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1.
There are times when Wanda's nightmares are not her own. Sometimes they are leftovers, remnants from minds she has touched. They feel foreign and ill-fitting and she is desperate to get out of them, desperate to be free, but they are perhaps not worse than her own. Most nights, her dreams belong only to her.
When she wakes up, she knows that she's fine. She knows she is safe, alone, in her apartment in Stark Tower (of all the places in all the world, and what would her brother say, what would he have said if given this choice, where would they be now? He gave his life for Clint Barton and for an innocent child and so she thinks, perhaps, right here.) She lies still in her bed and stares at a shadow in the corner for twenty minutes until her phone buzzes once on the nightstand.
Are you awake?, asks Natasha, who knows she hasn't been sleeping. Wanda thinks about ignoring it, because she is fine. She will be fine. But she would like to talk to Natasha. She would like to allow herself that.
Yes, she sends back, and gets out of bed. In her living room, she turns the lights on and unlocks her door and then sits on the couch to wait.
Natasha comes in a few minutes later, and Wanda is surprised at how much better she feels, seeing her. Natasha sits down with her and doesn't ask why she's awake- because it is difficult to talk about, because she already knows. There are people here who ask her how she's doing, and there are people who don't have to. Natasha knows things about her the way Pietro used to, knows without asking, knows just by looking. Wanda didn't like it at first, but now Natasha is her friend. Now Natasha might be the only person living who Wanda would trust to know her this way.
“What are we watching tonight?” Natasha asks.
Wanda, knees drawn up under her chin with a remote in her hand, is flipping through her Netflix queue, which is a thing that she has now. One strange thing among many.
“Star Trek,” she says. “The Next Generation.”
Halfway through the episode, she looks over at Natasha and says, “You do not have to stay up with me.”
Her brother would have said, “Yes, I do,” would have smiled at her so she knew he didn't mind it. Natasha says, “I know,” and she is smiling too, but subtle, quiet, and the feeling in Wanda's chest is familiar and new at once.
She has seen Natasha's nightmares, has dreamt them like they were her own, and she wonders if Barton used to do this for her. There are times she wants to say that she can go back in, she can take those nightmares and make them something else, something that doesn't hurt, but she is learning. She is learning that Natasha, more than most, would not want that.
She does not know how to apologize to Natasha for what she did to her, before they were on the same side. She does not know how to say many of the things she would like to. What she would most like to say is this: She used to wonder what it would be like to have a sister. Her brother was enough, she never needed anyone else as long as she had him, but she was curious. When they were very young, the family next door had four girls, close in age, and the mother was always tired and the sisters were always talking, laughing, fighting and making up, and she wondered. She does not wonder so much anymore.
By the time the next episode starts, the late hour is beginning to weigh on her. It's been many days, more than she has cared to count, since she has slept a night straight through. It would be okay, she thinks, to fall asleep again now, with Natasha next to her, with the lights and the TV on so the darkness and the quiet don't press in on her.
She's half asleep when she feels a blanket being pulled around her, and then Natasha's hand on her shoulder for a few moments, gentle and kind.
“Goodnight, Natasha,” Wanda says, and only realizes afterwards that she did not say it in English.
“Get some rest,” Natasha tells her. “I'll be here.”
2.
Steve turns 97 on July 4, 2015. It's an imprecise date, now, really- he was frozen in April, not quite 27, and thawed out 67 years later in May, so the lost time in between means his body turns a year older now on a new date that he's never bothered to calculate. At any rate, they should probably call this his thirty-first, but Natasha, who no longer surprises him by how long she can keep a bit running, gets him a cake big enough to fit 97 candles carefully arranged along the lines of a flag drawn in icing.
He could pretend to be annoyed, but there's not much of a point. He likes when Nat's happy, and calling him old makes her happy.
“You don't look a day over 85, Captain,” Wanda says.
Natasha smiles, just barely, and nudges Steve with her elbow. “She makes jokes now.”
He doesn't know what it's like to be Wanda, he would never tell her “I know how you feel,” but he does know what it feels like to lose the people you love most- his mother first and Bucky second and then everyone all at once, and now Peggy, again, piece by piece.
He goes to visit her with Sharon sometimes, and there are days that Sharon starts crying in the hallway as soon as they leave Peggy's room, covers her mouth and hides her face in his shoulder for a few moments until she can get herself together. There are days he starts crying in the car on the way home, a few silent tears down his cheeks, and Sharon always knows and reaches over to hold his hand while she drives.
But they'll try not to think about that today, on his thirty-first or ninety-seventh birthday, on which he has made it clear that he doesn't want or need a party.
“It's not a party,” says Natasha, who loves her friends quietly but very, very much. “It's just cake.”
“I hope this isn't a party,” Sam says, as he passes a lighter to Sharon and they stand at opposite ends of the cake, lighting candles from the outside in. “You've got four guests and a fire hazard.”
“And fireworks,” Sharon says, nodding towards the window, where they can see bursts of color over the tops of buildings.
“That doesn't count,” Steve says. “They're not for me.”
Natasha tilts her head. “Aren't they?”
“Nat,” he says, vaguely disapproving, but she just smirks at him.
“The outside candles are dripping wax into the frosting,” Sharon says. Half of them are still unlit.
“It's fine,” Natasha says.
Wanda holds her hand out. “I can finish.” Tiny flames leap from the already-burning candles, lighting the rest all at once.
Sam shakes his head. “Still weird.”
“You should blow them out soon,” Wanda says.
Natasha kisses his cheek. “Happy birthday, Steve. Don't forget to make a wish.”
Even Captain America can't blow out 97 candles in one breath, but he does all right, and everyone claps when they've finally been extinguished.
“So what did you wish for?” Sharon asks.
“That Natasha would never get me another cake,” he says, but he's smiling, and Sharon laughs.
“Now your wish won't come true,” Wanda says.
Natasha's grin is dangerous. “Just wait until your hundredth birthday.”
Steve can honestly say he's looking forward to it.
3.
Natasha brings Wanda to the farm to meet Nathaniel when he's two months old. She doesn't plan on it, she doesn't think Wanda would ever want to go there, but Wanda walks in on her in the middle of a video call with Laura and the baby, stands still and silent in the doorway until she hangs up, and then says, “I would like to meet him.” (Natasha had been the one to tell her the baby's middle name was Pietro. Wanda had nodded. “Thank you for telling me,” she'd said, and they'd left it at that until now.)
She wants to know that the family her brother died for is worth it. Or she knows, but needs to see it. People grieve in their own ways. So Natasha calls Laura, who would welcome anyone that Natasha brought into her home, and Natasha thinks how strange that is still, to be loved and trusted by someone as good and kind and normal as Laura Barton.
She answers exactly how Natasha expects her to, “of course” and “whenever you want.”
“What's she like?” Laura asks towards end of the conversation. Not is she dangerous. What's she like. Natasha imagines that Laura had asked this same question about her, before the first time Clint brought her home. She can imagine, too, what his answer had been.
“She's smart,” Natasha says. “And stubborn. Braver than she thinks.”
“So she's like you,” Laura says.
“I know exactly how brave I am,” Natasha says, and Laura laughs at her.
*
When they get there, Lila opens the door and jumps straight into Natasha's arms, shouting “Auntie Nat!” right into her ear. Natasha holds her tight and shuts her eyes for a moment.
“Hi. I missed you,” she says. It's only been a couple of weeks, this time, but she misses them always.
Laura comes to the door holding Nate, and Natasha puts Lila down and leans in to kiss Laura's cheek, who hands her the baby immediately.
Wanda has gone rigid, beside her, and Natasha catches her eye. You're all right. You'll be all right. (“Say the word and we're gone, okay?” she'd told her on the way there. “If you need to go, we go.”)
“Wanda,” she says. “Meet Laura, Lila, and Traitor Baby.”
Laura takes Wanda's hand and Wanda allows it. “I'm glad you came,” she says, and the thing about Laura is that she means it.
“Thank you,” Wanda says, “for allowing me to come.”
Lila gazes up at Wanda with great interest. Natasha knows that Wanda's pretty face and long hair and unfamiliar accent make her an exciting curiosity for Lila. “Are you friends with my dad and Auntie Nat?”
“I am friends with Natasha,” Wanda says. “I do not... know your father as well.”
“He's outside building a tree house with my brother,” Lila says.
“I told him he can build a tree house and renovate it for the rest of his life, but this house is off limits,” Laura says. “I'm sure Cooper will be in soon, he knew you were on your way.”
“Don't you want to see Dad?” Lila asks Natasha.
“Oh, I've seen him plenty of times,” Natasha says, bouncing the baby in her arms, and follows Laura into the house. She glances over her shoulder, and Wanda only hesitates for a moment.
Lila runs upstairs to find a drawing she'd made for Natasha, and Laura heads out back to fetch Cooper. Clint, Natasha thinks, will stay away, though no one has asked him to, though Wanda has explained to her haltingly that while she wishes her brother were alive she does not wish Agent Barton were dead.
“Do you wanna hold him?” Natasha asks Wanda when they're left alone in the living room with Nate.
“No. No, that's all right,” Wanda says, taking a small step back, just as Natasha knew she would. And maybe she shouldn't have asked, but- she remembers how it felt, to be here the first time, to hold a peaceful infant Cooper in her arms after Clint had gently convinced her it would be fine. To know that this place was safe, this family was safe. They feel as much hers to offer as they are Clint's to offer to her, again and again.
“Okay,” Natasha says. “But I'd recommend it. He's incredibly squishy.”
She sits down, and Wanda sits next to her, studying the baby. He's in a good mood, quiet and alert, and when he reaches a hand out towards Wanda, she holds out her index finger for him to grab.
“Hello, Nathaniel,” she says. “My name is Wanda.”
4.
The hospital is bright, and nothing like the Hydra facility where they had changed her, and that's good. That's good. They will not hurt Natasha here. She is fine, or she will be—Wanda can tell from Steve's face. She did not speak to the doctors, but Steve did, and he's come to find her where she sits in the waiting room with shaking hands, next to Sam, who has reminded her that Natasha can take a hit. That she has been through worse—a couple new gunshot wounds are nothing. (Wanda thinks Sam doesn't know what to make of her, still, but he trusts her, because he trusts Natasha. “She wants you on the team, I want you on the team.”)
“She's okay,” Steve says, and he looks tired. Worry, Wanda thinks—that is what makes a super soldier tired. Worry, regret, sadness. “She's still unconscious, but she's okay.”
He smiles, but still all Wanda can think is that she will just keep losing people. That because she cares about Natasha she is bound to lose her, someday if not this day. She stands up. “I would like to see her.”
Steve and Sam say something to each other that Wanda barely hears, and then Steve leads her down a hallway to a room where Natasha is not dead, just asleep. She is breathing, she will wake up soon, but looking at her, Wanda thinks of her brother, her parents, gone in an instant. She would have told them she loved them one last time, if she'd known.
She touches Natasha's forehead, and she shouldn't—she shouldn't—but she reaches out anyway, reaches not so far back to find a memory of the two of them, a month after leaving Sokovia, leaving her brother, for the last time. A smile is tugging at Natasha's lips and Wanda is laughing because Natasha, when the opportunity presents itself, does a perfect Tony Stark impression. It was the first time Wanda had laughed since Pietro died, and it feels like the right thing to show her, the best way for Wanda to tell her that she is grateful.
“Wanda,” Steve says, when he sees the wisps of red curl around her fingers as they rest on Natasha's forehead. He knows that she would never hurt Natasha, never again, or she hopes he does. But he also knows it's dangerous, to be in someone's head. That it's a line she no longer wishes to cross.
“I don't know... how else to tell her that I love her,” Wanda says, lifting her hand, and for a moment she thinks Steve will misunderstand her, but he doesn't—he loves Natasha the same as she does.
“She knows,” he says, because he knows better than to suggest that Wanda just say the words. He is a good leader, a good man to have on your side. He is a good friend.
Steve puts his hand on her shoulder and she finds herself leaning closer to him to accept the comfort. She had never expected Steve's kindness but it has been unwavering all the same. He has never touched her, though, not aside from shaking her hand, but he seemed to sense that she needed it. She did not know she needed it.
“She will wake up soon?” Wanda asks. “You are sure?”
“I'm sure,” Steve says.
She puts her hand back on Natasha's forehead, just to let it rest there for a few moments.