Chapter 12
Wanda ended up in the back of a public bus, her head down in a part of the city she was unfamiliar with. She stayed on board for close to an hour until she was in the seedier outskirts of the city and spotted a rundown motel a few blocks away.
The office was musty and smelled like smoke, but she could care less. She sent out a red haze of influence so that she wasn’t asked for an id and would be able to pay cash for a room. The old man behind the desk didn’t comment on her ripped clothes or the bruises around her neck when he passed over the key.
The room was equally musty and had probably been smoked in quite frequently, but she didn’t care. Wanda kicked off her shoes and collapsed down on the bed, too tired to examine the cleanliness when she wrapped herself up and fell asleep.
The nightmares that followed were filled with machines and a deep voice asking her to join him. There was a blur running from her that she knew was her brother, deaf to her screams. In the shadows she thought she saw Fury holding the scepter and passing it to Stark, but she turned away before she could really be sure. She slept off and on through the early hours of the morning.
The clock next to her bed blinked over and over at 12:00, but she assumed it was sometime in the early morning when she finally gave up on sleep and sat up. The bathroom wasn’t as bad as she thought it might be. It was just clean enough that she washed her face and did her best to untangle her hair. The bruises around her neck were already dark in color and in distinct patterns of the hand that had been wrapped tightly around her. Her shirt and jacket looked fine in the front, but when she managed a cursory look to turn and look at the back she saw just how much had been torn and burned. There wasn’t much to do about it then, but finding something clean would have to come next.
Wanda got comfortable back on the bed and switched on the television. It was older and thick, with little lines running from the top to the bottom of the screen. After the commercials were over, she settled in and got ready for whatever the news had to report on.
“Welcome back, we return with our newest story where authorities have confirmed a spy has been identified in the Washington D.C. area. Although no details on this person have been released, it’s believed that police are looking for a Sokovian female in her early twenties. We will keep you updated when more details are released. Until then more security has been posted around the city and checkpoints have been set up in sensitive areas.
The few hours of sleep had cleared her head a bit that she was able to think a little more clearly. She had to assume this was Ultron’s doing given the timing, but she couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t just killed her. If he thought she would change her mind and help him destroy the Avengers, he was mistaken. He put authorities on her trail, though, and that had to serve his purpose in some way.
There was a phone in the room, but Wanda didn’t have any phone numbers memorized. A mistake in hindsight, but something she couldn’t fix right then.
The news changed to the weather report but she muted the television. She laid back down, not quite ready to go back to sleep but wanting to find some sort of peace. Exhausted and overwhelmed, she closed her eyes but could come up with no plan. The last thing she remembered was the light from the screen changing against the ceiling when she fell back to a restless nap.
Wanda’s eyes snapped open. The sun was up but it felt like no time had passed since she had lay back down.
The presence was familiar but how Steve found her so quickly was a wonder. Either way, she felt her mind clear up and the fear dissipate with his arrival.
She jumped up and smoothed down her ripped clothes. She didn’t put her bare feet back on the old carpet and had just put her boots back on when he started knocking on the door. It was a little frantic but she was fast to answer.
His eyes seemed especially blue when they looked down at her, but she could always see the faintest green flickering in there. He looked her up and down, his gaze lingering on her neck and then to her ruined clothes. “Are you okay?”
Thoughtless, she threw her arms around his neck and pressed her face against his chest. “Tired, but I think I’m fine.” Her voice was husky from sleep and her sore throat. She stayed pressed against him a little longer than she might have usually, but his arms encircled her and squeezed her close while his thumb rubbed light circles in her lower back. When she pulled away, she motioned for him to come in, “how did you find me?”
“Wasn’t easy, it took Natasha and Fury a couple of hours, and that’s saying something.”
She smiled a little then, taking a seat back on the bed while Steve took a look around and ended up sitting on one of the worn chairs by the door.
He didn’t look at her for a while, eyes roaming around the room. She thought he might be trying to put the story together himself when he asked, “who did that to you, Wanda?”
She looked away from him for a moment and picked at the loose thread of the comforter, “Ultron. Do you know him?”
“I was told about him this weekend at Stark’s tower.”
She thought she heard his distaste for the creature. Good, let’s be on the same page for this one.
“Is he there now?”
Steve shook his head, “he went off the grid late last night. We were trying to find him when Fury called and said your phone went offline.”
“He destroyed it.”
“Steve, got a black car circling the place.”
“Is that Sam?” Wanda asked.
“He’s got eyes on us. Might be getting company soon. A story leaked this morning that there was a Sokovian spy in the area.”
She wrinkled her nose, “I saw that.”
“Come on, we need to get out of here.”
The car Steve brought was inconspicuous, though in the motel parking lot it was a little too new and shiny. She looked up for Sam but couldn’t see him anywhere.
“Jump in. We’ve got a few things to figure out.”
Steve took the wheel and got them out of the neighborhood. It didn’t look any better in daylight than it had the night before. When they made it on to the highway, Wanda cleared her throat and started from the beginning. Steve listened patiently while she told him everything. Dr. Link looking for her, waiting at the coffee shop until he showed up, Pietro getting shot, her decision to go the memorial, and then her meeting Ultron. She left out Ultron’s accusations that she held affection for Steve, but other than that she put it all out in the open.
He sighed when she finished her story, “Tony has a kill switch installed in Ultron. It will fry him, but he didn’t want to have to use it unless there was no saving the program.”
“If he can stop him, he needs to do it now.”
Steve nodded, “sounds like it.”
“FBI in area looking for the spy. Wanda’s identity still hasn’t been outed.” Sam’s voice was hard to hear over the sounds of the car, but she could hear that part fine enough through Steve’s earpiece.
“Fury’s looking for a place to lay low outside of D.C.”
Wanda said nothing while she stared out her window. She didn’t really want to leave the city or Steve, but she knew this was an inevitability. Before or after she was reunited with Pietro, eventually she would have had to have left D.C.
Wanda kept to herself once they made it outside the city limits. They drove until there were no buildings and very few people around them. Off the highway and down a smaller road full of potholes, Steve stopped just short of a black van. When Wanda reached out, it was Natasha and another person she was feeling. A few moments later, Sam was at the edge of her senses.
The doors to the van opened and Natasha jumped out first, followed by a man with short hair and a bow and arrow on his back. “I’ll take before and after pictures this time," he told Natasha.
“Wanda, this is Clint Barton. Clint, Wanda.”
“Wanda, nice to meet you.” They shook hands, but like Natasha, the man was hard to read. Maybe the other spy had given him a heads up on her powers, but when she got a shallow scan of him she felt nothing.
“You too.”
“Clint, good to see you again.” Steve called from somewhere behind her. She was very aware of her naked back, but tried not to feel it.
“Cap. Ultron went down about fifteen minutes ago. He’s somewhere in the pacific.”
“The kill switch actually worked?”
Natasha shrugged, “looks like it. What’s left of JARVIS hasn’t been able to detect any copies of him. Can’t recover the body but given the weight, the oceans pressure should destroy him in time. That’s that.”
The air pressure changed for the faintest of seconds before a familiar figure dropped down into the field. “The military wants to take attention away from Ultron. They’re putting a lot of focus on their spy angle right now. Sorry Wanda, it’s gonna be hot for a while.” Sam took his googles off and retracted his wings.
She nodded but didn’t say much else. There was relief in knowing Ultron was gone, but it all seemed far too easy. He had been strong when he had a hold of her. A toothpick to be snapped, she wanted to believe a kill switch was all it would take. But maybe if he hadn’t known… maybe it was enough. The machine that learned to quickly was put down before it could really pose a threat. She could only hope as much.
They were talking about what she was thinking, but Wanda didn’t join in. She stayed off to the sides and fidgeted with the ends of her sleeves while the four of them went back and forth.
“Wanda, you look cold. Jump in the van, I swung by Steve’s apartment and grabbed some of your clothes.”
Grateful for the distraction and to get away from the conversation she had nothing to contribute to, Wanda jumped into the van with Natasha.
“I grabbed what I thought you might need but I’m not really sure where Fury is sending you.”
“That’s fine, just getting out of these ripped clothes is a relief.”
Wanda was finally in a full t-shirt when Natasha flippantly spoke behind her, “it’s must be a relief that Ultron was destroyed. Going after him yourself was going into hot water. Fury might have cut you off from SHIELD if things hadn’t worked out.”
The Sokovian paused but adjusted her clean shirt down, “I didn’t know who it was I was meeting… I had hoped it would be my brother.”
“But how did you know to meet there?”
She thought of Dr. Link and knew he was still at large, but he was no friend of hers. Natasha wasn’t, either, but she was a bit closer to that territory than the doctor had been. So, she told the redhead about the doctor and waiting for him at the café. She left out feeling Pietro being shot. The Black Widow didn’t appear very comfortable with Wanda’s powers, and she wasn’t going to delve too deeply into them unless they knew each other a little bit better.
“Dangerous, still. You aren’t exactly on steady grounds with SHIELD yet. You need to earn the agencies trust before you can go off on your own like that.”
Wanda bit her lip and smothered her justifications. “You’re right… It won’t happen again.”
“Yes, it will. You’ll place your brother over the greater good of the mission again someday.”
She looked up to the vans roof but didn’t respond. Natasha continued on, “it’s okay. Really, it is. We all care about somebody enough to put them above all else. In your case, though, it’s too obvious. A weakness that’s already been exploited by this doctor.”
“What am I supposed to do? Pretend I don’t miss Pietro?”
“At least on the outside.”
“I don’t think I can do that,” Wanda finally looked back at Natasha and shrugged weakly, “it will be easier once I know he’s alright.”
They looked at each other far longer than Wanda thought was comfortable before the assassin gave a small, but forced smile. “When you two are together again, and things have settled down, I’ll teach you how to conceal your emotions.”
“I’m not joining the Avengers.”
“You say that, but I might just persuade you. Anyway, it won’t matter if you’re just with Steve for now.”
Her eyes widened and her relief must have been quite obvious to even the untrained watcher. “I didn’t think he’d be coming wherever I was being sent.”
“Like I said, you still have to earn SHIELDS trust. They wouldn’t just send you off on your own and hope for the best.”
“You make it sound like I’m a prisoner.”
“I remember that’s how I would feel sometimes.”
They sat together in silence, still not amicable or content but good enough for the time being. Natasha reached for the door but just before she opened it, she spoke casually over her shoulder. “I grabbed a few extra things that you might need. Just in case.”
Sam and his suit weren't on any radars yet. The U.S. military had their hands full with everything that had happened at the Potomac that they hadn’t gotten around to going after him for it. Nor would they, in all likelihood. Fury may have been technically dead, but he still had his connections and knew just how to work them. He was more useful on the ground, ironically, and stayed in Washington.
Where Natasha went was a mystery, but Clint flew the quinjet for them. When it landed within the hour, Clint and Steve shook hands before the archer did the same with Wanda. “You ever need anything, don’t be a stranger.”
It was just Wanda and Steve that made it to the small, unsuspecting beach house in Oregon. It was a simple two-bedroom place with neighbors just barely in sight and the whole ocean just a few steps away. “It’s a bit like Sokovia,” Wanda spoke lightly looking at the darkening sky from the bay windows.
“Enjoy it while you can. Who knows where we’ll be if Ultron survived.”
“When will there be any news?” she went to the bookcase and squatted in front of it. At the bottom were a few different board games that she scanned through before bringing one to the table Steve was at.
“Not sure. Stark and Banner are running all sorts of programs to be sure he’s off the net. Going to take time.”
She hummed and started to lay the game out. “You ever play?”
“Scrabble? Was different in my time.”
She smiled and explained the rules, laying out the pieces so that they could start a simple round. “My father taught us some of our English with this game.”
They played in silence for some time, both lost to their own thoughts. Through the cracked windows, Wanda heard the ocean waves and the faintest smell of salt.
"Steve, can I ask you something?"
"Anything. What's up?"
"If I didn't want to join the Avengers, if I was reunited with Pietro and decided the best thing for us would be to leave, would you try to stop me?"
He didn't hesitate in playing his next word. "No, I wouldn't."
"What if we had different agendas? And there came a time when we were fighting on opposite sides of a battle?"
"Is this something you think could happen?"
"I wonder about it sometimes. I don't want it to happen, but if it did... would we be enemies?"
He sat back, their game temporarily forgotten. "If you wanted to leave even now, I think I would want to go with you."
Wanda blinked, also sitting back and waiting for him to say more. When he didn't she tilted her head, "why would you come with me?"
"We're friends, aren't we?"
"I think so, yes." She spoke with confidence. She told Pietro as much, and despite what Ultron had thought, she had told him the same.
"I wouldn't let my friends go out there alone."
"Let's watch a movie." She changed the subject, "you said you enjoyed them. Let's find one?"
"You're just saying that because I'm doing better in this game right now."
She looked down, and sure enough he had a slight lead on her.
"Come on, Captain. The only reason you stand a chance in these games is because I won't read your mind."
She went to the living room while Steve went to the kitchen to find some snacks for them. The beach house must have been another one of SHIELDS, but it was stocked well and appeared to be more for relaxation. She thought it might have been for agents who were coming down from a tough mission.
Underneath the TV stand was an array of DVDs that she filtered through. "The Exorcist, have you seen it?" She called to the kitchen.
"No, but I've heard about it."
She looked on the front and back before getting it set up. Steve joined her with a bowl of popcorn, "I've seen parts of it," she told him, "it was playing on TV once but I was too young to watch. I caught flashes though, and remember my mom was pretty shaken up after she watched it."
And so was Wanda. It was just a movie, she had told herself. There was no reason to be so frightened. After they finished it and she had gone to settle into her room... her eyes kept looking to the corners. Her powers spiked when she tried to find something that wasn't there. Every time she drifted off she would be left alone to thoughts that were unpleasant and frightening.
In the morning she wasn't sure she had gotten even half the sleep she usually did when she went into the kitchen. The lack of rest and the new surroundings had her bumping into the walls which wouldn't be so bad, except that Steve was already at the kitchen table. He didn’t comment when she stubbed her toe against a small table against the hallway wall and let out a few curses in Sokovian. The table had been cleared of their game from the night before, replaced instead with a large breakfast.
"Got up early, did you?" Wanda took a seat at the table where there was already a cup of coffee poured for her.
"Took a run on the beach and in town, figured I'd make some breakfast as well.”
She smirked, just a little so that he wouldn't know just how much she understood. "That movie was very scary, wasn't it?"
He gave her a very pointed look and tried to be nonchalant. "It had a few moments."
Wanda pressed her lips together, trying not to make an obvious smile. "I know I didn't get much sleep. How about you?"
He didn't say anything, just sipped his orange juice. She couldn't help it, she laughed despite her exhaustion. She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. She was about to tell him it was okay, and that she had been in the exact same boat, but when she managed to get a hold of herself and looked at him, she stopped.
He was looking at her like....
Well she didn't have a word for it, and she was taken off guard and didn't want to scan his thoughts, but he was looking at her like... like she thought she might look at him sometimes.
She shook it off, despite his eyes being trained so intently on her. "Sorry, shouldn't have laughed."
"No, don't apologize," Steve looked away and then down at his food. "You don't laugh like that often. It was nice to hear."
To her horror, Wanda felt a rising blush and knew her face must have been just slightly red. She did her best to seem unbothered, "it feels good to laugh."