Chapter Text
After losing Pietro, Wanda could not find a reason to live anymore. Her last comfort, her last piece of home was ripped away so suddenly and so viciously it created a terrible vacuum in her chest. Half of her soul was gone and a strange combination of pain and emptiness had taken its place.She can feel her brother's absence and it hurts like she can only imagine a phantom limb would, a vacant space she aches for, a memory she can never touch. Wanda does not understand how emptiness can hurt like this. How nothingness can feel so heavy.
At the Avengers compound, she became a ghost. On some nights sneaking into the kitchen for crackers and tap water, Wanda ate just enough to stay alive then she would aimlessly drift around the halls until the weight of exhaustion pulls her back into her room. She would crawl back into bed and hope for a dreamless sleep.Clint, Steve, and Natasha took turns to try and cajole her into watching a movie or eating dinner with them, each of them gently tapping on her door to tell her about pizza arriving or Sam making popcorn to watch Jurassic Park. She never responds. The witch only stares at the closed door, waits, then when whoever walks away closes her eyes once again. She has not spoken to anyone in weeks.
On the nights that Wanda sleeps, the terrors come, and she wakes up screaming. At first, the older Avengers try to help, but they quickly stop when she makes it clear that they were not to intrude on her space. The first time Natasha rushed in she inadvertently slammed the woman against the wall using her powers. She can still see the look of horror on Steve’s face. Since then, she simply barricades the door with a red forcefield. She wants them and their feelings as far away from her as possible. She feels the guilt that rolls off Clint and it is overwhelming; it makes her smolder with anger at the man. When he leaves to return home to his family she unashamedly is relieved. Worse, Steve is filled with hollow pity for her. Natasha is the only person she can stand. Her mind and emotions are guarded, but she gets the sense that Natasha acts out of empathy. Perhaps she once sat in the same situation as Wanda and so rather than pity she understands the need for isolation.
Because of this, Natasha is the only one Wanda would accept anything from. When the others came by offering her food, she left their offerings to languish outside the door. When she heard it was the Widow, however, Wanda would emerge from under the blankets after she was sure the woman had gone to take the clean clothing or granola bar or the occasional book in Russian.
These items slowly collect until suddenly Wanda’s room stops feeling so barren. There are clothes in her dresser, a small stack of books accumulated on a shelf, and a stash of protein and candy bars that she rationed out for herself, an old habit from her time on the streets with Pietro. She has more things to her name than she did in her parents’ house; at this thought guilt sits in the back of her mind and deep in stomach. After a nightmare one night, she wakes up in a rage and rips every page out her small collection of novels in her frustration. When she realizes what she had done she feels a pang of regret and tries to reorganize the shredded pages, but it was too far gone.
She managed her isolation for two months after arriving in New York until one day there is a gentle knock on her door that wakes her up.
“Wanda?” A female voice inquires.
Wanda opens her mouth to respond but nothing comes out except a croak, and she realizes it’s been months since she’s uttered a word.
“I’m opening the door,” the voice calls and it promptly swings open to reveal Natasha standing in the doorway, wearing leggings and a tank top with her red hair loose around her shoulders.
“You need to get up,” the woman says in a no nonsense voice. Then she turns around and walks away.
Confused, Wanda blinks at the empty space where Natasha had just been then gets out of bed to trail after the older spy. Natasha does not look over her shoulder to confirm she is following, but she guesses that the Black Widow is not used to people disobeying her commands.
Natasha leads her into the kitchen where she points to a chair at the island for her to sit. As Wanda takes the seat, the woman slides a plate over to Wanda. It has small portions of applesauce and plain rice on it. Wanda looks at Nat blankly.
“Well?” Nat says with a touch of impatience, gesturing to the plate she orders, “Eat it.”
Uncertain of Natasha's new demanding attitude, the young girl picks up the spoon on the plate feeling obligated to obey the woman as she starts taking hesitant bites of the food, until eventually, she finishes.
At the empty plate, Natasha visibly relaxes.
“Thank you,” she says in a softer tone, a gentle smile on her face.
“You’re welcome,” Wanda feels compelled to say back, surprising herself at the sound of her own voice. It is the first thing she has said in weeks, if one does not count the screaming induced by her dreams every night.
As Nat continues to make eye contact with her, Wanda feels her face flush a bright red. Contrary to her fears and expectations, there is no malice or suspicion in the redhead’s expression. She simply studies Wanda as if trying to take in every detail of her face.
For the first time in years, Wanda feels seen by somebody other than her brother. The feelings bring terror and with it, anger.
“What?” She snaps at the woman.
Natasha raises an eyebrow.
“I me-mean...” Wanda stutters out, then she takes a deep breath, and starts again, “Why am I here?”
She weakly signals to the kitchen around them. After a pause, Nat takes a deep breath and slowly exhales, looking at the ceiling, “Do you really now know?”
Wanda furrows her brow and shakes her head in affirmation. This time, Nat raises both eyebrows and then says with sarcasm, “Maybe I just didn’t want you to starve to death.”
Taken aback by the woman’s statement, thoughts swirl in Wanda’s head. Why would Natasha care at all what happened to her, if she lived or died? After all the death Wanda caused, and the pain she poured on the Black Widow and her team in South Africa, she cannot see a reason for Nat to feel anything less than hate for her.
Suddenly, an image of a Hydra scientist strapping her down and shoving a feeding tube down her throat flashes in her mind, as do his ugly words, “Wenn Sie nicht essen, machen wir Sie zum Essen. Ich werde meine Lieblingswaffe nicht sterben lassen.”
If you don’t eat, we will make you eat. I won’t have my favorite weapon die. The words echo in her head reminding her that she is not worthy of being fed sweet applesauce and warm rice in a brightly lit room with a woman who has saved the world on multiple occasions. Wanda was a liability, a danger, only ever destined to be a weapon of mass destruction. Surely, Natasha understood that fact, right? At this thought, anger flares in Wanda and she bites back in Sokovian, “Well maybe I did want to starve, Agent Romanoff.”
She storms back to her room, leaving a surprised spy sitting at the table. Wanda slams her door and with a wave of her magic pushes her heavy dresser against the door. Collapsing gently against the wall, she shoves her head into the palms of her hands. Wanda tries to calm her emotions, but anger and pain courses through her veins. Or is that magic? She can’t tell anymore. Blood pounds her ears, blocking out everything else.
Wanda suddenly becomes aware of a high pitching keening around her. It’s a horrible screeching, one that shakes the water glass on Wanda’s nightstand and shatters the mirror in the bathroom. With a start, she realizes the noise is her screaming, her magic seeping into the terrible noise and amplifying it to a level of destruction.
Muffled shouting and the sound of splintering behind her bring Wanda to her feet. She turns just in time to see the dresser crash to the ground and her bedroom door fly off its hinges.
A wide eyed Captain America stands at the ready.
“Wanda!” He barks. “What happened?”
She looks around at her destroyed room in speechless horror. Everything is off the walls, the mattress thrown off her bed, and bathroom mirror shattered.
‘I-I..I don’t know” she mutters. When she meets Captain America’s eyes, she sees distrust and worry. That was the look she deserved. That distrust quickly changes to surprise as Captain America is pushed out of the way but a slight, redheaded figure.
Natasha.
Unlike Steve, she does not look shocked or scared. She looks annoyed. Wanda panics internally at the expression, the disapproval feeling worse coming from Natasha for reasons she could not explain. Wanda feels her stomach churn until she realizes the look is not for her, but rather for Steve as Nat berates the man. “Jesus, Rogers! You completely destroyed her door!”
“What the fuck?” She exclaims.
Wanda cannot help but giggle at the look of astonishment on Steve’s face as he unwittingly mirrors how she feels on the inside. Now it was his turn to stutter. “Well, I, I.. What else was I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know! But I’m pretty sure smashing Wanda with an oak dresser is not a team goal,” she says with exasperation.
He brings his hand to the back of his neck and sheepishly looks at Wanda.
“Sorry about that,” he apologizes genuinely.
Wanda shrugs.
“I guess I’ll get out of here,” he says and slowly turns around.
Nat and Wanda both watch him shuffle out and then make eye contact. For a moment they stare at each other before breaking out into giggles at the oldest Avengers expense.
It’s the first time that Wanda has smiled without her brother by her side.
After this incident Wanda starts eating dinner with Natasha every night.
——— ———
At dinner, a few weeks after the dresser incident, Natasha stares fondly at Wanda despite the fact she’s only eaten a few bites of dinner much to the spy’s frustration.
“Not feeling the waffles?” She asks.
Wanda looks up, eyes big, as they always are when somebody addresses her directly. She shrugs and stuffs a bite in her mouth. Shrugging has been the girl’s number one form of communication, which is not conversational, but it’s a step up from the vacant stares of a few months ago.
“You know, you can tell me if you don’t like something,” Nat adds.
“I like it!” Wanda insists around a mouthful of waffles.
Nat smirks and shakes her head, looking down at her own empty plate. She’s taken to eating whatever Wanda eats, even though it's usually far more calorie laden than her typical fare, in an effort to encourage her to eat more food.
A few more minutes pass in silence, the only noise being Wanda’s fork clattering against the plate until she finishes her two waffles. Nat reflects on how she needs the young Sokovian to eat more. She’s gained weight but remains gaunt and her eyes are still sunken into her face.
After finishing her food, she slouches in her chair and sighs.
“I’m full,” Wanda groans as rubs her flat stomach. Nat cringes inwardly at the tiny amount of food it takes to fill up the girl. Wanda gets up, taking their plates to the sink as she always does after dinner. Normally, Natasha would stand up to help as she has found it a good time to make small talk. She looks forward to these 15 minutes of talking all day.
Today, however, she pauses before standing up. She takes a deep breath to steady her nerves. Why is she nervous in the first place?
“Wanda,” she starts, “Would you like to watch a tv show with me?”
The girl tenses up for a moment. Normally after cleaning up, Wanda would slink back into her room and stay there until dinner the next night. The girl looks over her shoulder at Nat, her piercing eyes boring into Nat’s. She turns back around, and Nat can barely hear here say, “Yes, I would.”
A warm feeling blossoms through Nat’s chest akin to the first time she heard Wanda genuinely laugh. It is the memory of that quiet laugh at Steve’s expense that motivates her. She has been trying to bring it out of the girl ever since she heard it. After the disastrous results of her first attempt, Nat has tried a more tactful and less direct approach with Wanda.
Wanda reminds Nat of herself as a 15 year old. She is extremely defensive and protective of her space. Based on very limited experiences Nat sees that she is feisty and sassy, lashing out at the people around her using sarcasm and a razor sharp wit.
She knows that as a teenager fresh from the Red Room, orders were comforting and familiar, but that choices forced her out of the well-worn role of Natalia Alinova Romanova, the Black Widow and into whoever Natasha Romanoff actually was. She might be able to get Wanda healthier quicker by forcing her to do things, but at the end of the day, all it would lead to was collapse. Wanda had to walk into health and healing of her own volition.
The two sit down on the couch in the living room on their floor. After the destruction caused in Wanda’s room, Nat asked Tony to move the girl to her floor. She should have done that right away.
“Anything you want to watch?” Nat asks casually.
“Um, actually,” Wanda says, “I’d love to watch the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
“Sure!” Nat responds enthusiastically. She cringes at herself; tone it down Romanoff.
After showing Wanda the controls, she gives the remote to her. Wanda goes straight to season 2 episode 6. At Natasha’s questioning glance, she explains. “I never got to see past episode 5.”
“The other discs got destroyed,” she says flatly while staring at the TV screen,
Natasha does not have to say when for Nat to know she’s referring to the explosion of her childhood home.
“Ironic that I’m watching it here,” Wanda says ruefully.
Nat nods, “Life is unpredictable in the worst ways.”
The two fall into silence watching the show. Nat drifts off, thinking about her own time watching TV. She used to love watching reruns of the Brady Bunch back in Ohio. She liked to sit with Yelena and pretend that their family was just like the Brady’s; that she and Yelena were sisters. Step-sisters maybe, but still wholly sisters. Her heart aches like it always does when her mind touches on the sensitive subject of Yelena. She rips her head away from that train of thought and focuses her eyes back on the television.
She’s glad she does, because shortly after a beautiful sound brings a lump to her throat.
Wanda is laughing.
— — —
Wanda looks over at her twin. He throws his head back and laughs at something Papa said. She jumps up and down too, thrilled at the news. She’s so excited! The three of the start down the street, headed towards the good news.
Wanda opens her mouth to ask Papa a question about what he had told them, but suddenly, she can’t figure out what they were so excited about. She looks up to ask, but Papa is gone. She turns to her left, but Pietro is gone too.
Suddenly, the light around her dims, and the air takes on a dusty hue. The street she walks on is ruined. Wreckage from fallen buildings lie in the street. She makes out remnants of limbs under giant rocks of concrete and twisted metal.
“Pietro!” She screams.
“Sestra!” a voice calls behind her. She pivots in relief at the sound of her brother’s voice. But when she turns she doesn’t see her 10 year old brother, but a man with silver hair. His eyes are glassy and his torso is riddled with bullet wounds.
“Sestra, why did you leave me?” The dean man, her brother, intones.
She screams.
———
Wanda wakes up screaming and levitating. Upon gaining consciousness, the witch crashes to the floor. She hears the items in her room drop with her, most notably the sound of her heavy oak bed landing on the ground with a nasty cracking sound. She groans in pain and frustration. Damn. There goes another bed frame. She may just switch to a mattress on the floor.
Exhausted, the teen drags herself up and stumbles to the bathroom. Utterly drenched in sweat she strips off her soaked t-shirt and underwear and almost falls into the shower. The water is icy cold and miserable, but she finds it’s the best thing to snap her out of sleep. She will not be heading back to bed, not with those visions waiting for her in sleep. Normally, when her nightmares strike with such ferocity she just shivers in the shower for hours until exhaustion forces her to rest.
Tonight, however, feels different. Wanda thinks back to watching the Mary Tyler Moore Show with Nat a few days ago. She finds herself wanting to hear the comforting laugh track and the corny jokes.
Quickly drying off she pulls a pair of leggings on and her favorite sweatshirt. She loves this sweatshirt. It appeared one day in her clean laundry and since then she wears it all the time. It’s a heather gray sweatshirt with the word SHIELD embroidered on the front. It has a retro feel and it reminds her of what she might have gotten at a high school if she’d ever gone.
Plus it smells amazing. Like fresh sunshine and flowers.
Wanda opens the door and steps into the hallway, her bare feet padding softly on the cool wood floor. It is 2 o’clock in the morning so she is surprised to see another person in the living room.
It’s Natasha, watching James Bond.
Shit. She must have heard the nightmare. She needs to get back to her old floor.
Natasha looks up her when she stepped in the room and froze in the doorway. She smiles and pats the couch cushion next to her at Wanda’s hesitation. The girl stares a few seconds longer before deciding to fully enter, walking to the couch Nat was curled up on. Wanda perches on the edge of the couch. “Is it ok if I join you?”
“Of course,” Nat responds gently then turns back toward the screen.
They sit watching the movie in silence. It’s old and not one that Wanda knows, but Natasha clearly has seen it a million times. Everyone once a while she says the line with the actors.
“You must choose, Mr. Bond,” She says in a fake deep voice and Wanda cannot help but laugh.
Nat looks over like she had forgotten she was there, then grins as she says, “This is a favorite of mine.”
Wanda nods and returns the smile, “I can tell.”
Their eyes return to the film and the pair settle back into a comfortable silence.
As the end credits roll, Nat turns to Wanda, asking, “What’s got you up, little witch?”
Nat has started to introduce the nickname, one of many she already calls the girl in her head, but Wanda does not know that. At the epithet, the teen blushes a bit. She shrugs. Then stops and takes a deep breath.
“I had a nightmare,” she admits.
She looks up in shock when Natasha responds with an empathetic, “Me too.”
For some reason, the idea that the Black Widow got nightmares shocks Wanda. She always seemed so strong, so invincible. Wanda’s mind goes back to the vision she made her see in South Africa and she flushes in shame. With memories like those, nightmares seem inevitable.
Natasha is looking back at the TV, navigating to another program when she casually says, “We all get them, Wanda.”
There is a pause. Then, “You’re not alone here, little witch.”
Natasha holds her breath at her words, hoping she has not gone too far.
The words fill Wanda with warmth, and she subtly glances at the spy, who is keeping her eyes trained on the television with just a bit too much focus, and responds with a quiet, “Thank you.”
They sit together and watch a few episodes of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. It was all so domestic and comfortable that Wanda is suddenly jarred by it. That crawling, sickly feeling of shame rushes in her head and she had to get out of there. Only offering a small goodnight to Natasha, she gets up and bolts out of the room without warning. She rushes off to seek the solace and seclusion of her room.
Immediately, she crawls under the covers and pulls her knees up to her chest in an effort to get warm. The tower is always so cold. In these moments especially she missed her twin. On a cold night they always had each other to keep warm. But Pietro is gone. He is dead and Wanda is alone. As much as she wants to believe what Natasha said, she knows the woman is wrong.
Wanda will always be alone.
People always leave her, and Natasha is not an exception. These gentle dinners and nights together will not last, as much as the hurt and lonely child buried deep inside Wanda’s heart wishes they would. The witch is not naive enough to believe she will stay. Eventually Natasha will realize who Wanda really is, a monster that puts the people around her in danger, a monster that killed her family and destroyed her own country.
She cannot put a name on why, but rage suddenly fills Wanda’s veins. She uses her powers to throw her bedside lamp against the wall, and it shatters with a loud crash. Wanda does not want Natasha to stay. She is a dumb woman that watches old stupid movie, and she is an idiot for giving Wanda her time and attention, the teenager tells herself ferociously clinging to the ideas as if they were a lifeline.
The next night at dinner time, Wanda ignores when the redhead knocks on her door, remaining silent until eventually Natasha walks away.