Meeting the family - Part 2

We are on our way to the garage, when Wanda grabs my hand and then continues walking as if nothing has happened. My heart gets this warm fuzzy feeling it has had before when she touches me without asking permission. Don't get me wrong, I don't like it when people just touch me, but with Wanda… It feels different somehow. "So, there are two paths we can take to the garage. The straight forward one, or we can take a short detour. It takes longer but it's nicer. What do you want to do?" I will always take the option that gets me to spend more time with her, so of course my answer is: "Let's do the detour, I'd love to see more of the grounds." She gives me a kiss on my hand and I have the feeling like I'm going to stumble over my own feet. Wanda laughs. "What's wrong malysh (baby)? Did you forget how to talk?" she asks with a wink which just causes me to stutter. My sudden shyness seems to amuse her even more and her laugh fills the sky, as if the wind is carrying it along. Seeing her like this absolutely melts my heart. I know I'm probably just feeling this way because of her taking care of me for so long, but still… I don't think there will ever come a moment where I don't think that she is the most beautiful creature to grace the earth. She deserves the world and I know that I will do anything to give her just that. When the road splits she turns left and I follow her without a doubt, holding her hand like it's my anchor. After a couple of minutes spend in comfortable silence I notice that the trees become thicker and the landscape is slowly turning into that of a forest. I love it. When I was younger I always loved running through the trees. I used to play hide and seek with my best friend there, I was an absolute expert in the game. It's also the very first time that I'm in a forest again after I have been captured. I stop walking and look around, slowly talking it all in. The sun is shining through the leaves giving everything a golden color. I can hear birds singing in the distance, and the wind flies through the trees, playing with my hair along the way. I can't help but feel overwhelmed. I drop to my knees and let the dirt slide through my hands. Wanda squats down so she is at my eye height. "What's wrong milyy? Why are you crying?" Her voice asks me softly. I only realize that there are tears falling down my cheeks when Wanda mentions it, and I try to wipe them away. This leaves a dirty mud streak on my face. Wanda places both her hands against my cheeks and makes me look up into her eyes, her gorgeous emerald eyes. "Talk to me baby, I'm here." "The forest…" I whisper. She nods at me, encouraging me to continue. I know that I can just show her what I mean, but somehow I feel that it's important that I actually say it out loud. "It's the first time I can see the forest again, after… After Hydra, Strucker…" "Sssshhhttt my malysh, you don't have to continue. I'm here." She sat down on the ground, ignoring the dirt, and pulls me against her chest. Gently she rocks me from left to right, while singing an old Russian lullaby. "You're here, I'm with you and I will never leave you. I promise."

I don't know how long we sit like this, but slowly I can feel my breathing going to a normal pace again. She gives me a kiss on my scalp and when I look up to her I notice that I've made her clothes all dirty. "Wanda, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to…" She waves my apologies away. "I don't want to hear it malysh. I should have thought it trough. I know you've been there for years so I should have realized it. If anyone should be sorry, it's me." I shake my head. "You have nothing to be sorry for Wanda. You are absolutely perfect." A somber look glides over her face, just for a second though. "Oh no Lidiya… I'm definitely not perfect. I have made a lot of mistakes in my life and I'm still trying to make amends for it." For the first time since I have met her I'm the one pulling her in a hug. My arms go around her, protecting her from her own emotions. "You're perfect to me." I whisper in her ear. I can feel her smile and she hugs me back. For a few moments we stay like this, just enjoying each other's presence. Then Wanda get's up and holds out her hand to help me. "Let's continue with the tour now, shall we?"

The garage is at the end of a large track, and immediately next to a landing strip for planes. We enter through a door next to the garage gate (or should I say gates, since there are multiple) and we enter a room filled with the most amazing vehicles you can imagine. There are motorbikes, elegant sport cars and badass SUV's. Against the back I can see work tables and two dark skinned men are working there, their music blasting through the garage and I can see that one of them is laughing about something the other one said. Wanda notices that the loud music makes me feel anxious, so she waves with her hand and red clouds turn the volume of the music down. "Hey little witch! What was that for?" One of the men asks which makes Wanda squint her eyes. "This is Lidiya, she finally got Shuri's good to go so she's getting a tour of the compound before I take her to her room." She says while we walk over to the guys. "Sorry Wanda, we didn't know." The man who was just speaking turns towards me. The two men really look a lot alike, I notice. Both have a dark skin and have dark black hair. The only real difference you could see was that the guy who has just turned towards me has a slightly rounder face. He smiles at me and I just know that this is one of these guys that everybody loves, no matter what. "Hi Lidiya, my name is Sam. And this guy with a stick up his ass is Rhodey." I can't help but chuckle at his words. My attention gets drawn to what they were working on before we had interrupted them. Sam is working on some kind of wings, and I have to admit that it looks pretty cool, while Rhodey is working on some kind of suit. "What are those?" I ask, pointing towards the wings. They seem so much more badass then a grey suit of metal. Sam grins at me. "These are my babies! I wear them and I just use them to fly around and look absolutely badass. That's why they call me the Falcon. Because I can see everything when I'm up in the sky baby!" Rhodey rolls his eyes, it's clear that he has heard Sam's bragging multiple times before. "Yeah, except for this one time when you flew straight into an ambush and Warmachine had to save your ass, huh?" Sam waves Rhodey's words away. "Those are just insignificant details man!" "Sure, sure." Rhodey points towards the suit. "That's mine, they call it Warmachine. That's because of the insane amount of firepower this bad boy has." When I hear this I take a step closer to Wanda. "I'll keep you safe baby." I hear her say, but if I'm not mistaken her voice sounds a little… Flirty? No, I must have heard it wrong. "Yeah yeah Rhodey, just make sure that Tony doesn't hear you when you talk like that. He still hasn't forgiven you for stealing that suit and claiming it as your own, even though that was years ago." Rhodey just shakes his head. "See you later guys, I'm going to show Lidiya the big boys." Both of them say their farewells and Wanda guides me to a door, leading to the second part of the garage. The minute we enter the other room, I can hear the music being turned up again. Wanda rolls her eyes: "Boys."

Even though I was already impressed when I saw the cars and motorbikes, what I see before me right now is mind blowing: three planes are standing next to each other. They look big and impressive, and it's the first time in my life I see a plane this close by. So that's what that landing strip was for. "Yes milyy." Wanda says, hearing my thoughts. We walk towards the first one, a black one with the same logo on it that was on Daisy's t-shirt. "This is one of the S.H.I.E.L.D.S. planes." I cock my head. "What is Shield?" "I keep forgetting you don't know things like that, sorry. Shield was founded many years ago as an organization to protect the world. This included a lot of things. It could be about protecting the world from an alien attack, an incoming bomb or against someone with special powers, like you and me. Nick Fury was the director, a pretty awesome guy, at one point Shield was known all over the world, and that really was their biggest mistake. It turned out that Hydra had been infiltrating Shield for years, controlling it from the inside out. When they made their coup, Shield fell and became absolutely worthless. Every agent of Shield became a wanted man or woman, hydra made sure of that. Fury then chose Phil Coulson as the man to become the new director and to rebuild Shield from the shadows. The government does know about Shield existing again and that they cut out all of the withered branches, but that's about all they know. Coulson keeps a close eye on everything that happens and he refuses to let Shield grow back into this world renowned organization that it was. He says that it's better to work from the shadows." This was a lot to take in. I grownups talking about a Shield when I was young, but I never really got what it was about. "Is Daisy an agent of Shield?" I ask Wanda and she nods. "Yes, very observant of you to notice that. She is one of Coulson's must trusted agents. She stuck to his side when he lost a lot of people and she was one of the people to help him rebuild Shield. Daisy, together with Agent May and Fitz-Simmons. But you will probably meet them later. This plane is Daisy's, she isn't here permanently so yeah." I gave her a smile. "Thank you for taking the time to explain all that to me." "It's my pleasure milyy." We walk towards the second plane and Wanda points towards it. "This is the Quinjet, she's our baby. And when I say our, I mean the Avengers." It is a dark grey jet and I have to admit that it looks really cool. "What do you guys use it for?" "A lot of things but mostly just as transportation to get to a mission. She does have some neat weapons we can use, but that's not her purpose. They did modify her so she's capable of going to space when we need her to." I laugh at her. "You talk about it like it's a living thing, you know that?" Wanda shrugs. "You'll learn to love her, trust me." We walk over to the third plane, this one has a lot of orange on it. I can hear two people arguing with each other when we walk closer. "Seriously Peter, you got to be kidding me. Rocket will kill you when he finds out you have been messing with the motor of the Milano!" "Rocket has nothing to say about this, the Milano is my ship!" "Your ship? I was pretty sure it became all of our ship when we became the Guardians!" "When we became the Guardians, it gave all of you the luxury of staying at MY ship Gamora!" "Luxury? You have got to be kidding me. This thing only has two beds! Maybe you should concentrate on that instead of the motor, which was working perfectly fine by the way before you needed to mess with it!" Wanda coughs to get their attention, and that seems to be the moment they realize that they are not alone anymore. The woman has green skin and purple hair, and she looks pretty badass. The guy had short dark blonde hair and is wearing a red trench coat. The green skinned woman takes a step towards me and smiles. "I'm Gamora, and this idiot next to me is Peter." "Excuse me, my name is Star Lord thank you very much." Gamora rolls her eyes. "Yeah, Peter it is. Trust me, nobody uses that other name." I can't help but having a weird feeling about the Peter guy, he makes me feel uneasy. "It's very nice to meet you Gamora, I'm Lidiya." Wanda picks up on my emotions and says: "But we really have to get going, I still have a lot more places to show to Lidiya and we don't have that much time anymore! Let's go Lidiya. See you later Gamora, Quill." "See you later Lidiya and Wanda, I'm going to continue knocking some sense into that guy." The two of them turn their attention back to the plane while Wanda and I leave the garage behind us.

The next place she brings me to is the laboratory, and I immediately notice that this must be a big part of the compound because it's absolutely gigantic. I guess I should get used to things being enormous here. The laboratory is filled with tons of equipment and I have no idea what any of them do. That's why I just stand there with my hands behind my back, making sure I don't accidentally destroy something. There are a lot of people at work here, and suddenly a familiar voice says "Oh Wanda! How nice of you to include this to your tour! Nice to see you again Lidiya!" I turn around and see Shuri walking towards us, her dark hair tied into hundreds of braids, and she gives me a big grin. With her hand she waves towards, well, basically everything. "This is where the magic happens! Physics, math, healing and curing people, testing out new theories… Everything that has do to with some kind of science you can find here! Let me introduce you to some people." She walks towards a table where two guys are softly arguing with each other, and I recognize one of them as Bruce. "No Tony, we really can't do that. I mean look at the last time, we almost blew this entire place up." "Yeah Bruce, almost, but it didn't. You know why it didn't? Because we are getting closer to the answer! We have to push through!" Hearing them talk about almost blowing up the compound doesn't exactly make me feel safe. "Stop fighting you two, you sound like an old married couple! Tony, meet Lidiya. Lidiya, meet Tony also known as Iron Man..." "And also known as genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist." Tony finishes Wanda's sentence. She looks at him and says: "Or known as a first class jerk." Tony just laughs, not denying what she just had said. "Hi there kiddo, are you the one who has been living here on my cost?" I move around uneasy, feeling uncomfortable with his words. "Don't worry about it, you're absolutely welcome here!" I let out the breath that I was apparently holding in and take the hand that Tony is offering me. "Pepper's my wife and little Morgan is my everything." He tells me, as if he wants to prove that he really is more than what Wanda has just said. Bruce simply raises his hand and with a shy "Hi Lidiya" he moves his attention back to the book lying in front of him. I wave back at him. "Let's continue and leave these boys to their work shall we. I'm sure they have a lot more arguing to do. Next stop: Fitz-Simmons!" She walks us to a table where a man and a woman are hard at work while having a conversation. When we are close enough I can hear the woman say: "I like to think about the First Law of Thermodynamics. No energy in the Universe is created and none is destroyed—" "—and none is destroyed." The guy says it the same time as she does and I can see both of them getting excited while the woman continues. "That means that every bit of energy inside us, every particle, will go on to be a part of something else. Maybe live as a dragon fish, a microbe, maybe burn in a supernova ten billion years from now. And every part of us now, was once a part of some other thing. A moon, a storm-cloud, a mammoth—" The guy interrupts her with a big grin on his face. "- a monkey!" The woman laughs with his comment. "Yeah Fitz, a monkey." It seems at this point they seem to realize that they are not alone. "Are you done?" Shuri asks them with laugh. "Uhm yeah, sorry, when we get in a flow we just kind of get lost." The woman says with a shy smile. I notice that both of them have the shield logo on their robes, so I assume that they must be here temporary just like Daisy. "I get it, no worries. Just want to introduce you two to Lidiya." Shuri points towards me and I reach for Wanda's hand. She gives me a soft squeeze. "Oh yes of course, it's a pleasure to meet you Lidiya! My name is Jemma Simmons, and this is Fitz." Jemma says with a big smile. Fitz waves to me and I can see that he clearly is just as uncomfortable as I am. I remember Wanda telling me that they helped Coulson rebuild Shield. Jemma takes a step towards me and pulls me into a hug. Immediately I can feel myself stiffen and Wanda can also feel the change in my emotions. "I was so worried when they brought you back from their mission, I feared you wouldn't make it. But look at you, you look great! I'm so glad they found you there and now we can give you a safe place." Her voice sounds so warm and honest that I can't help liking her. She pulls back and gives me another smile. "Fitz, would you mind getting me another coffee?" she asks her companion. "Uhm yeah sure Jemma, be right back." He mumbles before walking out of the room. "Please forgive Fitz, he's an absolute genius but doesn't really do well with new people. He'll open up when he sees you more." Jemma explains to me and I smile. "You two seem really close, how long have you known each other?" "Oh yes, we went to the Shield academy together. We were both 17 at that point, the youngest students ever to join." "So did you make a lot of friends at the academy?" Jemma laughs. "I didn't really find anyone that interesting. Except Fitz. He was clearly the smartest one there." "Were you guys best friends, or were you…?" I don't finish my sentence, pretty sure that she knows what I mean. "We weren't friends. We were enemies. Bitter rivals. Yeah, the two youngest in class, though he is 23 days older than me, for the record. We were so competitive, constantly trying to one-up each other. He hated me. HATED me." "Really?" I ask, I have a hard time imagining this when I have just seen how close they are now. "Yeah, he didn't speak to me! Finally, we were paired together in chem lab, much to our dismay and then we, I don't know, just realized that combined we were twice as smart." I smile at her story when Fitz returns with a cup of hot coffee. "Here you go Jem, just be careful because it's really ho- auw!" While warning her about the temperature, he has poured half of the mug's coffee over his own hands. "Oh Fitz, be careful!" Jemma yells but of course it's already too late. "Oh Fitz, you really are too clumsy. Let me help you." She turns her attention towards him and we see this as our cue to leave. "I'm going to go continue with my work guys, I'll see you tonight!" Shuri says while waving goodbye and off she is.

Wanda and I have left the laboratory and are on our way to the living area. "Jemma is really nice." I tell her with a small smile. "Oh really? Going to run off with another girl so soon?" she teases, clearly loving it when she makes me uncomfortable. "Oh hell no, I'm planning on being your problem a little while longer Maximoff!" She laughs. "I'd like that." While we're on our way to our destination, we pass multiple meeting rooms. Most of them are empty until we come across one where I can see Steve standing, together with some people. The screens are on and I can see two more people on there. "What's going on?" I ask Wanda while I stop walking and just look at the room. Everything is made out of glass but it's soundproof, so I can't hear a word they are saying. "Oh, they are having their monthly meeting, checking up on everything. They check whether there are no safety issues, if hydra is under control, what the new missions should be, stuff like that. I personally think it's rather boring, but Steve loves it. Most of the time he is the only one of the Avengers to join, even though Hill is there to take notes of everything. Oh and sometimes Tony goes, if he actually remembers it." I chuckle at her last words. "Who or what is Hill?" "Maria Hill, she is a top Shield agent. Has been since before it fell to hydra, and she helped rebuilding it. She's not really an Avenger but she is still part of the team. She makes sure that we know as much about the upcoming missions as there is to know and sometimes she joins us on the field. Don't underestimate her, she is much stronger than she looks and her aim is amazing." I look at the woman, she has her brown hair in a ponytail and is wearing a Shield suit, clearly concentrating on the meeting. She does not look like somebody who you want to mess with. Next I turn my attention to two dark skinned people. One is a male who is wearing really nice clothes which look expensive. He has a necklace around his neck and it looks as if there are animal teeth hanging on there. The woman is standing one step behind him. Her head is completely shaven and she is wearing something that looks like traditional clothing. She has a spear in her right hand and her eyes keep going over everything, looking for possible dangers. "That's T'Challa." Wanda says pointing towards the man. "He is the king of Wakanda but he is also part of the team. His alter ego is Black Panther." "Wakanda?" I ask. I have never heard of a place with that name. "Jup. Wakanda is hidden thanks to the barriers they use. Believe it or not but the technology that they use here is beyond imagination. T'Challa gave us some ground close to the border to build our own place on, that way we are far away from the cities so we don't accidentally cause harm. But since it's still Wakandan ground, he is always present on the meetings. Just making sure that there are no problems between all of us. The woman behind him is Okoye, she is chief of the royal guard." I nod. It's a lot of information to take in but I try my best. "You see those two monitors over there? The guy with his eye patch is Nick Fury. Yes, the previous director of Shield. Even though he is no longer part of the organization, he still has eyes and ears everywhere so he is still an important guy. The one on the other screen is Coulson, the present director of Shield. We thought he had died a long time ago, but it turns out that he didn't and he's alive so yeah… There's that. He is a really kind guy though. But let's get going, we are not a part of the meeting." Together we continue our way.

I know we are close to the living area when I can hear a lot of laughter flowing in the hallway. We enter the room and I see a lot of people hanging on and around the couches, Natasha being one of them. She sees me enter and raises her bottle of beer towards me as a matter of greeting. "I don't know who played that card but it's definitely not going to win! Come on, give me some fun replies!" I can hear Rocket yelling. Next to him is sitting a tall tree like creature, that says: "I am groot." "I don't care if you think it's funny Groot, it's my turn to decide!" Rocket replies. "Uhm what are they doing and who is everyone?" I ask, the laughter is making me uncomfortable. Wanda pulls me close. "They are playing cards against humanity it seems, do you know how to play?" I shake my head. "That's okay, we can join them another time. So you have Nat, you already get along with her so there's no further introduction needed. Do you know her nickname is Black Widow by the way?" "No, I didn't know that." "If you want to know more about where it comes from you will have to ask her. Now do you see the guy next to Nat? The one who is serving as her footrest?" I laugh when I see that Natasha has placed both of her legs on his lap, clearly not caring whether he is comfortable or not. "Yeah I see him." "That's Clint, you've already met him remember? He's Natasha's best friend. He is like a brother to her and they care a lot about each other. But not in a romantic way! He is happily married to Laura and they have three kids together. His special talent is being absolutely awesome with a bow and arrow, that's why we call him Hawkeye." I take in all of the information Wanda is giving me and try not to forget anything. "Now on the other side of Natasha you have the blue girl." Apparently the blue girl hears us and she turns her head around, giving Wanda a fuck you finger after which she concentrates on the game again. Wanda chuckles and continues introducing her. "That's Nebula, she is Gamora's sister. Well they are both adopted but that doesn't really matter. She was part of the Guardians of the Galaxy before all of them joined the Avengers, and the Avengers decided to do intergalactic missions as well. I'm not sure what planet she is from but it's not earth." I know that even as a child I never imagined being surrounded by such a bunch of cool people. "Who are the Guardians of the Galaxy?" I ask her. "Ah, of course. It used to be the name of the group that was formed by Peter Quill, Gamora, Drax, Nebula, Rocket and Groot." She says, and while I am trying to see each of their faces in my head she points towards the tree like creature. "That is Groot, but you might have speculated that. Next to Groot is Rocket, you know him, and then we have Thor." "Loki's brother?" I ask and Wanda nods. "Yes exactly." I look at the guy named Thor and I can see a tall and muscular man. A hammer is standing next to him. He has long blond hair and is drinking from his beer as if it is water. "Thor and Loki both come from another planet named Asgard. They live way longer than we do, and they have been around for so long that the people on earth basically see them as gods. And if they are gods, Thor would be god of thunder. Because that's his power, together with wielding that hammer over there." I nod, a sign that I'm still following –kind of- and that she can continue. "And last but not least, between Thor and Clint we have Peter Parker. He's still a teenager and has spider senses, so everybody calls him Spiderman. He doesn't live here, he lives with his aunt May in New York. He's here for the weekend, for now Tony wants him to be 'friendly neighborhood Spiderman' and finish his studies before he becomes a full time Avenger." I look at the circle of people who are so familiar with each other, who consider each other family. It warms my heart but at the same time it gives me a tremendous amount of anxiety. How can I possibly fit in here? "Okay, okay guys I have decided who is going to be the winner! So, 'This month's Cosmo: Spice up your sex life by bringing EXPLOSIONS in the bedroom!'" The raccoon is nearly crying with laughter and almost everybody in the room joins him. "Give it to me rabbit! Another point for the god of thunder!" Thor yells while his fist knocks on the table. It's too much. I cover my ears with my hands, trying to make it quiet again. Wanda immediately notices this and looks at Natasha. I assume that she is probably sending her a message through her mind because within a second Natasha's head turns towards me. She looks at me and then turns back to the group. "If you guys are not going to be quiet within ten seconds, you will have me to deal with." Her voice is calm and steady, but immediately the room turns quiet. "Was that so hard? You should all be embarrassed, you scared the shit out of Lidiya." Everybody turns towards me and I flee into Wanda her arms. "I'm sorry Lidiya, we didn't see you there. Are you okay?" Clint asks. "Of course she's not you moron." Natasha hops out of the couch and walks over to me. "I'll help you get her to her room, let's go." She says to Wanda. Wanda picks me up and I press my face against her chest, inhaling her smell, and I let her movements lull me to sleep.