Chapter 4: The Training Room Test
The days blurred into a rhythm of sleep, broth, and the quiet scrutiny of Tony Stark’s machines.Her ribs were knitting, the deep ache receding into a stiffness that only flared when she moved wrong. Tony had upgraded her to solid food—a bland, nutrient-dense paste he called “industrial gunk”—and had stopped hovering every second. The absence felt significant, like being trusted not to break the moment she was alone.
She started exploring the corridors around the med bay, her socks silent on the cool floor.The Panini Press was a study in contradictions: spaces that felt cavernous and lifeless opened suddenly into pockets of warmth. She found a small hydroponics bay where Sam Wilson was carefully tending rows of leafy greens, the air thick with the smell of damp earth and growth. He showed her how the artificial sunlight cycles worked, his hands gentle on the plants.“It’s not much, but it’s real.Tony can synthesize a protein bar that tastes like regret, but this… this is living.”He offered her a sprig of basil. She crushed it between her fingers, and the shock of the fragrance was almost painful in its normalcy.
It was in the common area that she met them for the first time.She was attempting to decipher the coffee machine, a monstrosity of chrome and blinking lights, when a voice, light and accented, spoke behind her.
“It’s a specific series of insults.Press the third valve, say ‘you’re a prick, Tony,’ and then hit the large red button.”
Sage turned. A young man leaned against the doorway, impossibly fast in his stillness. He looked about Peter’s age, but older in the eyes, with white hair that seemed to defy the dim light. Beside him stood a woman with auburn hair and an expression of weary patience. She wore a worn maroon sweater, and her hands were curled around a chipped mug as if for warmth.
“I’m Pietro,” the young man said, a ghost of a smirk on his face. “This is my sister, Wanda.”
Wanda gave a small, guarded nod.Her gaze was heavy, a tangible weight. Sage felt seen, in a way Tony’s scanners couldn’t manage. It felt like being looked through, down to the frantic, feral core of her magic.
“You’re the one they found in the pipes,” Pietro stated, zipping to the machine in a blur. He performed the exact sequence he’d described.The machine shuddered and began to gurgle. “The one who makes things… hot.”
“Pietro,” Wanda murmured, a quiet warning.“What? It’s what they say.”
Sage’s guard slammed up. “What do they say?”
Wanda stepped forward, her eyes softening fractionally.“They say you are lost. And powerful.And that it hurts.” She took the freshly filled mug Pietro handed her. “I understand the hurt.”
There was no pity in her tone.Just recognition. Sage found she had nothing to snap back with.The silence stretched, filled by the percolating machine.
“They also say Stark likes you,” Pietro added, leaning against the counter. “Calls you his ‘most problematic protégé.’ He hasn’t called me that in weeks. I’m offended.”
“He doesn’t call me anything,” Sage muttered, taking a mug Pietro offered.The coffee smelled real.
“Exactly,” Pietro said, as if it proved his point. Then he was gone, a breeze ruffling her hair, reappeared by the door.“Don’t break the training room today. We need it for sparring later.” And he vanished down the hall.
Wanda lingered a moment longer.“The power… it is a river.Yes?” She echoed the words Sage had used with Tony. “Trying to dam it or force it leads only to flood.” She didn’t wait for a response, just walked away, leaving Sage alone with the hum of the machine and the unsettling feeling that someone, for the first time, might actually understand.Tony’s role shifted imperceptibly. The clinical questions became lessons. He’d sit with her in a small workshop cluttered with disassembled tech, sketching crude diagrams on a holographic pad.“Alright, bottom of the class.Energy. You’re not creating it.You’re a conduit. A really shitty, sparking, dangerous conduit.” He drew a wobbly line.“Your instinct is to open the valve all the way. Boil. That drains the reservoir—that’s you—and wrecks the plumbing—that’s also you.The push?That’s a controlled burst.A focused pulse. You’re not boiling the river, you’re shooting a water jet.”
He’d hand her small, broken components—a burnt-out capacitor, a fractured sensor.“Feel the current in the room.The static. The hum of the lights.Now try to nudge it into this. Not with heat.With… intention.”
She’d stare at the dead tech until her head ached, feeling nothing but frustration. One afternoon, after an hour of silent failure, she slammed her palm on the table.“It’s not working.”
“Good,” Tony said, not looking up from his own work. “You’re pissed.That’s a fuel.Now use it. Don’t let it use you.”
She focused on the anger, the hot coil of it in her gut. She imagined it not as fire, but as a directed shove. The fractured sensor on the table twitched, jumped an inch, and fell still.A tiny, pathetic movement.Tony looked up. A slow grin spread across his face.“See?You didn’t melt it.You moved it. Progress.”
It was in these moments she saw it—the careful, cranky investment. He wasn’t just fixing a machine.He was teaching.The realization was a warmth more unsettling than any magic. It made her want to trust him, which terrified her more than any Authority patrol.
Natasha found her there two days later. Sage was in the workshop alone, practicing the “nudge” on a scrap of metal foil, making it skate in jagged circles. She didn’t hear the door open, only felt the change in the air.
“Stark’s reports are optimistic,” Natasha said, her voice slicing the concentration.“He says you have fine control. I need to see it under pressure.”
Sage let the foil drop. “Why?”
“Because fine control in a workshop means nothing when someone is shooting at you.Because I need to know what asset I’m placing on a board. Because it’s not a request.” Natasha’s expression was unreadable.“Training room. One hour.Be ready.”
The training room was nothing like she’d imagined. It was vast, a brutalist cube of concrete and steel. The floor was a seamless, slightly rubberized dark gray.One wall was a sheer bank of monitors, currently dark. The other walls were lined with recessed panels that hinted at hidden dangers.The air was cool, circulating with a low, mechanical sigh. It smelled of ozone and old sweat.Natasha stood in the center, dressed in black combat gear. Bucky was off to the side, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed. Butcher was there too, perched on a crate, watching with a neutral, analytical gaze. To Sage’s surprise, Wanda and Pietro were also present, observing from the elevated observation deck behind a pane of reinforced glass.“No shields today,” Natasha stated.“Just evaluation. I’m going to come at you.You will defend yourself using only your controlled push.Not the boil. You will attempt to disable, not destroy.Understood?”
Sage’s mouth was dry.She nodded.
Natasha didn’t wait for her to get set.She just moved. One moment she was ten feet away, the next she was inside Sage’s guard, a leg sweeping for her knees. Instinct screamed.Sage threw up a hand, panic flaring. A wave of force, raw and unshaped, erupted from her.It wasn’t a push.It was a blast.
It missed Natasha, who had already pivoted away with preternatural grace, but it struck the concrete wall behind her with a thunderous crack. A web of fractures spiderwealed across the surface, and dust hazed the air.“Control,” Natasha said, her voice flat. She struck again, a quick jab aimed at Sage’s shoulder.
Sage twisted, shoving the energy downward this time, trying to aim it. It hit the floor at Natasha’s feet, a concussive thump that shuddered through the rubberized material and made Natasha stumble half a step. Butcher let out a low whistle.“Better,” Natasha acknowledged.Then she pressed harder. Her attacks became a relentless barrage—feints, strikes, pressure point targets. Sage deflected, pushed, sometimes just flung wild waves of force to keep her back. The air grew thick with the scent of charged particles, a metallic tang that coated the tongue.Her heart hammered against her healing ribs. She was tiring, the control slipping.Natasha saw it. She feinted high, then dropped low, leg hooking Sage’s ankle. Sage went down hard on her back, the breath knocked from her lungs. Before she could think, Natasha was on her, a knee pinning her good arm, a hand going for her throat.A red, searing terror flooded Sage’s system. It wasn’t a thought.It was animal survival. The magic didn’t respond to her will—it responded to the threat.It didn’t push.It pulled.
Heat didn’t radiate from her this time. It coalesced around Natasha’s wrist and hand, the air shimmering violently like asphalt on a blistering day. Natasha jerked her hand back with a sharp, bitten-off gasp, scrambling away. The skin of her wrist and palm was an angry, instant red, blisters already rising.Silence, thick and choking, filled the room. The only sound was Sage’s ragged sobbing breath and the hum of the lights.
Bucky was suddenly there, his metal hand pulling Natasha to her feet, his human hand already reaching for the med kit on the wall.Butcher had stood up, his face grim. Behind the glass, Wanda had her hands pressed against the surface, her eyes wide.
Sage lay on the floor, cold seeping through her clothes.She stared at her own hands, clean and innocent. She hadn’t meant to.She hadn’t even directed it.It had just… happened.
Tony’s voice, uncharacteristically hard, echoed from the observation deck speaker. “Evaluation concluded.” The door hissed open.He walked in, his footsteps echoing.He didn’t look at Sage. He went straight to Natasha, taking her injured hand, examining it with a clinical frown.“Second-degree.Clean. I’ve got a dermal regenerator in the shop.” His voice was tight.
Natasha pulled her hand back gently, her face a mask of cool composure, though pain tightened the skin around her eyes.“I provoked the response,” she said, her voice level. “The parameters were unclear.”
“The parameters were ‘don’t use the boil,’” Tony shot back, finally turning his gaze to Sage.It wasn’t angry.It was deeply, profoundly disappointed. “You okay, Nat?”
“I’ll live.” She looked past Tony to Sage, who still hadn’t moved.“The control is there.Until it isn’t. The trigger is fear.” She stated it as a fact, not an accusation.“We can work with that. Or around it.” She turned and walked out, Bucky following close behind, the med kit in hand.
Butcher approached Sage.He looked down at her, then offered a hand. After a moment, she took it, letting him haul her upright.He didn’t let go immediately. “See?” he said, his voice low.“That’s the statement. Scares the shit out of ‘em, even when they know it’s coming.” He released her and followed the others out.
Tony was left alone with her in the cavernous, damaged room. He ran a hand over his face, the weariness etching deeper into his features. He looked at the cracked wall, the scorched floor where the air had superheated.
“I’m sorry,” Sage whispered, the words ash in her mouth.“I know,” he said quietly. He walked over to her, stopped an arm’s length away.“You didn’t mean to. That’s the problem.It’s in the driver’s seat, kid. And until you learn how to grab the wheel, you’re a danger to everyone here. Including yourself.” He sighed, the sound heavy in the quiet room.“Go back to your quarters.Rest. We try again tomorrow.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He just turned and left, the door sealing shut behind him with a final, soft hiss.
Sage stood in the center of the empty training room, the ghost of the heat she’d summoned still lingering in the air, the cracks on the wall a stark monument to her failure. The warm, fragile understanding she’d started to feel curdled in her chest, replaced by the old, familiar chill.She was a weapon that went off by itself. And no amount of broth, or gentle lessons, or cautious friendship, could change that simple, terrifying fact.
The silence in the training room seemed to absorb the echo of their footsteps, leaving her marooned in the proof of her own violence.The cracks in the wall stared back like accusations. She touched her side where her ribs, mostly healed, gave a dull, sympathetic throb. It was a simple equation her body understood: exertion led to pain, and her magic was the worst exertion of all.
Back in the small quarters they’d given her, she sat on the cot, her hands resting on her knees.The room was relentlessly quiet, sterile. You’re a danger to everyone here, including yourself. Tony’s words didn’t just echo; they unpacked and settled in, finding crevices in her mind she didn’t know she had. She replayed Natasha’s sharp, pained inhalation. She saw Bucky’s immediate, protective shift toward the Black Widow, a reflex born of alliance and something deeper.
She thought of Peter’s nervous kindness, of Sam’s basil sprig, of Wanda’s quiet understanding. She thought of Tony’s sketches on the holographic pad, his gruff, “See? You didn’t melt it.” A dangerous, unwanted warmth had seeped into her in this place. Now she saw it for what it was: a vulnerability. Caring for them made the weapon inside her more treacherous, not less.She moved in the dark, methodical.The first aid kit was still in her bathroom. She unwound the supportive bandage from her torso, her skin pale and marked with fading bruises in the dim light.She applied a final layer of analgesic gel, the smell medicinal and clean. She re-wrapped the bandage snugly, the pressure a familiar, grounding embrace.
From the small conservator unit, she took three tubes of the industrial sludge.They were cold and heavy in her hand. She stuffed them into her old, battered pack, along with four water bottles from a case under the sink. It was a meager kit for the world outside, a world of checkpoints and drones and desperate people.It was still more than she’d had in the pipes.
She dressed in the same clothes she’d arrived in, now clean but forever stained with the grime of survival. She laced her boots tightly. Her breath came slow and deliberate, a conscious effort to steady the frantic rhythm of her heart.She shouldered the pack, its weight a comforting anchor to practicality.
The corridor outside her room was bathed in the facility’s nighttime indigo lighting, casting long, silent shadows.She knew the route to the secondary maintenance hatch from her tentative explorations. It was near the hydroponics bay, a little-used egress for environmental systems checks. Her socks were silent on the polished floor.Every distant hum of machinery made her flinch. She pictured Pietro’s blur, or the red focus of one of Tony’s sentry protocols she didn’t know about. She passed the door to the common area, a sliver of warm light still glowing beneath it, and heard the faint murmur of voices—Sam and Bucky, maybe. She froze, pressed against the cool wall, until the murmur continued, unconcerned.
The hatch was exactly where she remembered, a heavy, manual wheel set in the wall beside a panel of environmental readouts. She gripped the cold steel.It turned with a reluctant, grinding shriek that sounded catastrophically loud in the quiet. She stopped, heart hammering against her bandaged ribs.No alarms sounded.No footsteps came running. She spun the wheel again, muscles straining, until the locking mechanism disengaged with a solid thunk.The hatch opened inward, revealing a steep, narrow ladder leading up into a concrete shaft. The air that poured down was different—real, unfiltered, carrying the wet chill of night and the loamy scent of soil.She climbed, her pack scraping the walls. The rungs were cold and rough under her hands.Above, a circle of darkness promised the sky. She reached a final access panel, a simple latch. With a deep breath that caught in her throat, she pushed it open.The night air was a slap. It was alive with the rustle of leaves and the distant call of a night bird. She hauled herself out onto a disguised grate set flush with the forest floor, nestled between the roots of a massive oak. She looked back down the shaft at the cube of sterile, blue light below.It looked like a grave, or a womb. She couldn’t tell which.She closed the hatch softly, the sound final.The forest swallowed it whole. Around her, the Panini Press was just a hill, silent and unremarkable. She adjusted the straps of her pack, feeling the tubes of sludge shift. She took one last look at the false ground, at the security she was choosing to leave behind.
Then she turned, choosing a direction at random, and walked into the waiting dark. The compound door sealed behind her, not with a bang, but with the simple, irrevocable silence of a choice made.
The compound door sealed behind her, not with a bang, but with the simple, irrevocable silence of a choice made. The forest was a different kind of quiet, full of shifting shadows and the soft crush of pine needles underfoot. She walked until the first gray light of dawn bled through the trees, her breath pluming in the air, each step away from the warmth feeling more foolish and more necessary.
Back inside, the Panini Press hummed on, oblivious.
Morning began with its usual rhythms. Pietro was a silver blur in the kitchen, complaining about the synthetic eggs. Sam and Bucky were running a systems check on the ventilation filters, a tedious task that involved more swearing than progress. Tony was in his workshop, already three hours deep into recalibrating the perimeter sensors, a cold cup of coffee forgotten at his elbow. He’d checked the med bay logs on his way; her vitals had stabilized overnight. He marked it as a win, small but concrete.
It was Wanda who felt the absence first, a subtle shift in the emotional static of the place. She stood in the doorway of the common area, her brow furrowed, a thread of unease coiling in her chest. “Has anyone seen Sage this morning?” Her question cut through the mundane chatter.
Pietro stopped, a blur resolving into a person holding two spoons. “Not me. Maybe Stark has her doing more ‘conduit theory.’”
“He’s in the shop alone,” Bucky said, his voice flat. He’d already processed the tone in Wanda’s voice, was already moving toward the residential corridor.
Natasha emerged from the command nexus, her hair damp from the showers. “What’s the issue?”
“Sage isn’t in her room,” Bucky called back, not breaking stride.
The statement landed in the room like a stone. Pietro vanished, reappearing a heartbeat later. “Bed’s made. Too neat. No personal items.” Tony’s voice came over the comms, tinny and sharp. “What’s going on?”
“Possible AWOL,” Natasha said, already moving toward the security hub, her pace brisk but controlled. “Pietro, sweep the immediate exterior perimeter, half-click radius. Sam, with me. Bucky, check the maintenance hatches.”
The compound, so still moments before, became a hive of quiet, efficient motion. The easy camaraderie of breakfast evaporated, replaced by the cold protocols of a breach. Tony arrived in the security hub, his face a mask of focused anger. “Pull up all door logs from 2200 to 0600.”
The holographic display shimmered to life. Green lines of data scrolled. Everything was normal until 0347. A single, manual override on Maintenance Hatch Gamma-6. No alarm. It was a little-used systems egress, one of dozens. “Gamma-6,” Natasha read aloud. “Leads to the surface due east. Past the primary sensor fence.”
“Why wouldn’t it trip the fence?” Sam asked.
“Because I deactivated the exterior alert on that sector yesterday to run a diagnostic,” Tony said, the words tight. He ran a hand over his face. “I didn’t re-engage it. I was… distracted.”
The silence that followed was heavy with unspoken blame. Natasha didn’t voice it. She didn’t need to. “She’s had roughly five hours,” she calculated. “On foot, in unknown terrain, injured. Pietro?”
The speedster was back, not even winded. “Found a trail. Broken bracken, soft ground. Heads northeast, toward the old river valley. It’s fresh.” He tossed a crumpled, empty nutrient tube onto the console. It was the brand from their stores.
Tony picked it up, turning the metallic wrapper in his fingers. “She took supplies. This was planned.”
“Or she’s not completely suicidal,” Butcher grunted, leaning in the doorway. He’d been listening. “Kid’s a survivor. She’s got a head start, knows we’ll come looking. Probably thinks she’s doing us a favor.”
“She is a liability out there alone,” Natasha stated, her eyes on the map now displaying the terrain northeast. “Untrained, emotionally volatile, with a power signature that’s essentially a beacon if she loses control. The Authority’s patrol density in that sector increased twelve percent last week.”
“We don’t even know why she left,” Sam said, frustration edging his voice. “Did someone say something? Do something?”
All eyes turned, almost imperceptibly, toward Natasha. She met the collective gaze without flinching. “I applied pressure in the training room. The result was a predictable trauma response. Flight.” She said it as a tactical assessment, but a faint line of tension appeared beside her mouth.
Wanda spoke from the corner, her voice soft but clear. “She was not afraid of you. She was afraid of herself. Of what she is when she is afraid.” She looked at Tony. “You showed her a different path. Then she proved to herself she could not walk it. The shame was… loud.”
Tony stared at the empty wrapper, the truth of it settling in his gut like lead. He’d seen her face after the training room. He’d seen the devastation, the self-loathing. He’d given her a lecture about control when what she’d needed was… something else. Something he wasn’t good at. “This is my fault.”
“Fault doesn’t matter,” Natasha cut in, shutting down the introspection. “Containment does. We have two choices. We let her go. She becomes a statistical probability—captured, killed, or a catastrophic event. Or we retrieve her.”
“She doesn’t want to be retrieved,” Bucky said quietly.
“What she wants is secondary to what she is,” Natasha replied. “And what she is, is one of us now. For better or worse.” She looked around the room, her gaze landing finally on Tony. “Call it.”
Tony’s jaw worked. He saw the cracked wall in the training room. He saw the empty cot. He saw the faint, hopeful way she’d moved that piece of foil. He crushed the nutrient tube in his fist. “We bring her back. But not like a mission. No snatch and grab.” He looked at Pietro, at Sam. “We find her. We talk. And if she says no…” He trailed off, the possibility unacceptable.
“If she says no, we’re all fucked,” Butcher finished, pushing off the doorframe. “But sitting here ain’t fixing it. I’ll gear up. Know a few tricks for tracking witches who don’t want to be found.”
“Wanda, with me,” Natasha said. “Your… sensitivity may be useful. Sam, you’re on the sky. Low and quiet. Bucky, with Stark. Pietro, you’re scout. Report every five minutes. No engagement unless absolutely necessary.”
The group dispersed, the quiet morning shattered. As they moved to prepare, Tony remained for a moment, staring at the map, at the blinking dot that was Hatch Gamma-6 and the vast, wild green beyond it. He hadn’t felt this particular flavor of failure in years—the kind that came with caring. It was a rusty, aching sensation.
“She took the sludge,” he muttered to the empty room, a hollow attempt at humor. “Kid has no taste.”
Outside, under a cold, indifferent sky, Sage was already ten miles away, climbing a rocky ridge, her side burning with a fresh, hot pain. She stopped, gulping air, and looked back the way she’d come. She saw nothing but trees and the relentless rise of mountains. The silence she’d craved now felt immense and heavy. Somewhere beneath her feet, deep in the earth, the Panini Press was waking up to hunt for her. She turned her face into the wind and kept walking, the decision already feeling less like freedom and more like a different kind of trap.