Chapter 1: 1hr 31secs, Wanda Maximoff.
Chapter Text
1hr 31secs, Wanda Maximoff
Three weeks ago, Wanda Maximoff disappeared.
It was as ordinary a day as ever. Natasha and Wanda woke up next to each other as they had done for the past six or so months, lay around for about twenty minutes so they didn’t have to leave each other’s arms, then reluctantly got up to get ready for the day.
When she saw Wanda wearing one of her shirts, she was tempted to just take it off and fuck the woman on her bed, but there was no time unfortunately. They had a meeting at 9am and by that point, it was already 8.45.
So Natasha let Wanda get away with wearing her shirt for now as they headed to the floor below for the meeting.
The meeting was boring. Nothing they hadn’t already heard a hundred times before, but it was mandatory to have two meetings a week so they sat through it alongside the rest of the Avengers and pretended they gave a fuck. Or at least, Natasha did. Wanda, however, was too busy talking to Natasha with her powers.
It was a little hard to ignore all of the innuendos Wanda was making in her head, but what was Natasha if not the world’s greatest spy? No one suspected a thing.
After the meeting, Natasha was intent on getting on her morning training whereas Wanda wanted to head out and get coffee from her favourite café in the city. It was a little crazy to Natasha what Wanda would do for their coffee.
She personally had no intentions of heading to the same coffee shop for the third time this week when there was a coffee machine in the kitchen, so she told Wanda she would get started on her training while Wanda was free to go and get them some coffee.
While Wanda looked reluctant that Natasha wouldn’t be coming with her, she eventually agreed and stole Natasha’s car keys to head to her favourite coffee shop. Natasha pretended not to notice the theft of her keys as she gave Wanda a parting kiss.
That was the last time she saw Wanda Maximoff. She waited all day for Wanda to come back, growing more and more worried by the second, but she never did return. It should’ve only taken an hour to get their drinks and come back.
She tried calling Wanda at some point in the day when the time she was taking began to get suspicious, but it turned out Wanda had left her phone at the Compound. If there was ever a time she hated Wanda never using her phone, it was now.
By the time night fell, Wanda still hadn’t come back and she was going crazy with worry. Sam thought Wanda had probably just gotten distracted, Vision suggested there was a long wait time on the coffee, and Rhodey just shrugged with his own confusion.
She mentioned to Steve that Wanda hadn’t come back and she was worried, and thankfully someone else shared her concerns. He also knew how much Wanda liked the coffee from that one café and was aware that it shouldn’t take this long to get them, so he went out with Natasha to said coffee shop.
When they got there, they immediately spotted Natasha’s car parked down the street. There was a ticket on the windshield that Natasha snatched off with displeasure, frowning at the fine for being parked too long.
Still, she tucked the ticket into her pocket and headed a bit further down the street with Steve to the café that was still open. It was around 7pm so she knew it would be closing very soon.
They stepped inside to the heavy smell of coffee and tea. Natasha looked around the shop, searching for Wanda but the woman wasn’t in there anywhere so she headed to the counter.
She pulled up a picture on her phone to show the teen behind the till, asking if he’d seen Wanda at all today.
The kid squinted at the picture then turned to a coworker around the same age as him. The girl stepped closer, absentmindedly drying a glass.
“This is the chick you were talking about earlier, right? Was she here this morning?” The first kid asked.
“Mhm. Super hot, like 10/10,” the girl nodded, eyeing the picture. “She was here this morning. Ordered the usual, two coffees. Oh, and a couple of muffins I think. Why?”
Ignorning the girl’s blatant crush on Natasha’s girlfriend, Natasha turned to Steve with a worried look. Her car was parked down the street, Wanda had been in here this morning to get her usual order, but hadn’t returned to the Compound.
“Hey, aren’t you Black Widow?” The first teen asked.
“OMG, she is,” the second added on with realisation.
Pursing her lips as she wasn’t in the mood to entertain, Natasha put her phone back in her pocket and left the café. She waited at the kerb, staring at the traffic passing by.
About twenty minutes passed before Steve left the café.
“She’s gone,” she mumbled to him.
“I took a look at their CCTV,” Steve stated.
“And?”
“They’re telling the truth,” he said. “She came here this morning, ordered her drinks, then left. That’s it.”
“What time did she leave?”
“11.43.”
“So she didn’t make it back to the car,” Natasha pieced it together. She glanced around the street, picking out all the cameras around. “Get Tony on the phone. I need the CCTV footage from this street today.”
Tony was a saint. He had the footage within the next few hours and the Avengers all gathered in the boardroom to go over it.
They watched the grainy footage that Tony had recovered, easily picking out Wanda from the crowd.
As Steve had said, Wanda left the café at 11.43am exactly and began to make her way down the street to where she’d parked Natasha’s car. Unfortunately, it was pretty far down but that seemed to have been the only available space at the time.
Suddenly, there was a blip in the footage and when it cleared up, Wanda was gone. Natasha frowned and leant forward in her seat, blinking in confusion.
“What just happened?” She asked rhetorically.
Everyone else looked just as confused.
Tony replayed the footage, but the blip just kept coming. The footage fizzed out into static before recovering and playing again. When it did, Wanda was gone and the crowd had moved.
Natasha watched the time in the corner and noticed that there was only a minute of footage missing. That was all it took for Wanda to disappear though.
“Someone’s tampered with the CCTV,” Tony stated.
“Who would do that, though?” Sam asked.
“Whoever took the little witch,” Tony answered.
Natasha swallowed, eyes on the CCTV footage. It was like a hit to the face. Someone took Wanda. Someone took her girl.
Wanda was gone. Kidnapped. Taken hostage, whatever. She was just gone.
It was her fault. She should’ve gone with Wanda this morning. Was training really more important than spending time with Wanda?
A hand landed on her arm in hopes of comforting her, but she shook it off and stood up. She had to be somewhere else. She couldn’t keep watching that footage, seeing the blip appear and Wanda disappear. All within a minute.
It didn’t really register within Natasha that Wanda was gone until a week later, on Wanda’s fucking birthday, where the press were finally informed of her disappearance and it was all over the news within a day.
Natasha had woken up alone for the sixth time since Wanda disappeared, but she tried not to think about it. Decided to pretend that the woman had woken up early for her birthday and was just in the kitchen or in the shower, or she’d wanted to sleep in her own bed for once.
But then she’d turned the TV on and was immediately met with the sight of Wanda’s picture, broadcast all over the news.
A sob escaped her- the first real cry she’d allowed herself since Wanda… She didn’t stop the cry. Instead, she buried her face into Wanda’s anointed pillow, breathed in her scent, and sobbed.
She spent Wanda’s birthday alone because she couldn’t find it in her to face the rest of the team and hear their apologies.
More weeks passed following the day Wanda went missing and Natasha was doing all she could to stay strong and try to find her. It felt impossible when she didn’t have anything to go on other than some shitty CCTV footage and the word of two teens at a café.
But she’d worked with less. She was the Black Widow, she was an Avenger. She could do this. She would find Wanda Maximoff and bring her home.
It was by the third week that she was growing sick. It had been three weeks that Wanda had been out there. She could be hurt, sick, scared. She could be in the hands of the enemy, getting tortured. She could even be…
Natasha shook her head. She couldn’t think like that. Wherever Wanda was, she was alive.
Suddenly, the doors burst open and in came Tony, followed closely by Steve and Sam.
“What’s going on?” Natasha asked, spotting the urgency on the guys’ faces.
“Shut that off,” Tony said in reference to the same CCTV footage that Natasha had been watching for the past three weeks.
“What? Why?”
“I think we’ve got something,” Tony said.
He flashed a USB at her then snatched the laptop she’d been using to go over the CCTV with a fine-tooth comb.
“It came in a box,” Steve put a small cardboard box in front of her.
Natasha brought it closer and viewed the printed label stuck to the front. It was cut down the middle where someone had obviously opened the box with a knife, but she could tell that it said WANDA MAXIMOFF.
Her heart skipped a beat when Tony inserted the USB into the laptop and closed the footage she’d been reviewing. A file opened up upon him inserting the USB, causing Natasha’s expression to fall.
Like the label, the singular file residing on the USB was named WANDA MAXIMOFF. It was a video.
Urgently, Natasha stole the laptop from Tony and brought it closer to herself. He let her do so and she brought the mouse to hover over the file. She looked at the size of it and was dismayed to find it was quite large.
The video was 1hr 31secs long.
“Is this a good idea?” Steve asked. “Who knows what’s on that file? Maybe we should have someone else look at it.”
Ignoring him, Natasha found the nerve to click on the file and let it open. A video came up that took up some of the screen, but she only enlarged it so it filled the entire screen. Meanwhile, Tony connected it to the large screen that they usually used during meetings.
Natasha looked away from the laptop to the large screen in front of them all, watching the strange video.
It showed nothing so far, only a dark room that seemed to have four, dirty concrete walls, a concrete floor and ceiling. There was nothing more than a chair and a dirty bed in the room. The only thing on the bed was an old mattress that Natasha could see a couple of springs poking out of.
She couldn’t hear anything from the video aside from some very distant noises that she couldn’t identify. It didn’t sound like voices, though.
The room was dark, like aside from the camera, there was no light in the room. There was a green-ish hue to the video itself.
“What the hell is this?” Tony asked, arms folded as he sat on Natasha’s right.
“Whatever it is, let’s hope it’s just some sick joke,” Sam said solemnly.
Natasha agreed but knew it was too weird to be just a joke. She reached forward to the laptop and began to skip some of the idle video, nothing happening for a while.
When she saw movement, she stopped and let the video play. Light spilled in from some unseen doorway off to the left, followed by humanoid shadows. Natasha held her breath as the light disappeared and the sound of a door shutting was heard.
Then there were footsteps and an unidentifiable man wearing a masks and dark clothes stepped into frame, half-carrying someone with him. Natasha couldn’t quite tell who it was for a second, but she had a sinking feeling as she remembered the name of the video file.
Her suspicion was proven right mere seconds later as a very familiar woman was placed carelessly into the seat in the middle of the room. Wanda’s wrists were guided into handcuffs and rope was tied taught around her ankles, binding her to the chair.
Natasha felt bile rise in her throat as she looked away from the video for a second to gather her bearings. So it wasn’t just some sick joke made by a member of the public to mock them. This was real. Wanda had been kidnapped by some sadistic fuck.
“Jesus, fuck,” Tony cursed beside her.
“This can’t be real,” Steve said.
“I think it is,” Sam quietly rebuffed his claim.
“Nat, I’m… I’m sorry,” Steve told Natasha, putting a hand on her shoulder from behind. Natasha turned her gaze silently back to the screen, letting his hand rest there so she didn’t smash the laptop in her anger. “We’ll find her. I promise, we’ll find her.”
Natasha stared at Wanda on the video, the way her head moved around as if she couldn’t hold its weight up, her shoulders rising and falling heavily, her upper body slowly leaning forward until her captor pushed her back against the chair.
There was something wrong with her. Either she’d been drugged or she was just waking up.
Her captor walked in front of the camera then, and just stood there. His frame blocked half of Wanda, and from what Natasha could see, she was out of it. Either too tired or too drugged to do or say anything other than stare listlessly at the floor.
She was wearing the same clothes as she’d worn when she disappeared, Natasha noticed. Her hair was a mess, hanging limp around her face, the ends brushing against her knees as her head hung down.
For a few minutes, the man stood half in front of the camera, doing nothing. Then, he moved back and returned to Wanda. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back.
At the force and the movement, Wanda whined in protest. It was then that Natasha noticed a bulky, metal collar around her neck that she quickly and easily identified as a shock collar. Nausea bubbled in her stomach but she desperately ignored it, needing to know what was happening to Wanda.
She needed to examine her captor and any details she could find, no matter how big or small because they could be key to finding her.
The man spoke to Wanda, in a quiet voice that Natasha almost couldn’t hear, but thanks to Stark’s technology, it picked up on the voice and amplified it to a decent level. Natasha recognised the words he was speaking as Sokovian, but he was clearly covering his tracks because the voice was obviously changed with a voice changer.
Natasha pursed her lips with frustration, but listened carefully as he spoke. She was aware that the others didn’t understand Sokovian, but she did so she had to concentrate.
“They want me to cut your hair,” he said to Wanda.
Finally, there was a bit more recognition in Wanda’s eyes as she stared up at the man’s covered face. She seemed a mixture of angry and fearful, and anxious, absentmindedly pulling on her restraints.
Natasha didn’t know who ‘they’ was, but she was determined to find out.
“Shall I cut your hair?”
Wanda shook her head as much as she could in the man’s grasp, but he didn’t seem to really want her answer. He let go and moved off-screen for a moment. Wanda watched him go, blinking heavy eyes every couple of seconds as she fought to stay conscious.
Then the man returned with a pair of large metal scissors, displaying them to Wanda before stepping that last bit closer and bringing them to her hair.
“Here?” He asked, turning his head to the camera.
There was silence for a moment as Wanda looked down and tried to hide her tears, but then the man raised the scissors so they rested just above her shoulders.
“Here?” He questioned again.
That seemed to be a better choice to whoever he was asking because, within the next second, a lock of Wanda’s brunette hair was falling into her lap. A quiet gasp escaped her as she stared at the lock of hair on her lap, but the man gave her no time to recover as he then began to go around her hair and give her a messy, unwarranted haircut.
Natasha’s heart broke for Wanda as she watched the scene unfold. She knew Wanda had a complicated relationship with her hair. She hadn’t cut it since she was ten because her mom had always loved it. She kept it as a memoir to her late mother, so to have it cut like this without her permission was cruel.
She could see the tears falling down Wanda’s cheeks, the way her shoulders shook as she tried to cry silently.
By the time the man was done with the haircut, Wanda was sporting shoulder-length hair. Though it was a little messy, it looked beautiful, but Wanda only looked broken. A quiet sob escaped her.
“This is sick,” Sam commented with a shake of his head.
“We should let somebody else go over this footage,” Steve said. He sounded sick.
The guys discussed quietly behind her, but Natasha didn’t listen. She couldn’t take her eyes away from the video. This was her girlfriend being senselessly tortured; she had to watch. It was her duty to spot any hard to miss details that could save her.
On the video, the man put the scissors down off camera then returned to stand in front of it again. He stood in silence for a while again, doing nothing but standing there as Wanda cried quietly behind him.
Natasha realised belatedly that the reason he kept going back to the camera and talking to people she couldn’t hear talking was because this video was being livestreamed. Not now, of course, but when this had all happened, it had been on a livestream.
With a sick feeling, Natasha understood that Wanda’s torture was literally being broadcasted. The people the man was talking to were making requests on wha to do to her, like she was just some toy to be pocked and prodded, and fucking tortured for their amusement.
Finally, the man returned to Wanda and tilted her head to the right (or as far as it could go with her colllar), exposing as much of her pale neck as he could.
“You have nice skin,” the man told her in his synthetic, deep voice. “Perfect.”
“Do you know what he’s saying, Nat?” Sam asked.
Natasha’s skin crawled at the idea of telling her teammates what the man was saying, but she relented and translated anyway.
“I think right here,” the man came to some decision, lighting tapping a space on Wanda’s neck. It was near the pulse point. “You worked for HYDRA, yes?”
Natasha noticed Wanda’s eyes flicker up to the man from where she’d been staring at the wall. It struck Natasha as strange that Wanda hadn’t yet said a word, but aside from being pretty quiet anyway, Natasha decided it was probably because of the collar.
It was undoubtedly a shock collar, but she had yet to figure out when it was being activated. If it was in intervals, they were pretty far apart which meant it was an unlikely option. It left too much time for Wanda to escape. The woman could’ve escaped a hundred times over by now.
Therefore, the collar was clearly being activated whenever Wanda did something. She knew how people like this worked. You do something wrong, you get punished. In this case, Wanda does something wrong, she gets shocked. It probably served to stop her from using her powers and escaping.
The collar was most likely activated at even the slightest sign of her using her powers. They could potentially be shocking her when she spoke too, judging by how quiet she’d been throughout this ordeal.
Wanda gave a small nod in response to the man’s question.
“I think I know perfect brand for you.”
The man walked away then, leaving Wanda wide-eyed and horrified.
Brand? What the fuck? Natasha sat forward in her chair, her heart racing and palms getting clammy. Her breathing came out slightly shaky no matter how hard she tried to even it.
“Hey, what’d he say? Nat?” Steve prompted.
“He’s… he’s going to brand her,” Natasha translated. “He brought up her past with HYDRA and then said he knew the perfect brand for her.”
The guys looked horrified by that, Tony even getting up and walking away from the table for a moment.
Natasha’s eyes didn’t stray from the screen no matter how much she wanted them to. She scanned everything. Wanda’s expressions, the man’s behaviour and tone of voice, the room itself.
She tried not to miss anything.
When the man returned, he carried with him a orange, smouldering brand. Natasha’s eyes widened slightly, she wrapped one hand around her stomach to quell the nausea building inside.
“I can’t watch anymore of this,” Steve decided, and then that was that.
He left the room with big strides and Sam followed in his wake. Natasha didn’t look away from the screen, but she could see Tony still in his seat next to her. She was silently grateful he’d decided to stay.
“This brand is special,” the man told Wanda, “this will set you aside from others. They will know at first glance you are a Nazi.”
Finally, Wanda spoke.
“What?” She croaked.
Natasha realised that she hadn’t been talking because she probably struggled to. By the sounds of it, her throat was probably hurting. Potentially from the shock collar, or from screaming.
“No. No. No, I’m not a Nazi. I’m not a Nazi! I swear! Please, please don’t do this! I’m not- please!” Wanda cried desperately, pulling on her restraints with force.
“What are they saying?” Tony asked quietly. He sounded resigned.
A fat tear fell down Natasha’s cheek as the man stepped forward and pushed Wanda’s head back to expose her throat again. He couldn’t do this. Wanda wasn’t a fucking Nazi, she was Jewish. Her grandfather was even in one of the camps as a boy.
“Nat?”
“He’s… he’s branding her as a Nazi,” she whispered.
“What?” Tony demanded.
Suddenly, a blood-curdling scream echoed throughout the room as the hot iron made contact with Wanda’s skin. The sound of sizzling flesh burrowed its way into Natasha’s skull alongside her girlfriend’s scream.
“He’s branding her a Nazi because of her time with HYDRA,” Natasha mumbled, eyes wide and watery as she stared at the screen unseeingly.
“He can’t fucking do that!” Tony exploded, throwing himself to his feet again. “She’s not a fucking Nazi!”
Wanda’s screams continued quietly throughout the room, FRIDAY having lowered the volume without being told much to Natasha’s relief. The screams stopped momentarily as the man pulled the brand away only to turn it the other way and start again, branding Wanda’s skin with a Swastika.
“I don’t think he cares about what he can or can’t do, Tony,” Natasha said, brushing her tears away as she looked down at the keyboard on the laptop. She pressed the mute button for the moment. “He kidnapped her and is torturing her for other people’s pleasure.”
“What does that mean? For other people’s pleasure?”
“This was livestreamed,” Natasha reported, “it’s why he keeps coming to the camera and just standing there. People were giving requests, telling him what to do.”
“That’s fucking sick,” Tony turned away, bringing a hand up and wiping it over his face. “What kind of sick bastards-“
“We’ll find out,” Natasha said with a burning anger deep inside. “And when we do, we’ll kill them. They’ll wish they’d never even heard of the Avengers.”
Tony nodded his agreement, coming back and sitting down at his seat beside her. Natasha looked back at the screen and found that the branding was finally over.
Wanda’s head was hung low and she was openly sobbing, the man was brushing her hair back a little even as it kept falling back into her face.
With reluctance, Natasha unmuted the video and crossed her arms. She had to finish this video, there was still so much footage left to watch. She would find Wanda and bring her home, and her captor would regret ever being born. She would make sure of it.
Chapter 2: 1hr 31secs
Summary:
CW: Dehumanisation, implied/referenced sexual assault.
Chapter Text
Natasha had to take a break.
The sound of Wanda's screams reverberated around her skull endlessly, and she felt sick to her stomach. She paused the video when the sound of her girlfriend's cries died down to quietened sobs and her nameless captor took up most of the screen again after moving closer. Tony didn't say anything when she wordlessly paused the video and stood to head over to the window.
There was a tense silence enveloping the room that neither of them were brave enough to break just yet. The hold Natasha had on her own folded arms was almost so tight, it hurt.
“Jesus,” Tony whispered, Natasha almost missed it. “This is sick. Who would do such a thing?”
Natasha’s jaw clenched as she glared out of the window. Who. Who would do this, and who was doing this to her girlfriend? That was the question she wanted answered more than anything.
“Don’t know,” she quietly replied, only barely reigning in her fury, “but I do know that when I find them, I’m going to make their lives a living hell.”
To that, Tony said nothing. Whether he was onboard or not, Natasha couldn’t care less. She didn’t need his permission to avenge Wanda. She would either do it with the team backing her or she would do it alone.
“Do you wanna watch the rest of the video?” Tony asked with audible reluctance.
“Yeah,” Natasha replied similarly, “just… give me a minute.”
Natasha paced back and forth, breathing deeply in and out. She had to prepare herself for what she would see next on that video. It was an hour long and they’d barely gotten through twenty minutes before stopping.
Whatever was left on there to see, it wouldn’t be easy. Natasha had seen her fare share of torture and cruelty over the course of her life- she had firsthand experience with it- but to see someone she loved face these atrocities was another thing entirely.
Nothing could prepare her for what she was going to see. But she had to watch it so that she could find Wanda. She was the world’s best spy, if anyone could spot any clues, it was her.
After almost ten minutes of mentally preparing herself, she took another deep breath and stormed over to the laptop. She took the seat next to Tony again, who had his head in his hands, and hovered a finger over the play button.
She hesitated for a few seconds before steeling herself and pressing it.
They’d left off with Wanda curled up on the floor in a foetal position. Her captor had thrown her down there before kicking the chair into the corner of the room and leaving. Wanda clearly didn’t have the strength to pull herself back up and move to the bed so she’d stayed there, sobbing quietly to herself.
Natasha watched with burning tears and a lump in her throat that she had to swallow back down. She crossed her arms in an attempt to seem nonchalant, but the reality was that she wanted to break down. Or break something.
She wanted her girlfriend back home safe and she wanted whoever was responsible for her pain to pay.
After what was only a couple of minutes, Natasha heard a door opening in the video. Faint light spilled into the room for a second before disappearing altogether as Wanda’s captor reentered and shut the door again.
Wanda barely reacted, but Natasha saw her minor flinch.
“Up!” Her captor shouted in Sokovian which Natasha translated to Tony.
When Wanda didn’t get up from where she was lying, the man stormed over to her, grabbed her by her hair and dragged her into a sitting position. Wanda whined and whimpered while Natasha clenched her jaw and let out an annoyed breath of air.
“Fucking asshole,” Tony growled.
The man held something like a bowl in his hands but Natasha couldn’t see what it contained. She only hoped it was something sustainable for Wanda to eat as she was clearly lacking the energy to even hold herself up.
“Please,” Wanda whispered.
“I have brought you some food, bitch,” the man sneared at her.
Natasha sucked her teeth at the insult, but said nothing, too focused on what was happening.
With his hand still in Wanda’s hair, the man tossed the bowl metal bowl down on the floor, and Natasha was dismayed to find that it was filled with wet dog food.
She closed her eyes and looked away, no longer able to hold back the tears. The slipped out from under her lids and trailed down her cheeks as she took in a shuddering breath.
“Is that-“ Tony cut himself off with disbelief.
“Yeah…” Natasha mumbled. “Dog food.”
“Jesus,” Tony swiped a hand down his face. “That’s- fuck.”
“Eat it.”
With his hand still in her hair, Wanda just managed to look down at the bowl in front of her before taking in a shuddering breath, lower lip trembling.
“That’s dog food,” she whimpered.
“Yes, dog food for the bitch.”
Wanda stuttered and looked up at the man, seemingly unable to form a response to his words.
He pushed her forward and Wanda just managed to stop her fall with her hands in front of herself.
“Please, I don’t w-want to eat that,” she croaked.
“Eat the food,” her captor ordered then, with a sickening grin, he reached down for his belt and unbuckled it, “or I beat you until you are unconscious.”
He pulled the belt free of the loops and wrapped the ends around his knuckles.
Wanda stared at the belt, aghast and terrified before daring to shake her head.
“Please,” she pleaded, this time in Sokovian too.
“He can’t make her eat that shit,” Tony snapped.
Natasha sighed though she felt sick to her stomach from what she was watching. Wanda only had two options. Eat the dog food or get whipped. There was no easy way out much as she loathed to admit.
“I don’t think she has a choice,” she mumbled tiredly back to Tony.
Wanda sobbed, the sound piercing Natasha’s heart like a dagger, and nodded at her captor, eyes staring fearfully at the leather belt.
Slowly, she looked down at the bowl and took in a shuddering breath. With trembling hands, she reached forward for the dog food and took some of it into her hands to begin eating, but the man stopped her.
“Not with your hands,” he told her, “with your mouth.”
Wanda stopped and, just like Natasha and Tony, stared at the man with wide eyes.
“But,” she quietly began.
The man didn’t let her finish. Grabbing a fistful of her hair again, he pushed her head down, closer to the bowl. Wanda gasped, and Natasha’s heart hurt.
With clear reluctance, Wanda planted her hands on the floor either side of the metal bowl.
When the man’s hold on her hair disappeared, Wanda gave him one final, wary look before dipping her head and slowly beginning to eat the dog food.
At the first bite, she gagged and stopped. Her captor laughed unabashedly at her, but didn’t allow her to stop for long. Before she could even swallow her current mouthful, her head was pushed back down and her face shoved into the bowl.
Natasha caught a glimpse of tears falling down her face as she sobbed and forced herself to swallow the food.
Time moved on agonisingly slowly with Wanda only just managing to eat the food in between gagging, sobbing, and almost bringing it back up, whilst her captor took pleasure in her torture.
As mere observers, Natasha and Tony could do nothing but watch and pray they would find her before something even worse could happen to her.
When the bowl was empty, the nameless man kicked it across the floor which made Wanda flinch as she held her stomach and looked nauseously up at him. She didn’t have a chance to say anything before she was dragged up and back into her seat.
After being strapped in to avoid her escaping, the man returned to the camera and stood there like previously, obviously waiting for more requests.
Natasha began to pace behind Tony, unnerved by the silence. The man had his head in his hands, shoulders sagged.
“I hate this,” Natasha mumbled, a moment of vulnerability that she almost hoped Tony wouldn’t hear.
Unfortunately for her misplaced dignity, he did. Straightening up and removing his head from his hands, he turned his head to look at her.
“So do I,” he admitted.
Then Natasha could see that he was taking a moment to figure out what he wanted to say next.
“But we have to watch the whole way through. For the little witch.”
He was right, and Natasha knew that despite the way she felt about it.
So, she steeled herself, squared her shoulders, and put on her mask. Just watch the rest of the video, she told herself. There could be something there that would give them a lead.
She crossed her arms over her chest and watched the man step away from the camera once again. She couldn’t see his face but she was positive his expression was malicious.
He let out an amused chuckle.
“It seems everyone is wanting the same thing,” he said. “And I have been expecting this request too.”
Wanda looked up at him from under her lashes wet with tears, and shivered. She still looked nauseous and out of it, barely holding on from both being forced to eat dog food and also the previous abuse she’d suffered.
There was still blood on her clothes from where she’d been branded. Natasha was both proud and worried that she was still conscious. She needed urgent medical. In her situation and environment, there was a high chance that her injuries could become infected and she would become sick.
“What’s he talking about?” Tony asked after Natasha had translated to him.
“I don’t know,” she said, frowning at the screen.
The man grabbed Wanda by the scruff of her neck and dragged her up before forcing her over to the bed and throwing her on it. Natasha tensed, a bad feeling quickly overcoming her as she prayed that what she was thinking wad wrong.
“He’s not…” Tony trailed off, and Natasha didn’t say anything because she was afraid to.
When she saw the man began to unbuckle his pants, she hastily reached forward and paused the video, her heart racing.
She stared wide eyed and unseeing at the frozen image before closing the lid of the laptop as her eyes started to water.
No, she thought. This couldn’t be happening. Not to Wanda. Never to Wanda.
Chapter 3: 39 minutes
Notes:
Warnings for this chapter include: mouth-sewing and intentionally withholding food, also some light descriptions of an unknown eye injury.
I can’t stress enough that this fic is, and always has been, dead dove: do not eat. I’m trying to keep it as non-graphic as possible but it’s a little hard when one of the characters is actively being tortured.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Natasha didn’t press play on the video again. She couldn’t bring herself to do that. To sit back as a mere spectator to her girlfriend’s torture and watch something like that happen to her. Wanda didn’t deserve that- no one did- and Natasha couldn’t watch it.
When she checked, there was five minutes left on the video footage anyway so she ordered FRIDAY to skim through the rest and let the team know if she picked up on anything of importance.
After pausing the video, she crossed her arms as tightly as she could over her chest, stood up, and paced the length of the room.
Her heart was still racing She could still see Wanda’s pained, mortified eyes in her mind. That was a look she’d never wanted to see on Wanda’s face ever, and one she wouldn’t forget any time soon.
How could someone do that to another person? What kind of sadist would ever go out of their way to hurt someone to these extremes? Or to violate someone in such an intimate way just because they could?
“Nat, I’m sorry…” Tony’s voice broke through Natasha’s thoughts.
She hesitated for a second, slowing her pacing, before continuing.
“We need to find her,” she simply replied.
“We will,” Tony said, and he said it with such certainty that Natasha wanted to believe him.
However, she couldn’t help but remind herself ghat they’d gone through over an hour’s worth of footage and found nothing of importance yet. Nothing that could help them find Wanda anyway.
“FRIDAY’s gonna go through the rest of the footage for us, and in the meantime, you’re gonna get something to eat and get some rest.”
This time, when Natasha stopped pacing she didn’t start again. She looked at Tony with a raised brow.
“I can’t rest,” she said. “Not while she’s out there, going through God knows what. I need to find her, Tony.”
“And we will, like I said. But you’re no help to Wanda in this state. You need to be on your A game, and I don’t think falling asleep at the laptop is gonna help anyone. So get something to eat and take a nap, alright?”
It was times like this that Natasha was reminded that Tony did have a serious side to him. He wasn’t just the unserious, court jester that he wanted everyone else to believe he was. He truly cared about people, especially those closest to him, and this was his way of telling Natasha he cared.
He was also right, loathe as she was to admit it. If she wanted to help Wanda, she needed to be at her best and God knows she hadn’t been sleeping or eating properly since Wanda went missing.
With a sigh, she gave Tony a quick nod.
“Fine,” she mumbled, “but I wanna know if you find anything, I don’t care if I’m asleep. Come get me.”
“Got it,” Tony confirmed. “Get some rest, Natashalie.”
She gave Tony a parting look, eyes briefly glancing at the laptop on the table, before she turned away and left the room the same way the others had gone.
They would find Wanda, she told herself with determination. Even if it was the last thing they did. They wouldn’t leave Wanda in that hell hole to suffer.
As per Tony’s instructions, Natasha did have something to eat and got some sleep. She heated up some leftovers she found in the fridge, ate half of it, then slept for six hours.
When she slept, she dreamed of Wanda. She found herself on the couch with the other woman, cuddled up as close as they could be without jumping into each other’s skin, with the TV on the background. They weren’t watching it of course, too lost in each other’s eyes to pay attention to whatever sitcom was playing.
If Natasha could have stayed in her dream forever, she would have. It was easier than facing the reality that Wanda had been kidnapped and was being tortured. Easier than admitting she’d failed her.
I love you, she remembered whispering to Wanda in the dream, so much.
Then she woke up, tears staining her silk pillows. The other side of the bed was still cold, Wanda’s absence painfully apparent.
Another day passed following Tony sending her away to recuperate, and neither FRIDAY nor anyone else had found anything in the footage. Whoever had taken Wanda was hiding their tracks, and doing it well.
But Natasha was confident that whoever they were, they would slip up eventually. People like this always did. They would get comfortable, they would get cocky, and soon, they’d give the Avengers the answers they were looking for. And then they’d find Wanda and bring her home safely, alive.
They just had to be patient, something that was killing Natasha.
“We’ll find her,” the guys kept saying.
They found it easier the voice the words than Natasha did. Whether they were reassuring Natasha or themselves, she didn’t know but she nodded along either way.
She still couldn’t find it in herself to watch the last few minutes of footage on the video, to witness Wanda’s rape. Maybe that made her weak. Or a coward. But she couldn’t do it.
Tony admitted, quietly, as they stood aside from the others, that he’d skimmed through it quickly when FRIDAY hadn’t been able to find anything. Natasha’s skin had prickled at that. She wanted to be angry at the man, but she could see pain in his eyes- the haunted look.
He hadn’t seen anything either. Natasha almost asked him if it was worth it, but stopped herself by biting her tongue. He’d merely done something she didn’t have the spine to do.
“Anything?” Sam asked as he reentered the room with a tray of drinks.
As he set it down, Natasha reached for the coffee in a mug that read #1 Spy. Wanda had bought it her a while ago, but the words felt like a joke now. Ironic.
She sipped at the near-scalding drink.
“Not yet, but we’re still looking,” Steve sighed. “I’m sure we’ll find something soon.”
Natasha liked how Steve never lost hope. Never gave up. It made her feel somewhat better about their chances of finding Wanda. Like she had people she could truly rely on, who wouldn’t give up when things got a little hard.
After everyone had grabbed their drinks, Sam approached Natasha who had moved to the corner of the room with her mug clutched tightly in between her hands.
She was staring blankly at the laptop on the table, at the paused video. It was no longer frozen on the scene of Wanda fighting to get away from her captor, but that was all Natasha could see or think about. She wished she could get the image out of her head.
“Hey,” Sam said as he neared. He leaned against the wall with her. “How are you doing?”
Natasha sighed.
“I’ve definitely been better,” she admitted, opting for honesty over what would be an obvious lie. “But I’m managing. For her.”
“Of course,” Sam agreed. “We’ll bring her home, Nat. You know we will. We’ve got some of the best minds in this building, we’ll do whatever it takes.”
“I know,” Natasha said, nodding. “I just wish none of this was happening in the first place.”
“Me too…”
Natasha lowered her head, staring into the dark depths of her coffee, and contemplated telling Sam about the ring she had in her pocket. The one she’d been planning to offer to Wanda on Christmas Day. The one she’d might not get the chance to now, not for a long time.
But as her lips parted and the words formed on her tongue, the door opened and in walked Happy. He didn’t look… happy.
As he entered the room further, Natasha spotted a small box in his hand. Dread began to form in her stomach as she put her drink down.
“This just arrived,” Happy announced, holding up the box. “It’s got her name on it. Wanda’s.”
The team shared a look and it was Natasha who opened the box this time when Happy handed it over.
She had it open in seconds, her eyes instantly landing on yet another USB stick. Slowly, she pulled it out of the box and held it up.
“Don’t tell me that’s another…” Tony began, but didn’t finish his sentence. They all knew it was.
“Get it scanned for prints,” Natasha said, and handed it back to Happy.
The longer she could put off watching whatever was on that USB, the better.
Happy shared a look with whoever was over Natasha’s left shoulder before nodding and disappearing from the room again.
Swallowing a lump in her throat, Natasha turned around and strode over to the laptop. She left her coffee on the table to go cold.
Slowly, the rest of the Avengers resumed their work.
When Happy returned hours later, Natasha was sitting silently at the table, reviewing the CCTV Tony had gained access to weeks ago. Still, she saw nothing in the footage. The glitch only stood to mock her.
“Anything?” Steve asked when Happy entered the room.
“Apparently not,” Happy sighed. “Our team found nothing. There’s a small scratch on the bottom, but nothing else.”
Natasha clenched her jaw and glared down at the screen. She watched Wanda disappear again before closing the video.
For a few seconds, the team stood in silence, glancing at one another, before Sam spoke.
“Are we gonna… plug it in?” He asked. “See what’s on it?”
Natasha could feel someone’s eyes on her, searching. Perhaps wondering whether she would answer and tell them what she wanted to do. After all, Wanda was her girlfriend.
But when she said nothing, eyes remaining still on the tabletop, Tony answered.
“Looks like it,” he said although he sounded less than pleased. None of them wanted to be doing this.
Tony took the USB from Happy and sat down with a sigh in front of the laptop. He removed the previous USB from it and plugged the new one in.
Natasha bit her tongue and sighed quietly to herself. She rose from her seat and joined Tony at the laptop.
Just like the previous USB, plugging this one in warranted a screen to pop up with one single file inside.
WANDA MAXIMOFF, 39 minutes.
The room became tense as the Avengers stared at the file. They saw it, silently acknowledged it, but no one wanted to press it.
“We can wait,” Steve said, and Natasha knew he meant it. But could they? Whilst Wanda was out there, subjected to who knew what, could they really wait? Just for Natasha to finally get her shit together and be ready?
“No,” she said, “open the folder.”
And Tony did just that. Inside the folder was another video, titled the same as the folder which Tony clicked on after a moment.
The video popped up on the screen and Tony projected it to the bigger screen so they could all see properly.
Natasha swallowed hard as Wanda appeared on the big screen, battered and bruised, hair still choppy and uneven, skin still pale as paper.
This video started seemingly a while after what had happened in the last one. The man who’d tortured and assaulted Wanda was no longer in sight, but Natasha could see the signs of his assault on her. Finger print bruises on her thighs and wrists, a purple hickey on her throat, and some blood on her inner thighs.
Immediately, Natasha felt sick. She wished that she’d been able to stop this before it had ever happened. That she could’ve reached through the screen and just pulled Wanda to safety. Or that she was any fucking closer to finding her girlfriend.
The ring in her jacket pocket burned like a molten weight pressing against her hip.
How could she have let any of this happen? She should have gone with Wanda to get those damned coffees. She was an idiot.
One thing Natasha noticed immediately upon the video starting, aside from the bruises, was that Wanda was curled up and one hand was covering her right eye.
Her shoulders shook with what were obviously barely-suppressed sobs, and she let out pained whimpers every few seconds.
She was in pain. Something else had happened between the last video and this one, her captors had done something else to her, she was crying in pain. Her eye was hurting.
Natasha couldn’t help but take a step closer to the screen, trying to get a better look, but Wanda kept her hand close to her eye as she cried.
A fury Natasha was becoming familiar with since Wanda’s kidnapping began to form in her stomach as she listened to Wanda.
She didn’t take her eyes off of the brunette for a single second, not until, a minute later when the door to Wanda’s cell slammed open.
The woman started like a frightened cat, her hand falling from her right eye as she scrambled back as quickly as she could. Her left eye widened, the other staying screwed up tight, as she backed herself up flush against the wall. Although it stayed closed, Natasha could see the dark blood surrounding her eye. It was definitely injured and she seemingly couldn’t open it.
Natasha worried that if they didn’t get to Wanda soon, she would go blind in her right eye. Judging by the conditions of her cell and the lack of treatment or care by her captors, they wouldn’t care about keeping it clean or protecting it to avoid blindness. Hell, they probably wanted it.
“Stay away from me,” Wanda croaked in Sokovian, so quiet Natasha almost missed it as her mind spiralled.
She absentmindedly translated for the guys.
The two men who had entered the room laughed at her as if she had told them the funniest joke in the world. Natasha clenched her jaw. Couldn’t they see she was fucking terrified? That she was begging them not to hurt her anymore? Where the fuck was their humanity?
“Get the fuck up, whore,” one of the man ordered.
Again, Natasha translated, but didn’t include the slur. She wouldn’t say that about Wanda, even if she wasn’t the one calling her that word.
Wanda visibly trembled but she obviously knew that if she didn’t listen to the men in front of her, they would only hurt her more.
So, against her better judgement, Wanda struggled to her feet. She was losing weight, lack of food (edible, human food), loss of blood, and injuries was taking its toll on her.
She used the wall as support, pulling herself to her feel until one of the men got impatient and pulled her up the rest of the way. Wanda cried out in pain as she was manhandled to the centre of the room.
“We have a few requests today. You are making us a lot of money.”
Natasha fought back the scowl on her face. So they were taking money to torture Wanda. It wasn’t just sadism that brought them to do this, but money too. It made sense. They could get off on whatever sick fantasy this was to them, and get paid at the same time. Win-win.
“People are paying them to do this?” Steve asked once Natasha translated. He looked appalled.
“Sick assholes,” Sam grit out, crossing his arms over his chest and pacing a bit away.
Natasha agreed.
“We hope you are prepared for what is about to happen, little bitch.”
One of the men wheeled a trolley over and left it carelessly next to Wanda who eyed it with terror. From where the camera was positioned, Natasha couldn’t see what was on the trolley but she knew it wasn’t daisies and sunshine.
Most likely it held the tools they were going to use to hurt Wanda.
Natasha’s suspicions were confirmed mere seconds later when the other man in the room retrieved a rope from on top of the trolley and moved to stand behind Wanda’s back.
“W-What are you doing?” Wanda trembled.
It was the wrong thing to do as the first man raised a hand and swiftly backhanded her. Wanda cried out instantly, head harshly snapping to the side from the force of it. Natasha immediately noticed blood beginning to seep from a split lip.
What piqued her interest when the man backhanded Wanda wasn’t the blood from her split lip, however, but something she noticed for a split second. A tattoo on the man’s hand.
The man was wearing black, leather gloves, just like the other man in the room, but there was a medium-sized hole on the back of the glove where the straps were.
“Pause it,” she instructed Tony who immediately did so. “Rewind a few seconds and slow it down.”
“Did you see something?” Happy asked.
“A tattoo,” Natasha explained, watching Tony rewind the video. “Play it from there.”
Tony adjusted the speed and pressed play again. Thanks to advance Stark technology, the video managed to remain as close to high definition as possible whilst slowed down and replaying at a lesser speed.
Natasha watched the captor’s hand closely as he brought it up and then back down across Wanda’s cheek. She dutifully kept her eyes on the man’s hand, and not on her girlfriend’s pained expression as she was struck, focusing on keeping her fury contained.
When the back of the man’s hand was fully in view of the camera, Tony paused the video and the team were able to see what Natasha had briefly spotted. On the back of the man’s hand was a black tattoo which, as they examined it, they realised looked like a sun with its wavy, pointed rays.
“So we’ve got a tattoo of a sun,” Steve noted. “Anyone got anything else?”
“Nothing,” Sam sighed. Tony shrugged. Happy shook his head.
“We can work with this,” Natasha said.
It was small. Probably wouldn’t lead them very far. But it was something, and something was always better than nothing.
With a sigh, Natasha instructed Tony to resume the video at its original speed. He did so and the footage continued.
The man with the rope pulled Wanda’s arms back and tied them tightly behind her back until she grunted quietly with discomfort. He returned to stand in front of her.
“You always talk so much,” the man on the left, by the trolley, said, “this is becoming a big problem. Some people… they don’t like it. So they give us ideas to make you shut up.”
Natasha’s breath caught in her throat, and she watched as horror fell over Wanda’s face too. She glanced between the two men in front of her. The man next to the trolley reached over to it and plucked up a couple of items. Natasha couldn’t see what it was as his back was to the camera.
“I-I’m sorry,” Wanda stammered, “I’m sorry! Please don-“
The man to the right brought his hands to Wanda’s face and pushed her mouth shut. The one on the right finally moved his hands into frame so Natasha could see what he was holding and her stomach immediately plummeted.
It was a needle and thread. One he brought to Wanda’s mouth before piercing the skin. Wanda screamed as much as she could with the other man holding her jaw shut. But she resisted as much as she could meanwhile her captors sewed her mouth shut.
Tears fell from Natasha’s eyes in abundance. Usually, she was thoroughly against any display of weakness in front of an audience, but watching Wanda struggle and fight for the ability to so much as speak during captivity made Natasha feel sick and her heart broke.
Eventually, it was over. The men weren’t gentle or kind about what they were doing, but at least they were quick about it. Except, now all Wanda could do was whimper and breathe shakily through her nose. Her face was red and soaked with tears as she looked between her captors, her shoulders shaking with barely hidden sobs.
“Finally, some peace and fucking quiet, huh?”
Natasha didn’t have it in her to translate what he’d said. The guys didn’t ask.
“We will be back for you soon, little bitch. Don’t go too far!”
Before the men left the room, they removed a bowl from the bottom tray of the trolley that had been just hidden beneath the screen.
“Don’t eat it all in one go, huh?”
They threw the bowl to the floor then left the room with sadistic laughter.
Arms still bound and lips now sewn shut, Wanda shuffled back to the farthest corner of the room and sobbed quietly.
Natasha’s throat tightened.
“Turn it off…”
Tony did.
Notes:
Sorry for the slow update! Life has been kicking my ass lol
Chapter 4: 39 minutes
Summary:
Natasha has an important conversation.
Notes:
CW: Allusions to whipping, mentions of eye gouging and mouth sewing.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
And that’s when you found me, I was waiting in the garden, contemplating
The guys continued to watch through the video in their desperation for more clues or leads that could take them to Wanda. And, at Steve’s suggestion, Natasha had ended up taking a break. She couldn’t think clearly watching Wanda be hurt and defiled.
Any longer and she was going to break something, or even lash out at one of the guys and they didn’t deserve that. So she’d retreated to her room and decided to take a nap before returning to the conference room.
It had taken a while to fall asleep. She’d tossed and turned for at least twenty minutes, her mind restless, before, ultimately, she ended up dozing off thinking of Wanda. Wondering what she was experiencing right now.
…
When Natasha woke up, she was alarmed to find herself standing in a vast, white expanse of nothingness.
She blinked with confusion, her heart skipping a beat with alarm, as she rapidly looked around with her eyes.
For a few beats, all she could hear was a fuzzy, static-like noise in her ears until, finally, the sound faded and she began to hear a soft crying from behind her.
Frowning, she slowly turned around and right there, several feet away, was a pile of grey rubble and a familiar form sitting on it, hunched over.
Natasha recognised her immediately.
“Wanda!” She blurted before instantly bolting towards the crying form of her girlfriend. “Wanda! Wanda, can you hear me?”
As she got closer, Wanda slowly lifted her head, her eyes watery and confused as they met Natasha’s.
“Natasha? How- what are you doing here?” Wanda murmured, her eyes flickering over Natasha as if she couldn’t believe the other woman was there with her.
Natasha, herself, couldn’t believe it. Whether it was a dream or not, she still didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to talk to Wanda.
Without hesitation, she threw her arms around Wanda and pulled her in close. For a few seconds, as Natasha closed her eyes, Wanda didn’t return the hug. She was noticeably hesitant, but eventually she did, slowly encircling Natasha’s waist with her own arms and resting her cheek on her shoulder.
“I don’t know,” Natasha whispered, “but I’m so happy to see you, dorogoya.”
“… Me too,” Wanda replied just as softly.
After what felt like several minutes but also wasn’t long enough, Natasha and Wanda parted from each other and stared deeply into each other’s eyes. Natasha brought a gentle hand up and brushed away the remnants of tears from Wanda’s pale cheek.
Their touches felt too real to be a dream.
“Is this real?” She asked, hoping against hope that it was.
Wanda nodded slowly.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Is this your mind?”
Natasha glanced around at the expanse of nothingness surrounding them and the pile of rubble Wanda had been sitting on.
Dotted between the cracks and gaps in the rubble, small fires crackled and flickered. And she was sure she could see an old TV showing nothing but static.
“Yes, I think I am asleep,” Wanda answered, averting her gaze.
“Me too,” Natasha said. Then a more pressing question came to mind. “Dorogoya, where are you? Where did they take you?”
Wanda met Natasha’s eyes again. This time, she looked small and scared. A fear like none other shone in her eyes that instantly made Natasha feel guilty just for asking.
The woman shook her head.
“I… I don’t know,” she trembled, “Nat, I don’t- I don’t remember. I was unconscious.”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Natasha reassured her, her hands finding purchase on Wanda’s upper arms. She guided the other woman back to the rubble and sat her down, taking a seat next to her. “It’s okay, detka, it’s okay.”
“Nat, I’m fucking scared,” Wanda whimpered, “I’m in so much pain all over. I think they are going to kill me…”
For a second, Natasha’s heart dropped to her stomach. There was such sincerity in Wanda’s eyes as she truly believed her own words that Natasha feared the worst. She almost believed her too.
But then she mentally shook her head. That wouldn’t happen, she told herself. She wouldn’t let it. She would walk through Hell to save Wanda before that could happen.
“Don’t say that,” she told Wanda, hating the fear that was audible in her own voice. “I won’t let them. The Avengers are working on finding you as we speak. We’re gonna find you, Wanda, I promise.”
Tears welled in Wanda’s eyes once more as she looked down with a smile so sad that Natasha’s heart physically hurt.
“I promise.”
When Wanda finally looked up again, her tears had fallen onto her cheeks. Natasha wiped them away once more.
“Is there anything you remember from when they took you, detka? Anything at all? It can be something small, just anything.”
Wanda’s shoulders fell with an audible sigh as she looked away, visibly trying to think back.
“It was loud,” she said quietly. “I could hear cars and sirens, and people talking. But they were far away.”
“That’s great, dorogoya. Do you know if you’re still in New York?”
“Yes,” Wanda nodded, meeting Natasha's eyes. “Yes, I am still in New York.”
“Okay, that narrows it down a little bit. Did you see anything?”
“I don’t know,” Wanda sighed, “I think they drugged me. It’s all… confusing.”
“That’s okay, baby, it’s okay.”
“I just… I think I remember a big building. But that’s it, Nat.”
“What about the people who took you? Can you tell me anything about them? How many there are, their names, any defining features? Anything would help us right now, Wands. We need to get you out of there.”
Wanda’s hands went to her head for a moment, Natasha beginning to run soothing motions up and down her arms as she thought.
“There are… five men and two women,” she said. “I don’t know their names. They never use them around me. I… see three of the men more than the others. One of the women has a tattoo of thorns on her throat. And they’re all Sokovian except one of the women is American. That’s all I can think of right now. That’s it.”
“Okay,” Natasha sighed.
It wasn’t a lot to go on, but it was more than the Avengers has right now which was merely a tattoo of a sun. And they could probably narrow it down a lot more with Wanda’s descriptions.
“Thank you, Wanda, you did great,” she told her girlfriend. “We’re coming to get you soon, detka, I promise. Just hold on a little longer, okay? Can you do that? Please? Just hold on for me.”
“Nat, I’m so tired..” Wanda sobbed, burying her face into Natasha’s sternum to which Natasha wrapped her arms around her once more, “I… they gouged out my right eye… and I can’t eat or talk- they sewed my mouth shut. Everything hurts so much. I’m so scared, Tasha. I just want to come home.”
Natasha’s eyes welled with tears that burned as her throat tightened. She didn’t have the words to truly comfort Wanda so she simply held her and murmured promises that they would save her. That they would rescue her and bring her home soon.
And she did this until the woman in her arms began to disappear, fading into nothingness in Natasha’s arms.
Alarmed, Natasha stared wide-eyed at Wanda’s dispersing form.
“Wanda?” She croaked.
But it didn’t matter. Within seconds, Wanda had disappeared alongside the rubble they’d been sitting on and Natasha was left alone on her knees in the white void until she, too, jerked awake with a quiet gasp.
Although Natasha desperately wanted to scream and cry at the unjustness of of it all, or to cry Wanda’s name until the woman reappeared in her arms, she didn’t.
Instead, she swallowed her tears and the lump in her throat, grabbed a pen and paper, and wrote down everything Wanda had told her lest she forget any details.
With the paper in hand, she left her room and hastily made her way back to the conference room where the guys were still sitting around watching the tape that had arrived most recently.
As she entered the room, Natasha glanced at the clock on the wall only to realise she’d been gone for only an hour. It had felt like so much longer.
Wanda’s muffled screams met her ears almost immediately, causing her eyes to flit from the clock to the large screen where she saw her girlfriend writhing in agony on the floor of her cell. Someone wearing black leather boots was looming over her with what looked like a cat o’ nine tails in hand.
Natasha’s usually so strong stomach flipped at the sight.
“Turn that off. I have a lead,” she managed to tell the guys, tearing her eyes away from the screen.
Tony paused the video and closed the laptop lid, causing the image on the bigger screen to vanish. The rest of the team looked relieved for the video to be gone. In the corner of the room, Sam lifted his head from his hands and he looked sick.
Spinning in his chair, Tony stood up. Steve rose too and approached Natasha.
“A lead? How’d you get that? What happened?” Tony asked.
“I spoke to Wanda,” Natasha revealed.
Tony and Steve’s faces fell a little and tbey briefly shared a look the suggested they thought she’d finally lost it.
Natasha rolled her eyes and barged past them to stand in the centre of the room.
“I’m serious,” she said, “I went to take a nap, and when I fell asleep I was able to speak to Wanda in her mind.”
“So… Wanda still has access to her powers to an extent,” Steve realised.
“They come as naturally to her as breathing,” Natasha shrugged then she wielded the paper she’d written everything down on. “Even if she did mean to, she was able to use them for long enough that we could talk.”
Crossing over to her, Tony took the paper from her.
“What’d she say?” He asked, eyes scanning the note
“She’s still in New York,” Natasha revealed, “somewhere with a lot of people. Maybe a warehouse? There are seven people involved in her kidnapping that she knows of. Five men, two women. All but one of them are Sokovian. One of the women has a tattoo of thorns on her neck.”
“Nat, this is huge,” Steve said, hope returning to his eyes.
“We might just be able to find her with this,” Sam added.
Tony looked up and met their eyes with determination.
“Let’s find the little witch,” he said.
Notes:
A bit of a shorter chapter, I know but I’m just setting up for next chapter :)