Chapter Six

Natasha entered her old room in the Avenger Tower with a heavy heart. It wasn't long after their phone call that she received word that Black Widow has been 'exonerated'. In fact, she couldn't have missed it, considering T'challa's press conference withdrawing his suit against her was displayed in every news channel. Natasha saw not only Tony's hand in this. The world leaders, too, must be anxious to distract everyone's attention from the capture of whom everyone now know to be members of the elusive X Men, a group of mutants under the protection of Professor Xavier. From Tony himself, she knows that behind the scenes, the UN was being bombarded with visits not only from Professor X himself, but also Dr Hank McCoy Secretary of Mutant Affairs, both vehemently protesting the continuing imprisonment of the X Men youngsters, all to no avail. The UN, the Security Council, in particular, stood by their decision to capture the youths as part of their overall defensive objective against groups of super powered refusing to abide by the Sokovian Accords. Tony and her suspected a darker hand in this but as of yet was powerless to act without more comprehensive info.

She sighed as she placed her backpack on her coffee table, surveying the overall Spartan condition of her apartment. She was never one to settle down in one place, thus never felt the need to surround herself with things that offer her comfort. At first glance, her Avenger apartment reflected this. But as she walked around her bedroom, her eyes caught sight of the arrow necklace on her dresser, one given to her from Clint on her first successful mission as an official member of SHIELD. Near her bed, first thing she saw every time she woke up, was the framed picture of her uncharacteristically laughing standing next to a grinning Steve Rogers. It was a Christmas gift from Wanda who upon her opening the wrappings and seeing the picture just shrugged and stated matter-of-factly, "You need to laugh more." She felt a pang in her heart as she remembered the younger girl and how easily she has wormed her way into her heart.

She was shaken from her nostalgia by the sound of the door opening. She turned around in time to see Tony Stark strolling in lazily, a folder in his right hand. "Welcome home, honey, did ya miss me?" he retorted, drily. "No, wait. I want a do-over. Did you join a goth club when you were gone?" He gestured to her hair and Natasha rolled her eyes. "I believe calling in my hairdresser is priority number one?"

"Can it, Stark. It served its purpose, didn't it?"

He shrugged as he sat himself down on the only sofa in Natasha's living room. "But it's still going right? Otherwise I'm gonna have to come up with new names for you besides 'Red'. And you know my plate is just about full at the moment."

Natasha sighed and leaned herself against the doorway between her bedroom and the living-room and met his eyes, noting the worry lines and bloodshot eyes. "It's bad, isn't it?"

He shrugged but kept his eyes on her. "Not defcon level bad. Well, not yet anyway. Meeting tomorrow night, tentatively, and I'll appraise you and everyone else on what I know so far."

Natasha frowned at that. "Tomorrow? Tony, I'm here now. Why wait?"

"Ah, well now we come to the reason I'm here, unless you count making fun of your hair as a reason. Which I absolutely do, by the way," he drawled, as he stood up and handed him the folder. "Your first mission back as a full-fledged Avenger."

Natasha opened the folder to see Dr Banner's face staring up at her. She looked up, catching Tony's eyes. "I don't understand," she said slowly.

He slipped his hands in his pockets and shrugged. "Inside the folder, you'll find several possible locations where Banner has been sighted recently. I wish it was as easy as 'Find-my-Iphone'-ing the guy but the man is strangely adept at going off the grid for someone with a bio-medical background. " He paused to gauge Natasha's reaction then continued, almost defensively. "Big things are about to happen, Nat. And I don't know if you notice, but our side is a bit low on manpower, right now. I mean, literally, we have a hobbling War Machine, a what can only be described as a 'depressed' semi-sentient, and a high school student moonlighting as a crime-fighting spider. So, yes, finding Banner is priority number one. Well, number two after fixing that disaster of a hair, of course."

Natasha glared at him, and decided to ignore the rest of what he said. "So you want me to look for him and bring him back?" she asked, incredulously.

"Hey," he started, as he turned to open the front door, "you broke it, you deal with it." And wisely closed the door before Natasha could do anything.

Natasha took a deep, shaking breath and sank on the sofa, recently vacated by Tony. She leaned her head against the sofa and muttered, "Oh fuck."

Natasha steeled herself as she started taking off in the Avenger jet aircraft. This was one mission she felt herself not looking forward to. A memory from happier times came unbidden. It was an uncharacteristic afternoon at the Avengers common room, and Natasha and Wanda found themselves with no training, or debriefing, or team meeting on strategies and they were just hanging out. Natasha flipping through a tabloid magazine, probably left behind by Tony for Steve to use for 'information gathering into the 21st century', while Wanda was absorbed in painting her toenails.

"So," Wanda began, eyes focused on her task, "you and Steve." She stated this matter-of-factly as if she was stating an obvious fact rather than a question. Natasha was amused at this reminder of how much like her Wanda was. Never once to mince words, she gets straight to the point without meandering through meaningless words.

"Yes, Wanda? What about me and Steve?" Natasha asked, giving the girl a fond look.

"You care for each other," she stated, again in that tone of voice that does not seem to leave room for argument.

"Of course we care about each other, Wanda."

- "Not that way. You really care for one another."

Natasha found herself rolling her eyes and was about to say of course they do when Wanda ignored her and continued to make her point. "And he worries about you. He thinks that your heart is broken. Because Dr Banner left."

Natasha was silent now, her jaw unconsciously clenching. Bruce Banner was a sensitive subject with her. But not for reasons everyone seems to think. To the other members of the Avengers, she must keep up the façade of a jilted love. For the truth formed an uglier picture, a lot less romantic, one that she must keep to herself.

Bruce Banner, in truth, was her failure. A failed mission. He was an assignment for her coming from Nick Fury himself when he was still the Director of SHIELD and founder of the Avengers Initiative. It turned out that psych evaluation on Dr Banner suggested that he was the least likely of all of them to commit to the Avengers. Stark has his newly-acquired political and moral consciousness, Natasha her drive to balance her ledger and Steve his perpetual inclination to right wrongs. Banner was a loose piece, one that needs to be anchored to the team. And Natasha was to provide the anchor.

That was not to say she does not care for Banner. Which she did. He was one of the smartest men she has ever met and that's saying a lot considering her line of work. Besides that, she finds his normally muted personality interestingly at odds with 'the other guy'. So it was never that difficult to form a connection, a bond, with him. It was never supposed to escalate to more though, and she actually has the current occupant of the room to blame for that. The visions of her time at Red Room had really done a number on her emotions that she lost sight of her objective and was compromised for a moment.

But how was she supposed to articulate this to this young woman before her. How was she supposed to maintain Wanda's trust in the team if she learns the truth? She was aware that for all the hardship and suffering that Wanda's gone through, she has yet to truly abandon the rose-tinted glass through which she viewed the world. That was probably why she gets along so well with Steve. They had both been kicked around by life and yet still managed to remain resiliently optimistic in their views.

"He does not see that Banner is different," Wanda's voice shook her out of her contemplation and she turned to give the girl a sharp look. Does she see more than she let out? "He does not see that your smile is different when he says something funny to cheer you up. Less, how do you say this in English, rusty? Like you smile with your eyes, not just with your lips, when you look at him."

Natasha closed her magazine with a loud snap. "What is the point of all this, Wanda?"

"I just… I just want you to know, I guess. I mean, you've been taking care of me, Tasha. Ever since Sokovia. Both you and Steve. And you accepted me as one of your own as if I have never done wrong to you. To all the Avengers."

Natasha rolled her eyes, affectionately. "We are none of us saints ourselves, you dope. Who am I to judge? I have done far worst things in my life than you could ever imagine."

Wanda shook her head, seemingly forgetting her freshly painted nails as she brought her feet down to the floor and leaned forward as if using her whole body to drive the next point across. "No, no, you always do this. You always make yourself appear to be so undeserving. It is why I want you to see. Because you deserve a win, Tasha. You do."

Natasha let out a forced chuckle, wanting to lighten the mood, increasingly comfortable with the direction in which this conversation is going. "Wanda, Steve and I are partners. And we are good at being just that for each other. Period."

Wanda shook her head, sadly. "Tasha, he made piroshki just last week because you once mentioned that it was the only thing you remembered from your time before the Red Room. He even had Tony help him searched for the recipe on the internet because let's face it, Steve is still so shit at the technology, eh?" They both laughed at that.

"That's just because he's such a sap, Wanda."

"No," Wanda said quietly, laughter dying as she leaned back against the couch. "It's because he wants to see you smile. Because he always wants to see you smile." She shrugs suddenly, giving Natasha a mischievous look. "Who knows? Maybe deep down he knows that you smile at him different too."

Natasha rolled her eyes again and playfully slapped her with the magazine in her hand. "If I knew what an annoying little match-maker you turn out to be, I might have been less friendly with you."

It was Wanda's turn to roll her eyes. "Oh, please. You love me, Tasha." She tapped her head with one brightly-coloured finger, "Mind-reader, remember?"

A small smile played on her lips as she recalled that day, and not for the first time she felt such deep longing for not just Wanda, but for each and every one of the now estranged members of her team.

She sighed and kept her eyes determinedly ahead. Start with Banner first. She will bring them all back home as soon as she possibly could.