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It was safe to say that things were tense in the Compound. At least that was the only way Natasha could describe it. There wasn’t exactly a plethora of words that could describe coming home from a decimated nation with two teenagers — one in a box and the other in shambles.
No one knew what to do with the Maximoff twins after Sokovia. Steve and Clint immediately offered for Wanda to come live with the team in New York, but she didn’t seem all that enthused about the idea. At least she could escape Interpol from pinning the thousands of deaths on her. Though, after they had moved her into the new compound, Wanda hadn’t so much as left her room.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true.
She left her room once when they held a funeral for Pietro, but even though it was an entire week since his death, Wanda still had a dead and vacant look in her eye. Steve tried to ask her if she wanted the rest of the team to attend, but she didn’t even look at him. Evidently, that was enough of an answer because only she and Clint went into the forest that surrounded the compound to bury the coffin.
It didn’t take long for Clint to return home and Tony to “officially retire” — Natasha doubted he would actually hang up the suit, but that’s beside the point — which was Wanda’s cue to go back to hiding in her room.
At first, Natasha didn’t care. Though she’d be damned if she were to admit it to Steve, Wanda Maximoff creeped her out. It was kind of humiliating for a world-class super spy to be intimidated by a child half her age, but who could blame her?
She could feel that girl’s cold, bony fingers dig into her mind to hunt for any kind of memory that would send Natasha into a spiral, and boy, did Wanda find what she needed. Wanda had found every insecurity and regret that Natasha buried, which is pretty impressive considering the length of that list, and brought them back to the forefront of Natasha’s mind — thoughts that Natasha considered permanently burned and abandoned.
Every time Natasha so much as passed Wanda’s new bedroom, that same chill made her stomach jump. So yeah, at first, Natasha didn’t care that Wanda had grounded herself if it meant she wouldn’t have to interact with her.
At first.
The days that followed the funeral soon turned into a week, and Wanda still hadn’t ventured out of her little hovel. Whenever Natasha had the misfortune of passing Wanda’s room, she was met with the pile of dishes Steve had left for her. A neat display of all the past breakfasts, lunches, and dinners lined the floor, which were left either half-eaten or completely untouched.
On that particular evening, Steve happened to be out with Sam Wilson, leaving Natasha in charge of letting tonight’s dinner spoil at the foot of Wanda’s door.
As Natasha lingered by the threshold, the cold, creepy feeling she’d come to expect seeped into her bones. This had been the closest Natasha had ever gotten to Wanda’s room. She previously made it a point to walk on the other edge of the hall anytime she had to pass by. Still, this time, simply out of morbid curiosity, when Natasha set the chicken breast dinner down and balanced the fork and knife on the plate, she gently pressed her ear against the wooden front.
Natasha didn’t know what exactly she was listening for, but to her disappointment, all she heard was the soft hum of the running television.
Natasha even dared to knock.
“Wanda?” she ventured, but she got no reply.
She tried to open the door, but it was firmly locked.
Rather than pry any longer, Natasha decided just to let sleeping dogs lie and collect the rest of the dishware.
The rest of the evening mainly consisted of Natasha scraping meals into the garbage and trying not to think about Wanda. Whenever anyone asked a question about Wanda, Steve’s motto was simply “she needs time,” but just how much time was enough? Because frankly, it was getting rather old.
“Agent Romanoff?” a voice said from behind her.
Natasha grabbed the closest kitchen knife and whirled around to find Vision phasing himself through the floor.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I didn’t mean to frighten you, but you seemed rather lost in thought.”
Natasha set her knife down and sighed. “Sorry, I’ve just been wondering about things.”
“About Ms. Maximoff?”
A flash of confusion crossed Natasha’s face. “What do you know about Wanda?” she asked.
Vision was a weird one for Natasha to understand. She wasn’t there for his creation, and having Steve, of all people, try to explain to her exactly what he was probably had to be the worst idea any Avenger has ever had. To her understanding, he was a conglomeration of Ultron, J.A.R.V.I.S, and some other things. However, that didn’t explain him having some kind of weird special interest in Wanda.
“Well, I know enough to understand that her recent behavior would be considered ‘odd .’”
“Yeah,” Natasha nodded, “even teenagers don’t lock themselves in their rooms for weeks.”
“I’m not referring to that,” he said, “rather what goes on inside her room.”
Natasha arched an eyebrow. “You’ve been in her room?”
Vision’s eyes shifted to the floor. It might’ve been her imagination, but he looked almost guilty.
“Yes, see, I phased through,” he said. “And while I understand that a great deal of loss and grief has fallen on her, I wanted to ask whether the appropriate reaction is sitting with the lights off and watching sitcoms.”
“Did she happen to say anything?”
His eyebrows furrowed together. “No. She didn’t seem all that interested in my presence. Though, when I tried to get her to engage in conversation, she gave me a rather intimidating look that inferred I was no longer welcome.”
Natasha nodded, kneading the heels of her hands against her eyes. “Okay, I’ll let Steve know when he comes back,” she said.
Vision seemed content enough with that answer and phased back through the floor.
She and Steve were going to have to talk to him about the importance of door usage, but that was something they could do in the future.
It didn’t take long for midnight to roll back around, and Natasha was undoubtedly starting to feel the weight of the day come crashing on her shoulders. Steve still hadn’t come back from whatever he was out doing with Sam — probably working on their little missing person’s case — but she made a mental note to bring up Vision’s concerns in the morning.
A teenager locking themselves in their room was nothing if not stereotypical, but everything from not eating to not even acknowledging peoples’ presence set a small pit of concern in Natasha’s stomach. She remembered girls in the Red Room who would get like this. While locking themselves in their room wasn’t exactly an option, some girls would start walking around with sunken, blank faces.
Even when Natasha tried talking to them, these same girls who always seemed the most talkative would simply shut down and not even look her in the eye. They never made it through the night. Natasha saw every way possible. Using bedsheets to hang themselves, sneaking pain killers from the med room, or a knife from the mess hall. The Red Room simply called them failures and moved on.
As Natasha walked past Wanda’s room, she stopped, and her eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
She couldn’t hear the TV.
She shuffled closer, pressing her ear against the wood, but there was still dead silence.
As Natasha reached for the door, her foot hit something with a clatter. It was the plate of chicken, just where she left it. Except it wasn’t the same. While the chicken remained untouched, only the silver fork was left on the side.
Not the knife.
Natasha’s eyes widened, and her heart skipped a beat.
“Wanda, open the door,” she said, more like a command than a suggestion.
A loud yelp came from the other side of the door, and Natasha bit her lip. She grabbed the handle, violently trying to wrench it open.
“Open the door, or I’m kicking it down!” Natasha warned.
There still was no answer.
Natasha took a few steps back, not caring that she completely knocked the plate over, and slammed her foot against the lock.
It swung open, and she found Wanda sitting on her unmade bed. Her arm gushed with bright red blood with the steak knife pressed against her other wrist.
Wanda’s head shot up. Her eyes grew impossibly wide with panic as she saw Natasha standing at the threshold.
“Wait-”
Natasha didn’t give her a chance to say anything else. She leaped onto the bed, tackling Wanda against the mattress.
“No, stop!” Wanda whined as she squirmed out of Natasha’s grasp. Blood poured out of her arm as she tried to grab onto the nightstand.
Natasha quickly wrapped her arms around the girl’s waist and yanked her back onto the bed. Natasha’s force almost sent both her and Wanda to the floor, not expecting Wanda to be nearly as light as she was.
Wanda’s legs desperately kicked out as Natasha straddled her waist, and she shoved a bloody hand against Natasha’s face.
“Stay down!” Natasha ordered as Wanda shrieked in defiance.
“Leave me alone!” she screamed.
Natasha easily ripped Wanda’s hand away and pinned it to the mattress with her foot. She quickly seized Wanda’s bleeding wrist, slamming it against the red-stained sheets and applying as much pressure as she could without shattering Wanda’s bony hand. Some blood leaked out of Natasha’s fingers with a warm, unsettling squish.
Tears streamed down Wanda’s red face, and her neck strained as she tried to swallow a sob. “I just wanna go home…”
“I’m sorry,” Natasha whispered, not even realizing she said it until the words hit her ears. She kept Wanda pinned to the bed until the girl passed out from the blood loss.
Blood was a common occurrence in Natasha’s life. Her footsteps were smeared in it from childhood all the way to the present day. She had learned to tolerate it, to treat it as nothing more than another liquid. Still, as Dr. Cho and Vision settled a now unconscious Wanda into the hospital bed, all Natasha could do was sit in the chair that was off to the side and stare at her shaking crimson hands.
“Agent Romanoff?” Dr. Cho said.
Natasha jumped. Cho started explaining Wanda’s now stable condition, but Natasha wasn’t listening because everything stopped mattering as soon as she saw the pathetic figure that lay in the bed.
It was hard to see in the darkness of Wanda’s room, but under the blinding white fluorescent lighting, Natasha could see just how pale and thin Wanda was. Dark rings circled her eyes, and she looked substantially smaller than she did during Pietro’s funeral.
Multiple IVs jutted out from Wanda’s arms, tethering her in place, and her wrist was now wrapped in stained gauze. Her face was spattered with red, and her clothes were damn near soaked in it. Natasha ventured that she didn’t look all that different herself.
A wave of nausea hit Natasha as Steve burst into the room.
He looked between her, Wanda, and Cho in a morbid mix of fear and disbelief.
“I was gone for a few hours,” he mumbled.
Natasha couldn’t look him in the eye. She just stared at her hands.
“I’m sorry…” she said, “I should’ve been watching her more closely.”
She felt Steve’s steady hand rest gently on her arm, and he lowered himself to find her gaze. All that she could see were his kind blue eyes. He offered her a comforting smile before turning back to Vision and Cho.
“So what happens now?” he asked.
Vision was the first to speak. “It is advised that after one attempts to take their own life—” the ease of his words made Natasha visibly squirm, “— they ought to be hospitalized and seek treatment from both doctors and psychiatrists alike.”
“Absolutely not,” Steve said, “Wanda’s seen enough doctors for one lifetime.”
Cho stepped between Steve and Vision. “Captain Rogers, this is probably the safest option for her.”
“She’s a kid!” Steve said, his voice starting to rise. “She doesn’t need to be institutionalized. She needs time.”
Natasha sighed and leaned against the sidebars of the bed. Without thinking, she pulled a tissue out from a box on the nearby table and gently started wiping Wanda’s face clean. It didn’t feel right for her to wake up coated in a layer of dried blood.
A small, sad smile crept up on Natasha as she ran a hand through Wanda’s sticky hair. She looked so much like those girls in the Red Room. Hopeless girls who couldn’t even dream of a home to run to, who were so alone and hurting that they’d do just about anything to get out.
For the first time in weeks, Natasha didn’t see a possible threat in Wanda — not even someone who tried to destroy the Avengers from the inside out. All she saw was a child, who didn’t even try to defend herself with her powers, wracked with an unimaginable amount of guilt and loneliness.
“I’ll do it…” Natasha mumbled as she tucked a stray piece of hair behind Wanda’s ear. “I’ll take care of her.”
A long silence fell in the room as everyone stared at her in disbelief.
“I thought you hated her,” Steve said.
Natasha took a deep breath as she collected herself. “Maybe I did, but I’m the only one who knows a semblance of why she tried to...y’know. She’ll stay in my room, better than being reminded of what happened in hers, and I’ll keep a close eye on her.”
She looked at Steve with hard, determined eyes. Though Natasha had kept her voice as even as possible, she knew that Steve understood just how serious she was about this. Even Vision knew better than to argue with her. He just resigned himself to the other side of Wanda’s bed.
After that, they made the preparations. They brought Wanda to Natasha’s room, tucked her into the warm sheets while Natasha laid out a sleeping bag on the floor for herself. She made Steve promise that no one would try to come in, so he simply kissed her cheek and shut the door. The only time anyone ever tried to come around was to drop off food.
For an entire week, Natasha watched over Wanda’s nearly stagnant recovery process. She refused to utter a single word to Natasha, so Natasha never really tried to push for conversation. If Wanda didn’t feel like talking, they didn’t have to talk. If she wanted, Natasha was perfectly content with sitting silently in the room only lit by the bedside lamp, and the running TV.
The few times Wanda allowed Natasha to get near her was when she needed to change Wanda’s bandages or switch out the IV bag. At least now she did after one night when Wanda was picking at her days-old wrappings and Natasha yelled at her about getting an infection. While from then on, she let Natasha change the wrappings, as soon as Natasha’s voice started to rise, all the color in Wanda’s face drained and tears welled in her eyes.
As an added bonus, if Natasha tried to push their unspoken boundaries and sit next to her on the bed, Wanda would scoot as far away from Natasha as she could.
So Natasha decided it was best if she sat at the little table on the other side of the room and snack on the saltines and water. Every now and again, Natasha would offer some to Wanda, who would simply ignore her and fidget with her fingers.
One night, though, while Natasha was changing the bandages on Wanda’s wrist, Wanda mumbled in less than a whisper, “You pity me.”
Natasha was taken aback, not expecting to hear anything except the TV.
Wanda’s face was still that same apathetic and emotionless expression, but even in the lamplight, Natasha could see she was almost hoping for a specific answer.
“No, I don’t pity you,” Natasha said as she made the last snip for the new bandages.
Wanda rolled her eyes. “I can read your mind, remember? I'll know when you’re lying.”
Once Natasha finished putting all the supplies away, she returned to her seat by Wanda’s bed. “Then you should know I’m not.”
Wanda didn’t answer. She just drew her knees to her chest and rested her chin on top of them.
Natasha sighed. “I knew a girl once who was a little younger than you, and she had lost her sister. They were torn apart and never saw each other again.” Her stomach flipped at the mention of Yelena, but she kept the straightest face she could. “That’s a pain no one should go through alone.”
“Who was she?” asked Wanda, her eyes flickering towards Natasha.
“Me.”
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked, squeezing her legs tightly against her, “Don’t you hate me?”
Natasha bit at the inside of her thumbnail, pretending to think about it for a second. “I don’t think I do.”
“Not after…” Wanda trailed off, almost afraid to finish that sentence.
Natasha smiled kindly and leaned closer to Wanda, who was trying her best not to look at the older woman. “I’m not going to lie. What you did hurt me a lot. You brought up memories that I’ve tried very hard to forget. But no, I don’t hate you.”
Wanda looked up at her in confusion, her fingers unconsciously starting to scratch at the bandages on her wrist. “Why?”
“Because,” Natasha said as she gently took Wanda’s hand from her wrist and rubbed her thumb over the girl’s knuckles, “I think you were a girl who was very angry and very scared, and she did what she thought was best. Besides, I can’t exactly judge you considering how much red is in my ledger.”
“If you don’t hate me, then why did you stop me?” Wanda asked as she pulled her hand away, her lip beginning to tremble. “Why did you stop me from going home?”
Natasha didn’t try to reach for Wanda’s hand again. She just leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs, and stared at her boot. “I’ve never known a home that requires suffering upon entry.”
“The human body,” Natasha continued, “at quickest, takes five minutes to bleed out. That’s at best five minutes of suffering I’ve never known parents to ask of their child, or a brother to ask of his sister.”
A long moment of silence fell between the two, but Natasha could see Wanda’s shoulders shudder, and a tear glisten in the warm yellow light as it slid down her cheek and sunk into the blanket. “Then there is no home for me.”
Natasha moved onto the bed, and to her surprise, Wanda didn’t shift to try and get away from her. “I can offer you one here,” she said softly. “You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to, and I’m not going to try to replace the home you lost or the family you love, but I promise no one will leave you ever again.”
She lifted Wanda’s head from the blankets and gently wiped away the tears that spilled down her cheeks. “All I ask is that you live, and I’ll be right there with you, every step of the way.”
More tears fell down Wanda’s face, and a hiccup escaped her as her jaw tightened. Without saying a word, she pulled the blankets off herself and plodded over to the table with the crackers and water.
Wanda brought a cracker to her mouth and crunched as small sobs bubbled up in her chest with shaking hands.
A warm smile spread across Natasha’s face as she sat down to join Wanda.