I found Pietro on the lounge balcony again the next morning, looking pensively out at the city. I’d slept in, but I was usually awake before him anyway, so a late sleep-in for me meant we’d actually gotten up around the same time. Still, whatever staff Tony had on the payroll to keep the place in order had been and gone already, leaving the place looking immaculate, the furniture reorganised to be more suitable for the Avengers’ day-to-day. If I hadn’t attended it, I wouldn’t have guessed that there’d been a party here last night at all. Pays to be a billionaire, I guess.

“Hey,” I said as I walked up the stairs toward him. “Found a favourite spot to mope already, huh?”

“You looked like you found a favourite spot last night, too.” He glanced at me as I approached, a hint of annoyance in his tone.

“Uh, yeah. Kind of.” I avoided his gaze, feeling a little heat rising in my cheeks. “That’s not a problem, is it?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one who knows everything, you tell me.”

“I… I don’t want it to be a problem. But I want you to be okay with things, too.”

Pietro turned back to the city skyline, his expression unreadable. At his sides, his hands balled into fists, hard enough to see the whites of his knuckles, before he leaned forward heavily against the glass wall, supporting himself using one of his forearms.

“It’s just… sometimes you do something or say something and it’s like nothing ever happened. The way we…” He gestured with his free hand, fighting to find the right words. “You’re just… Wanda. My sister. You really truly are, no matter what you think. There’s too much there for that to not be true. How could you be anything else? And then other times I look at you and you’re just so different and I think ‘even she said she didn’t think she was Wanda’ and then I’m… I’m just a kid again, right back under that table, staring at a bomb, waiting for it to explode.”

“Only this time, the bomb has ‘Wanda’ written on it, not ‘Stark’,” I said softly and he slumped a little, letting his forehead smack against the glass. “I don’t think anything I can say would help. I don’t want to lie to you, Pietro. I just… I don’t know what’s true anymore.”

“And then there’s all this.” He gestured backward, toward the rest of the Tower. “I don’t know what to do here. It was always so clear before. We were going to get Stark. That’s what was important, right? Killing Stark. For our parents. But now everything’s all mixed up and you have this whole thing with the Infinity Stones and gods and monsters and whatever else and I don’t have that. I don’t know where I fit anymore or what I’m supposed to do. If we’re not going after Stark, what am I even doing?”

Gingerly, I reached out and touched his arm. When he didn’t flinch away, I stepped closer and rested my temple against his shoulder. “I can’t answer that for you. I’m sorry.”

“I know. That’s the problem.”

“If it helps, I’m glad you’re still here. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d given up on me.”

He scoffed. “If I wasn’t looking out for you, who would be? You don’t do a very good job of looking out for yourself.”

“Asshole.” I snorted and shoved his shoulder.

“You love me.”

“I… yeah. I do.” A brief smile touched my lips as I gazed out over the city skyline.

“Love you, too,” he said quietly, nudging me with his shoulder.

“So… speaking of you loving me…”

Pietro let out a long groan. “Oh, God. What now?”

“Why does everyone always assume the worst whenever I open my mouth?” I grumped at him. “You don’t know. It could be something good.”

“Is it something good?”

“I mean, it’s not something bad,” I hedged. “I just… I know we’ve mostly been focused on high-level stuff so far, but there’s a thing I’d like to do. For Nat.”

“Ugh. You and the Widow…”

“I know. She’s manipulating me. I’m not an idiot. It’s fine, I’m managing it.”

“You’re not managing it. You’re thinking ‘maybe she actually really likes me a little bit, teehee’.”

“She’s not a bad person. She’s been through a lot,” I said defensively, trying to get the conversation back on course before he got it into his head to lecture me any more about my love life. “Anyway, you remember what I told you about the Red Room?”

Okay, yes, maybe I was hoping that Natasha’s probably-feigned interest in me could be coaxed into real interest. Regardless of her past work as a spy, I found it a little difficult to believe that she’d emotionlessly use herself as a honey trap these days—after everything she’d been through—unless there was at least a spark of actual attraction there. It might have just been wishful thinking, but last night it really had felt like there was some genuine chemistry there.

“You want to bring down the Red Room?”

I paused, weighing possible approaches in my mind. I was pretty sure that reuniting and resolving things with Yelena and the rest of her ‘fake’ family would be good for Natasha and, at this stage, I didn’t see a way of accomplishing that naturally. It might be more beneficial to dissemble a bit and take the long way around, even if we didn’t actually have to.

The weird chemical mind control thing that the Red Room used was a problem—Yelena, Nat’s ‘fake’ sister, would still be under its effects unless we actually worked out a counteragent we could deploy against it or seized control of Dreykov’s systems but, again, I felt like it’d be better for Nat if we scooped Yelena up first and she took an active role in what came next. I knew that my chaos magic could break something like the Mind Stone’s control over a person… would it work to snap the Widows out of it as well? It was manipulation of chemical signals in the brain, rather than mental conditioning or direct magical mind control. I literally had no idea how these things interacted.

“I think what I’d like to do is talk to Natasha, tell her the broad strokes, maybe give a suggestion or two, but then let her decide what to do. It’s her life, after all.”

“Sure. Fine. Go ahead.”

I looked over at him. “Pietro, you’re doing that thing where you say what I want you to say, but your tone seems mean.”

He sighed again and looked at me. “I just worry, is all. I’ll be ready if you need me.”

“Thank you.” I pulled out my phone and tapped out a quick message: Thanks again for last night x. There’s something I wanna talk to you about, if you’re not busy today? “I’ll ask how she wants to handle it. If she wants to bring everyone in on this, we’ll do that. If she just wants to keep it personal, well… it’ll make for a hell of a first date, at least.”

Pietro snorted. “I guess so. I’m gonna head out. Let me know if you need anything.”

He left and I sat down on a comfortable chair near the window, looking out at the city and thinking about what I was going to say to Natasha. As I watched, a large black crow landed on the exterior platform that extended from the side of the building, sleek feathers shining slightly in the sunlight. It pecked absently at the metal a few times, then seemed to look straight back at me. I smiled a little as it hopped closer, turning its head this way and that as it checked out its reflection on the side of the building. I always did like birds.

A few minutes later, my phone beeped as Nat responded to my message: Sure x. Now good?

I messaged back to say I was in the Tower lounge, then settled in to wait. Nat didn’t take long to arrive, dressed casually in a simple black top and pair of dark skinny jeans, with the sort of casually effortless-looking, slightly-messy-yet-perfect hair and ‘natural’ makeup that had probably taken half an hour to get right.

“Hey you. How are you feeling this morning?” she asked with an easy smile, settling into the chair next to me.

“Good. Great, even. Last night was… really nice.”

“It was.”

I didn’t say anything else right away, just continued to sit and look out over the Manhattan skyline. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nat doing the same. She seemed perfectly relaxed and content to sit in silence with me for a little bit. It was comfortable. Nice. After a couple of minutes, I sighed and turned to face her. She noticed my serious expression and mirrored the movement, shifting her chair slightly so she could face me more comfortably.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“This isn’t… just let me start by saying that this has nothing to do with last night. It’s something I was going to talk to you about anyway.”

“Okay,” Nat said, watching me carefully.

“I’m going to tell you a few things. Some of them are probably going to upset you and some of them you’re probably not going to believe right away, either. Just… I think it’s really important that you know them. I don’t want you to get angry with me, but I’ll understand if you do. Please just let me say what I need to say and then it’ll be up to you how you want to deal with it all.”

“Okay… that sounds reasonable.” The corner of her mouth lifted in a slightly concerned smile. “Do I need to be worried here?” She looked calm and ready for anything I had to say, but I already knew that she wouldn’t be prepared for this.

“Dreykov is alive.” Natasha was normally extremely good at masking her reactions, but her eyes widened and her body went completely still as I said it. I forged ahead. “The Red Room is still active. After you defected, they developed something more dangerous to keep the Widows in line. You went through psychological conditioning when you were there, this is different—chemical subjugation of brain functions. It’s basically full-on scientific mind control. They can’t resist or break out of it on their own at all. He has Widows close to key political and economic figures all over the world.” I paused, gauging her reaction, then gave a small, encouraging gesture to indicate that she could respond if she wanted to.

“That’s…” She paused, masking a slight unsteadiness in her tone by appearing to consider her words carefully. “That’s not possible. Dreykov’s dead. It took almost destroying an entire city just to get to him.”

“Budapest. You and Clint. I know. You imploded a building to get him. Had a rough time getting out of the city afterwards. Even so…”

“Even so… you’re telling me you think he’s still alive?”

“I don’t think. I know. I’ve seen it. His daughter is, too,” I said softly, wincing slightly as the words came out. There was no easy way to drop that one. “She’s not well—look at who her father is, how could she be?—but she’s definitely alive, at least.”

Nat looked away from me, what I thought was a real crack appearing in her composure. I stayed quiet, letting her process the statement. The fact that her target’s young daughter had been collateral damage in Natasha’s defection to SHIELD had been a heavy weight on her conscience ever since. “That can’t be true,” she said eventually. “It can’t be.”

“It is. I’m sorry. I know this is a lot. Just a few more things, and then I’ll go get a coffee or something. Let you have some time to yourself so you can think.” I took a deep breath. “They have Yelena. She never got out.”

Nat continued to avoid looking at me, choosing to stare out over the city instead. Her face stayed carefully blank, but it was clearly artificial, a mask that betrayed conflicting emotions roiling below the surface. “…I thought that she did. That she was living a normal life somewhere.”

“She still thinks of herself as your little sister. Your family might have been fake, but it was real to her. Real to all of you, I think, to a degree. She loves you and I know you care about her, too.” I found myself struck by my earlier conversation with Pietro, my own ‘fake’ family. Despite the circumstances, what we had was real, too—that was what he had been trying to articulate.

Another few seconds of tense silence stretched out before Nat responded. “Wow.” There was a slight quaver in her voice. She swallowed hard and licked her lips anxiously. “You are just not pulling your punches here, are you?”

I paused for a moment, a tight feeling in my chest. I knew going in that this was going to be painful for her, but it was upsetting to see her disarmed like this. Just a little more and then I’d leave her to collect her thoughts. “I don’t know where the Red Room is. They have a literal flying base, like one of SHIELD’s helicarriers. It moves constantly. We could try to find it and Dreykov directly, but it might be tricky. There is someone, though, who I know could help us find it.”

Natasha finally looked back at me, holding my gaze for a few moments. “Alexei.”

I nodded. “I have some suggestions about what we could do. But they’re just that: suggestions. This is your story. Your demons. No one else gets to decide this for you. If you feel like you need to take care of this alone, that’s okay. I won’t tell anyone else. If you want me there, I’ll follow your lead. Whatever you need, I’m here. If you want to bring in the whole team, we can do that, too. I’ll let you think about it.”

I started to stand up, but Nat reached out and touched my knee. “Wait.” She took a deep breath. “Okay. Say I believe you. Say Dreykov is alive and the Red Room still exists. You have suggestions. What are they?”

Taking a deep breath, I laid out the basic gist of what I wanted to propose. “First, we abduct Yelena with a portal. Kill two birds with one stone: rescue her and find out more about the mind control at the same time. We need to see if we can counteract it—either Tony and Bruce can try to come up with a scientific solution, or, if you’ll let me, I can try. I had good results with Bucky, but this is a bit different. Second, we abduct Alexei. He doesn’t know how to find the Red Room directly, but he can lead us to Melina… she still works for Dreykov as a scientist. With all three of you there, given the chance, I think she’ll defect. She can lead us to the Red Room and then we hit them hard and fast. We’ll have to fight our way in—it's heavily guarded and there’s the Widows to contend with. Then, we locate Dreykov and kill him. If we can take his computer systems intact, Tony and Bruce can figure out a way to free all the Widows… and that’s about it.”

Nat gave a small, disbelieving snort. “That simple, huh?”

“That simple. Like I said, though, I’ll follow your lead on this one. Genuinely, Nat. Whatever you need.”

“…I thought Melina was dead, too.”

“She isn’t.”

She sighed heavily. “…do we need Alexei? Can’t we skip the middle-man?”

“If you know where Melina is, sure. If you’re asking why I’m not suggesting we abduct her with a portal like with Yelena and Alexei, it’s for the same reason I’m not saying we should just abduct Dreykov,” I hedged, shrugging my shoulders. “I can call up portals through association, but I still need to have a strong connection to leverage. I only saw tiny bits and pieces of the two of them. Yelena and Alexei I saw plenty of, I can definitely work with them. Melina and Dreykov, not so much.”

It wasn’t a total lie. I couldn’t recall if a location was named for Melina’s farm, so I had no idea where to look for it, and really didn’t think I could remember enough of Melina or Dreykov to build a strong or accurate enough picture of them in my mind to portal to them or track them with the Mind Stone, but I could try and it still might work. If Nat pushed me on this—if she asked me directly to try—I’d cave, but if there was a chance I could reunite her with her entire ‘fake’ family so they could talk and get some closure, I wanted to take it. Natasha wasn’t really the type of person I could just say that to directly, though.

She nodded, looking pensive. “Alright. Let me just… think this through.” As I stood up and started to leave, she reached over again and touched my hand, looking up at me seriously. “Wanda… thank you.”

“Thank me after you put a bullet in Dreykov’s skull.”

--

“You want to go after them in New York? Right under the Avengers’ noses? I had thought perhaps your little HYDRA phase was a one-off, Wolfgang, but perhaps I misjudged your intellect after all,” Zemo said with a frown.

“Unless we position ourselves to capitalise on opportunities as they develop, the twins will escape our grasp entirely.” Strucker shrugged, feigning nonchalance. He would not so easily abandon Loki’s sceptre, though he was keeping the existence of that particular item to himself for the time being. “And Sokovia will get nothing.”

Strucker had been incredibly relieved when the signals from the twins’ subdermal tracking chips had still been functional—Dr List had obfuscated the presence of the devices by implanting them during a period of intensive physical examinations, ensuring that the twins were unaware of their presence, but there was always the possibility that they would think to check themselves, or that some aspect of their powers or the sceptre would render the delicate chips inoperative.

At first, the signals had made no sense—zipping from one side of the globe to the other—and he’d thought the trackers had malfunctioned, but it had soon become clear when compared with intel gleaned from Zemo’s intelligence network that the twins had obtained some form of instantaneous movement. Perhaps they had unlocked some leftover power from the Tesseract’s interactions with the sceptre to teleport themselves? Or had they perhaps made some other discovery to enable such a thing? It was utterly fascinating and Strucker was eager to learn exactly what his greatest achievements had been up to while they were separated. Just on its own, instant worldwide transportation would be a massive boon to what remained of HYDRA, should it be replicable.

Zemo looked at him with narrowed eyes, a calculating expression on his face as he absently rubbed the thumb and forefinger of his left hand together. “Say I were to entertain your suggestion. What would you propose?”

“There are risks involved, yes, but HYDRA still has significant investments in New York that I can leverage. There are a few useful idiots at Hammer Industries still on my payroll. The headquarters is in Queens and has some impressive facilities, only one step down from what Stark himself has to hand. We also have connections to the local criminal underworld, should further muscle be required. Between them, we’ll be able to secure a base of operations, security, weapons and the tech we’ll need.”

“And then what?”

Initially, when the twins’ trail had led directly to Avengers Tower in New York, Strucker had thought they were making their move—a decapitation strike against their hated enemies. He’d been caught utterly by surprise when reports came through that no altercation had taken place and that the twins appeared to now be staying in the Tower as guests, free to come and go as they pleased. It just did not mesh at all with what he knew of Wanda and Pietro, to willingly ally themselves with the man that they held personally responsible for the deaths of their parents.

“Then we watch their movements and wait for an opportunity to inevitably present itself,” he said, projecting confidence into his voice.

Zemo continued to stare at him for a few more moments, weighing his decision, before he sighed and gestured irritably. “Very well. We’ll establish a base of operations, as you say, and if I am satisfied by the arrangements and if an ‘opportunity’ arises, I will assess the situation and determine whether the risk is worthwhile. While you may be nursing a grudge against them, our government has little appetite for foolhardy plans that may antagonise the Avengers.”

“Of course, Helmut. I wouldn’t dream of moving without your say-so.”

Strucker did not know the twins’ game just yet, but once they arrived in New York, Hammer Industries should have the spectrometers available to start sweeping for gamma radiation to confirm the location of Loki’s sceptre and—unless it was locked in a shielded subbasement of Avengers Tower—they should be able to get a good idea as to its specific location. Once he knew where the sceptre was, he could organise a plan of attack.

After that… well, he was already beginning to tire of the shortness of the leash that Zemo had him on and he suspected that the man intended to turn on him once the twins were in hand in any case. It behoved him to act first and secure the future of HYDRA under his continuing benevolent leadership. He would have to make arrangements with Rumlow… carefully and quietly, of course. Zemo was a dangerous man in his own right, and it would not do to underestimate him.