WandaWidow - Book 1

Chapter 40 - Pushed Buttons

A/N: Thank you all for the love for this story! I never expected so many people to read it. We're 2/3 through this book now, but don't worry I have much more planned for these two!

Over the next few weeks Wanda and Natasha's days seemed to fall into a routine of sorts. Wanda would go to training, Natasha would hang around her room and sometimes the kitchen to watch them outside, and then when Wanda was done for the day they would hang out. Every other day it was interrupted by a doctors visit, which thankfully had been all good news for now. Natasha was still healing as Dr Roberts had hoped, but she wasn't healing as quickly as she would have liked. Wanda couldn't help but notice her companion becoming more and more down as each day passed, and really hoped that she would feel a lot better once she was back to normal and able to train with the team.

Natasha was down about being injured, but that wasn't bothering her nearly as much as how she was feeling about the whole Europe mission in general. She still hadn't spoke to Wanda about it, and hadn't mentioned it to Steve again either since that first day back. The only person that could have any idea how she was actually feeling about it was Maria Hill, who Natasha had been asking for updates almost daily now.

Maria was torn. As much as she didn't feel like she owed the team anything, she felt like she at least owed Natasha enough to tell Wanda or Steve about her growing obsession. Maria knew that the way she was thinking about it, and her frustration over it all, wasn't exactly healthy. Natasha had had missions go wrong before, but she hadn't taken it as personally as this until now. Maria also knew that if she told Wanda or Steve anything, Natasha would see it as a betrayal of her trust and any chance of them becoming friendly again would likely be done for.

In spite of this, she knew she had to - she worried that if Natasha was put in a position again with Rumlow she would take unnecessary risk to fix what she considered her mistake, and in the process could put herself or the team in danger. As much as Maria acted that she didn't really care what happened to Wanda or the team, she didn't want them to be in any real harm. Natasha wouldn't be able to live with herself in the aftermath of something like that. All this being said, she couldn't bring herself to call up Wanda, so she dialled the number for Steve and held her breath while it connected.

"Hill. What's going on?" he answered the phone, sounding a little out of breath.

"Hi Steve. You busy?" she asked, figuring she needed his full attention.

"Running. Go ahead though."

"No. I mean, can you stop? This'll just take a minute."

Steve, who was jogging around the compound, slowed to a walk and then stopped completely.

"Okay, shoot," he encouraged her. Steve did feel a little bad about his initial reaction to Maria when she brought Natasha back, so tried to be as nice as he could.

"I need to talk to you about Natasha."

"Okay?" he replied, not quite understanding what she was getting at.

"How does she seem to you?"

"Fine. I mean, she spends most of her time with Wanda, but other than that she seems okay. I think honestly she's just bored."

"I think you need to talk to her, Steve."

"What about?"

"About what happened in Belgium. She's not taking it too well. She's messaging every day looking for any update on Rumlow. She feels like she failed, and she's becoming a little obsessed."

"Are you sure? She's honestly not mentioned anything to me."

"I'm sure. Please just check up with her."