Chapter Text
[2015, Sokovia]
It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the bleak skylight, a sharp chill nipping at her exposed cheeks. She leaned down and grabbed a fistful of snow, sifting it through her gloved hands. She was home . Well a few hundred miles from it, anyway.
It had been Wanda’s idea to retrace their steps in the search for HYDRA or rather, the search for Pietro. Fury had gladly provided the coordinates from which Pietro had gone missing nearly two years ago. Wanda believed returning to the mountaintop laboratory might give them some clues to revive the cold trail. The only thing she hadn’t anticipated was this being a team mission.
Wanda had spent the greater part of the past few months training and taking down the last stragglers of HYDRA with the Avengers . After weeks on end of hopeless searching, Steve and Wanda had put their search in their peripherals and traded it in for raids and hand to hand combat. A distraction, really. She had turned him down again and again when he suggested that she join the team. They were already a team without her after all and she wasn’t going to volunteer to throw that off. But, Steve was persuasive when he wanted to be and frankly she had gotten used to having him around.
She stood there, her boots firmly planted in the snow and looked around at the team. She had to admit she was a little starstruck. Getting to know Steve was one thing, but now she had a whole team of people who already knew each other, plus they were practically living legends. They did look a little goofy all wrapped up in their snow attire though. As far as any of them, including Wanda, were concerned, this was a clean cut get in and get out mission. Of course, they still had their gear at the ready.
It took a few more minutes of stares for Wanda to realize that they were waiting for her direction. She was the one who had been here before after all; the one who had lived here.
“Uh, this way,” she called, gesturing forward. They trudged through the snow with a steady pace all around her. As conversations broke out within the group, Wanda and Steve kept ahead of the rest, leading the way.
“Are you doing alright?” Steve asked, his brows furrowed.
“Yeah, of course,” she replied, kicking up some snow as she walked.
“You’re a terrible liar, you know that?” Steve chuckled, giving her a playful nudge. He had certainly reminded her on more than one occasion. She wasn’t exactly in great shape, if she was being honest. Really, if this exhibition didn’t turn up anything, she didn’t know what else to do. She’d never give up, of course not, but if there wasn’t something here that could be traced back to her brother, there wasn’t much of anything left to go on.
“Hold on,” she murmured, stopping Steve in his tracks while the rest of the team continued to catch up. “No...I could’ve sworn-”
“What is it?” Steve cut in.
“It’s supposed to be right here,” Wanda whispered, not wanting to embarrass herself in front of the team. She pulled out a tablet from her hiking bag and typed the coordinates into the GPS. “No this can’t be right…” Steve moved to look over her shoulder. “It says we’re standing right in front of it,” Wanda faltered.
“Is everything alright?” Natasha called, walking over to them.
“Uh...yeah we’re almost there,” Wanda muttered. She swiped through the file from the Sokovia mission, trying to see if she had missed anything.
“You think I can’t wield your puny bow? Of course I can, I am the-”
A stream of air sent a chill down Wanda’s back as an arrow whizzed by.
“Hey!” Steve hissed, “You could’ve hurt someone!” Wanda was too distracted to take concern. She traced the path of where she assumed the arrow had gone but there was no sign of it.
“Hey, Barton!” she called. “C’mere!”
“What is it?” Clint responded, jogging up to meet Wanda.
She pointed straight out, “Could you shoot an arrow in that direction?”
“At what?”
“Just.. in that direction,” she estimated. “Just trust me.” He shrugged, placing an arrow in the bow’s rest and fired. They watched as the arrow shot forward and then, out of nowhere, disappeared.
“You saw that too, right?”
Wanda nodded and wandered over in the direction of where the arrow had flown. She kept her hands out in front of her and continued to walk until she could no longer see them. Moving her hands back and forth, she noticed a disturbance in what seemed to be some sort of force field. She took a breath, then stepped completely forward. Eyes wide, she gasped at the sight around her.
The mountaintop laboratory towered above her, smoke trailing out from its chimneys. It gave the impression of a castle rather than a lab. An intense rush of deja vu formed a pit in her stomach. All this time she had been searching far and wide, when Strucker and his team had simply returned back to their home base.
“Uh...Maximoff?” Clint called out, “You’re uh, well you’re gone.” She turned around and went back through the cloaking field, holding her index finger to her lips to silence him as she approached. Taking her cue, Steve beckoned over the team until they stood in a tight circle.
“It looks like we’ve got more than debris to go through,” Wanda explained. “We’re going to need a plan of attack.”