Word count: 2339

~>)/|\(<~

The first time the reborn Pietro saw Wanda, she was smiling.

    She was sitting on the ground in the living room while two children taught her how to play a game called 'Sorry!'. She had a bandage wrapped around her arm with a little blood soaked through, but she was otherwise quite well. She looked... happy. Every once in a while, someone would say something and she would visibly zone out, but she didn't seem to be struggling with much. Pietro knew that she was a lousy actress, that the smile she put on was very different from her genuine smiles. This smile was something new. It seemed like a mix of the two, like she was trying to convince someone she was happy while she actually kind of was.

    The first time the reborn Pietro saw Wanda, he didn't know who she was smiling for.

    Later on that week, as Wanda faced different emotions, he had seen her light a candle. He had seen her speak to the candle and cry, but she was still smiling through her tears. He could read her lips sometimes and saw the familiar shapes they make whenever she says his name. She also saw her apologize a couple times before slowly calming down. It became obvious that she still had no idea how to function in grief. She wasn't used to having time to mourn someone.

    This time, it was obvious who she was smiling for.

    As he kept watching her, Stella managed to scout out the team, tell the weak links. She was waiting for the right day to strike. Both of them were supposed to be, but Pietro was looking for enemies instead. Wanda had had several arguments with the others, ones which would usually make Pietro hate the others, but she kept insisting on being alone. Pietro knew what she wanted wasn't seclusion. He wanted to come and tell her what she really wanted.

    He knew she wanted to feel safe.

    Pietro watched the car leave the house. He saw her tearstained face from his hiding spot in the wood surrounding the house on two sides. He had seen her scream at the people who she was staying with and most importantly, he had seen them try to stop her from leaving. He had seen earlier when Steve put the jacket over Wanda's shoulders and how uncomfortable she had been. While Steve was right, he did want Wanda to wear it if she was cold, he didn't like how Wanda reacted. He had seen her stop struggling, and he had seen how terribly she was coping.

    He had seen her method of moving on.

    More importantly, he had seen this method fail her.

    The Avengers retired inside to talk this over, but Pietro and Stella took this opportunity to make up a game plan.

    "I can go in tonight. You can watch your sister, make sure she doesn't come back for a while."

    Pietro just shook his head.

    "What? Why?" Stella asks, shocked. "You can take care of her from far away, I know that's what you want to do. What if she gets hurt?"

    Stella had been listening to Pietro's worries. He would constantly mutter about his sister under his breath, silently wondering how she would fare and if she would hurt herself.

    "I can't."

    "What?" She was completely confused.

    "I can't go after her alone, Stella," he gently takes the blonde's hand. "I'll tell her. She'll see me."

    Stella glances him up and down and sighs, "Pietro, I'm going to go in there tomorrow. You will have to stake out if you're not going with her."

    Pietro just purses his lips before Stella walks off, going back to the jet.

    The next day, as promised, Stella was going to go to the house. Wanda was not back by noon, so that was when Stella decided to come in. After giving herself a couple cuts and bruises and ripping some of her clothes, she looked as if she had gotten lost in the woods and had been wandering for a day or so. Pietro seemed distracted as he helped her, which Stella understood. She told him to make sure nobody saw him before slowly emerging from the woods, a smile creeping onto her face. This felt wrong to do. It felt wrong to make herself known. She had been stalking these people from a distance for so long... the thought of needing to talk to them almost made her panic.

    She slowly makes her way to the house, pursing her lips nervously. A conversation was going on inside and it seemed heated; someone mentioned vision coming or having a vision or something of the matter, but this seemed to be a controversial remark. She moves to knock before the conversation ends with a 'someone's here'. The door opens suddenly.

    "Who are you?" A redhead asks, looking Stella up and down suspiciously. Stella doesn't manage to say anything, freezing up. She takes a slow step back, panic setting in again. Without another word, someone else, a man this time, steps in front of the redhead.

    "Excuse her, we're all just a little high strung..." a tall, muscly man whom she identified as Steve said. "Are you lost?"

    "Uh..." Stella nods slowly. She calmed down a bit. She could no longer hear her heartbeat in her ears. She swallows the nervous lump in her throat. "Yeah. I am..."

    "What's your name?" Steve asks.

    "Stella," she replies easier this time. She was quickly getting used to these people. The fear was fading from her chest.

    "Who's at the door?" A voice from inside calls. "If it's the Girl Scout again—"

    "It's not," the redhead, whom Stella had quickly realized was, in fact, the assassin Natasha Romanoff, says. "It's a woman. She's lost."

    "Yeah... is there any way I could come in?" Stella asks. "I'll be out of your hair soon-"

    "No, that's not necessary. You can sleep on the couch if you want," Steve says. Stella nods before Steve steps to the side, inviting her in nonverbally. Stella steps in and looks around, seeing all of the people whom she had waited years to meet. Ever since 2012... she stuffs her clenched fists in her pocket to keep from doing anything at the moment. She felt her chest burn with a mix of rage and sadness and kept looking around for a moment. This was not what she expected. It was awkward, there was a tragic air around. Stella suspected it was because Wanda had left, but she hadn't expected everyone to be so affected.

    She clears her throat and goes into the couch, sitting down and looking around. She wished they could begin a conversation, but people were just murmuring.

    "Do you believe her?" Clint whispers to Tony. "I don't trust her. Why did she come today, of all days? The day after Maximoff left. It's too much of a coincidence."

    They didn't think she could hear, but alas, she could.

    "Do we really have a choice, here?" Tony responds. "What else are we gonna do? We're fifteen miles out of town and she took the car. I have my suit, but we have no other mode of getting her somewhere. We can't just kick her out."

    "Why not?" Romanoff asks, not bothering to whisper. "I don't trust her. Kick her out."

    "Natasha!" Clint shouts before returning to a whisper. "Don't talk about someone like that when they can hear you."

    Stella didn't find this offensive. She found it to be an opportunity for empathy, make them feel pity or guilty for her. She had seen it as effective to appeal to empathy in the small ways in order to convince someone that you have no malicious intent. She stood up slowly and said, "It... It's okay. I didn't expect to even be let in... I know when I'm not welcome, I'll just go."

    Tony shakes his head, "You don't have to leave. You didn't do anything. Natasha here is just being ridiculous."

    "I'm not being ridiculous, I'm being careful. You should try it sometime," the redhead retorts.

    Tony sighs, "Natasha, just-"

    "If she kills one of you, I'm going to say I told you so," she says, oddly without spite on her tongue. She was saying such threatening words without a threatening tone. Natasha then turns and walks away. "I'm going to keep trying to track down Wanda. If you guys want to become friends with the strange lady who came out of the woods, be my guest."

    She kept walking, the sound of her light footsteps slowly fading until the sound was replaced by a door closing. Silence then ensued.

    Stella was intrigued by the woman. She had, yes, made things difficult, but... the manner in which she did to pique her interest. She started to walk after where Natasha had gone, curious. The blonde had seemed to rub her the wrong way almost instantly.

    She gently pulls her hand up and knocks on the door of the room which the redhead was in. None of the others had warned her, exactly, but they had given her a concerned expression. She wonders why for a moment before she hears the woman inside say, "The door isn't locked. There's nothing stopping you from opening the door."

    "I figured you wouldn't want me to enter," Stella says as she opens the door. Natasha stands up from the desk at which she sat slowly, sighing.

    "I don't. I'm just saying, you shouldn't bother to knock. There's no reason," she still had a reserved and almost calm expression as she crosses her arms over her chest.

    "Why don't you trust me?" Stella asks. "You don't even know me..."

    "Exactly," Natasha says, looking her up and down. "How did you get in the woods?"

    "Me and my friends were out drinking last night. I blacked out and woke up... I would say a mile away, but I'm not sure exactly how far that is or how far I walked," Stella says. "I passed about a million trees and a stream... if that lowers it down."

    Natasha smiles softly at that, finding the apparent boneheadedness of this girl to be kind of adorable. She then looks back at her and says, "What's your name again?"

    "Stella," she says, smiling a little before she sat on the bed in Natasha's room. "Well— technically, it's Julianna. Nobody calls me that."

    "Julianna," Natasha smiles to herself. "You look like a Julianna. If nobody calls you that, I'll be the first one. What's your last name?"

    "What are you, a lawyer?" Stella asks with a chuckle before making up a fake last name for herself. Her real last name was Oliver, which was her mother's last name. People always called her mom Frankie Oli. She never knew why they even bothered to call her by her last name if they would just end up shortening it anyways. Her mind immediately went to her mom's boyfriend, Kyle Stevenson. She decided to take his name. The whole thought process only amounted to a moment of simple forgetfulness. "Stevenson. With a V."

    "Well, Julianna Stevenson-with-a-V, what are some other things you think might be important to tell me?" Natasha asks. At this point, Stella had realized that she had made a mistake. Natasha was interrogating her.

    "I don't know," she shrugs. "I'm an only child. Is that important?"

    She was not. She was one of four kids, the only girl. She was also the second-youngest. However, her little brother lives with her father and her older brothers were already out of the house by the time she reached kindergarten. She was raised almost like an only child, she liked to think.

    "Really?" Natasha asks. "Where did you go to college?"

    "College, are you kidding?" Stella asks, continuing to pepper in the truth about little things while maintaining her lie. "I go drinking in the woods, is that really the crowd you think I'd fall in with?"

    Romanoff shrugs, though the smug smile on her face was slowly fading. She was starting to believe Stella, and that was the last thing she wanted. She hated to be wrong, and to be wrong about something like this would be an insult to her training.

    "I suppose not," she concedes. Stella let go the breath she didn't realize she was holding.

    "So... now can we have a normal human conversation?" Stella asks.

    "Yeah," the assassin puts on a smile again. She was supposed to be relieved, right? This girl didn't seem to be anything really. She had paused before saying her last name. A great trained spy or assassin would have just said it instantly. Natasha decided to look her up, later on, see if she was who she claimed to be. For now, though, she decided to maybe give this girl a chance. She seemed nice enough to become friends with and naive enough to actually get lost while doing what she claimed to be doing. She wasn't airtight, but no true story is. "So... do you have any topics we can talk about?"

    "We can talk about you," Stella says. "What's your story?"

    "Believe me, you don't care about my backstory. It's not all that interesting."

    Bullshit. Stella knew Natasha's backstory through and through. She knew everything about her. They didn't have much to read in the camp excluding files and Stella adored going through the files of the famed Black Widow. Hers were honestly the most interesting case files she ever got to read; there may have been more interesting ones, but she didn't have the clearance for them. Hell, she didn't even have clearance to read her own files.

    "Well, surely you can think of something?" She asks. "Any interesting stories? Any fun facts about you?"

    Natasha shakes her head, "Stella, not everything is interesting. Some people lead boring lives."

    "Well, what about the girl who left? Any interesting stories about her?"

    Natasha shrugs, though she seemed more relaxed about that topic, "They're not my stories to tell, but they're pretty interesting. Get comfortable, I'll tell you a bit about her."

~>)\|/(<~

A/N: We're finally introducing Stella into the main household.

I just finished writing chapter 10 and I've decided to implement a new romance but since I haven't yet introduced said romance nor any chemistry and since said characters haven't even met yet, I'm not putting it in the description for a long while, until the characters actually meet and have an opportunity to have a little chemistry.

This book is really small right now and I'm really proud of it thus far! Please tag someone you think would enjoy it or, alternatively, leave some suggestions on how to make the story or storytelling better.