"Agent Romanoff." A female voice caused Natasha to jolt out of her thoughts as elevator doors silently slid open on the medical level in the tower. She looked up to see Dr. Helen Cho standing in the open frame with worry lines between her brows.
"Dr. Cho." The agent said evenly and waited for her to continue.
"Do you have a moment? There is something we should discuss." The doctor held her arm across the elevator to prevent it from closing. Natasha had been on her way up to the living quarters of the Avengers Tower. It had been three days since the team had defeated Ultron, three days since Bruce had flown off in one of the jets, three days since an entire city fell down from the sky nearly obliterating the planet earth as they knew it. And while technically they had won, the events had left all of their consciouses shaken. Natasha had taken the liberty of skipping out of the debrief and disappearing for few days to get her head on straight. The battle had been death-defyingly hard but for the superspy being in mortal peril was becoming her norm. The memories that had been dredged up by the red wisps from Wanda Maximoff on the other hand had been something she'd been entirely unprepared for.
The flashes from her past and the nightmares that she had long sequestered to the corner of her mind were pulled into the light once more. So as soon as the helicarrier landed and docked, Natasha ignored the PA system requesting she join the other Avengers on the tarmac to take a quinjet back to the tower in New York City and she helped herself to a motorcycle, letting herself off the vessel like a bat out of hell. She drove down New England country roads at blistering speeds, scarcely noticing the scenic foliage as she blazed through before settling at a safehouse. She turned off her cell phone knowing Clint and probably Steve would try calling her in then stayed a couple days, sleeping with a pair of handcuffs secured to the headboard. She didn't attach the other end to her wrist, she promised herself she never would again, but she held it tightly with the metal biting into her fingers. On the third day when she woke up without images of ballerinas with bloody feet or shooting a bound faceless man or riding on a metal table down a grim, dank hallway, Natasha set back out on the road to rejoin her team.
She still felt on edge, but it was manageable now, everything slowly falling back into the compartment she had made for it. Now she just wanted to be in her rooms, take a long, hot shower and find Steve and Clint if he had not gone back to the farm yet. However, the tension in the doctor's shoulder, the concern in her expression gave her pause, "Yes, I have some time."
As she stepped off the elevator Dr. Cho fell in line with her, "If you could follow me please, I think it would be best if I showed you."
After a moment of silence as they walked down the hall, Natasha commented, "I'm surprised to still see you're here and not back in Seoul."
"I stayed on to see if I could help the boy." She clarified. "His sister helped me break out of Ultron's trance. I wanted to see if there was anything I could do."
"And could you do anything?
She shook her head, "He is being preserved in the Cradle but that's all I can do for them now."
"Is that what this is about?" Natasha asked evenly.
"Yes," Dr. Cho confirmed and went into more detail. "The girl hasn't left her brother's side since they arrived here. Agent Barton has been checking in on her, I was actually going to find him before I ran into you."
"He would be better suited to help." Her blasé demeanor never faltered but a part of Natasha squirmed uncomfortably, not liking walking into a situation she was not prepared for, especially if Wanda Maximoff was involved. She realized that in the end the woman had helped defeat Ultron and even understood better than most that she should have a chance for redemption however, forgiving her for messing with her head was a different matter entirely.
"Let me just show you first." Helen ignored her reluctance and stopped them in from of a large observation window of a recovery room. The standard hospital bed had been removed and in its place Dr. Cho's Cradle had been set up, glowing the eerie turquoise color. Then half sitting in a chair, half draped over top the machine was- Natasha blinked.
"Who am I looking at here?"
"Wanda Maximoff."
"That's not Wanda Maximoff." Natasha said confidently and yet at the same time she knew it was her, however her appearance had changed drastically since she had seen her last. Wanda who had appeared to be a young woman in her early 20's now looked to be a slumbering, young teenager. She had shrunken in stature, becoming thin and gaunt, but remained recognizable from her apple cheekbones and bow-shaped lips, the mass of dark waves spilling messily around her head and the last remnants of black eyeliner smeared around her eyes. The red leather jacket the girl had borrowed from the Black Widow was still around her shoulder, but it had become too large for her the fabric pooling around her.
"I assure you it is." Dr. Cho insisted. "But this is the first I've seen her as young as she is. Like I said, Agent Barton has been checking in, trying to get her to eat but she hasn't been very responsive, and I've been around monitoring the boy's stasis.. Then when I came by just now, I found her.. well, like this."
Natasha took the image of the girl, so slight and unmoving it barely seemed like she was there at all. Eventually she asked, "Any theories?"
"We never really understood her powers. My best guess is that it has something to do with them. Based on how little she has been eating and sleeping I'd say she finally exhausted herself." The doctor crossed her arms over her torso as she spoke, the agent adopting the same posture and nodding along with her words.
"I'll need to talk with the rest of the team." Natasha declared after a moment of consideration.
"What should I do with her for now? The boy will be fine in the Cradle indefinitely but eventually he should have a funeral or some kind of burial rites."
Natasha sighed. The boy. She could not see Pietro Maximoff's body from where they stood but she wondered if he had undergone a similar transformation as his sister. She felt dread as if she knew the answer but was not ready to deal with the reality of it. "I'll talk to her about moving up to the living quarters. We'll figure this out as we go along."
Natasha unfolded her arms and strode to the door. She rapped on the door before opening it, hoping to wake the girl up before she entered. It worked. When she walked through the doorway, Wanda's head shot up, her eyes glowing red as she quickly realized that her disguise had been lost. She flexed her fingers over the Cradle, gripping it protectively as she stared at Natasha. After a few seconds, the agent said calmly though with a deadly serious look in her eye, "If you are thinking about using your powers on me, I would carefully reconsider it."
After another pause, her eyes faded to their normal mossy green. Natasha stepped further into the room, "You remember me?"
They had minimal contact in the field and Natasha had not seen anyone on the helicarrier before they docked, and she took off. The girl nodded, "Agent Romanoff."
"Right.. Want to explain your costume change?"
Wanda cleared her throat, her voice still cracked at first, but she pushed out her explanation, "My powers let me change the appearance of things. It is a.. glamour, an illusion. I can only really do me and Pietro. And little things with objects, the color, the size... Older was better, safer."
In an instant, Wanda appeared as a 20-something woman again then as quickly as it had come the mirage flickered away to reveal the petite girl.
"So how old are you?"
She hesitated and Natasha pressed her, "Your file may have been incomplete but, it will only be a matter of before we find some record of your birth. It will be easier if you just tell me now."
"We're 15. Almost 15, in two weeks." Wanda said then seemed to hold her breath in anticipation of the Black Widow's reaction. Natasha exhaled heavily and ran her hand through her hair, ending up gripping it at the base of her skull. She was a just kid, only a couple years older than her niece and nephew.
"Thank you for telling me." Natasha managed to say through her shock, "Now you need to come upstairs-"
"No." Wanda refused flatly.
"Why not?" The agent raised her eyebrows.
The girl glowered at her with renewed ire, "I won't let them cut him apart for your tests and experiments."
"No one is going to do that." Natasha tried to reassure her. "We'll have to talk about things, hard things." She avoided using the word funeral at this point. "But I promise, your brother will be treated with respect here."
"Why should I trust you?" Wanda did her best to keep her voice strong, but Natasha heard the wavering at the end.
The agent sighed and thought a moment. Finally she took another couple of steps toward her, attempting to reason with her, "We're on the same side now, right? We're the good guys, we wouldn't do something like that."
"We thought Hydra was good, but they did-" Her word got choked up in her throat then she forced out, "They would."
"We aren't Hydra, Wanda. I promise there will be no dissection or experiments." The young girl's harden expression was melting into one of pure anguish, and Natasha realized this may be less about her fear and more about not wanting to leave her brother. She said honestly with a heavy heart, "We just want to give your brother a place to rest."
She added with a bit more authority, "And you need to rest too. Now, you have to come upstairs."
Wanda stared at her for a few seconds and then finally nodded, but her eyes turned to gaze down through the glowing glass top, looking down on Pietro's face that Natasha still could not quite see. Tear began to drip down from her eyes. Natasha softened slightly, "I'm going to go upstairs and see about getting you a room. You can stay here a while longer and say goodbye for now. I'll be back in about 30 minutes, okay?"
"Yes." The young Sokovian rasped out, her eyes still fixed down. Natasha turned and left her for the moment, immediately running into Dr. Cho as she exited the room.
"Can you keep an eye on her until I come back, or get a nurse to if you're busy?" She asked the doctor.
"Of course." Helen agreed.
"I'm not sure when we'll be able to move him from the Cradle-"
"There's no rush." She looked back to watch Wanda who had laid her head back down on the machine. "She lost her whole family. I can't imagine how she must be feeling."
/
Natasha finished her journey up to the residence though instead of heading to her quarters she made her way to the kitchen, the most likely place for the rest of the team to be and she found exactly who she expected to be there. Sam sat at the round kitchen eating a bowl of cereal with Steve who was reading a news article on a Stark pad. Clint had his face stuck in the refrigerator, but he peered around the door when he heard her announce, "We need to talk, boys."
"It's about time you showed up." He ignored her statement and took the butter out the fridge.
"Glad to have you back, Nat." Steve looked up from his tablet, speaking with his Captain American sincerity. Sam waved his spoon at her in greeting after he had taken a bite.
"I can't stay much longer. I've got to get home to Laura and the kids, and I was hoping you might be able to help me get Wanda out of the medical wing today. I'm just about to head down there now to see if she'll eat something." Clint said as he buttered some toast he already had on a plate with some orange slices.
"I just saw her. I told her I'd be back in 30 minutes to take her to a room. She'll come up." Natasha informed them. "That is actually what I need to talk to you about."
"You saw Wanda? And she agreed to come up?" He asked, incredulous that she had managed to complete the task he had been trying for days to do seemingly minutes after her arrival.
"I just told her it was time." She could guess how Clint had been handling the situation. He was one of the most capable people she knew but he had a soft underbelly when it came to the people he cared about, which apparently extended to Wanda now. He would gently ask her to come upstairs or to eat something, and she would look at him with her big, watery eyes and shake her head no, and he would fold like a deck of cards. It would probably only get worse now that Wanda was actually a child. While Clint's intentions were in the right place, Natasha knew sometimes giving direction could be more beneficial for someone in Wanda's position.
"Did you threaten her?" He half accused.
Glaring at him, she retorted sharply with a huff, "I didn't threaten her. Look, you guys need to see something. Steve can we use your tablet?"
He nodded and Natasha grabbed Clint's forearm to drag him over to the table. Sam leaned in and the two spies stood around them as Natasha requested, "FRIDAY, can you play the live security footage from the medical wing of Wanda Maximoff to Steve's tablet."
"Of course, Agent Romanoff." The AI chirped and a video started playing on the screen. Wanda somehow looked even smaller on the feed. She'd sat up once again and her lips were moving though there was no audio and Natasha could not lipread in Sokovian. Simultaneously, the men all tilted forward to get a better look.
"Is that…" Sam trailed off and held his chin as he continued to gawk at what he saw.
"Nat, what am I looking at here?" Clint asked bewildered.
"That's Wanda Maximoff. The real Wanda Maximoff."
"No, no it's not. That's just a kid."
"What are you guys watching? Goat videos on YouTube again? Look up the ones where they run at them with umbrellas." Tony made a very Tony-like entrance when he suddenly appeared with the one-liner, wearing his usual band t-shirt getup and carrying a wrench for no apparent reason.
"You're going to want to see this Tony." Steve stood up and presented the device to him still displaying the girl a few floors below saying goodbye to her brother.
Tony blinked at it a few times and started reciting particulars about video as if that could help him comprehend it, "Right, this is a camera feed from the Med Level. And that is the Cradle where they are temporarily keeping Pietro Maximoff's body, so then that would mean the child lying on top of it who bares a striking resemblance to the little Sokovian witch is in fact…"
"Wanda." Natasha supplied when he trailed off and all eyes turned to her asking for an explanation. She went into her debrief mode. "Wanda is 15. She says can use her powers to change her and her brother's appearances. Appearing older acted as a sort of protective camouflage for them it seems. Obviously, we don't really understand her powers and what their extents are.. I don't think she does either."
Tony said distantly, swiping his hand over his face, "We got our asses handed to us by a teenager."
"Well you guys did. I didn't." Clint reminded them that he was the only one who had avoided falling under her spell.
"No, you just electrocuted a 14-year-old in the brain." Natasha snapped a little, not liking being reminded about the visions pulled from her memory.
"You said she was 15." Clint gaped at her.
Natasha sighed, regretting having lashed out at him, "In two weeks. She'll be 15 years old in two weeks."
"Jesus Christ." The archer muttered under his breath. No one bothered with their new favorite joke to point out the bad word to Steve as they fell silent and contemplated the gravity of the situation. Tony, never able to stay quiet for very long, restarted the conversation with rapid-fire questions.
"So what does this mean? Have we kidnapped a girl? Do we take her back?"
"Take her back to where? The hole in the ground?" Clint demanded incredulously.
"No," Tony quickly denied the implication, "I mean turn her over to Sokovian authorities."
"You mean turn her back over to Hydra." Natasha crossed her arms over her stomach.
"I'm not trying to say we leave her in the hands of Hydra." Tony started to get frustrated, "I'm just saying-"
"We understand, Tony." Steve interrupted him with gentle firmness. "We know you don't want to leave her to Hydra, but if we take her back to Sokovia that is where she will end up."
"And we can't let that happen." Natasha painted a potential picture for them. "Imagine if she did end up back there. We know Hydra uses mind control. She's already so powerful and only a kid, she'll only get stronger. Her under their complete control could make the atomic bomb look like a cherry bomb."
Steve nodded along with her words. She knew he had to be thinking about the yet to be located Winter Soldier as he agreed with her, "Nat's right. She is dangerous. I don't necessarily mean that she is a danger to us anymore, just power like that comes with more potential for danger. Wanda needs to stay with us so we can guide her."
"Great. Mazel Tov." Tony pressed his palms together and dipped them down in Captain America's direction. He added, "Someone should probably tell Fury and Hill. They have been using their contacts to get her legally into the country. I don't know how her being a minor will impact what they need to do."
"I can go contact them." Steve offered. "Let them know what is going on."
"Clint and I will go back down to medical and bring her up here. There is a spare room in my hallway that we can put her up in." Natasha then said pointedly to Tony, "You, make yourself scarce."
"So what? I'm supposed to be Daddy Warbucks, but I'm not allowed to be in the same room as Orphan Annie?" He looked insulted. Natasha glared hard at him. She knew the eccentric billionaire used humor to cope and usually found the trait enjoyable, but currently had little patience for it.
"I don't think it would be a good idea for a traumatized teenager to see the man she blamed for her parents' deaths right now." The Black Widow told him stonily.
Tony deflated slightly, realizing he crossed a line, and rubbed the back of his neck, "I'll be in my lab."
Steve left to go do his part and Sam excused himself as well, said he would locate the Vision and fill him in as well, leaving Natasha and Clint on their own. As soon as the others were gone Clint slumped back against the kitchen island, "Jesus Christ, Nat. A 14-year-old girl, what am we going to do with a kid? She is going to need a guardian and I've got to get back home. Laura is due in the next couple weeks."
Clint's eyes darted around as his mind went thought to thought. Natasha observed him, her own questions and concerns in line with his. "You're not thinking of taking her to the farm are you?"
"What else am I supposed to do?"
"You have a baby on the way, and two other kids. You think it's a good idea to bring an unstable superpowered teenager in the mix?" Natasha raised an eyebrow. He sighed. He knew she was right. Helping Wanda would be a full-time job and he did not have the capability to do that for her right now. She went on, "It doesn't have to be you, you know."
He perked up and looked over at her in surprise. Furrowing her brow at his expression, she asked, "You think I couldn't handle it?"
"No, I think you could handle it just fine. I'm just surprised you would want to all things considered." He raised his hands up defensively.
She backed down with a sigh, "Look, I do think the farm would be the best place for her. But we both know now is not the time for her to go out there… I could take temporary guardianship, give you time to take care of your family, and you really should talk to Laura." Though she knew Laura with her enormous heart would not bat an eye at taking in the misfortunate kid. "It will give Wanda time to grieve, we can make sure her powers are under control.. And then we can revisit the idea of having her move to the farm."
"It would just be for a few months, just until after the baby comes and we're more settled." Clint seemed to promise.
"Whenever you and Wanda are ready." Natasha acknowledged, finding herself repeating her words, "We'll figure it out as we go."
"You're right." Clint relaxed marginally.
"It'll be like Budapest all over again." She smirked at him and he chuckled as they allowed themselves a moment of levity.
He matched her wryness, "Again, you and I remember Budapest very different."
Their smiles faded and they paused to gather themselves for a moment, then Natasha tapped Clint on the shoulder as she passed, "Let's go get her."
The two agents rode down the elevator down the few stories to the medical level in silence, then made their way down the corridors to the room where Wanda was. Natasha again knocked softly on the door before she pushed her way inside; Wanda looked up. She felt Clint hovering behind her shoulder as she locked eyes with the lost girl. "Wanda, it's time to come upstairs. You ready?"
Wanda wavered for a moment. There was a tenseness in the air, like the next five seconds would determine more than they could realize. Finally though the girl nodded resolutely and slowly rose to her feet.