"You remember how to play?"

"Of course."

~~~

One month earlier, Wanda was tucked under Clint's arm, being led into the living room of the Avengers facility. She was unfamiliar with the layout. She'd avoided places like the living room for fear of being forced into human interaction. She still didn't feel particularly safe at the Avengers facility, not with Tony Stark around.

Thankfully, the room was empty except for Natasha. The Black Widow was sitting on the edge of the couch, twirling a red pen through her fingers like a tiny baton. She offered Clint a smile when she saw him, and her eyes fell on Wanda.

Wanda offered her best attempt at a smile, though her eyes watered when she tried to meet the woman's gaze. She forced down the urge to hide behind Clint. She was already half hidden, pressed against his side.

Clint was one of the only people who could get close enough to touch her.

Clint was one of the only people who seemed to want to.

"Hey, Tasha, game of chess? I was gonna show Wanda how to play." Clint's words caught Natasha's attention, and she finally lifted her heavy stare from Wanda.

"Why not," she said with a shrug. "I've got about an hour before I have to leave."

Soon, Wanda was seated on the wide couch beside Clint, Natasha having moved to take the chair opposite the table between them. Wanda had never paid much attention to the chess set on the table, but now examined it.

There were two colours of pieces on the board. One set was brown, the other was a pale blonde, and they were both made out of some sort of glossy wood. Each set had a row of identical short pieces and a second back row of more unique pieces.

She'd admitted to Clint that the only "board" game she'd ever played was card games, and he had immediately convinced her that she should learn to play chess. So here she was.

"So, normally in chess, the pieces are black and white. This set, however, was hand carved by yours truly." Clint dramatically gestured to himself, earning an eyeroll from Natasha and a faint smile from Wanda. "The brown wood stands in for black and the tan wood stands in for white. White always goes first."

He gestured towards Natasha, who was sitting on the side with the white pieces. "So, Natasha will go first when we play. The goal of chess is to take out your opponent's king and take other pieces out along the way. Easy so far, right?"

She nodded faintly, unwilling to look up from the board in case she met Natasha's stare again.

"So, the first rows on each side, the eight identical pieces, those are pawns. They can only move forward one space at a time, except for their first turn, where the player can choose to move them forward two spaces. Pawns can only take other pieces that are diagonal from them, and they can't move backwards."

She nodded when he looked down at her, silently questioning if she had understood. Thus, he plowed on.

"The second row, going from the outside to the inside, has the castle, the knight, the bishop, and the king and queen. Castles are easy, they can only move in straight lines, but for however many they want until they take an enemy piece or are stopped by an ally piece. Bishops are the same except that they can only move in diagonal lines."

Again, Wanda nodded silently when he looked to her. He continued.

"The knights are harder to understand. They can make any variation of a four block 'L' shaped move, and can even hop over other pieces. They have to land on a piece to take it." He demonstrated for this piece, instead of just pointing to it. He moved it in several L shaped variations. "And then there's the king and queen."

She focused on the two unique pieces, side by side. She couldn't tell which of them was which until Clint did it for her.

"This," he said, tapping on the tallest piece, crowned with a cross, "is the king. It can only move one square, but in any direction. It can't ever move into a check position, and all of the other pieces have to protect it. If your opponent's pieces get it stuck and there's no way to stop it from being taken, it's called checkmate."

Clint's grin was wide as he picked up the last piece. "This is the queen. The single-most powerful piece in chess. It can move in any direction, any distance, until it takes or hits another piece. Even though it can't jump like the knight, it's still the most valuable piece on the board. Loosing your queen doesn't necessarily mean you'll lose---."

"But it sure as hell makes it harder to win," Natasha said, and Wanda glanced up to see her grinning slyly at Clint, who rubbed his hands together and grinned cheekily back.

"Think you get it?" He asked her, and she yet again nodded. "Tasha and me, we've played a lot of chess together. Good thing I've got you here as a good luck charm."

That caused her to blink. She'd never been called anything of the sort. If anything, people avoided her like a black cat. Or at least, she avoided other people.

Clint and Natasha played for nearly thirty minutes, and their pacing was wild. They would go from lightning fast capturing of each others' pawns to slow consideration on moves for minutes at a time. In the end, Clint had one castle, his queen and king, and a single pawn who was stuck face to face with one of Natasha's own.

Natasha, on the other hand, had both bishops, one knight, several pawns, and her royal couple. She had started to smile when she took Clint's castle, but it was short lived. In a matter of moves, Clint's queen had darted around the board and he'd crowed "checkmate" to his partner.

The pair had exchanged several taunts over the game, but Natasha seemed to be a gracious looser. She had shaken her head in exasperation at Clint's celebratory dance, which looked to be an imitation of both a headless chicken and a stampeding horse. "He's just excited because he rarely wins."

Wanda felt exposed and vulnerable without Clint next to her, especially with Natasha speaking directly to her. She ducked her head, allowing her hair to swing forward.

"My good luck charm saved me," Clint had said as he came to sit back down beside her. She managed to return his happy smile.

~~~

"You sure? It's been a while since we played." Clint gave her a wink. "Wouldn't want you claiming ignorance as your way out."

"Trust me," she said, smiling proudly. "I remember."

He gave her an appraising look. "If that's the case... your move."

The game began, Wanda making careful moves. She was quite excited when she managed to take one of Clint's bishops, and it didn't seem like it had been a calculated loss, which brightened her spirits even more. The victory was short lived when his castle decimated half of her pawns, but she was proud of the taken bishop that sat beside the board.

She was so focused that she didn't remember their audience. When she moved her queen forward and called out her first "check," there was a short round of applause from Natasha, and an appreciative noise from Vision. Even if Clint's king easily dodged it, she kept her queen tailing him.

The game culminated in an epic fault on her part. She wasn't careful enough with her queen and Clint's king took it when it got too close, and her knight wasn't able to move to take out Clint's own before a checkmate ensued. By that point, both sides of the table were littered with taken pieces, almost equally brown and tan.

Clint offered his hand to her across the table, grinning. "Good game," he told her.

She reached out and took it, smiling back. "Good game," she replied as they shook hands.

"My turn," Natasha announced, and promptly booted Clint out of the chair. Wanda instantly recoiled, slightly terrified of facing the Black Widow in anything, but Clint wandered over to her side and plopped down on the couch beside her.

"We can team up, Wanda, don't worry."

"Chess is not a team game," Natasha said, but Clint stuck out his tongue at her.

As she had expected, Natasha steamrolled her, but she actually found herself enjoying the match, especially with the two agents explaining strategies and special moves to her while they played. It was more informative than the last match, which had been fun and lighthearted.

It came as a surprise to the three of them when Vision asked if he could face the Black Widow in a game. She shrugged, glancing at the clock. "Steve and Sam should be back soon, fittings are at three. We've got time for another game."

Wanda and Clint scooted down on the couch, giving Vision room to face off against Natasha. They both watched as the board was reset, and the battle began.

Vision went first, and the initial moves made by both of them were swift and sure, but it soon became much slower and more thoughtful as they both strategized. Natasha was pulling all of the special moves she had in her game with Wanda, but Vision wasn't nearly as clueless. He parried several of her more dangerous moves, seeming unfazed by the Widow's best attempts.

Eventually, the death toll began to raise. Both sides of the table were once again covered with taken pieces, nearly equal losses on both sides. The match had become something intense, with furrowed brows and long periods of concentration before each move was made.

She found herself watching Vision carefully as he played. She took note of how his eyes dancing across the board, how he folded his hands after each move. How the yellow gem in his forehead pulsed with light occasionally.

By the time Sam and Steve walked in at 2:45, Sam breathless and sweaty, Steve looking slightly windswept, the game had gotten really intense. Natasha and Vision each had so few pieces left, just queens and kings and trapped pawns. The two boys quickly and quietly excused themselves for quick showers before fittings.

Even by the time they returned, just five minutes before three, the game still hadn't finished. Almost everyone jumped when Vision finally broke the silence. "I believe we have reached a stalemate, Agent Romanoff."

Everyone was a bit surprised by this news, but the two players did indeed seem to be out of moves. There was a brief moment of silence before Natasha offered her hand to Vision, repeating Clint's words from the first and second games. "Good game, Vision."

"Likewise, Agent Romanoff," Vision replied, shaking hands with the Widow just as James Rhodes entered the scene, leading a literal troupe in behind him.

"Sorry to interupt," he said. "The prep team's here."

Everyone was moving forward to greet Rhodes and the team when Clint tapped her on the shoulder and led her back through the kitchen, snagging a large, bulky yellow envelope off of the counter as he shepherded her just through the doors into the hallway.

They swung shut, cutting off some of the sound from the living room, and Clint smiled. "Didn't want to forget about this in all of the hullabaloo out there." He handed it to her.

She was surprised by how light it was, despite the large size, and carefully tore the top open. Glancing inside, she saw several electronics.

"Phone, laptop-tablet, communication equipment, chargers. All of it comes with unlimited data, super compact size, all that jazz." He crossed his arms, leaning against the doorframe. "Would have had them to you earlier, except I sent them in for a search. Made sure that there was no spyware, from friend or foe."

She met his eyes and her stomach twisted as she pulled out the phone, which was lightweight and had the Stark Industries logo on the back. "Stark," she said quietly.

"No matter what, you know you can count on him," Clint said. "He might be a giant ass a lot of the time, but he's loyal as hell and you can usually trust him. I didn't find any kind of added technology on any of it, from anyone."

The knots in her gut untied, realizing that she had overreacted and had been swift to assume the worst of Stark. Even now that she knew that her parents' deaths hadn't been his direct fault, she still harbored a grudge against him. He didn't get the name "Merchant of Death" from being a saint.

Then again, she wasn't exactly a saint herself.

She shoved those thoughts away, meeting Clint's eyes. "Thank you," she said softly. "I really appreciate it. I appreciate everything you've done for me, I know I don't deserve any of it."

He waved a hand in the air as if to brush away the words. "We all do stupid shit as kids. I don't have a clean record either, kid. What matters is change, and you're changing a lot." He wrapped her in a hug.

Wanda hadn't had a father figure in her life since she was a young girl. The scientists from HYDRA hadn't come anywhere close, she had no relatives, and her own father was, of course, dead. But Clint, the father of three, just exuded dad jokes and fatherly love, and she had no idea how she had been lucky enough to be a receiver of it.

"Go on," he said after she had pulled back. "You've got time to go stash those in your lair. I'll cover for you." He winked and pushed back through the doors and she couldn't help but smile at him.

It was really, really wonderful to have Clint back.

~~~

AUTHOR'S NOTE

~~~

If you hate chess, I really, really apologize. Chess was not supposed to take up 1500 words of this chapter. It will, however, be a largely revisited plot point and have some emotional symbolism.

If you hate flashbacks, I also apologize. I think it was a needed showing of how Wanda has gotten a bit more comfortable with human (Avenger) interaction.

If you liked this chapter, BE SURE TO BERATE ME TO WRITE MORE, cuz dear lord do I procrastinate. If I had a Pokemon move, it would be Procrastinate. I'm doing pretty well, with three good(?) chapters out in a pretty short period of time.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed. The next chapter will detail costume fittings and stuff, and also feature some side characters you might recognize. I don't watch Agents of SHIELD anymore so it might be inaccurate as heccc. Oh well.

~~~