Chapter 9
“Wanda, wait!” Sam jogged to catch up with the fleeing Wanda. The woman had made it to the rooftop of their apartment complex, the cool night air ruffling her long hair.
“It is no use Sam, I am tired of living like this! I will not tolerate someone else trying to force me to do something I don’t want to!”
“But where are you going to go? You know you have to be careful, there’s people out there trying to hurt us”
“I can take care of myself Sam, I’m not a little girl!” she said with a condescending snarl, not stopping to look back at him.
“Well, you could've fooled me, because you’re behaving like a spoilt brat!”
At Sam's words, the woman froze, turning around to pierce him with an enraged glance.
“I am no brat! I could wipe out anyone that comes against me with a single hand” and as if to demonstrate her power, she sent a tendril of red energy to a rusty old pipe laying at Sam's feet, bending it with a simple wave of her hand.
“Your power is not correlated to your maturity Wanda! You ARE a brat, because you don’t care about the consequences of your actions!” Wanda took a menacing step towards Sam, making him backpedal “Look, I’m not trying to start a fight with you, but you can’t just leave, we have to stick together!”
“I don’t have to do ANYTHING you tell me! I am sick and tired of all of you! You do nothing but hide and try to chase ghosts!” she said with irritation, a red glow shining through her eyes “I pity you Sam, you still can’t see the truth, Steve is obsessed with finding a dead man. Vision has told me Stark is no more, you are all fools for playing this game for so long!"
With that, the woman left in a flurry of red mist, cracking the floor beneath her feet she took to the sky, rapidly disappearing into the night, leaving a shaken Sam behind, a cold sweat running down his spine. Only now did he realize his mistake, he should have never gone after her by himself, the woman was a menace, she could literally do whatever she wanted and there was nothing any of them could do to stop her.
Turning, Sam made his way back, a chill still running down his whole body. As he got to their floor, he saw Natasha having a smoke just outside their apartment, sitting out on the open balcony. He didn’t stop to talk to her, but her voice made him slow his pace.
“You were lucky she didn’t decide to hurt you Sam... you have to be more careful, you can’t always make people see reason”
Feeling no desire to discuss his stupidity, he simply kept walking, closing the door with tremblier hands than he'd like to admit.
A couple of days had gone by since Wanda had left them, and this time her absence felt permanent. Neither Sam nor Natasha were entirely comfortable with the idea of losing the woman out of their sight.
Natasha knew the potential disasters that could stem from letting an unbalanced and powerful being like the Scarlet Witch wander unsupervised and unaccounted for. Sometimes she really missed SHIELD's methods, no doubt Fury would have had several contingency plans for this kind of situations.
Her only comfort was knowing that Vision was apparently keeping the witch in check. She was no fool, they all knew that was where Wanda had been disappearing to, but it also filled her with a deep dread, knowing that two of the most powerful beings on earth were an unstable child-woman and an unexperienced android playing house. This was what kept her up at night, the knowledge that those two were a potential disaster waiting to happen and wondering what they could do to prevent all this from ever blowing up in their faces.
But she reminded herself, she had bigger problems to worry about. Sam had told her the witch's parting words, how Tony was "no more", and they had discussed what she might have meant by them.
After debating it, they had decided to discuss it with Steve, but far from helping the man accept the very real possibility of Stark's demise, it had seemed to drive him to the edge. The captain's mood had taken a turn for the worse, they could see how he was slowly spiraling into the depths of despair. He had stopped shaving his face, a dark shadow of stubble marring his otherwise sharp features.
Natasha recognized this behavior, she had seen this pattern before, back to the first time Steve had learnt Bucky was alive. She could see all the signs where there, the obsession, the guilt and recrimination, they were all tell tales of Steve's current fractured state of mind.
"Nat, I feel like I might go mad if I don't find him. I need to know he's ok, I need to know he's not dead!" Steve had told her one night with a breathless voice, trying his best not to fall apart in front of her.
She could see the obvious parallels Steve made with Bucky and Tony in his mind. The man projected his own guilt on both men, making it almost impossible for him to overcome his obsessive behavior. A side of her had started to worry they wouldn't get Steve back until they found Tony Stark.
A loud clang was heard in the small kitchen, breaking the relative calmness that had reigned in the small apartment. Natasha stood rooted to the spot in front of her laptop, a toppled over chair behind her. She had a pair of headphones firmly placed over her ears, a stunned expression on her face. She couldn't believe what she had just heard: a phone call with Tony's voice in it.
Natasha had made it a habit of keeping tabs with Pepper and Rhodey, it both helped her be in the loop of any developments in the Avenger's and Accords situation, as well as keeping her informed on the ongoing search for Tony. She had planted a couple of devises on Pepper's office long before any of this mess had started, and long before Tony had been considered MIA for a second time.
So far, neither Rhodey nor Pepper had shown any indicators that they knew where Tony was, until now.
Natasha's bugs had registered a call that had sent her chills. Tony's faint voice had been captured by one of the devices, his message short and cryptic:
"Pepper, you were right. You know what to do, I'll keep in touch"
The call had lasted all of 5 seconds, not nearly enough to track it, but enough to send Natasha's mind reeling. The implications were many, obviously, this meant Tony was alive, and well enough to contact Pepper, which brought forth the question of why they were only hearing from him now, and most importantly, why hadn’t they made public he was alive yet? Natasha's need to get to the bottom of this had been rekindled, and she was determined to find some answers, one way or another.
Sam found Natasha sitting at the kitchen's table in the middle of the night, completely absorbed in her laptop. He had been having some troubles falling asleep himself and had gone to get a late night snack.
"Hey Nat, you ok?"
Looking away from her computer, Natasha gave him a sharp look.
"I need you to listen to this" she said, taking off her headphones and tossing them to Sam.
"Oookay" he said, awkwardly catching them with his left hand, taking the chair next to hers.
Sam's dubious expression turned to bewilderment.
"Was that Tony? He's alive after all?!" he said, taking off the headphones.
"…I can’t really say. I intercepted this call from Pepper's office, but... I had a feeling something was amiss, so I sat down to analyze the call"
"And? what did you find?"
"It was the tone of Stark's voice" She said, turning back to her computer "On closer examination I discovered it was a synthetized voice"
"What? you mean it wasn't really him?"
"I think someone manipulated a recording or managed to synthetize a sample of his voice. Whichever the case, it definitely wasn't a live voice"
Sam felt overwhelmed, what the hell was all this? what was this mystery? And most importantly, what where they all getting themselves into?
"Are you going to tell Steve?"
Natasha crossed her arms, a dubious expression on her face "I'm not sure, he's been out of it lately, I'm afraid of what this could do to him"
Sam agreed, Steve was under a lot of stress, and any false hope could be devastating for the man "…But we can't keep him in the dark, sooner or later we'll have to tell him" he said after a moment.
Natasha had to agree, but the fact remained that the call had raised red flags in her mind. Whoever this was, she was sure it was trying to impersonate Tony
“Are you sure you can't trace the call?”
Steve's eyes shone with a desperation that made Sam feel bad for the man. In the end they both had decided to let Steve know about the call.
"No, there's no way to tell where the call was made from, the only certain thing is that it wasn't really his voice" she said with no emotion. She felt frustrated. She was starting to feel they were no closer to solving this mystery than they were a month ago.
"We have to tell Pepper, she might be in danger" said Steve pensively. If this was really an impostor, they had to warn her, no matter on what terms they stood, he didn't want something bad to happen to any of Tony's family.
"I don't think she'll appreciate it that we've been keeping her under surveillance" said Natasha with a sarcastic expression. She knew Pepper Potts was not someone to be taken lightly, if the woman even suspected they had had something to do with Tony's disappearance, things would only get exponentially harder for them.
"But we can't keep this from her! We have to at least warn her!" Steve insisted, he couldn't just sit there knowing someone was plotting to impersonate Tony.
Sam, who had been reading the newspaper in the kitchen poked his head from behind the large pages, the headline 'Spider-Man saves family from apartment fire' could be clearly seen on the front page.
"You know, I’ve been thinking" he interrupted the other two "this kid, spider-man, he was very close to Stark, wasn't he?" He said, pointing at the front page "So, don't you think that if Stark IS really back, maybe he has contacted the kid?"
"What makes you say that?" Natasha asked with a raised eyebrow, grateful for the change of subject. Discussing with an obstinate Steve was like trying to reason with a wall.
"Well, it's just a hunch, but from that message…” said Sam with a pointed look at Natasha’s computer “... we can deduce that SOMEONE has been in contact with Rhodey and Pepper all this time, but it's quite obvious that for whatever reason they haven't let it on. Now listen..." he said, putting down his paper and crossing his arms over the table "think of it this way, if Tony is, by whatever reason, trying to lay low, it would only make sense that Pepper and Rhodey would play along, right? But what if Tony has also been in contact with the spider-kid? I’m betting the kid won’t be such a good liar as the other two. I'm sure that if we asked him directly, we would be able to tell right away if he's hiding something or not"
Steve and Natasha shared a glance. That sounded too much like harassing the kid, but maybe Peter could lead them to some answers, and at this point, Steve was desperate enough to try anything.