Chapter Text
Who Could have Helped Her?
By the time Maria Hill heard what Wanda was doing in Westview it was too late for her to do anything to help.
Maria Hill woke up in the middle of Sixth Avenue in New York City with one question: “Where’s Fury?” Within 24 hours she had rejoined him, at least she thought it was him, at Tony and Pepper Stark’s Farm in New York for Tony’s memorial service. The farm was full of their old colleagues from the reformulated SHIELD and people kept coming up to her to welcome her back, which was odd since had no awareness that any time had passed. She also heard many different versions of what had just happened in Wakanda, some from those who had been there, such as her friend Valkyrie, and others second hand. She now understood that Tony had sacrificed his life to defeat strike Thanos by taking all of the Infinity Stones into his own hands and snapping away Thanos and his armies.
While the ceremony was beautiful, and attended by people she had often heard of, like the Racoon and Groot, but never met, Maria could not get past two notable omissions. She has been told many times how just last week, her ex-girlfriend Natasha Romanoff had gone back in time to voluntarily sacrifice her life by jumping off a cliff on the planet Vormir to obtain the Soul Stone before Thanos could get a complete set. She also learned about the first battle against Thanos in Wakanda, which had been raging while she and Fury were driving.
Val told her that the synthezoid Vision had been killed by Wanda Maximoff to deprive Thanos of the Mind Stone lodged into Vision’s brain that animated him into sentience.
Only Wanda could do the task because she had survived hydra experiments infusing her with the same Mind Stone when it was in liquid form in Loki’s scepter. Maria knew Wanda but had never spent much time with her. Two short years after joining the Avengers and killing Ultron at the Battle of Sokovia, Wanda had to go underground with Steve, Natasha, Sam, and, until they dropped him off in Wakanda, Bucky. They were on the run after being declared dangerous criminals by the new version of the World Council. Her friend Sharon Carter had also gone off the grid because by returning Cap and Steve’s weapons, she too had become a wanted criminal. As far as she knew, unlike the Avengers, Sharon was alone. One of the few plans Maria had made so far was to find Sharon.
Maria and Natasha had gotten together when Natasha first defected from Russia and joined SHIELD. When SHIELD dissolved after being infested by Hydra, Maria ostensibly went to work full time for Tony. But Nick Fury had begun reconstituting the organization almost immediately and relied on her just as much as he had before. Maria was therefore living something of a double life in the years between the Battle of New York and Civil War. It actually brought her closer to the Avengers and she was always on the guest list for the many parties Tony threw for them in the Tower.
What Maria knew of the time between the events of Civil War and the snap was through occasional encrypted updates from Natasha about how Wanda’s powers were getting stronger. In a note she found concealed in her dry cleaning, Maria learned that Wanda’s powers had become so unstable that she jeopardized their ability to stay in any one location for more than a day or two. Apparently not only could she move heavy objects, read minds, and make people experience their worst nightmares, characteristics that led Maria describing her to Captain America as “weird,” she now apparently could change the nature of matter to create new objects.
Natasha reported that it had been useful at the beginning when Wanda could create items they needed. Wanda had started with small things like a backpack or a compass and then advanced to bicycles, motor-cycles, cars, and eventually safe houses. But in the last contact Maria had had with Natasha, on the paper sleeve shielding a take-out coffee order, when Wanda experienced strong emotions, like fear or anger, she could create destructive energy forces she couldn’t always control.
It was something Natasha had hoped Maria could help with if they could ever come out of hiding and one of the last things Maria could remember doing for work was arranging an encrypted telemedicine link between Natasha, Wanda, and Dr. Helen Cho. Although reluctant to get involved with the fugitives, Dr. Cho had suggested they bring Wanda to Korea for treatment using a new version of the Cradle. But of course that had never happened because Wanda disappeared in the blip only a few days after her team, now more like a family, emerged from hiding to join Tony, Rhodey, Bruce, Sam, and Vision to confront Thanos.
The second thing Val told Maria was that also among the dead as the synthezoid , Vision, Tony and Bruce had created in the hopes of defeating Ultron. Killed by Wanda who had some point while they were on the run had fallen in love with him.
Maria was surprised at what she was hearing about the relationship between Vision and Wanda because having taken Tony’s side in the Civil War, he should have never been in contact with her and the fugitives. But as Darcy Lewis, Jane Foster’s former assistant, whom she had hired as a summer intern while Darcy completed her Ph.D. in astrophysics, explained, Vision and Wanda had been meeting in secret in Scotland while the outlaw Avengers were in hiding.
Another reason why she was surprised by the relationship was that the reason Natasha was her ex-girlfriend is that she had begun dating Wanda about a year after Sokovia. Maria had gotten to know Wanda when she first arrived and enjoyed helping her acclimate to life in the United States and to her new role as an Avenger. Never-the-less, her first year with the Avengers was a tough one because she was mourning Pietero. He had been killed by one of Ultron’s robots during the battle of Sokovia because he deliberately jumped into the path of a hail of bullets heading towards Cliff and a young boy he was sheltering.
By the time of Civil War Maria and Natasha’s busy schedules were already causing them to drift apart. She and Nick stayed out of the Sokovia accords, but with his blessing she had been able to assist the Avengers remain in hiding and had even joined Natasha and Cap breaking Scott, Cliff, and Wanda out of the raft. So she was sad but not surprised when a flyer advertising home security systems on her car windshield turned out to be a letter from Natasha ended the romantic part of their relationship. However, reading on that Natasha was doing so because she wanted to be exclusive with Wanda left her angry and horrified.
She thought Natasha’s feelings for Wanda had been parental although she knew that they were much closer in age than anyone had originally thought. In fact, when the twins switched sides from ULTRON to the Avengers Pietro and Wanda were really 26, not 17 as they first thought.
It also meant that they hadn’t been duped into joining Hydra as young teens after living starving on the streets after Tony Stark’s bomb and destroyed their apartment building and killed her parents. In fact, Wanda and Pietro had been 21 when they signed up and were fully committed to what they thought were Hydra’s objectives of world order.
Maria had met Wanda few times during those years and liked her well enough. Wanda’s personality emerged more and more as she got further from her days helping Hydra and Ultron. Over time, though, she was able to join the training program Natasha and Cap had set up for New Avengers and began to live a life that was for the first time independent of Pietro’s shadow. As the more gregarious twin, he had often taken on the role of spokesperson while she lingered a little behind him, saying very little. Wanda must have been in her thirties when she disappeared on the battle field in Wakanda.
In one of the last conversations they had in person, Natasha was telling her that she hoped that Wanda would not think she had to stay with the Avengers and was encouraging her to complete her education at NYU as a mature student-going so far as to strew brochures and purple logo merchandise all over the tower.
Although Maria was sad that she and Natasha couldn’t sustain their relationship, she could see how the pairing of Wanda and Natasha made sense. After all, they were together all the time. Natasha, if she could be believed, was only eight years older than Wanda. Both were Eastern European, both Jewish, and both had very similar experiences being turned into weapons by a totalitarian organization: Natasha the KGB and Wanda Hydra.
That didn’t mean Maria liked or trusted Wanda. It bothered her that while Natasha had been handed over to the Red Room as a very small child, Wanda’s commitment to totalitarianism when she joined Hydra and then to world domination when she paired with ULTRON was deliberate and informed. When Natasha worked as an assassin before joining SHIELD she knew no other life. Wanda, as Maria recalled, had been raised in a warm and loving Jewish/Romani family which would have been horrified at the harm she had done.
Learning of this shift in affection from Natasha to Vision only confirmed her feeling that Wanda was untrustworthy. She could only imagine Natasha’s disappointment that Wanda had chosen her jailer, Vision, over her. Natasha must have known why Wanda was making regular trips to Scotland and allowed them despite the risk that it could lead to not just Wanda but all of them being captured.
And why Vision? Everyone knew he had a crush on Wanda--so much so that Natasha had to warn Pepper of a potential harassment action if Tony didn’t change Vision’s programming so he could not simply phase through walls into Wanda’s room whenever he wanted. Also, Vision was very much on Tony’s side during the Civil War, had willingly become Wanda’s jailor, fought against her and Cap brutally in Germany at the airport, and likely was instrumental in subduing her so she could be held in the Raft prison. Could Vision really have been keeping his trips to Scotland secret from Tony? Or had he and Tony been developing a plan to separate Wanda from the rest of the team so that he could have her and Tony could put Cap, Natasha, and Sam back on the raft? She’d probably never know.
On the other hand, if there was one thing certain about Wanda it was that she could read minds and would know if Vision was planning on betraying them. It was possible that she and Natasha had just drifted apart and Vision truly was jeopardizing his position freedom by hiding what he knew about the fugitives. It was also possible that as Wanda’s powers became more chaotic she feared hurting Natasha and found Vision’s imperturbable manner and indestructible body combined with his obvious affection for her, as safer alternative for everyone.
Maria knew that there was no evidence of either Wanda or Vision jeopardizing the safety of the renegade Avengers. And Vision had sacrificed his life to stop Thanos. It wasn’t fair to carry a grudge against him or Wanda, but it would be too much to expect that she would have warm feelings for either of them.
Standing there, watching those who had remained embracing those who had come back, Maria wondered if she might have been able to restart her relationship with Natasha.
She knew based on comments she had made that Natasha would not be comfortable being the third person in a relationship between a witch and synthezoid (who she sometimes referred to as “the robot”).
From where she stood, Maria could see Wanda at the far edge of the crowd huddled with Cliff’s family. She looked terrible, still covered with the blood, blue alien goo, and dust of the first battle of Wakanda. From the way she was pacing and wringing her hands, sending red tendrils of what looked like smoke in the air, Maria doubted that she had slept or ate much since waking to find both Vision and Natasha gone.
Looking at Wanda and Clint, Laura and the kids must have gone inside, Maria again felt anger at Clint for allowing Natasha to sacrifice herself. Why didn’t they retreat and consider their options?
What made them think one of them had to jump immediately, that second? Why wouldn’t they go back to the ship and consult with Nebula or even simply return to headquarters, where less than a few minutes would have passed, so the whole group could have worked on the problem.
She understood that they believed they only had one chance, but Bruce and Tony were geniuses. Who knows what kind of work around they could have devised?
For all that she appreciated Cliff’s warm heart and his central role in bringing both Natasha and Wanda to SHIELD, she also knew that having a wife and three children had not changed the recklessness and impulsivity that so often created trouble on missions. She could imagine that Natasha only jumped to stop him from doing so. Natasha had always felt that she owed her second chance at life to his, impulsively again, deciding to disobey orders and bring her back to join the Avengers rather than assassinate her on the spot.
She also felt that Natasha’s sacrifice was wasted because as far as she knew, Thanos was still very much alive--and now quite angry. She couldn’t help smiling about what she had been told of the all-women team, led by Wanda and Carol, someone she had always wanted to meet, who had very nearly stopped Thanos on their own. Maybe they would have with Natasha there. Maybe Tony would have survived.
While it was unlikely that Thanos would have returned to Earth after reducing its population by half, during the battle he had promised to do so out of spite when the Avengers had marshalled all the forces available to them in that last battle. And given the inevitability of Thanos’ return, was Earth really better off without Tony and Natasha to defend it?
Maria understood that without Natasha’s sacrifice neither she nor half the population of Earth would be here now, but it wasn’t as if they had suffered being blipped. It didn’t make any sense.
And of course Maria couldn’t help but wonder if Natasha had been thinking of her when she went on what she knew was a dangerous mission to Vormir. According to Bruce and Scott, who was growing on her despite her initial horror of the ants who followed him around everywhere, no one believed they were on a suicide mission and all hoped to reunite with their lost loved ones.
Yes, they told her that on the night before they left for the time heist they wrote last letters but this was standard operating procedure before a dangerous mission. It didn’t mean they planned to die. Bruce had given her two of the four sealed envelopes Natasha had left in her old room at the tower. There was one for her, Cap, Wanda and Bruce--all clearly marked “only to be opened if you are sure I’m dead and not coming back.” Hers, Cap’s and Bruce’s were all the same size, a slim business envelope with the Avenger’s logo. Wanda’s was larger, more like the size of a magazine. Bruce had taken his and Cap’s and she assumed they were going to read them later.
Maria still had hers and Wanda’s unopened inside the long zippered pock of her jacket. She believed what Thor, Dr. Strange, and Bruce had all told her, that Natasha really was dead. And would not come back. But opening that letter felt like giving up, and she wasn’t ready to do it.
Maria wondered if the letter contained Natasha’s hope that she and Maria could start over. Natasha had been alone without Wanda or Maria for five years. She had a lot of time to think about what she wanted or what she regretted.
But if Natasha if had been looking forward to getting back together, why did she jump? How could she think that while Clint had his family, she had nothing? Her death affected many people deeply. And by the looks of it, other than herself the person it was affecting the most was Wanda.
From Maria’s perspective, what Wanda was experiencing now looked like more than grief, it was anger and shock. She had caused Vision’s first death and witnessed his second. Natasha’s had been entirely unexpected.
Of course Wanda was distraught over what to her had just happened a few minutes ago. Maria had been told that Wanda’s cries of anguish could be heard, and the resulting red flares seen, for hundreds of miles across Wakanda. With that loss magnified by that of her twin Pietro, also in battle, she would expect Wanda to come back from the blip as grief stricken as she had gone into it. But even while watching Vision die twice, she knew that Natasha was alive. From her perspective, when she woke up on the battlefield it had been less than a few minutes since Natasha had rescued her, telling ’ the daughter of Thanos who had tried to isolate Wanda that “she’s not alone.” Wanda could reasonably have expected that in moving forward after Vision’s death, she wouldn’t be alone. She would have Natasha just as she had after Pietro’s death.
Seeing that Wanda had moved from crying in Clint’s arms to what looked like beating him with her fists, Maria stepped forward and went over to them.
“Hello Wanda,” she said. Then, more warmly than she thought she would, “ I’m so glad to see you and so sorry for your losses. I have something for you.”
----to be continued---