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Really Natasha had not seen it coming at all. That was rare for her, she prided herself on essentially being a psychic, predicting the next play before the game had even started. So when a man flew at her, waving a knife covered with some sort of corrosive substance, taking the kill shot, she didn’t even have the wits to move. She didn’t even really brace for impact. There was no need to; she had been ready for death to find her ever since the ripe young age of four.
So when there was movement, grunting, and a blonde ponytail hitting whipping her in the face she didn’t startle. At least her mind didn’t. Her body moved on memory, dodging and punching and trying to fight back against death for some reason she had long since forgotten. But her mind was resigned to the Grim Reaper’s call. When the proverbial dust settled, though, and her mind cleared she was staring at the man’s dead body. His flesh was in tatters, his clothes hung off his broken body. He lay crucified on the ground as if a reverse Jesus on the cross.
A guttural moan brought attention to the other actor in the Shakespearan tragedy. Yelena. She lay positioned on her back, fingers weakly wrapped around the hilt of the knife that had been embedded in her chest. It was what she had been trained to do. Natasha kneeled, pushing her hands against the wound. Blood squelched between her fingers. And there was so much of it. Sanguis in via fluebant. “Stay with me sestra- stay with me,” Natasha thought she said, maybe in Russian, English, or Latin. She might have cringed at the cliche. Yelena didn’t say anything in return.
This wasn’t a movie. There were no cinematic words exchanged. Yelena didn’t smirk, baring her blood-stained teeth for audiences around the world to see, saying some catchphrase for people to repeat long after the film was over. Nor did she beg for some sort of forgiveness, or even admit her sororal love for Natasha. They hung in the nothiness, punctuated only by Yelena’s heaving and the occasional howl of agony.
At some point Yelena could not remain awake, and her eyes began to slip close. Really Natasha had no idea how long it had been, time was not linear in their constructed universe. Before Yelena condemned herself to the void, though, she gave one last look at her older sister. Orpheus was unable to resist looking at their Eurydice for one last time before the burgeoning darkness blocked out the light.
The ambulance’s mournful wailing crept closer. She must have pressed the button on her suit that called it. She couldn’t remember doing that. Natasha could feel tears leak from her eyes. She realized she was in shock, this was shock, fear and pain closing in on all sides. It was stifling.
Men arrived, pushing Natasha away forcefully, swarming her fallen sister’s body. They were uncaring, distant, contorting her body as though she was already deceased. Maybe she was. Maybe she was. Hands were on her now, words and voices floating around her as though they were part of another world. Was her mouth moving?
“Russian, I think that’s Russian.”
“Calm down, ma’am.”
Hands pushing, pulling her into the ambulance with them. Someone gave her a blanket, pushing her into a corner to make room for her sestra’s gurney. Scissors cut her shirt in two, and then her bra for the wires. Memories of men ripping her clothes off, touching, feeling. They stuck onto her skin like some sort of parasite, sucking out her lifeforce and leaving her nothing in return. Tubes were placed. Beeping, yelling. Natasha watched silently as these foreign creatures screamed over each other in their alien language. It was barbaric. Finally Yelena’s mouth was pulled open, a tube was produced and slid down her throat. Tape followed it, securing the gag. She no longer had a voice.
The ride continued with men working on her, violating her, slipping and sliding in the blood. Someone threw a blanket over Natasha before rushing in to feast their hands on her sister again. It was loud, ear splittingly loud, and Natasha wanted to fade into nothingness. She wondered why she had even been created in the first place.
They pulled up to the hospital, pulling her sister out like luggage. They ran into the hospital, leaving Natasha behind. She stood in the parking lot, feeling as though she took up too much space. Some kind-looking older man strided out to her, a strangely genuine smile on his face. She followed him. She remembered what had happened the last time she had followed a man like this away from the public eye, but at this point she was too tired to care.
He led her into an isolated room in the hospital, with some cozy blankets piled on an old couch and pictures of what she assumed were his children smiling menacingly down. Their eyes followed her as she moved. When she started to undo her belt and pull down her catsuit zipper though he stopped her. Blubbering out apologies she waited for the slap to the face, the punch to the gut, but none came. People do weird things when they’re in shock, he had murmured to her, You’re not the first to do that, and you won’t be the last.
He called in some nurse to check her over. Fingers brushed her over body, making Natasha shiver and curl in on herself. Faceless hands pulled a blanket around her, handed her a juice box, and left as quickly as they had entered.
“Are you alright to answer some questions?”
Natasha nodded, did she really have a choice. Her eyes never left the little dark-haired girl’s smiling ones on the opposite wall.
The man’s eyes followed her own. “That’s my grand-daughter. Cute, isn’t she?”
Natasha nodded gravely, taking a sip of her juice box. She felt like a child.
“Was that your sister back there? The blonde woman?”
Natasha nodded in the affirmation again. The man sighed. “I’m sorry. The surgery is pretty extensive, she’s going to have a long, painful road ahead of her.”
He waited for Natasha to react. She didn’t. She didn’t even know if she was really alive anymore. She didn’t feel like it.
“Do you have anyone I can call? Parents, or relatives, or friends?”
“Mama and Papa.”
“Your mom and dad?”
She nodded for the third time.
“Can I see your phone?”
She handed it over to him. She was completely detached from the consequences of him looking through her phone. If he found government secrets, sent Tony a stupid text, or even discovered the Black Widow loved to watch cat videos in her spare time she did not care. At all.
A number was dialed, frantic voices on the other end. The man maintained his calm cadence, relaying the address and where to find them. Natasha sat still, unmoving. Maybe in a past life she was a Buddhist. That didn’t make sense, though. She must have done something really, really bad to deserve this.
“Your parents will be here soon.” Natasha’s eyes did not move from the girl’s picture. So young. Had she really been that young once? She knew Yelena had been. Her baby sister.
“Would you like anything else? I have a TV here, some books I’ve been meaning to read. Are you hungry?”
Natasha straightened a little at the idea of food. She was hungry. The man noticed, some crinkles appeared around his eyes with a smile. “I’ll get you a sandwich then.” He exited the room, leaving the door ajar behind him.
Natasha was left alone with only her thoughts for company once again. The room was homely, the perfect lair to lull people into a false sense of security. She wondered how many sins had taken place here, how many people had suffered. She curled further under the blanket, not caring about appearances now, just taking comfort in the only barrier she had between her and the world that wanted to eat her alive.
The man arrived again with a sandwich in tow. Natasha nibbled, testing for poison, before devouring it. The normally suffocating warmth of the room turned soothing, and Natasha was having more and more difficulty clinging to the overworld. The man glanced up at her through his glasses. “You can go to sleep if you’d like, I’m just going to finish up some paperwork. Natasha’s grip failed and she tumbled down.
She woke to hands caressing her, soothing her. Melina and Alexei looked down at her as though she was something precious, something to be protected. Shock was vacant from her parents’ expressions. This was a possibility that they had prepared for every day since the flower of love first bloomed in their chest all those years ago. She stretched, savoring the sweet soreness of her aching muscles. Pinpricks of pain erupted around her body. She was abruptly reminded that she had been in battle only a couple hours previously.
No noises were made, no communication was attempted. The little unit sat in silence, feeding off the comfort of each other’s presence. Alexei’s shoulders shook a bit. The man in the room said nothing. An hour wore on. When Natasha pried open her mouth for the first time words flowed out, and she was in no position to stop them.
“There was a man, and he had a knife. Something was on it. I don’t know what. I didn’t stop him. I don’t know why. Then Yelena was there, and the man was dead, and she had a knife sticking out of her. Then it was over and more men came and took her away.”
The retelling was quick, elementary in presentation. The man across the room regained his voice. “Could you tell us a little more? Go into more detail? How long was she awake for, how much blood was there, did she say anything? It might help with her care.”
Natasha looked back at him, a woman demented. “That’s what happened, though.”
“Okay,” he sighed, scribbling something on his notepad. “It may be a little more helpful to talk later. I just got a call from one of the surgical nurses; he said,” a glance at the notepad, “he said Yelena may be in surgery for several more hours. It looks good right now, though, about an 80% chance of survival.” The family blanched. “Considering what she’s been through, that's a pretty good fighting chance.” He closed his notebook now, folding his hands on his desk. Natasha braced for the other shoe to drop. “We have some family rooms available at the moment. A couple of beds, a couch. They’re pretty nice, I’ve had to use one myself a couple of times. I would recommend taking them. It looks like she won’t be placed into a room until tomorrow morning.”
All the members of the little group nodded, understanding their next assignment. None of them had ever had problems with following orders. A nurse appeared in the doorway, ready to lead them to the next stage. The hallways of the hospital were long, vacant, and impersonal. Once in a while a nurse or doctor would appear, harried, looking as though they were a member of the undead. It was a frightening trip.
The woman, Shirlene, as she had introduced herself, stopped at a door. Inside was a white-walled room, some stock-photo art meant to mask the frigidity of it. There were two sets of bunk beds, a couch, and a television all in a room that was just big enough not to be labelled a closet. The nurse told them if they needed anything else the help desk was just down the hall, and not to be afraid to ask. She left them with a professional, almost patronizing smile and the feeling of impending claustrophobia.
Alexei let his body go limp, flopping down onto the couch. “80 percent,” he lamented, “only 80 percent.”
“That’s really quite good,” Melina replied, “she had a knife in her lung, Alexei.”
“I don’t even want to think about the 20 percent chance that-”
“Then don’t,” Melina harshly interrupted. “It’s unlikely that’ll even happen, so don’t.” Mama, always the statistician.
“We’ve all had worse, too,” Natasha croaked out, “the universe just hates us too much to even let us go.”
Neither Melina nor Alexei knew how to respond to that. Alexei just put a heavy hand on her shoulder, and Melina on his, using him as a conduit to funnel comfort. “Maybe I’m selfish, though, because I don’t want her to go. Even if she’s in pain I want her to stay with me. I can’t be alone again.”
She felt exposed, as Yelena must feel all alone, naked, in that operating room. Natasha pushed Alexei’s hand aside gently. She appreciated their love, the comfort they provided, but she couldn’t handle how oppressive it felt right now. She laid on the shitty hospital mattress, facing the wall, and silently, so no one could see, began to sob.
Alexei turned to the TV in the corner, flipping it on. There were only three stations, HGTV, Food Network, and a local news channel. Shuddering at the idea of seeing stories about dead children, taken from their parents too soon, Alexei flipped between the former two. They were abhorred. One was watching people eat excessive amounts of food, while the other was people spending excessive amounts of money. Both so wasteful, so gluttonous. Natasha drifted off to the sound of Guy Fieri eating his fourth chili cheese dog of the show.
Her dreams were punctuated by people screaming, ghosts clawing at her skin, Hades chuckling victorious above her. This was hell. The limbo between sleeping and waking, the light and the dark, suspended between the two like some deformed creature. She was relieved when Melina’s hand shook her awake, when she saw a doctor standing in the arch of the doorframe.
The surgeon was not necessarily friendly, but she was knowledgeable. Natasha liked that. She didn’t think she could handle one more sickly, sympathetic smile. Natasha, Alexei, and Melina immediately fell in step behind her like they were schoolchildren.
“The surgery went well, 13 hours in total,” 13- a powerful number to the Greeks, not so much to everyone else. “As you can guess I’m pretty tired, so I’m going to pass off care to someone else now. She should be in a medically induced coma for a few days before we start to wean her off the medication. I’m warning you now, she had a lot of medical equipment to keep her alive. Usually that can be a little jarring to family members. That should include a ventilator, central line, chest drain-” they whirled the corner, “-NG tube, some electrodes, a urinary catheter, some more tubes, et cetera.” Natasha could tell she was completely dissociated for the task at hand, already picturing the breakfast she would eat when she got home. “Alright, here we are.”
Yeah, the doctor was right. Natasha wasn’t fucking ready. Yelena lay prone, tubes jutting from her body, one sewn into her chest. It looked like some sort of pagan sacrifice. Two tubes snaked from her face, one in her mouth and another in her nose. There were so many machines crowded around her there were virtually no places to sit. The surgeon pushed through the obstacles expertly, ignoring the hesitation of the family. She was obviously eager to get through her checklist.
“So she’s not brain-dead, as I will demonstrate now for you,” the doctor peeled Yelena’s eyelid open, and Natasha startled when she saw her sister’s hazel eye staring through her like the dead fish in the supermarket. She clicked on a flashlight and shined it into her eye, watching the pupil constrict. “The pupillary response indicates brain function, although we are not completely sure how complete the function will be considering she went without oxygen for a short period of time.” The woman seemed bored. “To answer your questions we are not sure if she can hear us; everyone has varying experiences. Yes she will still create waste, the nurses will take care of that. And no, she will not wake up before we decrease sedation. Any more questions?”
No one dared to utter a word. “Great,” the woman clapped her hands together to conclude their very one-sided conversation. “I will be passing you off to Dr. Hansson for the time being. I hope you all have a lovely day, and I hope Yelena here,” she butchered her name, “gets better soon.” She didn’t even bother to make the statement sound authentic, and for some reason this was refreshing to Natasha.
They were left with only the noises of the machines filling the room. Natasha moved to Yelena’s bedside, stroking up and down her soft arm. She felt a little insecure, the room opened up to the rest of the ICU, and she felt as though she was on display in a zoo. Yelena didn’t care though. Natasha didn’t know if Yelena felt anything at the moment. She watched her sister’s chest move up and down, forced to mechanically. The sound reminded her of the movie her and Yelena had been terrified of as children, the scary man with the mask and the dark suit with the light sword. It had been nice to let herself be scared of something she knew was irrational.
She didn’t use this moment of respite to probe her sister for answers she knew she wouldn’t receive. There was no “Why did you do that?” or anything of that nature. Natasha knew why she had done it, because she would have done the same. She just hated herself for allowing for it to happen. She should have reckoned with fate.
“Oh, bug,” Alexei took his youngest daughter’s hand. There were no accusations thrown, words meant to tear at each other’s skin. Only quiet- the sound of each others’ breath and mechanical beeping. Melina stood at the base of the bed, the only place where machines didn’t form a halo around her daughter. She reached out, gripping onto Yelena’s foot, anchoring her to their world.
Nurses flowed in and out of the room. Some manipulated Yelena’s limbs as though she was a mannequin- an unfeeling being. Others tended to her dressings, cleaned out her mouth. One emptied her urinary output, a task that Natasha found outright disgusting but one a nurse was quick to reassure, “You get used to it.” Natasha found her sister broken down to the very lowest level of what man really was- a creature with two orifices; one for taking in matter and the other for excreting it. She couldn’t die like this.
Alexei was the one who began to speak with her. He sang soft little songs they had always loved together. Ones that made Natasha picture little Yelena in the front seat of his twenty-year old truck, swinging her legs that did not reach the floor yet back and forth, singing along with him. He had always been one for fairytales- believing she could really hear him in her coma. He told her sweet stories of his mother, her babushka, and a long-lost childhood bathed in gold. Some were entertaining- Natasha had to give him that, enough to make Melina snort with laughter on a few scattered occasions. She didn’t know how Alexei could do that, speaking as though she was really with them. He had replied, pointing a finger at Yelena’s body, “but she is here Natka, see?” Natasha shook him off, pinning him as the crazy old man he presented as.
Melina was obviously having a tougher time with it. She wouldn’t touch Yelena, the equipment reminded her of all the experiments she had conducted over the decades. The lives she had ruined, the souls she had lost because she was, at her core, a coward. Natasha had caught her once, though, stroking Yelena’s face in the dead of the night. She was running her finger down the slope of her nose, stopping to tap the tip, ignoring the feeding tube that protruded out. It always used to send Yelena into a fit of giggles. Now she was not even aware of it.
Natasha had quickly fallen into a caretaking role. Her entire purpose was simply to be helpful, another tool, for whoever required it so this new character was not difficult to play. She helped with the various tasks that needed to be performed on her sestra day in and out. The nurses accepted her into their circle quickly, even pretending to take heed when she suggested to please not touch her there, she’s ticklish. She took comfort in braiding back Yelena’s hair into increasingly complex hairstyles, ones that more and more people streaming into the room began to compliment. She even took a couple pictures, making sure to get the ventilator in the shot along with the braids. Yelena had always had a morbid curiosity in things like this, as referenced by her Grey’s Anatomy obsession a year back. Natasha knew she would pester Natasha for photos once she woke up.
“Today’s the day!” A few days after the initial incident, their pleas to a god they did not believe in were answered. “We’re going to wake her up. Yelena… Belova, correct?”
Natasha’s heart leaped into her throat. The doctor attempted to make small talk.
“That’s an unusual name, what is that? Ukrainian, Polish?”
“Russian,” Alexei grunted out, obviously annoyed. Natasha understood the man, he seemed young- fresh out of med school. He was trying to understand his part of a cog in this massive machine of life. Right now he was just failing miserably.
Melina was the first to interrupt, “So when will she wake?”
The young man seemed grateful to move back to a subject he was more confident in. “We’re cutting down on the sedative right now, it may take as long as eight hours for her to come to. I’ve seen it in three, though.”
Melina nodded, letting no emotion slip through her wall of an expression. “So will you take out the breathing tube now?”
The young doctor acquired his awkward stance once again. He looked over his shoulder for someone to relieve him of this duty. There was no one. “I thought someone already had this conversation with you, ma’am.”
“No,” Melina was unimpressed.
“Well your daughter- your daughter right?” He had to check his clipboard once again. Melina nodded. “Her lung hasn’t been healing as well as we would have liked it to, so she will still require mechanical ventilation- likely for another couple of days.”
Alexei advanced on the man, “You want to wake her up with a tube down her throat?”
He chuckled nervously, but it was a forced sound. The sound was tinny in their little circle. “Well, studies show that patients who are kept awake on the ventilator actually report they prefer it, and that it brought them and their family more comfort than if they had been kept sedated. Participants also cited shorter hospital stays, lower-”
“Enough, enough,” Alexei waved his arms about angrily. “What if I say no?”
“Well, Yelena’s current power of attorney at the moment is,” he squinted, “Natasha Romanoff.”
It really wasn’t a surprise at all- Natasha had told them amidst all the clutter. She supposed Alexei just forgot it in all the chaos.
Alexei spun to face Natasha, angry, “So say no, Natka!” After a quick, silent deliberation with her mother Natasha ignored him and nodded.
Yelena’s waking process was slow, deliberate. Around hour three her toes began to twitch at gentle pressure (“she always did hate having her feet touched,” Alexei had remarked almost proudly). All the following events seemed to happen in quick succession, at least to a family whose internal clocks had slowed to that of a comatose person. Her fingers began to curl in when held, muscles in her face started to contract. Alexei bragged to the nurses, asking them if any of the other patients they had had woken up this quickly. They decided to play along. They have not sir, she’s special .
When a crease formed between Yelena’s brows the doctor returned. A man timing his entrance to pantomime a hero. He had spoken to her as though she were a child, “Yelena, wake up for us now.” And despite her stubbornness she obeyed.
Yelena’s first look was one of confusion, bewilderment. Natasha saw the exact moment the terror struck; when she tried to swallow- to speak. The heart monitor climbed up, and up, and up. Orpheus, given a second chance, looked at their Eurydice and only saw Phobos. She tried to reach up, to pull out the tube, but her arms were weak with disuse and her hand flopped across her chest. Doctors and nurses alike began to shush her, a cacophony of noise that just forced tears out of Yelena’s eyes.
“Miss Belova, you have a tube down your throat to help you breathe that will be removed in a couple of days; do you understand?”
Yelena did not. She tried to turn her head against the ventilator, against the fear, but it just moved with her. Her movements appeared lethargic, but her eyes didn’t. She looked at the man with unadulterated terror, eyes that of a wild horse with their ears pinned back. A gutteral sound came from the back of her throat. She looked around the room, and found eyes resembling her own. A mirror. Her sister.
A nurse connected a syringe to her IV, narrating what she was doing to Yelena. “I’m just pushing in some Versed hun, you should feel better soon.” Yelena did not appreciate this, as evidenced by another wretched moan that hurt on the way up. “I know, I know, I’m sorry sweetheart.” She wasn’t though, and she didn’t even bother to conceal it.
The room drifted around Yelena. Hands on her, some soft and soothing, others cold and robotic. Her world was strange, blurry, but when she could see there were waves of red. Fields and fields of it, encompassing as far as the mind could see.
Natasha did not particularly enjoy watching her sister attempt to navigate this sort of half-life she found herself condemned to. Yelena would cry more than Natasha had ever seen her- even when she was a cherubic, chubby little three-year old. She would cry when nurses would clean her wound, when her feeding tube irritated her nostril, when Melina wiped more drool from her mouth that she couldn’t contain. It was terrifying; silent gasping punctuated by the occasional inhuman gurgle. Natasha was afraid to touch her in these moments, reaching out to reassure her before retracting her hand as though she had been burned. Yelena noticed, of course she did, and it just made her sob harder.
A speech pathologist had entered once, knocking on the open door. That had vexed Natasha, but she did not mention it. “Is this Yelena?” she had asked with an odd tone of excitement. The family nodded in the affirmative, observing her. “Great!” she beamed, “Hi, Yelena!” She had enunciated her words too well, almost patronizingly. Yelena tore her eyes away from the TV and the program that had been blaring: a couple tearing apart old homes and refurbishing them in the same white and grays. Conformity at all costs.
“Hello, sweetie! We’re going to do something fun today, do you know what that is?” The woman now took a seat at her bedside, cooing at her. Yelena squinted, irritated with the way she was being spoken to. The woman mistook it for confusion. “Well, we’re going to use this tablet,” she held it up as she spoke, “and you’re going to use it to talk! Isn’t that cool?!”
Yelena’s gaze found Natasha’s in the room. Evidently she did not agree it was cool. The woman patted her hand a bit, trying to get her attention again. The screen now displayed four boxes, complete with childish imagery. Happy. Sad. Scared. Angry. “Which one do you feel like today?”
Melina and Alexei’s interests were peaked. They looked up: Alexei from the TV and Melina from her hands. It took Yelena almost no time to decide.
“Angry,” the artificial voice stated, emotionlessly.
“Why are you angry, Yelena?” the speech pathologist probed. “Can you show me why you’re angry?” She switched to a different screen, this one complete with more words and images.
“Angry,” the tablet echoed again, “Angry.”
“Yes, but why?” She began to prod her, “Why are you angry?”
“Angry.”
“Can you press a different button, Yelena? Tell me why.”
“Angry. Angry. Angry.” The words ran together, until the word was almost incomprehensible. She was so unbelievably frustrated with herself, her predicament, everything. All she could see was red.
“Alright,” after about 10 minutes with Yelena the woman was already obviously annoyed, “I’ll go then, but if you ever want to talk I’m always available.”
A hush fell over the room again. Alexei looked uncomfortable in his own skin, and he chose to refocus almost entirely on the television, but not before reading out a blind hand to squeeze his girl’s foot comfortingly. Yelena closed her eyes, gnawing anxiously on the tube in her mouth as she tended to do when she was upset. Melina rested a cool hand on her forehead and she stopped.
The day finally arrived after much anxious waiting. Doctors filed into the room, all with large smiles plastered on their faces. “Today’s the day,” they chanted this sentence as though it was some sort of religious ritual, “Today’s the day.” Yelena seemed to share in this excitement by trying to do the honors herself and attempting to rip the tube out. Natasha sat with her holding both her hands, a front for restraining her, they both knew it, but it was nice all the same.
They began to crowd around her, pulling the tape off her cheeks, preparing the oxygen mask. Finally one woman emerged from the sea, deflating the balloon on the tube, telling Yelena to try to breathe through it. Then in one fell swoop she pulled the tube out of her throat. Natasha cringed- it was like a magic trick she had seen when she was younger. A magician reaching into his top hat, pulling out scarf after scarf after scarf. Like how the tube just kept coming and coming out of Yelena’s body, it was horrifying. All of a sudden it was over and her little sister was bent over the bed, hacking in a basin produced out of the crowd. A mask was placed over her face, she was pushed back into the pillows, and one word reverberated through the pushing, pulsating mass of people. Breathe, breathe, breathe.
As quickly as they had come people began to trickle out, the spectacle now over. Yelena and her family remained to ride out the storm. Her chest heaved, her head fell to the side- exhausted. The sound of Yelena’s wheezing pressed in on Natasha’s ears, and for a while it was all she could hear.
“Na-sha”
Alexei clapped his massive hands together, raising both fists to the ceiling in silent celebration of his daughter’s first word. Melina beamed, running her fingers along Yelena’s braid in pride. Natasha moved in closer, into the small circle only they shared.
“Yes, Yelena?”
“You,” the words scraped out of her vocal cords, clearly painful by the way Yelena contorted her face on the syllables, “stayed.”
The words that went unsaid hung heavy in the air. You stayed this time. She had fucked up- really fucked up. She considered it the worst mistake of her life. But widows never made the same mistake twice.
“I did, and I won’t leave again, sestra. Never again. Promise.” She held out her pinkie fingers, memories of sweet summer nights and promises made under the cover of night sprouted up about them. Yelena reached up a shaky hand, latching onto her sister’s finger. The pact might as well have been sworn in blood, both women understood the significance of the pledge. Yelena began the slow and agonizing process of pulling herself to the side of the bed, patting the space she had left in her wake. Natasha felt herself shaking her head, but her eyes were so big, so pleading, so young that she found herself crawling into bed after her. She seemed very pleased with this, resting her head on Natasha’s shoulder, her chest finally stilling into a more reasonable pattern. Natasha melted into the touch. She hadn’t realized how much she had needed this, how much they had both needed this. Melina smiled softly, bringing up a fluffy blanket around them, wishing them both sweet dreams as she had always used to do, when sweet dreams were still a common occurrence. Alexei did the same, and soon, despite her best wishes, Natasha felt herself drifting off. Orpheus closed their eyes too, finally able to rest knowing Eurydice was right behind them, not needing to check. Eurydice would never leave them. She would never leave.