Work Text:
Natasha’s eyelids snap open. The window catch clicks. A familiar shadow pushes it open and clambers inside.
She groans and pulls a pillow over her head, “You could have just knocked.”
“I thought you might be asleep.”
“I was.”
“Exactly.”
Natasha cranes her neck and cracks her eyes open, watching as Yelena drops a holdall to the floor with a disconcertingly loud thump and drapes herself over the armchair in the corner. She waves a hand in Natasha’s direction, “It’s fine. Go back to sleep. We can talk in the morning.”
Natasha closes her eyes for a few moments, trying to reclaim the blissful fog of slumber. It’s no use. She groans and rolls onto her side, an uncomfortable pull stretching across her back as she lifts her head to look in Yelena’s direction, “You might as well make yourself useful.”
The other woman tilts her head, a question in her eyebrows.
Natasha pushes herself up onto her knees and lifts her t-shirt to bare her back.
“Eurgh.” Yelena squints, “You should clean that.”
“Yes. Thank you. That would be great.” Natasha collapses face-down on top of the blankets, trying to ignore the discomfort reawakened by all this shifting around. It’s not a deep graze, but it runs down half the left side of her back and, by the feel of it, is full of gravel. She can hear Yelena digging around in her bag for supplies and lets some of the tension leak out of her shoulders. She really hadn’t been looking forwards to traveling across two states tomorrow with half a parking lot embedded in her back. She also hadn’t been looking forward to Steve’s concerned face when she arrived. Yelena’s feigned indifference is much more comfortable.
She closes her eyes again and buries her head in the pillow as Yelena shifts about the room, digging through her bag and opening and shutting the bathroom door a couple of times. It’s been a few months since they last saw each other. She’d been expecting her to turn up soon.
Natasha’s fingers clench as the bed dips and Yelena sits next to her. “I saw you on the news.” She says.
“Awesome. Anything exciting?”
Yelena pauses, “Apparently they’re trying to deport you. If they can find you.” Alcohol burns down her back and Natasha focuses on breathing for a moment. She feels a poke in her side. “They can’t do that though, right? You have a passport. A real one. You’re an American citizen.”
She starts in with the tweezers and Natasha bites her lip, “It’s complicated.” The tweezers stab her a few times, “You have no bedside manner.”
“And you—” a slightly harder stab “—are side-stepping the question.”
“Why does it matter? What’s the name on your visa again?”
“That’s beside the point.”
A laugh bubbles up in her throat, “Why?”
“Because I am not an international fugitive.” Yelena blurts out, “Or an Avenger. No-one cares about me.”
Natasha contorts to look over her shoulder at her. She tries to look solemn. “I care about you.” She means it and she’s trying to wind Yelena up. Win-win.
But her sister throws the tweezers down in frustration, “You’re not taking this seriously. And I need more light.” She stalks across the room and liberates a heavy desk lamp from the table by the wall, dumping it with a clatter on the nightstand and fumbling around for the socket to plug it in. Natasha watches her warily. She’s misjudged Yelena’s mood this evening, misjudged the timing and intention of this visit.
“Yelena—” she snags her wrist on the way past, “Sorry. Thank you.” Yelena nods shortly and gestures at her to lie down again. She fusses with the lamp for a bit, and then Natasha feels her cool hands on her back again, a little gentler this time.
She returns the favour.
“I do have citizenship. But it was rushed through by SHIELD, didn’t go through the proper channels, and the paperwork was signed by Alexander Pierce.” She pushes her hands into the cool underside of the pillow under her head. “Tony’s lawyers were trying to sort it out but…” she shrugs helplessly.
“You had a falling out.”
“Yeah. Well, no. They’re still trying, as far as I can tell. But attacking the King of Wakanda put paid to their ‘good character’ arguments and left me in a quagmire of legal minutiae.” She sighs. The thought of losing her right to live in the States doesn’t exactly make her feel comfortable, but it’s not like she’s ever let passports and visas stop her from going where she needs to. And she’s already on the run so aside from the unmistakable sting of rejection, it doesn’t really mean anything. Yelena’s got the bit between her teeth though, and seems to be waiting for something more. She shrugs again, “It doesn’t make any difference, anyway.”
“It might.”
“Yelena—” Natasha stops. She can’t have this conversation with her face in a pillow. She pulls her legs up under her and turns around, kneeling next to her on the bed.
Yelena waves the tweezers at her indignantly, “I wasn’t done.”
“It can wait. What are you worried about?”
Yelena scoffs, a rush of air releasing between her teeth. She stands up and walks over to the window, staring out for a moment before turning to face Natasha with her arms folded across her chest.
“They would deport you to Russia.”
“If they arrested me. And if the lawyers didn’t do their job. And if I couldn’t break myself out. Or you, or Steve or Sam or anyone else couldn’t help. Then yes, that is what would happen.”
Yelena stares at her pointedly.
“I know that would be bad. But what’s your point? It’s not going to happen.”
“I—” Yelena chokes on it, turning around and bracing her hands on the windowsill, staring out over the near-empty highway passing by in the middle-distance. Natasha frowns, wary and confused. She pulls her t-shirt down and pads over to stand beside her. Her hair is plaited tight to her head, boots scuffed and jeans worn and loose. Her fingertips are turning white on the sill.
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Fine.” Natasha settles herself on the floor, knees pulled up and back pressed against the wall. Her back stings, but it’s grounding rather than distracting. She tips her head back and stares up at her sister.
Yelena stands for a moment, resting her forehead against the cool glass. “I’ve been talking to the other Widows.” She pauses, “After I free them. We talk, sometimes we go somewhere. And it’s good, that’s good.”
“But…?”
“But they have so many stories. And most of them aren’t about Dreykov.”
Natasha closes her eyes.
“They’re everywhere. Politics, and business and— everywhere there’s power. There are people who knew what was happening and did nothing,” Her voice is rising a little, breaking with anger and frustration, despite her clear efforts to contain it. “People who helped him. Or worked for him. Or did him favours. Or—”
“I know.”
Yelena’s fists have clenched on the sill. She turns sharply to look down at her.
“There’s always more.”
“More what?”
She smiles for some reason, and tips her head back against the wall, “More bullshit.”
“I know. I did know—” Yelena screws her eyes up and presses her forehead hard against the glass, “Obviously he had help. Supporters. It’s different to know who they are. And how many.” Her voice is small, “I’m so angry.”
Natasha reaches a hand across and rests it lightly on the top of her boot. She can feel the warmth of her through the fabric of her jeans. She doesn’t say anything.
“And you were the one seen fleeing the site of a destroyed Government Research Project. They think you killed him.” She turns to look down at her, “That’s what they call it. Did you know that?”
Natasha nods, her lips pressed tightly together, “I do read the news, you know.”
“Then why don’t you care?”
“I do care.” Natasha tugs at her jeans. Yelena snatches her leg away. Natasha breathes out slowly. She doesn’t know what to say. How to explain that she’s been this angry for ten years. How she’d turned her back on Budapest and tried to pretend it was over, but every mission she was sent on seemed to uncover another stomach-churning facet of the dirty underbelly the world turns on. How she’d spent eight years doing what she could anyway, dirtying her hands in the name of freedom, only to find that she’d just swapped the Red Room for Hydra. Only this time she hadn’t even known her strings were being pulled.
But however she tries to phrase it feels wrong. It feels like talking down to her. Because, however shitty things have been, she has had choices. She’s had friends, family, real relationships. She’s had time. Time that Yelena has not had, time that Yelena could have had, if Natasha had done her job properly in the first place.
She lets out a measured breath. Counts it calmly before her mind has a chance to wind itself into chaos and self-recrimination.
Yelena’s voice breaks the silence, “It feels like we did nothing.”
Natasha deflates, “Yeah.”
“I thought you were going to argue.”
“Nope.” She rests her arms on her knees and her head on her arms, tilted to look up at Yelena, not quite upside down but sideways. She tugs on her jeans again, “Sit, please. I’m too tired.”
Yelena does, the fight gone out of her now there is no fight to be had. She leans her head against Natasha’s arm.
“Don’t get arrested.”
“I’m trying.” Natasha breathes a few times, staring with unfocused eyes past Yelena and at the garishly patterned motel carpet beyond. She’s not good at long speeches. But the thoughts drifting and coalescing through her mind might require one. She tries.
“It does make a difference. It has to.” She pauses, considers how to continue, “To you. And to me, and—”
“Katya killed herself.”
Natasha stills. A sort of sickening inevitability settles over her.
Yelena’s voice is low, “Sofia told me. She made it to the golden gate bridge, like she wanted to. And jumped off.” Her hands are wrapped around her knees and she’s staring straight ahead at the bed frame.
Natasha closes her eyes, “I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t know her.”
“I’m still sorry.”
Yelena’s hand moves restlessly against her leg. Natasha captures it and laces their fingers together. Her hands are cold. She wants to say more. That even though the world is still full of shit, they did as much as two people could. But it sounds callus now. She just sits instead, a hand held in hers. Natasha can hear cars passing occasionally on the highway outside, the rattling of radiator pipes and the mumbling of a television in the room across the hall. She can feel Yelena’s breathing, her rib cage moving next to her, the flutter of her pulse against her wrist.
Yelena seems to be thinking hard about something. She turns her head, “Can we start over?”
“Start what over?”
“Tonight. Can we start tonight over?”
Natasha frowns. “I don’t know what needs starting over?”
“Maybe I will say what I mean, and you will hear what I say.”
She laughs, “Ok, deal.”
“I am done with losing things.” She is emphatic. “I will not lose you or Melina or Alexei. Even if you are all a pain in my ass. I have decided.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
“Ok. Then we are agreed?”
“Yes. We are agreed. No-one goes anywhere.”
“Good. This is a good plan.”
Natasha extracts her arm from between them and squeezes her shoulders, a gesture she’s probably not made with anyone since she was eleven, if ever. No more losing people. That’s the core of it. The rest of it is just chaos and noise. There’s only so much you can control and you have to choose what’s important. Yelena grins at her, suddenly childlike, the shadow retreating for a little while.
She stands, “Back on the bed.”
Natasha groans, muscles aching and seizing again as she scrambles to her feet.
“You’re so old.”
Natasha punches her lightly on the arm, a burst of spontaneity and contrariness leading her to propel herself face first onto the bed. Her head bounces against the pillow and she doesn’t entirely regret it, despite the bruises she’s suddenly painfully aware of. Yelena settles beside her, her cool hands gentle now, her attentions with the tweezer relieving rather than aggravating.
“What happened, anyway?”
“I fell off my bike.”
“You fell off your bike.”
“It was icy.”
“Were you are least being chased?”
Natasha tries to muffle her voice in the pillow, “No.”
Yelena scoffs. She drops another piece of gravel into the cup beside her with a merry tinkle.
“You’re such an embarrassment.”