Chapter 8
Wanda ran until she thought she would puke before she finally gave it a rest and collapsed off to the side. She was just catching her breath when Sam joined her. His breathing was heavy but he did a good job of covering up how much he had really pushed it this time. “I don’t think he’s even winded yet.” He nodded off to Steve who was still running at full speed around the track.
“Wonder how long he could go.” Wanda sighed, sitting up and leaning against the same tree as Sam.
“Too many for me to even pretend to keep up with.”
They watched Steve for a while, while the sun was just barely starting to come out and light the sky.
“So,” Sam started once he was breathing normally, “any leads on your brother?”
“No, nothing in the news and nothing here,” she tapped her temple. In the weeks since she had last spoken to Pietro, Wanda had tried over and over to reopen the connection without any luck.
“Hey, something will come up eventually. You just have to be patient.”
“And not die from all of this running.” She lamented.
“And not die from all this running.” Sam laughed, “are you going to start practicing with your, ugh, other powers soon?”
“Soon. Steve said I needed to finish conditioning first. Maybe if I survive all these runs we’ll get there eventually.”
“Hey, it’ll get easier. Just got to stay on it.”
“Yeah,” she groaned, “but it’s so much sweating.”
“You two giving up?” Steve called, taking a detour from the running path to come stand over them.
“Hey now, take it easy. I’m just here to keep Maximoff company.”
“You could barely speak when you first sat down.”
“Shhhh, just give me this.”
Sam was shaky when he stood up but helped Wanda stand as well. “Okay you two I got to go. Wanda get some rest, Steve don’t push it.”
“You ready?” Steve asked.
“Yep, to the gym?”
Since they returned from New York, Steve had kept his promise and had been training her as best he could. They still hadn’t moved on to her using her powers, but she was getting into better shape than she had ever been in before.
Running was Wanda’s least favorite, but fight training could be fun. She was well aware Steve had to hold back almost all of his strength when they did this, but she enjoyed the challenge. Training in different styles took a lot of work, but she thought she might actually be getting somewhere with it.
She hadn’t had much combat training in Sokovia. Maybe, with time they would have gotten to it. The parameters of her powers were still being measured at the time. Dr. List would spend hours holding up blank flashcards to her and asking what he saw on the other side of them. A lot of work at the time, but child's play, really, as she was coming to learn that she could do far more than read shallow thoughts.
They took a car to an old SHIELD gym that was still closed to most people, where they could work in relative privacy.
“When we move on to you using your powers,” Steve had told her when they first began training, “you’ll most likely be fighting long distance most of the time. It’s still good to be able to defend yourself from an enemy that gets too close.”
The gym was underground and on the older side of things. She had never seen anyone else here, but that wasn’t surprising given that there were newer gyms open to agents who had been cleared to go back to work. There were all sorts of equipment and training centers, but Wanda and Steve went straight to the giant matted area at the center or the room.
“Today we’ll work on getting out of holds. Remember what I told you last time?”
“Keep my airway open, it’s probably going to come down to either my legs or hips, and to drop all my weight down first thing and see if that will loosen the hold at least.”
“Alright, let’s start.”
She knew he was holding back as per usual, but when he reached around her and held her in a light chokehold, she swore there would be no escaping his grip. First, she pushed back and kept her throat free of obstruction. Next, she snaked her foot behind his and tried to trip him but he twisted to the side and planted his foot down to keep his balance and throw off her center of gravity. She was fast when she reached around and got her arm over his neck, digging her fingers into his neck and going for the ears. She gave a rough pull that actually loosened his grip enough for her to shove back with her hips and try to escape. She just managed to wiggle away when Steve got one arm around her waist and the other around her neck to pull her back into his hold. Trying the next tactic seemed silly given his strength, but she went completely limp and actually fell about an inch before he stopped the fall.
All thoughts of getting away fell apart when she noticed just how close they really were. One arm was just under her breast, and her ass was pressed back against him at just the right angle. She held her breath, startled first by the change in adrenalin to get away to a desire to stay and push back for all the wrong reasons.
Wanda knew she found Steve attractive, but it was one thing to think of him in the privacy of her own room, and another to entertain those thoughts when they were in the middle of training. She hadn’t considered what she felt towards him as anything more than finding him handsome, but now she wondered if she’d slipped into ‘crush’ territory without realizing it.
She knew no good would come from thinking of Steve as anything more than a friend. A friend she could get along with and live amicably with. Clouding her judgment with more than that meant potentially compromising Pietro’s safety and her and her brother’s futures. Nothing could come before the last of her family and so she knew she’d need to squash any feelings that went beyond friendship right then and there.
“Remember to breathe,” Steve reminded, oblivious to her internal conundrum. Gone was the technique and form she had tried in previous spars. She was thrashing and squirming when she tried to escape this time, pushing against and away from his hold. “You’re going to burn up a lot of energy this way.”
“Then how do I get out of this?” She hissed, growing slightly desperate to escape.
“You were on to it before, get your arm free again. It’s okay to fight dirty if that’s how you protect yourself.”
She wrestled her arm out again and got it around his shoulders. She jabbed her fingers against his neck. It might not have worked on Steve Rogers very well, but it would at least slow down another man. With the loose grip she pivoted sharp and jammed her elbow into his stomach. As soon as she managed to land a hit she was able to take a giant leap away from him.
“Good job,” Steve spoke while rubbing where she’d hit him. “You’re getting better at this.”
“Thanks.”
“Want to give it another try?”
Her first instinct was to say yes, but Wanda knew she needed to get some distance between them for now.
“Actually, can we go to the punching bags?”
Wanda skipped the morning run a few days later, opting to sleep in and give her muscles a break. She knew the moment the front door opened, it wasn’t Steve or Sam.
She brought up her defenses and scanned the intruder with her powers, detecting somebody who had clearly been here before. Not a hostile, but also somebody who Wanda wasn’t sure she could trust entirely. This person was quick to realize the apartment wasn’t empty and took a seat at one of the kitchen stools to wait patiently.
Wanda contemplated calling Steve and getting him to come home right away, but pocketed her phone with the call screen ready to go instead.
The woman was waiting for her when she got down the hall, legs crossed and seeming completely at home. A light scan of her mind revealed very little, as she was keeping her thoughts and feelings blank, likely until she had a feel for the situation. That must have taken years of training to master.
Wanda already recognized her, though.
This was the redhead from Fury’s memories albeit slightly older than the way the man remembered her. Now that Wanda was really seeing her, she thought this must be another Avenger. The grainy footage from the New York attacks had glimpses of a redhead killing swarms of aliens but she was just now able to make the connection.
“Well, hello.”
“Hello to you. I’m Wanda Maximoff.”
“Natasha Romanoff. Is Steve around?”
“He’s on a run with Sam.”
“Ah, and you decided to skip going?”
“I went yesterday. No need to kill myself two days in a row.”
Natasha smiled just slightly, “so you’re a friend of Steve’s?”
Wanda tilted her head and thought she might have felt a genuine curiosity somewhere in there, even if she didn’t like the emphasis that was put on ‘friend.’
“I guess you could say that. The better description would be houseguest. Nick Fury brought me here for the time being.”
At this, Natasha perked up. “Fury. Where did he find you?” But Wanda already knew that Natasha had narrowed her accent to Sokovian and was trying to break down what region.
“Sokovia. Now while I’m making my own waffle, do you want one?”
As it turned out, Natasha was a fan of waffles.
“-and until either Fury or Steve and I find Pietro, I’ll be staying here.”
“But you’re also helping with Barnes?”
“When I can.”
“And how’s that?”
Wanda passed the whipped cream over, which Natasha put a healthy amount of onto her waffles, “after my time in Strucker’s lab, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.”
Natasha’s eyebrows pinched together, but she didn’t ask any more questions or push for a better explanation.
“Does Steve know about these tricks?”
“He does.”
“Well then, they must be quite impressive.”
“They’ve come in handy,” with this, she would not elaborate until she got to know Natasha a little better. Maybe the redhead acknowledged this, because she leaned back in her seat and took a break from her breakfast.
“I was in a similar situation a few years ago. I was found by an agent who refused to kill me. He brought me to Fury and I was offered a second chance.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, he offered me a place to stay, too. It took me a while to get myself better.”
For the first time since Natasha had shown up, her mental blocks wavered and Wanda caught just the briefest flash of an old memory. A man, with a bow and arrow pointed directly at her that was slowly lowered.
How old are you?
“I didn’t trust either of them at first, but this… it’s not so bad.”
“Could be worse.” Natasha agreed, and they were both lost to their own thoughts for a beat.
Natasha gave no outward indication, but Wanda knew that she had also felt the moment Steve arrived.
“Sam’s with him, too.” She offered.
Natasha raised one eyebrow, already making her own calculations on Wanda’s abilities. “That’s good. I think he can help.”
“With what?”
“Stick around. I think you’ll be able to help as well.”
They took their time finishing their breakfast until Steve and Sam finally got in. They both hesitated when they saw Natasha, but Wanda thought there was a real a happy reunion underneath the initial surprise.
“Rogers, I like your new friend.”
“Romanoff, I figured you’d be deep underground for a while.”
“Oh, I was. Had to rebuild my network and start from scratch. While I was doing that, I came across a pretty well supplied HYDRA base. I thought of taking it out on my own… but it is pretty well guarded.”
“Sounds like an important mission,” Sam was nonchalant, but Wanda knew he was interested in getting into the fray.
“If my suspicions are correct, and they usually are, this place has an isolated server that will have a pool of HYDRA intelligence for the taking. Could be useful.”
“Where is this place?” Steve asked.
“Massachusetts, not far.”
“Alright, we need to figure out their security and guard rotations, exactly how many hostiles we’ll be encountering. At nightfall we’ll move in and locate this server. Sam and I will secure the room while you collect the information. Get in get out, keep it simple.”
“Sounds like a good plan, Rogers, but what about Wanda?”
The brunette perked up, “yeah, what am I supposed to do?”
“Stay here and go nowhere near Massachusetts. You’re not ready.”
Wanda didn’t want to argue with him over this. She knew she could handle the mission and that she should be there given that there might be information about Pietro. Computer servers maybe, but all she needed was to listen to the thoughts of somebody who had seen him recently, or had some sort of connection. That was something only she could do. For the sake of avoiding the fight, Wanda did her best to relax.
“Sam, can I try something with you really quick?”
“Ugh, sure.”
“Ok, just… just watch the TV or something.”
This was one of her powers she’d practiced with small animals and the occasional stranger in the park. It wasn’t perfected, but she thought she was getting better with her influences.
She waived her hands close together, feeling the familiar red energy that grew from the movement. Steve immediately looked to Natasha, Wanda assumed to gauge her reaction. She missed what the redhead thought of it, as her focus went to Sam when she pushed her influence on him.
He might have been afraid for only a second once the scarlet passed by him. His eyes flashed red for the barest of seconds before returning to their natural color. The manifestations of her control disappeared and he moved robotically to the door, opened it, and walked out.
She released the energy and sat back. Only a moment later Sam reopened the door and came back in.
“We really need to bring her with us. That was weird.”
“What was it like?” Natasha questioned a bit harshly.
“Like… I just wanted to walk out the door and so I did.”
Steve sighed, arms crossed and leaned against the wall, “you stay close at all times and don’t go off on your own. You don’t push it with your powers either. If it becomes too much, say something as soon as you think you need a break. When we’re in there, you follow my lead. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“When do we leave?”
“Now.”