Fire and Smoke - Wanda Maximoff x Reader

Chapter 97

"Natasha?" I croak out, my voice tired and scratching my throat painfully as it leaves my lips.

Natasha does not reply. In fact, she doesn't do anything. She doesn't move from where she is, sprawled out on the floor. The blood continues to very slowly trickle out of the cut along her forehead, creating a little pool by her face. She looks pale, surrounded by red. I'm worried. The blood hasn't stopped trickling, and she has been out cold for probably a good fifteen minutes. I try to pull on my restraints, but the cuffs cut into my skin harshly with no give at all. I'm stuck watching her like that.

I growl, annoyed at my situation. I cannot believe we made it so close. I crane my neck to the left, squinting in the harsh fake light, recognizing the computer Natasha was hacking into with the help of Darcy and Vision. It sits there, hauntingly close. The room which is filled with wires and computers around me hums contently on, blissfully unaware of what turmoil I'm in. A couple of minutes more, and Natasha would have managed to reset the hard drive, and the multicolored chords emanating from the computer, taking thousands of bytes of information through to wherever in the world would have seized to do so. They would have forgotten all about Wanda. And then, all we had to do is grab the physical drive, get Steve, and get back to Wanda. So close.

But naturally, not a single thing can go right for me, ever.

I scowl at the memories of the Hydra agents suddenly swarming us from all directions we didn't even realize they could come at us from. Their guns drawn. Their faces covered. Eyes gleaming under the fluorescent lights. And then her. I thought I was having a nightmare, asleep on the couch in the cabin. Unfortunately for me, the sound of her gun hitting the side of Natasha's head is too real in my head still now, and the mental image of Natasha's eyes rolling back in her head as she just crumbled so easily is hard to shake. And I just stood there, unable to move my body because of the handful of guns aimed at my face.

I stare at the redhead, the sight of her so vulnerable not sitting right with me. She's Natasha Romanoff. She's the Black Widow. She is supposed to be unbeatable. She's not supposed to get hurt. The most human out of all the Avengers, and yet the most inhuman in her strength. And she went down so easily.

I shiver, trying to yank myself free again, my shoulders stiff and dully aching, the restraints just cutting into my wrists more, most probably drawing a little bit of blood. I struggle to make my brain work with me here, to figure out a plan. There must be a plan. But my head remains stubbornly empty. The only thing I find some sort of solace in is that I am indeed tied up. That shows that however confident Strucker feels in her plan, she isn't one hundred percent confident in me, and their control of me. Maybe I showed them that I could indeed bypass their stupid Vernut programming in me when I escaped with Wanda.

The thought of Wanda makes me involuntarily shiver, the hairs rising on the back of my neck. It feels near unsettling, now that I'm alone again in the large facility. Well, now that I'm truly alone. I feel slightly numb ever since Wanda's consciousness left me. After Wanda forced her way into my head the way she did, I'm now sporting a dull headache and a numb body that feels foreign to me. Like something isn't right. I haven't had time to process that event at all, as I've been occupied by thoughts about Natasha's state. But now, realizing I actually am not able to free myself from the stupid restraints keeping me hostage to the side of the table which is secured to the floor, I have ample opportunity to think about my situation. It isn't looking great.

What the fuck even happened? I feel slightly sick, remembering how I tried to push her out of my head, how her usually comforting warmth felt sweltering and stifling, was making it hard to breathe. How when I tried to push back, she pushed back, harder. I felt her scarlet push through me, the magic hotly, slowly coursing into my consciousness, like small, sharp knives cutting my body away from me until I was cornered, unable to move, speak or think. I shut my eyes, trying to not liken the feeling to that of being stuck in my body as whatever Hydra created takes over. This is Wanda, and it's not the same.