Damsel in Distress
The Quinjet landed at the Avengers compound. Tony Stark was standing outside, ready to greet them. “Hello, criminals.”
“Do you really want to get into this right now?”Steve was desperate to find Natasha, for all he knew, she could be dead.
“You never told me what you needed me for,” Tony mentioned, curious as to why the criminals came crawling to him for help.
“It’s Tasha...she’s MIA,” Clint told.
“So you need my help to find her?” Tony scoffed.
The others nodded, not wanting to accept the fact that they actually needed him.
“Well, that’s too bad. If you had mentioned it was the double agent who was the damsel in distress, then I would have saved you the trip. I’m not helping her after how she betrayed me!” Tony was still furious about the incident at the airport.
“She could be dead!” Steve yelled.
“Then I don’t need to help her do I? Go home,” Tony walked away.
The team ran after him, desperate for help. Steve grabbed Tony’s shoulder and turned him around, “please, Tony. I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t need this from you.”
Tony considered for a moment, trying to think a few moves ahead. If he did this, what would he get out of it? Would he get in trouble? After thinking deeply of the possible outcomes and consequences, Tony finally agreed, “fine. I’ll help.” and he headed towards the base.
Inside the base, Tony led the others to his lab. “Natasha is a deceptive character. Are you sure she didn’t just leave you because she was tired of you guys?”
“No.” Steve explained the whole incident to Tony.
“I see. Do we have any clues of where Wanda may have sent her?” Tony asked.
“I can try to search for her but it could take months, maybe even years.” Wanda said.
“Not if we have a device that can tap into your consciousness. It could speed the process up, but it might still take a while,” Tony informed. “In the meantime, write down all the memories you have of Natasha. Every day, check the original list to see if you have any additional memories of her.”
“Because she may be altering history.” Wanda concluded.
“That and it could help us know when to search for her.” Tony said.
Rhodes passed by the lab, still hobbling due to his condition. Sam made eye contact with him, feeling sorry for what had happened. He broke his gaze, looking back towards Tony.
The next day, Tony called the others into his lab. He sat on one of the counters, looking at a small device in his hands, as they came in. He showed it to them. He said, “Here it is.”
“How does it work,” Clint asked, worried for how Wanda might be affected.
“Well, we connect this to Wanda’s head, it may sting as there is a tiny needle that inserts itself through her skull. Then we connect a standard HDMI cord to it and then connect that to this,” he pointed to the supercomputer behind him. “It should speed up the search by 20 times.”
Clint put his arm around Wanda. He cared for her, but right now he cared more for his partner, Natasha. “Are you good with this,” he asked her.
“Yeah. Anything to reverse my mistakes,” she replied, not taking her eyes of the machine.
“Wanda, you know that doing this will put you in a coma until you find her, right?” Steve asked.
“I know. So let’s start while we can.”
Tony had Wanda lay on a small bed surrounded by medical machines to track her vitals during the coma. He held the device up to her head and a small spike came out, stabbing into her brain. She grunted but the pain was short-lived. He attached the device to the supercomputer.
Clint said to Wanda, “whenever you’re ready,”
Wanda began to search for life signs of Natasha on a worldwide scale through all of time. She fell into a coma as the computer showed where and when she was looking. While Clint stared at Wanda, Steve sat and wrote all his memories of Natasha, from the time they met up on the carrier to their kiss in that mall, to the most recent fight they fought and everything in between.
“Clint,” Steve addressed him, “she’ll be okay. Right now we have to worry about Nat.”
Clint turned away from Wanda and scribbled down his memories of the spy: the time he was sent to kill her, Budapest, their fight on the carrier, Sokovia, Georgia, among others. Sam also noted his limited memories involving Natasha.
Tony watched a monitor next to the supercomputer where all of the names showed up. He expected to see Natasha’s name a few times but only when she was younger so he would just have to cross reference the names with the images. “What did I get myself into?” he mumbled to himself.