shock and horror her eyes met with the driver. But it wasn't Natasha wasn't behind the wheel.
"Where is Natasha?" Pepper hissed the second the car stopped, and Laura ripped open the door on Lila's side to help her out of the car, and Clint immediately on Nathaniel side.
Wanda didn't say anything to them. Only turning around in her seat to look at the kids with a smile while the adults removed the kids from their seats and grabbing all of the shopping bags.
"Wanda!" Steve said loudly. His voice was annoyed, and Laura could see Wanda jump by the sound of it. She turned to him shaking his head lightly with a smile.
"Sorry, she met a friend. She asked me to just drive the kids home so she wouldn't hold us up. My phone is also dead, it dies just before we driving, think almost 30 minutes ago." Wanda said, turning to them with a small smile. Her voice was calm and collected, and very little told them something was off. Or at least not something you would notice right away.
She is lying.
It was a lie.
Laura knew it was a lie.
She got the same instinct she got when she felt Natasha or Clint lying. It was the same pit in her stomach that told her it wasn't true. She could see it in Wanda's face. Her eyes not letting go of hers, but her pupils shining in this very familiar way. In fact, the entire way the woman was carrying her was familiar. It was Natasha, it was like she was looking at Natasha. It was exactly how Natasha looked when she was lying as well.
"Okay, well let's get everything inside then." Maria said, matching Wanda's calm voice, just grabbing Lila's hand and a couple of bags in the other. "Hmm kid, how was the ice cream?" she continued, not giving Laura a second look as she guided Lila towards the house talking with the girl as they walked.
Laura just looked after her before turning to one of the food bags grabbing it slowly. "Coop, what happened?" She said, trying to keep her voice as calm as possible, not quite sure what to do with herself yet.
"Oh, Nat just saw a friend and went after the person. I don't know who it was, but then Wanda said we should maybe wait, even if Natasha had left the keys with us, she didn't want to drive without her. So, we went to play on a playground before Wanda got a text saying she was going to be late. Then her phone died when she tried to call her, so we just went home as she suggested." Cooper said with a small smile before picking up a bag of his own making his way into the house.
Laura was torn. She knew Natasha and she would absolutely never leave the kids or Wanda like that without reason. She also knew that Wanda was definitely lying as well. But very little went past Cooper, even if he usually didn't pick up exactly what, he, even without thinking about it, always seemed to notice when something was off, but he didn't seem to have noticed anything at all this time. Of course, when Natasha went in for a small lie, he didn't pick it up. But if the atmosphere was wrong and he would have noticed one way or another.
She knew she couldn't relay on just that, but if Cooper hadn't noticed anything it couldn't have been very dramatic. It meant that Natasha had not seemed worried or stressed around him before she left. If she had, he would have noticed. He had turned extra sensitive after they moved, especially when it was Natasha. Of course, Wanda had been worried, but he had already stated he had noticed that. So if Natasha hadn't been taken away, not seemed worried, or not stressed, what had happened then?
Laura was not alone in being worried. Pepper seemed to look at her phone every third minute, and even Steve seemed to be restless through the rest of the day.
Wanda, Maria and Clint all shared the ability to seemingly not care at all. None of them seemed to break their character at all for the rest of the day. Even when the kids asked why Natasha hadn't returned after dinner Wanda had just calmly answered she had texted saying she was staying the night even though Laura knew Wanda hadn't gotten any texts at all.
This whole act lasted the whole rest of the day until after the kids were in bed and the adults were yet again alone. It wasn't before then Wanda finally broke the act.
She had left for the bathroom right after Laura had re-entered after putting the kids to bed. She had been finishing up the dishes and was slowly drying out a cup when Wanda came storming into the room with an upset look in her eyes.
"AHH I should never have left her!" Laura turned around surprised by the sudden outburst and watched as Wanda fell down on a living room stool. It was one of the two small pieces of furniture's that Natasha had bought for her own bedroom, and the only real furniture in the living room and kitchen at the moment.
The woman hid her face in her hands and Laura watched as the woman sank down shaking. She didn't look at any of them, only hiding her face in her hands, sobbing into her sweater.
"Wanda, sweetheart, what happened?" Laura tried, putting down the glass on the counter before walking over to her. The outburst had caught the attention of the rest of the group too and all of them turned their heads towards the woman.
"I don't know! I was putting Nathaniel in his seat when I saw Natasha through the window turning around and looking at somebody before, she said to the kids to stay by the car. I didn't have the chance to stop her before she walked away. But with the kids with me I couldn't just run after her, so when she didn't return by ten minutes, I suggested we could go play in the park instead. I didn't know what to do! She didn't say anything just smiling before walking away!" Wanda's voice was filled with pain as she spoke, and Laura felt her heart breaking as she watched Wanda cry. She sniffed and whipped away a tear as Laura closed the distance, looking at her with two tear-filled eyes as Laura couched down beside her resting a hand on her leg.
"She sent me this message. I tried to call her as well… before my phone actually died." Wanda said with a weak voice before she picked up her phone handing it to Laura with a shaking hand.
Think I saw a familiar face, don't wait for me.
Laura read it out loud, looking down at the phone reading it over and over in her head. She could see Wanda had followed up the message multiple times asking where she was without answer.
"Hey, it's okay, you did nothing wrong, if anything what you did was the right call. Thank you for taking care of the kids." Laura said, handing Wanda back her phone, trying to keep her voice as light as possible. The other woman didn't look at her, just quietly sobbing in her hands while the rest of them looked at her.
"I want to go after her." Laura turned around when she heard Maria's voice whisper to Clint. Clint was nodding, both looking out into the dark. They had both the same look in their eyes. Wanting, wishing, needy in a way.
"Same, I don't know if I like the word choice "familiar face" very much." Clint replied quietly, looking at Steve as well. The other man looked between them before looking out into the dark.
"Suit up." Steve said finally, turning around to the door not saying anything else as he left.
Laura looked between them confused.
"What? No? what are you doing?" Laura said pushing herself off the floor and walking away from Wanda.
"Laura, we will all be together. It's only to look for her. And you can call us whenever you need, and it will pick up in our earpieces. I promise we will be safe." Maria said, stepping in front of Clint before Laura could reach him probably knowing that if she had reached him, she would never let go.
Laura looked at her unsure. Torn between either forcing Clint to stay or letting him go with them. She didn't want them out there, and she didn't want to risk losing any of them again. But she also didn't want to be alone either. Natasha, out there alone again, doing God knows without anyone there to back her up
"Promise to call in an hour or so?" Laura whispered, looking over at Pepper who had taken the role of comforting Wanda.
"We promise," Maria said with a small smile before looking at Clint nodding at the door.