WinterWitch: Control

Chapter 31

Wanda POV

"I leave you all alone for five minutes and it all goes to shit, huh?" Tony remarked, gesturing to the broken comms device laying on the table. J.A.R.V.I.S was running some kind of scan on it to see if there was anything we could retrieve.

I brought my hand up to massage the bruises on my neck. 'Can't get a collar that big' I thought to myself. It had been an hour since the fight, half an hour since I woke. My first thoughts were of Clint.

As soon as my eyes opened, I quickly pushed to sit myself up. I blinked as I tried to adjust my focus and saw Clint shaking his head. He was sitting beside me in the medical bay.

"Take it slow, take it slow," he chastised, placing his hand on my shoulder. I sighed and took his advice, slowly shifting my body to sit next to him.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "He didn't mean it."

I felt my eyes swell with tears as Clint brought me into his side for comfort. "I know."

After speaking to me and dropping me to the meeting, he went to stay by Natasha at her cubicle. She still hadn't woken up yet and was in isolation, her body being observed and blood being extracted to review whether she had control of herself. It was scary to think she was influenced by someone else like that. She wouldn't have betrayed us. Right? I needed to seek her out after this discussion and figure out what the hell was going on with her, but first...

"Shut up, Tony." Pepper emerged through the meeting room doors with a box of doughnut. She quickly walked over to Tony and shoved one of the treats into his mouth to keep him quiet. He frowned as his fiancé, but started to eat the doughnut with joy nevertheless.

Hill flicked the pen in her hand and spoke: "Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do about Barnes? This can't be allowed to continue."

"I feel bad talking without him being here," Steve noted, leaning back in his chair.

"With all due respect, he could kill someone, Steve." All eyes shot to Maria who didn't seem phased by the attention; even Tony stopped eating. Steve seemed to recoil slightly like he'd just taken a jab. Unlike the Captain, I felt anger boil in my chest at her suggestion, even though part of me knew she was right. Hill sighed and stood up, placing her hands on the table. "Look, Stark put me in charge of you all. But I also have a duty to everyone else on this base. I need to make sure they're safe too."

Her argument was fair. I think I was just desperate for a solution to all of this, an impossible problem. Hopefully not completely impossible.

"So...suggestions that don't include locking him in the basement?" Tony asked having finished his doughnut. He licked the sugar off his fingertips and I frowned, feeling the sudden craving for sugar. Reading my mind, Sam slid the doughnuts box to me and I winked at him gratefully.

As I brought the doughnut up to my mouth, I realised everyone was looking at me, not just Sam. I slowly took a bite and chewed in suspicion, watching the others. "What?" I asked, my voice muffled slightly by fried, sugary dough.

"If anyone is going to have a good suggestion, it's going to be you," Stark commented, probably one of the nicest remarks he had made since I joined the team. I smiled momentarily as I put doing the snack and tilting my head as I thought back to earlier.

"It's me, you did it, oh my goodness." I clasped my hand over my mouth and grinned, watching as he took a deep breath. "Are you alrigh-"

Suddenly, he grabbed my throat and pushed me against the wall, my head slamming into the brickwork. My eyes widenned as I stared down at him, my vision dizzy for a second. All emotion was gone and the Soldier was there.