Chapter Text
Natasha stared out the broad window of her suite at the rolling woodlands outside the new Avengers facility. It was an eastern view, and she watched how banks of fog interplayed with the light of the sun. In her hand she cupped her tea in a ceramic demitasse, steaming and dark.
Something’s wrong. Her thoughts looped back again and again over the whole Ultron incident, trying to come to some understanding as to how her common sense had utterly deteriorated when it came to Banner.
Natasha could slip into a persona as one may slip into a pair of shoes, let the role even color her thoughts and have weight on her emotions; it was how she could trick even the best of lie-detection technologies. But never once had she been so completely lost in some sort of love-sick haze that she would abandon Clint, desert Steve…not in the middle of a crisis.
Even to this hour, whenever she thought too much on Bruce...
Something’s definitely wrong.
A pleasant, electronic chime announcing a visitor pulled her back from her introspection.
Was Cap early? He and she were still ironing out the individual and collective training exercises for each new member of the team. Sam and Rhodey were well-accustomed to the military-like structure, but the others were not. So they had to get creative.
“Come,” she announced to the room’s AI, amused at how very ‘Star Trek’ her world had become when the door opened and admitted Wanda with the Vision not a few feet behind.
Natasha offered a smile to them, setting her own concerns aside. “Would you like some tea? A scone?” The tray with its pot and baked goods sat on a low coffee table surrounded by a few modern, leather lounge chairs.
“I have eaten, but thank you,” Wanda spoke, her accent soft, her eyes not quite meeting Natasha’s. The young woman instead looked to the synthezoid that stood now at her shoulder. “The Vision. He lets me into his mind often. Last night, I saw something of you and the Sceptre and a smirking man in green and gold. It was disturbing.”
“The Battle of New York,” Natasha clarified. “I used the Sceptre to close the Chitauri portal.”
“There is more,” the Vision interjected. “Loki bears a particular hatred of you.”
“Well, I did kinda beat the Liesmith at his own game,” she recalled back to the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier years ago. Then suddenly the floor was dropping from her feet and the words filling her skull, echo-upon-echo, until it became a cacophony.
You’re a monster.
Oh, no. You brought the monster.
Monsters. The thought seeded and growing in her like some sort of parasite.
Now who’s the monster? she asked of Banner when she was gripped in despair, memories of the Red Room. The question spilled from her lips, as if she believed it, as if it was some sort of horrible truth that could convince Bruce to...
Her teacup shattered as it slipped from numb fingers, breaking her from the horrid mental downward spiral. She blinked, trying to clear her head, banish the noise.
Wanda’s spoke, probably to her companion, as the mindbender rested a hand on Natasha’s shoulder. “See, it is bad. His hex toys with her. Just enough no-one noticed. Not even her at the time.”
Fuck. More mental twisting. No wonder she had felt completely off, uneasy in her own skin for weeks. Was this the root of it?
Natasha felt both of her guests ease her into a seat, but she was half elsewhere thinking she wasn’t supposed to be weak, not in front of her trainees.
Natalia was supposed to be unbreakable.
The Red Room did not suffer fragility.
Natasha watched transfixed as scarlet glowing tendrils of Wanda’s gift gathered up the pieces of fractured vessel and lowered them gently onto the tray. The young Sokovian woman then lowered herself down in the seat next to hers.
“When did Loki…? How?” Natasha finally was able to gasp.
“It would be best, Miss Romanoff, if we showed you,” the Vision offered, a little antiquated remnant from JARVIS showing through. “Wanda can provide an interlink with the Mind Stone.”
She didn’t want anyone more in her head, playing around. Never again. The Natasha of a month ago would have told them both to leave, keeping her fear to herself. But the two were Avengers now. They all had to build trust in each other. If she couldn’t place her own faith in Wanda, how could she trust her with the others? With Steve? With...maybe, one day, a certain brain-washed assassin still in hiding?
The thought of James remembering more than tiny fragments of the past encouraged her.
“Alright,” Natasha agreed, nodding slowly, then called to the facilities’ AI. “Jocasta. Patch me into Rogers.”
”Calling Captain Rogers now,” the system agreed. While they waited, Natasha finally spared a look at her two guests. The Vision, as usual, had a neutral face. But Wanda’s eyes glimmered with concern.
Another signalling tone, then overhead:”Steve here.”
“I’m gonna have to cancel our date, honey,” she responded playfully, aware that many in the facility joked that she and Rogers were now ‘work spouses’.
”What’s going on?” he asked over the room’s speakers.
”Impromptu team-building exercise with Maximoff and Vision. They’re here now with me,” she responded. Then more seriously. ”It’s priority.”
A pause, broaching uncomfortably long. Then: ”Not a problem. We’ll regroup tomorrow. Rogers out.” The coms closed with another down-tone.
Then before Natasha let her nervousness get the best of her, she ordered the AI to reschedule all her activities for the rest of the morning.
Taking a deep breath, the spy looked back and forth to both her guests. “I suppose no time like the present?”
Wanda held out her ringed right hand to Natasha, and she reached over to clasp it lightly. “When you are ready.”
The gem in the synthezoid’s forehead pulsed in time with Natasha's quickening heart-rate. She swallowed, looking out briefly again at the window for some tranquility before she plunged herself into this new frontier.
“I will see what you see,” the mindbender explained. “First, the witnessing. Then the three of us shall talk of what can be done to unmake it.”
“Let’s start,” Natasha agreed. “The sooner I can get back to being me, the better for everyone.”
“You’re in good hands,” the Vision spoke, just before the room where they were in peeled away to something else entire.