Chapter Text
Natasha is absent from the tower on Thursday mornings. Wanda knows this because she senses - not hears, the other woman never making any noise ever, despite living on the same floor - her leave. She doesn’t know if the other woman is always like this, or started to after having to share the floor. Wanda bets it's the former.
It’s yet another thing she noticed about the other woman, despite their limited interactions. The last time they talked was Sokovia, when Natasha noticed her wearing her red jacket. She still remembers when the woman’s gaze landed on her, wordlessly telling her to take it off or daring her to keep it on, to do something. She remembers shrinking into herself and looking away.
Since then, Natasha seems to avoid her like the plague, and she really can’t blame her for that; she did enter her mind and made her relive her past. Wanda herself only got glimpses before she deemed her job done and moved on at the time, but they still linger in her mind, months later. More so than another of the others’ nightmares.
When she first learned of her powers to enter others minds, when Hydra threw nameless person after person for her to practice her ‘gifts’ on, what she saw was predictable, almost mundane after a while. Phobias of normal people, everything from losing a loved one to spiders.
But the Avengers, their fears were different. More grand, visions of doomed futures of their own doing. Inevitable.
All of them, expect Natasha’s. Hers were of inescapable pasts. Ballet, muffled screaming, handcuffs chaining slim wrists, the graduation ceremony. Different, haunting.
She considered asking around about it, but didn’t, unsure if she’d earned the right to ask things about others. Most days, she’s not even sure she has the right to be here, in an ivory tower with her own room, while her country is nothing but dust and ashes and her brother is six feet under the ground.
Even if she did, she got the sense that no one else will know. Everyone seemed to be a bit scared of the red haired woman to various extents, herself included, and the woman seemed to revel in the fact. No doubt her secrets were her own.
In the end, she adds this to her growing pile of questions about the sole other female member of the team, and figures that’s that.
+
It’s eventually boredom that tips over her passive curiosity to an active one.
Despite Clint’s rousing speech - “If you step out that door, you are an Avenger.” - real life is not as simple as that. The reality is that she’s technically an illegal immigrant stowed away in one of the, if not the most notable landmark in the United States. Stark- Tony is figuring things out so that her stay can be permanent without breaking the law, but it’s nothing that requires her input.
Legal issues aside, nothing about her life leading up to last year is private, available to everyone since the leak last year. Hydra kept an extensive portfolio of both her and Pietro after they were the only ones who survived their experiments, and now all of that is public knowledge. Her more recent exploits - including but not limited to abetting in the murder of Strucker, and working with a genocidal AI to fight the Avengers - are known only to the members of the Avengers and SHIELD (or what’s left of it), something she feels both thankful and guilty for. Still, the point is that it was still deemed too early and risky to have her on the field for the time being.
Besides, her powers are an unknown variable, continuously growing but with no way to contain or control. Thor did mention magic users in Asgard that could probably aid her, but she doesn’t think she’ll be seeing them anytime soon.
In simple terms, she has more or less been stuck in the tower for the past month, and feels restless. Stir-crazy, she thinks the American term is. She doesn’t get why she feels this way when she’s lived in Hydra’s underground bunker for years. It’s the windows, she thinks. Makes the allure of the outside world that much stronger.
So, the next time she senses Natasha grow further and further away, she dresses up and follows.
+
She keeps her hood up, in case someone recognizes her, and follows Natasha from a distance. She’s not sure if the other woman knows she’s being followed, but she blends in and out of crowds so seamlessly that Wanda loses sight of her multiple times and eventually has to rely on her magic. It feels a bit like cheating, Natasha’s more familiar aura easy to discern amongst the crowds of people that seem to occupy every corner of this city, but she has no other option.
It still feels like a wild goose chase, and she swears she goes in circles multiple times, seeing the same corner deli shop over and over.
Eventually though, Natasha does slow down, stopping in front of a nondescript, red-bricked building. There’s less people around them now, and Wanda slows her pace as well, stays on the opposite side of the street.
As she watches, Natasha goes up the stone stairs and presses the buzzer. The door unlocks seconds later, and before she enters, she turns and directly looks at Wanda.
Wanda flees.