Chapter 5
Steve looked up at her, the open laptop in front of her was quickly forgotten and his sole focus was pointed to her. “Where did you hear about him?”
Wanda took a seat across from him and clasped her hands in front of her, squeezing each time she felt nervous. “I’ve heard it a couple of times…”
She really tried to give his mind privacy, but he was all but projecting the images right to her. It was the same man she saw the other day when she had cooked paprikash. First, he was standing between Steve and a machine that would kill millions, and later a single metal hand reaching out in the water and pulling him from certain death.
“Is that him?” she spoke softly, while trying to ignore the emotions Steve was going through now. They were a hurricane of despair and failure that made her ill.
“Yeah,” he admitted, “but his name is James Buchanan Barnes. But to me, he was always my friend Bucky.” He spoke with such nostalgia and warmth that she could feel it without even using her powers.
“What happened?” she asked quietly, having a bad feeling where this was going.
Steve’s face darkened in a way she’d never seen it before, the hurricane of emotions grew stronger and a rage she didn’t expect from him surfaced. He told her all of it then, his friend Bucky who went to war and was presumed dead, their reuniting, the fall from the train. Steve waking up seventy years later and fighting the Winter Soldier, the Potomac, and finally the friend who was nowhere to be found.
She stayed silent through all of it, until he got to the end and motioned to the open computer in front of him, “and now, I’m just trying to find him. He’s alone out there and trying to figure things out, but I think I can help.”
He ran his hands over his face and pushed his hair back. Wanda was taking it all in, trying to figure out what it all meant. In a lot of ways, she already knew what he was going through albeit on a smaller scale and much shorter time frame. She was also separated from somebody with no idea where they were or how they were doing. She felt closer to Steve then, better than she had been in the near two weeks she’d stayed in his home.
“He’s your Pietro,” she sighed, looking at the blank screen of her phone.
“Yeah, you could say that.”
They sat in a comfortable silence, perhaps he was feeling the connection she was and simply enjoyed it for a time.
“Why did you ask about him earlier?” Steve eventually asked her, closing his laptop screen and watching her closely.
Wanda tried to have no outward reactions, but after hearing everything that happened to Barnes, and how desperate Steve was to find him, she knew there could be no holding back. She would have to set the ethics of mindreading aside for now.
She sunk into her seat, though, and held her hand up.
“I’m going to tell you something, but you have to promise not to confront anybody with this. I’m not even sure it’s true. But you can’t hurt anybody with this, okay?” she stressed her point. She didn’t think Steve would ever actually hurt Sharon over this, but she didn’t want an angry confrontation. Sharon was just an agent following orders and doing her job.
He tried to hide the anxiety he had, maybe even the suspicion, but he nodded. “Okay, what is it.”
She took a calming breath and spoke as gently as she could. Her accent still felt thick but it was worse when she was nervous. “Earlier, when Sharon was over I picked up on some of her thoughts. Her intel says that Barnes isn’t in America anymore. They believe that he’s in Europe.”
For a long moment, Steve was unreadable. She didn’t dare use her powers and just waited for anything to see how he felt about all of this. Many emotions played out over his features but she let him work through it alone before he seemed to reach his own conclusions.
Despite everything he must have been feeling, he did a pretty good job of not showing it when he finally spoke, “well then I guess I should be looking in Europe.”
Wanda perked up, “I can help there. If you’re looking for Barnes and I’m looking for Pietro, we might find them together.”
“No, it’s too dangerous.”
“Please don’t think I’m a child like Fury does,” Wanda moaned, “I’m twenty, not sixteen, and I can help with this. How much easier will it be for you to find your friend with me reading minds of people who might have seen him?”
“No Wanda, it can’t happen. Fury sent you here for a reason and dragging you into a possible battlefield is unacceptable.”
She stood up then and crossed her arms. “Well Europe’s a pretty big place, do you plan to just drop in and find him day one? Needle in a haystack, with me there I can shrink the field.” She was thoughtful for a moment, “maybe somebody here knows more? Get me close enough and I can try to find out more.”
This Steve seemed to consider before shaking his head, “no, thank you for telling me what you knew, but there’s got to be another way.”
“But this is the best way, for both of us.”
“I can’t justify taking you someplace dangerous, not after everything you’ve been through.”
“Then I’ll always stay behind you, I’ll follow orders and if you tell me to get out I will, but if you go then I should too.”
He shook his head but before he could reject her again she jumped in, “who does Sharon report to? If you get me close enough, I’ll know more.”
A plan was already forming in her mind where she would find out as much as she could. Steve would leave but then what would stop her from following shortly after? And if she could get her own leads on Pietro, then she would have to follow them. Still, she did want to help the Captain, and if she could then she would, but she would always make her brother her priority.
“That’s too dangerous, Wanda. You don’t even exist as far as this country’s concerned. If they find out about you, who knows what will happen? Not to mention it could get out that Nick’s alive.”
She wrinkled her nose at that. She had no intention of betraying Fury’s help, but she was also desperate, “I wouldn’t have to be super close to read somebody. There’s a certain range I can go from.”
“You really want to do this?” Steve asked, and she felt a flicker of hope that they could find their people together.
“I want to help you find Barnes and I can’t just sit here and hope Fury finds Pietro.”
As curious as she was what he was thinking, she didn’t peak into his mind while he thought it all over. She sat back down and waited silently.
“No, I can’t bring you with me to Europe and I can’t have you listening to somebody with classified information.”
Her heart sank but he continued, “me trying to find my friend can’t come by endangering others, you included.”
Disappointed and frustrated she struggled to think of what to do next. She was blank, though, and didn’t know if there was anything she could do. “I just… I don’t want to sit here and do nothing.”
Steve nodded, in the same boat as her.
They sat in another one of their thoughtful silences before Wanda couldn’t take it anymore. She grabbed her phone and gave him a small nod of her head, “I’m gonna go read for a bit, let me know if you come around to my offer.”
If he gave any response she didn’t hear it, aloud or in his head when she went to her room. It was too small to really pace around in but she didn’t know how to bring herself back down. Her heart was pounding and she had the need to do something to get her life back on track.
She used the phone for a while, picking up Steve’s habit of checking the news constantly. It could be the tiniest thing that could lead her to Pietro or Strucker, even the most offhand comment might be her key. There was nothing, and she pushed the phone away but not before once again checking that the volume was at it’s highest.
Collapsing face first onto her mattress, she laid there for a while just trying to find a new plan, an unexplored angle that could fix everything.
The stress was becoming too much and she felt the back of her neck growing stiff from the tension she carried in it. She thought of taking another shower but dismissed the idea. It wouldn’t be enough, it wouldn’t be soothing, nor would it offer the real release she needed.
And that’s what Wanda needed. Release. It wouldn’t solve all of her problems, not even close, but at this point it would help with the tension she carried everywhere. She reached out and found Steve in his room. She had no doubt his hearing was exceptional, but hopefully he wouldn’t hear this.
She got comfortable in her bed before lifting her dress skirt over her hips. She hadn’t done this in a while, hadn’t been able to after the never-ending experiments and constant monitoring that left her exhausted every night.
When she reached into her panties, though, she remembered what she had been missing.
She started with light strokes and teasing that had her curling her toes before she even penetrated herself. One finger and then two, she did her best to keep rubbing while she brought her fingers in and out. Her thighs tensed and she felt the pleasure of each stroke as her fingers easily moved inside of herself.
Her panties got in the way when she was ready to go a little harder. She paused just long enough to get them off and kick them away before she was back at it, her fingers as deep as she could get them.
Wanda sighed and let out small moans but couldn’t quite reach her peak. She teased more and even managed a third finger but it just…. it wasn’t….
She reached up and grabbed at her breast, giving both a rough groping until it added to the pleasure but still wasn’t enough.
Her moans grew frustrated but no angle was the right kind of satisfying. When she pressed against her clit it was good, and it made her yelp and her eyes squeeze shut, but that too failed to bring her over the edge. She lifted her hips and kept her legs spread but there was no white explosion or mind-numbing satisfaction. Just pleasure with no release.
She whimpered when another stroke of her fingers failed to bring her to the end. She was getting to loud and had to pause all her movements to make sure she hadn’t alerted Steve. When she reached out, he was thankfully still in his room and didn’t seem to have any idea what she was doing.
And then she wondered what it would be like if he did know. What it would be like if he could hear every moan, sigh, and frustrated whine. If he would want her to stop or if he would want to hear her scream, as she was growing desperate herself to do. She hadn’t thought of him like that, the nice guy who never seemed to think of anything but finding his friend. But, he was a man after all, and she wondered what he would think if he came into her room now and saw her with her hand between her legs. Better yet, what he would do.
She started to move a little more anxiously, her thumb a constant pressure on her clit as she imagined Steve standing in her doorway just watching, arms crossed while he leaned against the frame and looked down on her.
Or maybe he wouldn’t just watch, maybe he would come inside and sit on the edge of the mattress while she was to lost to the pleasure to keep her eyes open.
He could touch her. His hands were so much bigger than her own. She imagined those blue green eyes watching each time her fingers disappeared inside of her before he would replace them with his own. They would be an extra stretch and fill her up so much better than she was able to do on her own…
That’s all it took when Wanda arched her back and let out a surprised cry. She had just enough good sense to grab a pillow and managed to muffle the rest of her cries as she came.
When it was all over and she threw the pillow to the side and sucked in a lungful of air. She did feel a little better about everything.
She was relaxed, at least.
There hadn’t been any new leads in either missing person cases. The former Winter Soldier was a ghost, after all, and Pietro Maximoff may as well have not existed. Wanda found images of her and Pietro and even a few videos at the protests in Sokovia. She watched them over and over but they were a few years old and a lot had changed since then.
She’d been living with Steve just over a month when she found out about the Captain America Exhibit.
“You didn’t tell me about this,” she pointed to the coupon in that mornings paper.
Steve groaned and she thought she might feel his embarrassment, but she tried not to invade his thoughts or his feelings now that there was a trust between them.
“Yeah, it’s a thing.”
“Well have you been?”
“A few times,” he turned down the TV, “I actually had to go steal my old uniform from the place.”
“There’s a story there,” she tapped the coupon, “and you’ll have to tell me all about it when we go here.”
“You actually want to see a museum about me?”
“Of course!” Wanda jumped up and grabbed her bag. “Did you have big plans today?” She asked, knowing very well after his morning run with Sam he was settled to try and narrow down any leads he could get in Europe, just as he had all week. Not that she could judge, she did the same thing minus the morning runs. Sam had tried to get her to go, but running was much more Pietro’s style, she just needed to work on not getting winded so quickly. But she wanted to go out and do something, even for one afternoon.
“Come on,” she insisted, “I’m curious now, I’m gonna see it one way or another. Be my tour guide?”
He really didn’t put up a fight after that. Since she arrived, he’d barely left his apartment for anything personal and she hoped this would at least be enjoyable for him.
“You want me to grab a cab?” Wanda asked once they hit the street.
He hesitated and she felt the reluctance to get in the back of a car, “what is it?”
“Yeah, we should get a cab.”
But she felt the wind like it was running through her hair and knew there had to be a motorcycle around here someplace that he preferred over a cab and traffic.
“Oh, I’ve never ridden a motorcycle before.”
He looked at her funny and she held up her hands, she hadn’t meant to pick up on his thoughts.
He shook it off, “and you never will, at least not with me. They’re dangerous.”
“You know I move things with my mind, don’t you?”
“Good point.”
Wanda felt her heart race with excitement when he brought his bike out. “Um, here.” He took off his jacket and passed it to her along with a helmet.
“Just in case, and it’s going to be cold.”
She smiled and put both on. Steve started the bike up and she carefully climbed on, her hands automatically wrapping around his waist when they pulled out of the garage. The bike felt unsteady and she was just starting to feel second thoughts when they hit the street, her arms tightening around him. She buried her masked face into his back but felt safe enough when they got on to the main road.
It was fun, and Wanda felt herself getting used to the ride when they began to dodge the heavy traffic in the city. The wind was too loud to have a conversation, but she was able to enjoy the part of town she never ventured into on her walks. The Smithsonian was huge with banners hanging all over it, one of them displaying a familiar shield that she’d seen him leave on the couch back home.
He found a spot towards the back and locked things up. She passed him his jacket which he kept close to his chin. He also put on a navy baseball cap that she stared at.
“That’s your big disguise? No false mustache?”
“It actually works really well.”
She snickered as they made their way into the building. “No secret entrance for you?”
“Nope, and were in disguise right now, so hope you brought those coupons.”
She actually hadn’t but they got inside fine, despite Steve keeping his head down and looking like he was on the run from the police.
“Oh wow, they gave you your own wing.” She admired when they made it to his exhibit.
“Yeah, I’m surprised they had enough material for the place.”
Wanda took it all in. She knew Steve Rogers, she lived with him. He was the guy who had way too many books and revealed so little of himself. There was generosity and bottomless kindness from Steve. Captain America was a symbol, and something she hadn’t quite seen in person yet. He was the Avenger she once swore to destroy. He was the template that her own experimentation wanted to replicate.
Although they were the same person, seeing black and white images of Steve in uniform still seemed like a stranger.
She wandered around, but he wasn’t far behind her. In one video there was a beautiful woman with red lips talking. Wanda couldn’t hear her over all the voices, but she felt Steve tense up when they got to her. Steve was all but speaking out loud when he though Peggy.
The memories flooded of Steve and this woman, and of a dance that was missed. “I’m sorry,” Wanda sighed and turned away from the monitor. She moved to the plaque in the middle of the room with a familiar face and name on it. “This is the one you’re looking for?”
“Yeah, this is Bucky.”
She read the engraving, the few paragraphs that defined somebody’s entire life. She stared at the face and memorized it, despite having seen flashes of how he was now. Steve joined her but she felt the mourning he tried to cover up, the loss that he always carried with him. Not just for his friend but for all of it. Those black and white videos always playing weren’t just monitor filler, it had once been his life. The items kept on display behind glass were everyday things he once owned and probably never thought would end up in a museum. It was too weird when she put herself in his shoes, left her with a bad taste she wanted to get rid of.
Without thinking, she reached over and squeezed his hand. He looked down surprised but she reached over with her other hand and squeezed his palm again with both of her hands before letting him go.
“We’ll find him.”
“We?”
“Yeah,” Wanda nodded, “we’ll find both of our people.”
She meant it, too. Both Fury and Steve had told her to figure out what she would do once she reunited with Pietro and now she knew. No matter what, she would help find Barnes and get him whatever help he needed. She owed the Captain just as she knew the ache he felt. It was a pain she wanted to help soothe and the first step was to help him find the last connection he had to his old life.
She pulled out her phone and found the videos she’d watched over and over, “this is Pietro.”
He took the phone from her and watched the short clip of the old protests. Wanda, angry and indignant after more buildings collapsed and more Sokovian’s had died terrible deaths. It was just before Strucker found them, and they’d been in orphanages, state homes, and the streets but always together. “His hair is blond now, a reaction to the scepter I think.”
They stayed there for a long time, ignoring the heavy foot traffic around them as they looked at the people they missed terribly.
“So, is that where the uniform you stole used to be?” she pointed to the empty place where all the other mannequins were lined up beneath corresponding portraits.
She got a genuine, happy laugh at that.