Let's go do this together

Slowly I wake up, instantly crawling closer to Wanda, who is lying next to me. I don't want to get up just yet, I want to savor this moment a little longer. My nose is pressed against her collarbone, her arms pulling me closer to her, and I'm savoring the warmth that radiates off of her. "Good morning princess." I sigh in contentment when I hear Wanda her voice, there's just something about it that relaxes every muscle in my body. "Mmm." Is the only reply I give and she chuckles, not attempting to make conversation. She just holds me close to her, and it's everything I need at the moment. "Love you." I manage to mumble, sleep still clearly present in my voice. "Right back at you." I smile, I can't help it. A week has passed since I said these words to Wanda, and I've been back in my own room since yesterday night. We talked about it, not that I wanted to. To me it was more something that I had said and now that it's out in the open there was no need for conversation about it. But she insisted on it so we did. I had no expectations so there was no chance for me to be disappointed. Wanda told me that she loves me, but that she wants to take things slow. Not immediately jump into a relationship, just let it go it's own natural way. She explained to me that she doesn't want me to fall for her because she was the one that rescued me, the 'hero syndrome' she called it. She wants to give me the time to see how I really feel, to be sure about what I want and not get mixed up emotions because of the amount of support I have received from her. And even though I wanted to tell her that I am sure about what I feel, her showing that amount of respect for me only made me love her even more. So I agreed. We were not in a relationship, it was like we were dating… Kind off. Without the classic dates people have, and we had already been sleeping together for weeks so yeah… It was complicated. But that's okay, both of us are, so it makes sense that this thing we have is not textbook material. The only thing that really matters is that both of us love each other, and I hope that someday I will get to call her my girlfriend. I smile when I think these last words. "Yes, someday." Wanda agrees with me and when I look at her I can see her eyes are still closed but she has the sweetest smile on her face. "You're not supposed to listen to my thoughts without asking." I mention with a smirk, that statement was utter bullshit of course. "Is that so? Then maybe you should stop thinking so loud." I can't help but laugh. "We should get dressed." "Why?" I ask. Wanda opens one of her eyes and gives me a funny look. "Because I want to take you somewhere and I can't do that with you wearing your pyjama." "Fair enough. Guess you're not going to take me to a pillow fort then." Wanda gets up on one of her elbows and stares at me with an amused face. "A pillow fort Lidiya?" "Yeah, I mean, that place wouldn't need me to get dressed." Wanda falls on her back laughing when she hears my explanation. "If you want to we can make one here some day." I give her a childish smile, it's on purpose. "Yes please! I've never been in a pillow fort before." Wanda takes my hand and gives me a kiss on my fingers. "Neither have I moy lyubov'. It will be a nice first time experience together." I feel a blush crawling over my cheeks and a happy feeling settles in my heart. "So let's get dressed." I tell her and she smiles back at me.

Wanda guides me outside of the compound to where the Quinjet is waiting… for us? I can see Natasha walk towards us, dressed in comfortable clothes. "Good morning lovebirds, I thought you were going to stay in bed forever." I can feel my ears getting red when I hear her words but it's clear that Wanda ignores Nat's comment so I do the same thing. "Nothing wrong with getting a bit of sleep Romanoff, you should try it sometimes." Natasha grins, it's the relaxed expression I have only seen on her face when she's with us. "Maybe I will, I think during the flight is the perfect time, don't you?" Wanda rolls her eyes hearing the comment, after which she turns her attention back on me. "How do you feel about flying?" I raise my shoulders and let them drop. "I have no idea, never been on a plane. Or at least not that I remember." I add, knowing that I must have been on one since they managed to get me all the way from the Hydra facility to Wakanda. "Well there's a first time for everything, let's go." I follow Wanda and Natasha inside, and Nat immediately goes to the controls. "She's not here as a third wheel on our date, she's just the driver so to speak." Curiously I smile at Wanda. "So this is a date then?" This time it's her turn to get red and not know what to say. "Kind of, maybe, I don't know. If you want it to be…" "God you're bad at this Wanda." Natasha laughs when she hears her friend stumble over her own words. Wanda protests but I can't help but agree with the Russian spy. "Fine, this is not my strongest area." Wanda admits after a couple of minutes. "Let's just go, it's not indented as a date but if you want to see it like that afterwards that's fine by me." I give her a quick hug, letting her know that I was only teasing her. "Now put your asses in these chairs and buckle up please, otherwise we're not going anywhere." Natasha orders us. I sit down next to Wanda and copy her movements, tightning myself to the chair. Natasha sits down at the controls, and after she pushed some buttons I can feel the engine coming to live and the loading platform closes. "Ready?" Natasha asks and I nod. Excitement takes over me combined with a little bit of fear. I grab Wanda's hand and she gives me a warm and comforting smile. "Take off in 3, 2, 1…" Natasha pressed the last button and slowly the Quinjet rises in the air. After this Natasha presses some more things and this causes the jet to go up in the air with a lot more force. "Okay, first step completed. Everyone okay there?" I don't manage to answer because the emotions block my throat but I give her a thumbs up. "Good, going to proper flight mode then." Through the window I can see the blasters turn and with a power surge the Quinjet sets off, this causing me to fly back in the seat. Suddenly I understand why it was necessary for me to buckle up.

After about 15 minutes Natasha lets us know that it's safe to walk around. I walk towards one of the giant windows and look outside. We're flying just on top of the clouds as a way to keep the Quinjet out of sight. It doesn't matter, I'm still absolutely amazed by the view, even if it consists out of white puffy looking matter. Wanda joins me and puts a hand on my back, smiling warmly. "I know it's not much of a view, but –" "I love it." I interrupt her. "It gives me such a feeling of freedom." I can hear Natasha hum in approval. "You have all the freedom in the world my dear." I smile when I hear Wanda her words in my head. "As long as you spend it next to me." "Deal." I look into her eyes, the emotions I can read in them are capable of drowning me. I know it. "Hey lovebirds, get a room will ya." I turn towards Natasha, who is sitting in her pilot chair grinning at us instead of paying attention to the sky, and raise one of my eyebrows. "We didn't say anything, and shouldn't you be paying attention?" "You don't need to say anything, and I'm paying perfect attention to what's happenening in front of me." "Tsssk." A sissing sound leaves my lips before I even realize it. "What about, I don't know, the plane and the sky?" A big grin crosses Natasha's face. "Oh that, don't worry, FRIDAY's got everything under control. Isn't that right FRIDAY?" "Yes miss Romanoff, everything is under control." The look that she gives me says 'checkmate', and I know she's right. So I know that what I'm about to do next is very childish but I don't care. I create a little ball of fire in my hand, which I have been holding behind my back, and put all of my energy in it. I throw it towards Natasha and it hits her cheek. However, my control is perfect and it doesn't burn her at all, it just gives her a small shock, not unlike her electric charges. Natasha her eyes open in surprise as she feels her cheek and Wanda bursts out in laughter. I just stand there looking at her with the biggest grin ever on my face, proud of my accomplishment. "You really are a little child Ivanov." She says after which she turns around and puts her attention back on the controls, mumbling something about 'stupid gifted people'. I turn my attention to Wanda and I don't need to use words to tell her how proud I am of myself, and how much I loved shutting Natasha up. She pulls me close to her chest and gives me a kiss on my head. "And you have every right to be proud lyubov'." The next 2 hours pass with me talking to Wanda about absolutely nothing, and it's the most at ease that I have felt in years. She tells me that her favorite color is scarlet red, and when I respond with saying that mine is black, she doesn't give me any of the stupid comments that I always used to get. Stuff like, black isn't a color, or: no wonder you're always that depressed. She just smiles at me and encourages me to continue finding myself. When we get to the point of Wanda sharing with me that she absolutely loves American sitcoms, Natasha tells us to buckle up again because we will be arriving soon. I do as she says and when we finally hit the ground, my conclusion is that I like lift off more than touchdown. "You guys take your time, I'm going to work on finishing some of the paperwork that's due." "You're not joining us?" "Nah, this should be between the two of you. I'll be here for you when you are ready to go back." I smile at her, and when the loading dock opens, I take a hold of Wanda's hand as we leave the plane.

We are at the edge of a forest, and the ground is covered with a little white layer of ice. Even though I'm wearing jeans, a green t-shirt and a black sweater on top of it, it's not enough to keep out the cold, so I shudder. Wanda notices this immediately, of course, and with a snap of her fingers her red magic creates me a warm and comfortable jacked. A scarf, a hat and a pair of gloves follow next. "Don't want you ending up back at the hospital, right? Shuri would never forgive me and I'm sure that Clint would never let me hear the end of it." I smile hearing her words, I don't want to end up in the hospital wing –again- either. With a snap of her fingers she creates the same kind of outfit for herself, and we can hear the loading deck of the Quinjet closing behind us. "Where are we?" I ask, so far I can't think of a reason as to why she brought me to the middle of nowhere. "You'll see, we have to go through the forest. The Quinjet can't land any closer because of the trees. Let's go." Even though I have no idea where I am and everything here is new and scary for me, I take a hold of her hand without any doubt. I'll follow her everywhere. The only sound I can hear right now are birds, the wind and the crushing of our shoes on the ice, it's peaceful. I'm not sure how long we walk like this before we pass the first bunker. I stop and look at it. "Is this from the world war?" I ask her, curious. The history of the world has always intrigued me. "Not really moy devochka (my girl), you'll see soon enough." A sad smile crosses her lips, but I decide to let it slide. It won't kill me having a little patience. I notice that the ground is turning into more of a hill and that we pass even more of those bunkers, some of them being destroyed by an unknown power. After a while the looks of a castle enter my view, and as we get closer I start to realize exactly what castle it is we're walking to. I stop in my tracks and with a shaking voice I ask: "What are we doing here Wanda…" She gives me a soft but comforting squeeze in my hand and looks me straight into my eyes. "Both of us have been through hell in this place, both of our freedom got taken away here. It has always been my plan to visit this place, to look it in the eye and know that it no longer controls me. That I'm no longer a prisoner of its walls and that the horrors that have happened there are part of the past. A past that might have shaped me into who and what I am today, but not a past that will control me." I take a moment to let her words sink it, just staring at the dark walls of the prison in hell. "Why haven't you?" It's as if Wanda get's snapped out of her own thoughts by my voice, because she asks me to repeat my question with a confused look on her face. "You said it has always been your plan to visit it, why haven't you done it until now?" It's Wanda's turn to think about my words and to think about how she should say what she wants to say. "I have." She starts walking again and after a moment of hesitation I decide to follow her. "What do you mean?" Wanda sighs and she turns her head to face me, slowing down her walking pace while doing so. "Almost a year ago I decided that I was strong enough to go look for this place. To come back here, to come face to face with the past that has created me. As far as the Avengers knew, after getting the Hydra vermin to leave this place and after the battle against Ultron, this castle has been empty, only filled with haunted memories. When I got back here I was expecting to find a wilted building, after all, 9 years can do quite some damage. But when I entered the forest I could feel that something wasn't right. The only energy I was supposed to feel was that of the forest animals, but I could feel more, so much more. I could feel the energy pattern that's specific to humans, and when I got closer to the castle I could see the guards on the walls. It didn't take long before I realized what had happened. We had been so busy fighting the battles all over the world, that we didn't even think about checking whether Hydra had not come back to this place. Because it turned out that they did. For a couple of months some of SHIELD's shadow agents were keeping an eye on this place, watching who was going in and out –and trust me, almost nobody came out. When we managed to get enough information on this place to risk an attack, well, that's when we found you." I'm quiet. We keep walking in silence, it's a lot of information to take in. It was because of Wanda her need for closure that I had been found. "Thank you…" I whisper quietly, but Wanda scoffs. "This is not something you need to thank me for Lidiya. This never should have happened, if we had done our job properly you wouldn't have been captured. The experiments they did on you, the people killed for nothing… All of this is on us." I can feel the sadness, desperation and guilt waving off of her and without hesitation I pull her into a hug. "It's not, Wanda you know it's not. If someone kills somebody and you don't manage to protect that person, that doesn't make you the killer. It stills makes the killer the killer… If you know what I mean. All these years, you were doing other good things. Great things. Saving the world on multiple occasions. If you would have had any idea about what was happening here I know you would have stopped it, just like you did now." Wanda leans against me and I can feel her shaking, and that's when I realize that she was crying. In all these months of knowing her, I've never seen her cry. Not for real. I just pull her even closer, I let my senses drown in what is Wanda Maximoff. Her smell, her touch, her being… Everything. "Let's go do this together." I whisper in her ear, and I can see a very small smile on her face. "Together."