PURE AND TAINTED ( wanda maximoff )

twenty-three → is it bad that i like banksy?

PURE AND TAINTED
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
( is it bad that i like banksy? )

"HE'S ALL OVER THE GLOBE," Maria informed them as she, Steve, and Aline stepped out of the elevator. The living room was still a mess from the previous night and when Aline had asked Tony about it, he said that the cleaning lady was coming Friday. She immediately dropped the subject. "Robotics labs, weapons facilities, jet propulsion labs, reports of a metal man 一 or men 一 coming in and emptying the place."

"Fatalities?" Steve asked.

"Only when engaged. Mostly guys left in a fugue state going on about old memories, worst fears, and something too fast to see."

Aline's eyes went wide as she said, "Wanda and Pietro." Saying her soulmate's name, hearing it in her ears, it still felt like heaven, even though she was working with Strucker, allowing a madman to experiment on her and her brother. But now she was working with Ultron, someone much worse and possibly had everyone on her. She was still nervous about that information getting out to the public. She herself hadn't read her own file, fearing what it would say about her, but now she really wanted to. What was on it?

"Well, that makes sense he'd go to them, they have someone in common," Steve said.

"Not anymore." Maria handed them her tablet, swiping to reveal a picture. It was of Strucker in his cell, slumped over on his prison bed with an ugly wound on his head. Written in the man's blood on the wall was one word: PEACE.

"Lovely," Aline muttered and crossed her arms.

Maria left them as soon as they reached the top of the landing, with Steve and Aline pausing as they spotted Clint a few feet from them. He held his phone to his ear and was speaking in a hushed tone. Because of her enhanced hearing, she could hear every word Clint was saying; she always thought it was funny, and rather cute, that him and his wife spoke like they were agents.

"Barton," Steve called, "we might have something."

"Gotta go," Clint said into the phone and hung up, slipping the phone into his pocket.

"Who was that?"

"Girlfriend," Clint answered, which resulted in Aline wolf whistling at him. The archer just winked and ruffled her hair, which earned a growl from the tribrid.

As they walked down the hall, Aline leaned over to Clint and whispered, "You better have told her I said hi. And I have been meaning to visit soon."

Clint rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, they're all expecting to see you soon." He shoved the phone into his back pocket, gently nudging her with his elbow as they walked down the hall.

"Me too," Aline said.

The two eventually joined the others in the conference room, where everyone else was. "What's this?" Tony asked as Steve showed them the bloodied picture of Baron Strucker.

"A message," Steve answered and Thor slammed the tablet into Tony's chest. "Ultron killed Strucker."

"And he did a Banksy at the crime scene, just for us."

"Yup," Aline said, "and it's just as dark and morbid as per usual. Is it bad that I like Banksy?" The corner of her lip curled up, a lopsided grin appearing on her playful face.

"This is a smokescreen," Natasha said, completely ignoring Aline's comment. "Why send a message when you've just given a speech?"

"Strucker knew something that Ultron wanted us to miss," Steve said.

Natasha moved to sit in front of a computer, and turned to it.. "Yeah, I bet he 一" She cut herself off once she looked at the monitor. "Yep. Everything we had on Strucker has been erased." The woman let out a quiet huff.

"Not everything," Tony said.

Aline nor any of the other Avengers had realized what Tony had meant by this until he had brought in several boxes. Boxes covered the table of the conference room and were scattered across the floor, all of them filled with miscellaneous files and paperwork. Aline had helped take some of them in, and she kicked the last box into the room. She had seen that her teammates were already digging into the information, but she wasn't quite sure what they were looking for. The tribrid walked over towards a box balancing on the edge of table and lifted up the top, picking at a manila folder.

"How do you still have physical copies of things?" Aline muttered quietly. Her fingers fluttered across the papers as she quickly scanned the contents of the folder. It didn't hold anything interesting, something about tax returns from years ago, so she shoved it back into the box. "We live in such a digital age."

"Known associates," Steve said and looked through a box. He too was reading through a collection of papers. "Well, Strucker had a lot of friends."

"Well, these people are all... horrible," Banner commented as he flipped through a file.

"Wait, I know that guy." Tony shoved his finger between the pages of a folder Bruce was looking through, landing on the picture of a man that Aline had never seen before. "From back in the day. He operates off the African coast, black market arms." He lifted his gaze to see that Steve was giving him a funny look, even raising an eyebrow. "These are conventions, all right? You meet people, I didn't sell him anything. He was talking about finding something new, a game changer; it was all very Ahab."

She leaned forward even more, and her brows furrowed. One of her fingers pressed onto the picture, aimed at the mark on the back of the man's neck. "What about that?" she asked.

"Uh, it's a tattoo," Tony answered. "I don't think he had it 一"

"No, these are tattoos, this is a brand," Thor corrected. He had gestured to the rest of the man's body, where there were a few tattoos scattered about, and the Asgardian was right. While the tattoos were colored with ink, the mark on the man's neck looked like it had been literally burned into his skin.

At the computer, Bruce said, "Oh, yeah. It's a word in an African dialect, meaning thief. In a much less friendly way." His computer screen revealed he had had already pulled the same picture up, deeply analyzing the brand.

"What dialect?" Steve asked.

"Wakanada?" Banner stuttered as he looked at the screen. "Wa... Wa... Wakanda."

"Wakanda?" Aline asked. "Geez, I haven't been there in years." She'd been to Wakanda once, centuries ago. It was a quiet and proud nation, but she wasn't exactly welcomed there. She lifted her gaze to look at Tony and Steve. "Hey, if this dude got out of Wakanda with some of their trade goods..." She trailed off.

"I thought your father said he got the last of it?" Steve said Tony.

"What comes out of Wakanda?" Banner asked.

"The strongest metal on earth," Tony said and turned his gaze to Steve's shield resting on the floor.

"Where is this guy now?" Steve asked.