Chapter Text
It took them months to come up with a plan.
Meanwhile, they kept playing their roles to perfection, keeping up the facade, but knowing deep down that nothing about their situation was fake anymore.
Melina got what she wanted — she now had an album full of pictures of Yelena fiercely roaring for the camera, Natasha timidly posing with her bronze medal (and then another one with a larger, unbound smile where she was being tightly hugged by Alexei after her competition) and herself and Alexei kissing in front of their lit-up, mismatched decorated Christmas tree, taken by Natasha.
She got her heart full of memories — Alexei bundling up Yelena to the point where they could barely see her before they went ice skating on a nearby pond; celebrating Natasha’s birthday with a small party, just the four of them, and yet somehow ending up with Yelena and Natasha with frosting smeared all over their faces; all the little moments that screamed to the world they were a family and that made Melina ache with the need of keeping it, them, protected.
Safe in more places than just her heart.
She and Alexei spent nights pouring over case files and reports — the ones they were still sending to the Red Room and the ones they were compiling to bargain their turnover to S.H.I.E.L.D. — trying to figure out the best way to get to the person who was most likely to be able to help them.
“How are we going to find this Fury man?” Alexei asked her sometime around the end of January.
Melina knew they were teetering on the edge of being found out and needed to act sooner rather than later; the problem resided in the fact that the man they were trying to find was impossible to be found.
“It is not going to be easy,” she told him for the umpteenth time. “Nicholas Fury is a world-renowned spy, the most accomplished one in the allied forces,” she rubbed her temples in an attempt to chase away her impending migraine. “His secrets would be the most well guarded. And the one thing all spies know to keep secret—”
“—Is the one thing we are going to have to give away,” Alexei sighed, sagging on the dining room chair that creaked under his weight.
As a well-trained spy herself, Melina wasn’t fond of the fact that, to draw Fury out of the shadows he lurked in, they were going to have to draw attention to themselves, giving away their location, their security. It didn’t sit well with her thinking that the very people who saw them as enemies would get close to where her family was.
In order to keep them safe, I have to put them in danger first.
With nothing but the desire to keep what they so desperately wanted, they hashed out a plan.
//
“Where’s Daddy?” Yelena asked around a mouthful of grilled green beans Melina had managed to get her to eat.
“He is working late, little one,” she answered with an easy smile, cutting up her steak methodically. “He’ll be home soon.”
It wasn’t a lie but it wasn’t the truth either; Alexei was finally putting their plan into motion tonight. He was loitering just outside a political rally, hoping to catch the authority’s attention so he would have an excuse to use his super strength and then catch the attention of who they were really after.
While impersonating his favorite contemporary/co-equal.
“Can I get a shield?” Alexei looked like a kid at Christmas, vibrating with barely-concealed excitement.
“You know you are not actually going as Captain America, right?” Melina scoffed, straightening his Brooklyn Dodgers cap — the one she had to go to several thrift stores to find — with a frown. “You are just using his name.”
Hopefully, he would be broached by a hostile law enforcement officer about his loitering so he could use his super strength and be mistaken by Steve Rogers, or someone impersonating him at the very least.
“I should still get a shield!” Alexei insisted. “And a helmet!”
“Now it just sounds like you want your suit back,” she gave him his sunglasses, not pleased with how he looked, but it was the best they had.
Alexei sighed, frowning himself. “I do miss my suit.”
“You’ll get it back soon enough,” she assured him, taking one final look at him. “But first, we have a mission to complete.”
“Is everything alright?” Natasha questioned solemnly and Melina’s heart panged sharply in her chest.
Her big girl, still so young, carried the weight of the world on her tiny, skinny shoulders in a way that had Melina longing to take away her pain and worry. But she knew she couldn’t, not yet, not when they still had so much on the line, when she wasn’t sure their plan would be successful.
But she promised herself she wasn’t going to lie to her girls anymore, so she tried her best to assuage their worries.
“Everything is okay, dorogaya,” she shot Natasha her best reassuring smile. “No need to worry.”
Natasha’s frown was still twisting her brows — like it always did when she didn’t get straight answers to her questions — but she went back to her dinner, even engaging Yelena when the girl started babbling about her favorite TV show. Melina knew she hadn’t done a good job at soothing her eldest’s afflictions but, to be honest, she didn’t even know how to soothe herself.
She had no way of knowing if their plan was going to work, if Alexei was okay (the man was a super soldier but he wasn’t indestructible, even if he thought so) if they would end up attracting the wrong kind of attention, if—
“Mama?” Yelena’s voice cut through her jumbled mess of racy thoughts, her shiny, innocent, green eyes looking at her questioningly.
“Yes, malyshka?” Melina cleared her throat, snapping herself out of her own spiral.
She needed to stay here, be present, when —if things didn’t go as planned.
“Can we have ice cream for dessert?” she asked with a pout — the one Melina knew always caused Alexei to cave and give her whatever it was that she wanted.
She knew she shouldn’t do it. Giving Yelena sugar, no matter the time of the day, equaled having an energized bunny wrecking havoc all around, and it would most certainly leave her with a cranky child fighting bedtime with all her might.
But Melina knew that if left alone with only her thoughts for company — she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep until Alexei came back home — she would most certainly crumble. And she couldn’t. Not now.
Not ever. Not when her family was at stake.
“Yes, malen’kiy, we can,” she smiled at Yelena’s victory cheers and Natasha’s surprised look. “Big girl, can you grab the bowls for us?”
Natasha nodded, her eyes still warily regarding Melina. She sighed, knowing she would have to talk to them sooner or later.
She just hoped she could give them good news for once.
//
It was a little after three in the morning when Alexei finally came back home. Melina heard a car pulling outside and because she was nothing if not prepared, she grabbed the gun taped under their dining room table and went to open the door.
And there he was, her husband, seemingly unscathed, causing her to let go of the breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding. Her relief was short-lived, however, when she spotted three figures exiting the car right behind him.
“Honey…” Alexei sighed when he saw her, eyes drifting to the gun in her hand. “It’s okay.”
“We just want to talk, ma’am,” the man she recognized as Nicholas Fury stepped up and said. “Please lower your gun.”
“Will you lower yours?” she arched an eyebrow, nodding to the woman behind him with her gun pointed straight at Melina.
There was a brief silence before he cleared his throat. “Hill,” he said in a clipped tone.
The woman named Hill held her position for a moment before putting her gun back in her holster. Melina slowly lowered hers as well, opening the door fully so everybody could come in.
“Welcome to our humble abode.”
She watched as the agents piled up in her living room. A balding man she didn’t know almost tripped on Yelena’s pink pony plush before grabbing it and putting it on the center table. Alexei closed the door behind them, locking eyes with Melina again as if trying to reassure her that everything would be okay.
When it became clear that they weren’t going to speak up first, Fury cleared his throat. “You’re the Iron Maiden,” he said without preamble.
“You know who she is but not me?” Alexei’s offense was clear in his tone and his scowl.
Melina rolled her eyes and Fury continued, both of them ignoring his outburst. “I’m supposed to believe that one of the most prominent assassin spies to come out of the Soviet Union wants to… what? Live in the Midwest and play house?”
She clenched her jaw, holding her gun more firmly in an attempt to ground herself. “It is not playing house. We are a family.”
“Captain Russia over there told me it’s a mission,” Fury replied callously, crossing his arms. “To infiltrate a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, no less.”
“It started like that,” Alexei admitted gruffly. “But I told you, it is not that anymore.”
“What is it then?” he pinned them with a hard, cold look.
“We are a family,” Melina repeated herself, returning Fury’s look unwaveringly. “We would like to continue being one.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that?” he asked again, slightly raising his voice, and Melina had to restrain the urge to leap at him and bang his head against the wall until he understood her.
“We have evidenc—” her voice also began a crescendo when something, or rather, someone interrupted them.
“Mama?” Melina turned when she heard Natasha’s voice from the stairs.
She quickly handed Alexei her gun, trying to conceal it from her view. “What are you doing up, malyshka?” she waved her over to the kitchen and Natasha made her way to her, giving the agents in the living room a weary look before gripping Melina’s waist and leaning into her touch.
She took notice of how tightly Natasha held onto her, even as she shot her a look of betrayal. “You said not to worry.”
“And I meant it,” she assured her, running her fingers over her brow’s creases until they eased. No more lies. “It’s over, big girl. We’re done.”
However, her words had the opposite effect, causing Natasha to just grip her waist harder.
“I don’t want to go back there,” she whispered against Melina’s stomach, and she felt her heart break into a million pieces when she sensed tears staining her shirt. “I wanna stay in Ohio.”
“No, no, no malyshka,” she gently turned her daughter’s face until she looked at her, her eyes rimmed red and tears still streaming down her face. “No one is going back, okay? We are staying. Here, together.”
“But you said—” Natasha sniffed, her jaw clenching in what Melina knew was an attempt to stop her tears. “You said it’s over.”
Melina used her T-shirt’s sleeves to dry Natasha’s face, uncaring of the fact that the agents were still in her living room, watching the scene unfold in front of them.
“The mission is over, yes,” she nodded. “Because we are no longer on the other side. We are staying here, as family.”
Natasha’s watery eyes widened. “We are?”
Melina looked over at Alexei, who nodded, then Fury, impassive-looking, then back at Natasha, wide-eyed but with something akin to hope brimming underneath her shock.
“Yes, dorogaya,” she said resolutely, with no margin for doubt. “We’re staying.”
Natasha hugged her fiercely, holding on as tightly as her arms would allow her, and Melina hugged her back just as hard. She didn’t know for how long they held onto each other, but it was long enough for Fury to heave another sigh and say:
“Walk me through everything you have.”