The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 24

Novi Grad, Sokovia

Spring 2015

The lab wasn't as abandoned as he'd thought.

A breath of relief gusted out of Pietro as he caught sight of Nina stretched out on the cot in one of the isolation cells, still restrained despite the thick glass and her unconscious and obviously weakened state. But she was still alive; he could see her chest rising and falling with the same shallow, laboured breaths as earlier.

But as he forcibly moved himself past the thoughts that she had succumbed to the Sceptre's power, another thought hit him.

They would lock her up too, he realized angrily. Strucker had begun the experiments on her that had succeeded on him and his twin. It was still far too early to tell if they had taken—despite Wanda's insistence that they had—but the procedure hadn't killed her yet...so there was a chance that she was now just like him and Wanda: Enhanced.

She hadn't asked for it, hadn't volunteered like they had. She didn't deserve to be locked away and studied because of what Strucker did to her.

Pietro made his decision almost before he'd realized there was a decision to make.

In the space of a heartbeat, he had dashed through the lab to the bank of reinforced glass-walled cells, broken in to free the slight blonde from her restraints and, after carefully picking her up, was whisking her back out of the base and safely away from the Avengers.

Admittedly, she wouldn't exactly be safe—Pietro knew better than to think that; none of them would ever be 'safe' again—but she would be safe from falling into the hands of Tony Stark and the Avengers. And that was something.

In moments he'd reached the old, now abandoned, apartment where he and Wanda had been living before they'd signed up for Strucker's Experiments. It was one of the first places he'd visited during his unsanctioned excursions shortly after he and Wanda had been released from isolation, only to discover the whole building had been abandoned; condemned since they had left for Strucker's base.

Quite soon after, by the look of it.

Not that that had exactly been a surprise... But Pietro had taken it as a good sign, and pegged the old building and the familiar apartment as a safe place to go if he and his twin ever needed it. After all, it never hurt to be prepared. It was something being on their own had taught him and Wanda at an early age. It wasn't much, especially since the already poorly maintained building was even worse off since being abandoned, but it was shelter and it was a place where they could hide. He hadn't even told Wanda about it yet.

Laying Nina out on the sad-looking old couch that had been left behind—not that they'd had much when they'd lived here, but what little there was had been long since scavenged—Pietro straightened, stepping back before he could race off to reunite with his twin. But before he could dart away, he found his gaze drawn back to the girl laying on the couch sitting lonely and almost forlorn in the nearly empty room.

She looked chilled in the still, unheated air of the abandoned apartment. Her cheeks were still flushed and fevered as her body trembled and shivered. As he looked back at her, he found he couldn't leave her just yet.

It was an odd compulsion, but Pietro found himself unwilling to dismiss it. With a gust, he'd collected a blanket—slightly less neglected-looking than the rest of the apartment's sparse furnishings—and had tucked it in around her. It was only then that he was satisfied enough to leave...though part of him was still uneasy about leaving Nina alone at all, especially in her current state. But he needed to retrieve Wanda. He was anxious enough already at having left her alone in Strucker's base with the Avengers closing in. Even knowing as he did that she was more than capable of dealing with anyone who dared to mess with her, he couldn't help it. Knowing she could take care of herself didn't stop him from worrying more the longer they were separated; call it his protective brotherly instincts.