Chapter 26: Pantry Confessions
The morning dawned clear and cool, the kind of Ohio day that felt like a fresh sheet on a bed. Melina was in the chicken coop, her hands automatically scattering feed, her mind a thousand miles away—or more precisely, six feet away, in the farmhouse, where Wanda Maximoff was presumably still asleep.
The memory of last night’s silent exchange was a splinter in her brain. She’d replayed it on a loop during the sleepless hours: her hand in Natasha’s hair, the weight of Wanda’s gaze, the terrifying sense of being known. She’d built a life here on calculation and control, brick by brick. Wanda had glanced at it and seen the blueprint.
“They’re judging you, you know.”
Melina started, feed scattering from her bucket. Yelena leaned against the coop door, a piece of straw between her teeth, her eyes shrewd.
“The chickens?” Melina recovered, bending to scoop the spilled feed. “Their standards are low. Grain, water, no foxes.”
“Not the chickens,” Yelena said, her voice dropping from its usual teasing lilt to something softer. “Them. In there.” She nodded toward the house. “They think you don’t like her.”
Melina froze. “That is absurd.”
“Is it? You get all… tight. Like a wire. Whenever she does anything nice. Or looks at you. Or breathes in your direction.” Yelena pushed off the doorframe and walked in, scratching one of the hens under its beak. “Natasha notices. Wanda definitely notices.”
“My temperament is consistent,” Melina stated, a weak defense even to her own ears.
Yelena just hummed, a non-committal sound that conveyed profound disbelief. “She fixed the tractor, by the way.”
“What?”
“The tractor. The one with the wonky steering. Wanda went out to the barn before dawn. Nat found her there with her hands glowing, all the metal parts floating around her like a puzzle. Put it all back together. Purrs like a kitten now.” Yelena watched her closely. “She said she heard you complaining about it yesterday. Wanted to help.”
A wave of something hot and unbearable washed through Melina. She saw it in her mind: Wanda in the shadowy barn, lit by her own scarlet energy, performing a miracle for a mundane machine. For her. The gesture was so profoundly, stupidly kind it felt like an assault. In the Red Room, kindness was a vulnerability, a currency with no value. Here, it was a weapon that disarmed her completely.
“She should not have wasted her power,” Melina said, her voice strained.
Yelena’s smirk was back. “Tell her that.”
Breakfast was a boisterous affair. Natasha, buzzing from the farm’s familiar energy and the secret knowledge of the repaired tractor, was full of stories. Wanda listened, a small, private smile on her lips as she pushed eggs around her plate. She wore one of Natasha’s old sweatshirts, the sleeves too long, covering her hands. It was an intimacy that screamed.
“…and then Clint just fell right into the fountain,” Natasha finished, grinning.
Wanda laughed, the sound warm and rich. “He claims he was pushed.”
“He was,” Natasha and Yelena said in unison.
Wanda’s eyes flicked to Melina. “Do you miss it? The field work?”
The question was a landmine in the soft earth of casual conversation. Natasha and Yelena went quiet.
Melina sipped her coffee. “I miss the clarity. A mission has parameters. Success or failure. Here…” She gestured vaguely at the window, at the sprawling, untamed land. “The feedback loop is longer. Less defined.”
“But more real,” Wanda said softly. Her gaze was steady, clear. “You built this. It’s not a cover. It’s a life. That’s powerful.”
Again, that feeling of being seen, of having her own quiet pride reflected back at her with understanding. Melina’s knuckles were white around her mug. “It is maintenance. Nothing more.”
“Everything is maintenance,” Wanda countered, her tone light but her words carrying weight. “Relationships. Homes. Ourselves. The work is never done, but that’s the point, isn’t it? The tending.”
Natasha reached under the table, her hand finding Wanda’s thigh. A simple, possessive touch. But she was looking at Melina, her expression unreadable.
Later, they walked the south fence line checking for breaks. Natasha and Yelena ranged ahead, bickering amiably about the best way to patch a post. Melina and Wanda followed in a silence that was neither comfortable nor hostile, but charged, like the air before a storm.
“Thank you,” Melina finally said, the words wrestled from some deep, rusty place inside her. “For the tractor.”
Wanda glanced at her, a slight surprise in her green eyes. “It was nothing.”
“It was not nothing. It was a significant expenditure of your energy for a trivial problem.”
“It wasn’t trivial to you.” Wanda stopped walking, turning to face her. The wind played with strands of her brown hair. “You provide this place. This peace. For her. For Yelena. For me, when I’m here. The least I can do is fix the tractor.”
Melina stared at her. The programming from a lifetime ago screamed at her to deflect, to deconstruct the sentiment, to find the angle. “You talk about tending,” Melina heard herself say. “Is that what you are doing with Natasha? Tending?”
Wanda’s expression softened, but her eyes grew more intense. “I love her. Tending is part of that. But it’s also… indulging. Celebrating. She has spent so much of her life being a tool for others. With me, she gets to be…” Wanda searched for the word, a faint blush coloring her cheeks. “She gets to be Natalie. Her wants, her needs, her pleasures… they are the mission now.”
The directness was staggering. It was an offering, a glimpse into a private world. Melina knew, abstractly, of the dynamic. Natasha had hinted at it, had shyly, proudly, called Wanda ‘Mommy’ in her presence once. But to hear Wanda speak of it with such reverent practicality undid her.
“She calls you…” Melina couldn’t finish.
“She does,” Wanda affirmed, no shame, only a quiet, potent confidence. “And I take care of her. Completely.”
Ahead, Natasha laughed at something Yelena said, the sound carefree and bright, carrying on the wind. Wanda watched her, a look of such profound, unguarded love on her face that it stole the air from Melina’s lungs. It was the look Melina had always wanted to inspire and protect, the look Natasha had never gotten from her own fabricated childhood.
“You are good for her,” Melina said, the admission torn from her, raw and true.
Wanda turned back to her. “She worries about you, you know. That you’re lonely out here.”
“I have the animals.”
“You have a routine,” Wanda corrected gently. “That’s not the same thing.”
The fence check was forgotten. The world had narrowed to this patch of long grass, the two of them standing too close, the lines between mother-figure and something else perilously thin.
“What are you suggesting?” Melina’s voice was a dry whisper.
Wanda took a half-step closer. The scent of her—ozone and vanilla and power—washed over Melina. “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just… observing. You spend so much time ensuring everyone else is rooted. Who tends your roots, Melina?”
It was too much. The insight was a laser cutting through every layer of armor. Melina took a sharp step back, her boot crunching on a fallen branch. The sound was like a gunshot in the tension.
“We should catch up to the girls,” she said, the old, cold façade slamming back into place so fast it made her joints ache.
Wanda simply nodded, that knowing, infuriatingly gentle look still in her eyes. “Of course.”
As they walked, the distance between them feeling like a chasm, Melina replayed Wanda’s words. Who tends your roots?
A treacherous, wild part of her mind, a part buried under decades of frost, whispered a single, impossible answer. The answer walked beside her, her hands tucked into the too-long sleeves of Natasha’s sweatshirt, her power humming just beneath her skin, quiet as a heartbeat.