Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

My fingers gather, measure hair,

hook, pull and twist hair and hair.

Deft, quick, they plait,

weave, articulate lock and lock, to make

and make these braids, which point

the direction of my going, of all our continuous going. 

And though what's made does not abide,

my making is steadfast, and, besides, there is a making

of which this making-in-time is just a part,

a making which abides

beyond the hands which rise in the combing,

the hands which fall in the braiding,

trailing hair in each stage of its unbraiding.

From "Braiding", by Li-Young Lee

“Mommy, can you make my hair pretty?”

Mama is busy with her papers at the kitchen table—she usually is—but she still spares a smile for Yelena.

“Hmm? Oh, hello Yelena. Do you want pretty hair like Natasha’s?”

Natasha changes her hair color sometimes, even though her actual red hair is really pretty already. Mama put some stuff in it to make it turn yellow once, like Yelena’s, and then brown, like Mama’s, but right now Natasha is moving through all the other colors of the rainbow and more besides: pink and green and blue and purple. Mama buys Natasha whatever colors she asks for. She always smiles proudly and says it’s like warning coloration.

Some animals use bright colors to show they’re dangerous, Mama had said, as she put the color in Natasha’s hair. Like poisonous toads and venomous snakes. Or black widow spiders.

Yelena had giggled. Natasha’s not dangerous, Mommy. She’d expected Mama and Natasha to smile at her, say of course she’s not, or make a joke, but they’d just looked serious, and Natasha had looked kind of sad, or maybe scared, probably because spiders were scary, so Yelena had suggested Natasha make her hair rainbow colored.

“The colors are really pretty, but no, Mommy. Jenny came to school yesterday with the prettiest braid, like, a princess braid, and even Annie said it was pretty and not boring like how other girls never did anything with their messy hair, and I think she was talking about me, so now I have to have a pretty braid for school today, Mama, I have to!” 

Natasha looks up from her breakfast with narrowed eyes. “If Annie’s making fun of your hair, you should stick chewing gum in hers, see how she likes that.”

“Natasha,” scolds their mother, though she obviously doesn’t mean it, because her eyes are smiling. “I’ll braid your hair so long as you promise not to put gum in any of your classmates’ hair, Yelena.”

Well, now Yelena has to think about it. It would be very funny to put a big wad of chewed gum in Annie’s perfectly straight, perfectly boring brown hair. But Yelena’s hair would look very nice in a fancy braid, and then once she takes the braid out, it will be all pretty and wavy, and so the braid wins out.

“Okay, deal. I promise.”

Mama nods solemnly and they shake on it.

So Yelena goes to fetch the hair brush and hair ties and then she comes back to the kitchen table, where Mama brushes her hair nice and soft, and then starts braiding it.

“Not a regular, boring braid, Mommy, something fancy,” Yelena tells her.

“Oh, fancy, okay. Well, what’s fancier than a crown?” she says, and Yelena has to try very hard to stay still until she’s done. 

The moment she finishes, Yelena runs off to the bathroom to look in the mirror, and gasps when she sees herself. She really does look like a princess, a complicated-looking braid circling her head like a crown. It’s so pretty and Annie is going to be so jealous. She runs back to the kitchen to give her mother a hug.

“Thank you, Mommy!”

Mama cups her face in her hands and smiles down at her, tilting her head to and fro as if to make sure the braid is perfect. 

“Beautiful and practical,” she says. “It will keep your hair out of your face, and make sure no one can grab it and pull it in a fight.”

This is true, thinks Yelena, remembering the time she’d pulled Michelle’s temptingly swishy hair as payback for Michelle stealing her snack time cookie.

“She’s not going to get in a fight in kindergarten,” says Natasha, her voice sharp.

Mama’s smile goes a little strange. “No, of course not,” she says. “Have a good day at school, girls.”

Natasha walks to school with her like always, and she’s quiet and scowling the whole time. Yelena doesn’t know why.

“Do you think my hair looks dumb?” asks Yelena, suddenly unsure now that they’re almost at school, because she’s never seen any other girl with braids like this and maybe everyone will think it’s weird.

“You always look dumb,” is Natasha’s automatic rejoinder, but she smiles at Yelena as she says it, and fusses with a stray wisp of Yelena’s hair. “Your hair looks pretty like that. We can learn some other braids too, if you want. I can do them in the mornings when Mom’s busy.”

“Really? Thank you!” She hugs her sister, and Natasha hugs back, tight and long, until Yelena has to squirm out of her grip. “I’m gonna be late!”

“No gum in anyone’s hair, and no fights!” yells Natasha as Yelena runs to class.

Honestly, why does everyone think she’s going to get into fights. Yelena would much rather play with her crayons. Maybe she’ll draw a picture today, one of her and Natasha and Mama and Papa, and she’ll make sure that Natasha’s hair is colorful and pretty, and that Yelena’s is like Mama’s, braided into a crown. Yeah, that’s what she’ll do.

Chapter Text

Yelena is on a mission, and she is not alone. 

This is something of a rarity: the Red Room usually sends Widows out on missions alone, or they send multiple Widows, separately, and leave it to the Widows to decide whether to work together or take out the competition. 

And it’s always a competition. That became very clear, in the training exercise when Yelena was 15, when she’d walked into the taiga with seven of her fellow Widows, and walked back out alone. The handlers had called her the winner for that, but that hadn’t felt like the right word. Survivor seems more appropriate.

Anyway, Yelena is on a mission—tasked with leading it, even—and she is not alone, Ingrid is with her, which probably means it’s a very important mission, because Yelena and Ingrid are the best. To both be sent out together, with the expectation of teamwork…this is a very important mission indeed. Not that Yelena knows why. She’s been briefed enough to know the objective, and doesn’t need to know more.

Alone or not, the rhythm of pre-mission prep stays largely the same. She checks her weapons, she checks her body armor, she puts it and her weapons on. Ingrid does the same. When that’s done to her satisfaction, she turns her attention to satellite imagery and maps, committing them all to memory. Marrakech is an old city, and its streets and alleys are a jumbled maze, easy to disappear in. Yelena does not intend to let their target disappear in them.

Here is a difference in the familiar rhythm of preparing for a mission though: Ingrid braids Yelena’s hair.

There are few rituals among the girls of the Red Room, and fewer still that retain some innocence, but this is one of them. The Widows play with each others’ hair, combing and curling and brushing and braiding. It’s a practical enough pastime that the handlers have never cracked down on it, though they have looked askance whenever the Widows get too creative with their makeshift hairdressing. Darya has always deflected their suspicion though, her light brown face serene and her dark, luminous eyes steady as she makes some perfectly reasonable excuse like it improves our disguise skills or it keeps our hair out of our eyes. 

It’s been a long time since Yelena has seen Darya. She wonders if that means Darya’s last mission is ongoing, or if it has already failed.

It isn’t relevant. It’s Ingrid who’s braiding Yelena’s hair now, though Ingrid undoubtedly learned from Darya, because she’s doing more than a simple and practical plait. She does first one braid on the right side, then another on the left, and twists and tucks them into what feels like a secure bun.

“Getting fancy, are we?” murmurs Yelena.

Ingrid flicks Yelena’s ear, right on one of her piercings. “Just trying to match these,” she says.

Yelena grins and is about to offer to braid Ingrid’s hair for her, when their comms crackle.

“Target has been spotted, move out,” says the handler, and there’s no time to return the favor of a braid. Ingrid gathers her hair up into a fast, tight ponytail, and they go.

Yelena will regret that, later. It wouldn’t have made a difference, wouldn’t have saved Ingrid, wouldn’t have freed her. Yelena had, after all, left Ingrid behind, not yet comprehending just what gift Oksana had given her in those vials. But at least then, Ingrid would have looked—cared for, in the end. She would have had that one small, good piece of the Red Room, or like someone had loved her enough to take the time to give her some intricate braid.

Yelena can give all her sister Widows a better gift than braids now, hopefully: she can give them freedom, so long as her gamble doesn’t fail, and so long as her superhero sister doesn’t fail her.

Chapter Text

“Oh, that was a bad idea,” groans Yelena, and lowers her arms after barely starting to braid her hair. She wants it secure and out of her face if she’s going to be on pilot duty for this whole jailbreaking Alexei plan, but maybe she’ll just have to settle for stuffing it into a bun. “Fuck, I’m so stiff and sore, do we have any more ibuprofen?”

“I told you, you should have stretched instead of just going to sleep,” says her heartless sister.

Yelena has had a long couple of days, okay? Sleep had seemed a lot more important than stretching last night, even if the chopper’s cots are incredibly uncomfortable. Could they not have parked the damn thing near a city with a hotel or something? Instead they’re in the middle of nowhere  at some ancient Soviet airstrip so they can fuel up before breaking Alexei out of his Siberian gulag.

“Fine, whatever, do we have any vodka?” she asks.

Natasha glares. “No drinking and flying.”

“You’re no fun,” Yelena tells her, then makes another attempt at putting her hair up. 

Her biceps are not happy about it, and her trapezius muscles register some vigorous complaints too. Yelena groans again, which makes Natasha roll her eyes as she pulls a hairbrush out of her bag.

“Stop that, come here, I’ll put your hair up.” 

Yelena doesn’t lower her arms just yet, and squints suspiciously at Natasha. Her arms might actually be stuck now, come to think of it. She risks lowering them carefully, and almost sighs in relief when the worst of the ache eases.  

“Properly? Because I’ve seen footage of you Avenging, your hair’s all over the place, it’s a disgrace. You’re just giving enemies a handhold, and for what? So you can, like, toss your hair around and look hot?”

“Oh my god, that’s not what—“

“It is, it totally is, because you’re a poser—“

“Do you want me to help or not—“

“Only if you do it right, because if I crash the chopper when my hair gets in my eyes, it’ll be your fault—“

“Just let me do it already, will you?”

“Fine,” says Yelena, and turns to offer Natasha her hair.

Despite what a tangled mess Yelena’s hair is, Natasha combs it gently enough that Yelena only feels the occasional sharp tug of a knot coming loose.

“When’s the last time you washed your hair?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I haven’t exactly had the time to shower what with being pursued by assassins and what not, I’ll make sure to pencil in some self-care time the next time I’m on the run from an evil organization.”

“Looking put together is its own kind of armor, you know,” says Natasha, still combing. “Or a disguise.”

Warning coloration, remembers Yelena. It seems Natasha has really taken that lesson of Melina’s to heart. She thinks of Natasha’s Black Widow uniform, the version she sports as a member of the Avengers, and frowns. Is it a costume more than it is a uniform? The thought is disquieting for some reason.

“Is that what it is with the Avengers?” she asks. “Like, you’re just the sexy cool Black Widow on a team full of obnoxious macho men, and now they’ve all, what, broken up with you and hung you out to dry?”

“Okay, no, I kind of, sort of went out with one Avenger, not all of them—“

Yelena gasps, making sure it sounds exaggerated and loud. “Which one? Wait, let me guess, you have that arrow necklace, was it Hawkeye? He’s not hot, you can do better. Like, aim for Captain America at least.”

“It wasn’t Hawkeye, he’s married. And again, it’s not like that, the Avengers are just—were—my team. For a while. And it’s complicated, but—it’s not about me, you know? It’s the Sokovia Accords, and it’s Steve and Tony’s shit, and Bruce being AWOL…I don’t know. It was good while it lasted, I guess.”

“Thought they were your shiny new family.”

Natasha snorts. “I thought that too, but clearly, I was wrong.” 

Yelena twists to look at Natasha’s face, and she sees Natasha’s lost expression before Natasha covers it up with affected annoyance. Honestly, fuck the Avengers for putting that look on her sister’s face.

“What, are you just going to give up on your Avenger family then?” Yelena demands.

“You’re the one who said they’re not my family in the first place,” says Natasha, and turns Yelena’s head so she can keep braiding. “It’s fine, I’m good on my own.”

“Bullshit,” scoffs Yelena. 

Natasha cares too much and always has. There’s no way she’s okay with just ditching the Avengers, team or family or whatever they are to her.

“It’s not bullshit,” says Natasha, and okay, she’s braiding Yelena’s hair kind of tightly now, the braids tugging on Yelena’s scalp.

“It is! It’s total bullshit. If they’re your family, you don’t give up on them. Not after one fight, and not just because some of you are in prison and some of you have abandoned the others, you put the work in and you try. You at least try, instead of just giving up.”  

“Yelena—“ starts Natasha, her voice horribly soft and gentle, too close to pitying.

“Whatever,” says Yelena, past the unexpected lump in her throat. Natasha’s pulled too damn hard on her hair, is all. “Are you done?” 

“Yeah, I’m done. Do you have any pins or anything?” Natasha asks.

Yelena does in fact have pins, because she can seriously carry so much stuff in this vest. She opens one of the small pockets and fishes out a few bobby pins, and hands them to Natasha.

“Told you I can put so much stuff in here.”

“Uh huh,” says Natasha, a smile in her voice. “There, all done.”

Yelena tests the braids out with a few sharp shakes of her head, but nothing moves, and the braided bun at the back of her head stays secure.

“Thanks,” Yelena says. “I can do yours, if you want,” she offers, but Natasha shakes her head.

“Nah, I have to flip my hair around like a poser, remember,” she says with a wink. “Now come on, the package should be on the way to Alexei by now, we need to get going.”

Yelena sighs, and heads for the cockpit. This really isn’t the kind of family reunion she’d ever imagined, but it’ll have to do.

Chapter Text

If Natasha has some grand monument or statue somewhere, Yelena doesn’t know about it and doesn’t want to. Let the world have its heroic lost Avenger to venerate: Yelena just wants somewhere to mourn her sister.

She wishes she had something more than a gravestone over an empty grave, because too many dead Widows have been left to rot like trash, abandoned and unmourned, and she remembers too, how much Natasha had wanted to find her biological mother’s grave, some proof of her existence. But that’s not possible, apparently.

She’d gone to Clint Barton to demand answers, after she and half the world’s population popped back into existence, and found a broken man.

I’m sorry, he’d told her, with all the misery of a man who expected no forgiveness. Which was good, because Yelena will never give it to him. It should have been me, he’d said, and no arguments there. He’d told her about Vormir and the Infinity Stones and the time travel, and how the Avengers had tried to bring Natasha back, they’d tried, but even with supposedly all-powerful magical space rocks, they hadn’t managed it. You could have at least brought her back home, she’d told him, instead of killing him like she’d wanted to. Cap was going to, Barton had said. But then he didn’t come back.

So whatever. Yelena had a headstone made, and put it in Ohio. She hadn’t thought anybody knew about it, she sure as hell hadn’t put out a goddamn announcement or obituary, but every time she comes here, there are flowers on the grave, or little toys, candles, photos, drawings, notes and letters. She’d figured it’s the Avengers’ doing, and maybe some of it is, but the photos are of strangers, with brief notes written on the back saying things like thank you for bringing my family back and thank you for making sure my babies were looked after while I was gone. The notes and letters are similar: full of thank yous and how much Natasha had meant to them. It’s nice, she supposes. It’s nice that people appreciate what Natasha did for them.

But every time that Yelena comes here, she’s alone, apart from Fanny. So who knows how people get here, or when.

Today, there’s actually someone else here. Yelena keeps one hand on Fanny’s leash and the other near her weapon as she approaches Natasha’s grave, but there’s no ambush waiting for her: just a child and a woman, unarmed to Yelena’s eye, both of them sitting on the grass beside the headstone, as if on a picnic. There’s a suited man standing a few yards away who’s definitely armed though, but by then she’s close enough to recognize the slim woman with the pale hair: Pepper Potts, Tony Stark’s widow.

“Hello,” says Potts, rising, as the child squeals, “Doggy!”

The kid has some sense, at least, and doesn’t rush over to pet a strange dog.

“We can go, if you’d like some privacy,” offers Potts, and Yelena almost says yes, leave, before her eye catches the child’s drawing anchored by a stone at Natasha’s grave, newly placed there judging by the still clean and whole paper.

“No, that’s alright,” she says, and smiles at the little girl, who’s practically vibrating with the desire to pet Fanny. “You can come and pet her, she’s friendly.”

“Hi, I’m Morgan,” says the little girl, more to Fanny than to Yelena, already burying her hands in Fanny’s copious soft fur.

“Hi, Morgan. I’m Yelena, and this is Fanny.”

“Are you and Fanny here to visit Aunt Natasha? Mommy and me are here to visit Aunt Natasha, I brought her a picture I drew.”

Aunt Natasha. Of course her sister had been Aunt Natasha to all the Avengers’ kids, not just Barton’s.

“Yeah, I am,” she says, and glances at the drawing, a stick figure with red hair holding a smaller brown-haired figure’s hand, the trees and lake drawn around them with somewhat more skill than the people. 

What do people say, at times like this? Something kind and encouraging, probably, even if it’s untrue. Morgan is only a little girl, after all. She doesn’t need to be good at art. Yelena hadn’t been, at that age. Yelena dredges her memory for the things people had said about her own terrible childhood drawings, Alexei’s booming voice exclaiming over all the colors.  

“And I see that, it’s a lovely picture. The lake and trees are very pretty.”

The suited man is coming closer now, possibly having spotted the signs that Yelena’s armed too.

“Pepper,” he calls out, but Potts—Pepper—just waves a hand at him, then offers it to Yelena to shake.

“Hi, I’m Pepper. Did you know Natasha, or are you just here to pay your respects?”

As far as Yelena knows, Natasha had only told Rogers and Barton about her, at Yelena’s own request given the whole Accords, superhero team divorce situation. Knowing Natasha had kept that promise, even after Yelena was gone, makes her ache. She could lie now. Pepper would never know, probably. She could lie, and leave, but—Morgan had called Natasha Aunt Natasha.

“She was my sister.”

“Oh,” says Pepper, taking that in and coming to who knows what conclusions. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she adds, and it’s no empty platitude. It’s widow to Widow, as it were, so much understanding in her eyes that Yelena almost can’t bear it. “Were you the one who arranged for…” Pepper trails off, gestures around them.

“Yeah. When I came back, after the whole being dead thing. Did you—those five years. Did you spend a lot of time with her?”

Because Yelena hadn’t been able to stand talking to Barton, would’ve ended up with her hands around his throat screaming about how it should have been him, how could he have let her go, and apparently, Barton hadn’t been around anyway, off being tragic and murderous about his (temporarily) dead family, like boo hoo. Everyone had a dead family at the time, you don’t have to become an assassin about it. Anyway, she doesn’t want to murder Barton, it would lead to a whole inconvenient Avengers avenging him thing, Rogers is MIA or dead no one will say which, Stark is definitely dead, the green guy is kind of Natasha’s ex so fuck him, and who the hell knows how to get in touch with assorted alien gods or whatever. The upshot is, no one’s been able to tell her much about Natasha’s last five years.

Yelena would like to know. Yelena just wants to feel close to her sister, one last time.

“Some,” says Pepper. “Work things, mostly, setting up aid organizations and charities, but also just lunches and dinners at the house, or at the Compound.”

“Aid organizations?” Yelena prompts. “I’ve read things, in the letters people leave here, about—about homes for kids?”

Pepper smiles, and sits on a blanket spread on the grass, pats it in invitation. “Yes, for children left orphaned after the Blip. I’d be happy to tell you more about it.”

So Yelena sits too, and listens as Pepper tells her about initiatives and charities and foundations, all set up to make sure that the children left orphaned and alone during the Blip didn’t fall through the cracks. That no one would steal them and use them, that they would be safe and cared for.

“She chose a lot of the staff herself,” says Pepper, and then, carefully, she adds, “She said she knew a lot of women who’d been in similar circumstances, who wanted to help.”

The Black Widows, the ones freed from the Red Room. Of course, of course, Natasha would have— Yelena can’t breathe for grief. It bows her back and fills her lungs, it takes her by the throat. Yelena has spent more time without her sister than with, her absence shouldn’t hurt so much, she should be used to it, but Yelena had hoped—she’d wanted—her grief crashes through her, an ocean spilling out of her, a tidal wave. 

Fanny whines and presses up against her, and Morgan sounds scared as she asks if Yelena is okay, but Pepper just puts an arm around her.

Eventually Yelena gets a hold of herself, and Pepper Potts is apparently some kind of angel, or maybe just the actual most tactful, kind person in the world, because she takes Yelena’s hand, and keeps talking. Even Morgan catches on, and regales Yelena with a circuitous and somewhat confusing story about the time she went on an adventure with Aunt Natasha, nonsensically concluding with, “If you’re Aunt Natasha’s sister, that makes you my aunt too, right?”

Yelena looks at Morgan, a billionaire’s heir, a martyred Avenger’s daughter, who will never want for anything, save maybe her father. She is the furthest thing possible from the child Yelena had been, owned by the Red Room without even knowing it, and it seems impossible that Yelena could ever be Aunt Yelena to this little girl. But she’s already had one Black Widow for an honorary aunt, so why not another? And if Natasha hadn’t given up on holding together her odd Avenger family in the end, then shouldn’t Yelena at least try to honor that?

“You can call me that, yeah,” she says, her voice hoarse.

Morgan beams at her. “Does that mean I can braid your hair too? Aunt Natasha always let me braid her hair.”

“Sure,” says Yelena, and clears her throat. “She used to braid my hair too.”

“You don’t have to—” murmurs Pepper.

“It’s okay,” Yelena says, with a smile for Morgan, and lets Morgan’s cheerful, childish chatter wash over her as she plays with Yelena’s hair. 

Morgan evidently decides against a simple, single braid, and carefully arranges Yelena’s hair first on one side, then on the other, and then sets about braiding, with the occasional gentle instruction from her mother. Eventually, Yelena has two braids, messy and a little lopsided, and tied off with Morgan’s own hair ties.

“They’re not as nice as Aunt Natasha’s,” says Morgan, with a sweet little frown.

Yelena smiles. “Well, you’ll just have to practice more.”

Morgan nods, solemn and determined. “I’ll learn how to do nicer braids for the next time you visit.”

Chapter Text

“So, like, is this an official Avengers mission or what?” Yelena asks. “And if it is an Avengers mission, does that make me an Avenger? Do you have auditions or something, because I just want to make it clear, this is not me trying out for your little superhero team.”

She’ll play nice with Natasha’s one-time superhero family, but she has no intention of becoming Natasha’s replacement. If anyone is about to suggest it, she will jump out of this damn plane.

“We’re not official Avengers,” says Wilson, exchanging a look with the Soldier—Barnes—James—she doesn’t know what to call him.

She knows his name now, but she doesn’t know what she can safely call him. She doesn’t even really know who he is, if he’s not the Winter Soldier, and he’s definitely not really the Winter Soldier anymore. Or not only the Winter Soldier, anyway.

“You’re Captain America, how are you not an official Avenger?” she says.

Wilson shrugs. “Back before the Blip, I spent most of my superhero time looking for this guy,” he says, with a nod towards Barnes, whose expression stays neutral and vaguely forbidding. “And I never signed the Accords. So don’t think I was ever on any kind of official roster. And now—well, let’s just say we’re free agents.” He meets her eyes, even and open and honest. “So if you ever need backup for another mission like this one? You can come to us. We can keep it out of any official channels, if we need to.”

Yelena’s immediate impulse is to say thanks, but no thanks. She hadn’t even wanted them along on this damn mission. But she’d run into them while they were raiding an old HYDRA base, in possession of the very intel she needed, and she’d had to decide, fast: abandon the mission, fight Captain America and the Winter Soldier, or suggest a mutually beneficial arrangement. Alexei would have said to fight, Melina would have suggested retreat, but Natasha—Natasha had considered Wilson a teammate, though Wilson doesn’t seem to know anything about Yelena herself beyond that she’s a Black Widow. And the Winter Soldier would have—

So anyway, Yelena went with begrudging teamwork. Only out of practicality, of course. And it’s practical to keep this team-up friendly, to not make any more enemies than she needs to, so she says, “I’ll consider it,” and Wilson nods, evidently satisfied.

The Soldier—Barnes—just stares at her, part assessment and part mild curiosity. She doesn’t know if she wants him to recognize her or not. She stares back, and looks for the Soldier she’d known. He’s there in the harsher lines of Barnes’ face, maybe, in the battle-ready tension of his body. But his eyes—that’s where the difference is. That’s always where the difference is. Yelena’s seen it dozens of times already, when she’s administered the antidote to her fellow Black Widows: relentless blankness replaced with an unmistakable but impossible to describe something, a spark or a light. Swiftly followed by absolute horror and terror, of course.

The comedown from mind control and brainwashing sucks. A lot.

“We have talked about your staring problem, Buck,” murmurs Wilson, and Barnes’ lips twitch into the slightest suggestion of a smile as he cuts a quick glance over at Wilson.

James, Bucky, Buck, how many names does he have, and why are almost all of them ridiculous? Maybe, after having had no real name at all, he’s collected an excess of them. There are worse coping methods, she supposes.

“She started it,” says Barnes, and then he winks at her.

A wink. It’s the most uncool thing she’s ever seen.

“I did not!” she retorts. “You started it!”

“Lord save me from grown-ass assassins acting like literal children,” says Wilson, and rolls his eyes.

Barnes’ hint of a smile widens to an actual grin, and Yelena struggles to keep her reaction limited to a surprised blink. Maybe she should just jump out of the plane. The urge only grows stronger when Wilson attempts to make small talk. Yelena doesn’t do small talk. Wilson catches the hint and falls silent, though he exchanges another speaking look with Barnes, who just shrugs.

She and Barnes go back to staring at each other. Barnes still doesn’t seem to recognize her. She manages to work up some nicely distracting anger about that, until her brain unhelpfully reminds her exactly why he doesn’t recognize her.

This is what happens when you don’t wipe the Asset, how could you let it walk around like that for weeks—

We used the words! It was fine! What’s the damn point of the words if you still have to scramble its brains every—

Fucking Soviets, I’m taking this to Pierce, fuck resource sharing if—

Go ahead, tell Pierce, like Dreykov gives a shit, the Red Room’s not giving the Winter Soldier program shit if your assets are going to come here and try to stage a goddamn jailbreak—

And screaming, the whole time, screaming, the Soldier shackled to a chair, his back arching and his whole body spasming as the machine strapped to his head wouldn’t stop crackling and sizzling, and he wouldn’t stop screaming, and the youngest Widows were all crying as quietly as they could, while all Yelena could think of was being dragged screaming from her family, then from the Soldier. She could never keep them, it seemed, everyone was always being taken away from her—

“We’re jumping in half an hour, you should probably secure your hair if you don’t want to be eating most of it on the way down,” says Barnes, and Yelena startles, despite the fact that his voice is as shockingly low and soft as always.

Yelena reaches back for her messy ponytail, and twists it up into a sloppy bun. “There, happy now?”

He frowns, shakes his head. “That won’t hold. I can braid it for you, if you’d like.”

Now it’s Yelena who stares, caught in another memory she doesn’t think he shares with her anymore: the Soldier, sitting patiently and watching with concentration as Darya showed him how to braid Ksenia’s hair. Here, now you try, Darya had said, turning around to offer her own straight black hair to him, only for him to surprise all of them, including himself, when he’d effortlessly and gently braided the thick mass of it into an intricate french braid.

He was supposed to have been teaching them how to garrote a larger opponent, and how to break out of someone attempting it on them. The Widows had all ended up learning how to french braid instead.

Her silence makes Barnes’ expression begin to turn neutral and shuttered again, and he starts to say, “Sorry, forget I—”

“Sure,” says Yelena, and yanks her hair back out of its bun before leaving her side of the jet to sit on the floor in front of Barnes.

“Do you have a comb or brush?” asks Barnes, and Yelena shakes her head. “Hm, we’ll make do. Tell me if it’s too tight.”

His fingers, both metal and flesh, are gentle as they comb through her hair, coaxing out the tangles without yanking. He starts braiding near the crown of her head: a french braid again, all these years later. The motion of his fingers, and the care he takes with each and every single knot and tangle, are the exact same as the Winter Soldier’s. Yelena’s eyes burn.

“Oh, you know how to do fancy braids,” says Wilson, his tone split between teasing and impressed.

“I had three little sisters and an overwhelmed mom, I know how to do all kinds of braids,” says Barnes, and Yelena has to close her eyes then.

Three little sisters. Of course. Suddenly, a lot of old memories make a lot more sense. She doesn’t want them to make more sense.

She wants to scream. She wants to jump out of the plane and scream, and let the roar of air swallow the sound and swallow her. When she opens her eyes again, Wilson is looking at her, a concerned furrow in his brow, and shit, what is her face doing right now. She gets it under control again.

Barnes braids her hair quickly, never tugging, keeping the braid tight enough to be secure but not so tight that it pulls at her scalp, and when he’s done, he taps her shoulder and she passes up a hair tie to him.

“Looks nice,” says Wilson.

“Thanks,” say Yelena and Barnes, in unison, and Wilson laughs.

Even with the rubble of the crashed Red Room smoking all around her, Yelena had never fully trusted that it was gone for good, and it turns out that she’d been right not to. The Red Room will always exist, so long as there are men like Dreykov, or men like Lukin now, attempting to take up Dreykov’s mantle, always so happy to use up little girls and women for the sake of their power. Sometimes it’s not the Red Room itself, not the monstrous thing Department X created, and yet it is still the Red Room, it’s still stolen girls and women, still people trapped and enslaved, still people being used up and thrown away. Yelena’s happy to destroy those kinds of Red Room too.  

This, though, is the real thing, if in significantly reduced circumstances, set up as it is in an abandoned train depot, once used for freight. Deprived of Department X’s and the Red Room’s resources, and subsisting off of what’s left of HYDRA’s, Lukin hasn’t managed much beyond holding some children captive, and kidnapping some scientists, so the mission is easy enough, a swift infiltration under cover of night, dropping in from the air for stealth.

It’s especially easy with Wilson throwing the shield and Barnes terrifying the shit out of all the HYDRA lackeys as he stalks through the makeshift base, leaving destruction in his wake. Not deadly destruction, Yelena can’t help but notice. He pulls his punches, shoots to wound rather than to kill, sends knives into weak points rather than vital organs.

Yelena tries to do the same, mindful of the possibility that these goons aren’t acting of their own free will. Someone else can sort that out later, and deal with Lukin too; she is here for the girls.

They find them in the freight cars, huddled there in the cold and in the dark, and Yelena has to breathe through the memory of the shipping container that had taken her to Russia.

Some of the children are smaller and younger than she’d been, back then.

She has the antidote ready to administer, but they are all just girls, not yet Widows, all of them terrified but some of them brave too, defiant and desperate the way Natasha had been, when they’d stolen Yelena from her arms.

Both Barnes and Wilson turn gentle, when they’re faced with the girls. Yelena tries, but she’s not an especially gentle person. Still, one of the girls takes her hand when she offers it, and then another joins her, and they lead the girls out, Wilson already calling the appropriate authorities. One of the little girls asks Wilson if he is an angel. Yelena supposes that he looks the part.

Barnes has a child in each arm. Wilson is holding a toddler, and another child is holding his free hand. Yelena is holding two children’s hands, and she follows Wilson and Barnes out, and there is no shooting, there are no alarms. They do not have to run. They do not have to be quiet. None of these girls needs to stab and bite and claw and kick their way out, only to fail anyway, and no one will say a few words that will make Barnes go blank and vacant, and Yelena will not have to scream Soldat, wake up, please, please, we’re almost there—

Yelena needs to get a hold of herself. This is a successful mission. She doesn’t know why tears are making her eyes burn hot.

“You okay?” asks Barnes, and when she looks at him, there’s no hollow despair in his eyes, there’s only concern, warm and open, utterly genuine.

He doesn’t even know her, not anymore. He doesn’t even know her and he is still like this. Yelena doesn’t know why she wants to scream at him, to throw herself at him and hit, or maybe to throw herself at him and cry. All of a sudden, it’s as if she’s still in the Red Room, still so close to escape, still that little girl who the Winter Soldier had told to run, Yelena, run, go, look after your sisters. And she had, she’d tried, but she hadn’t been fast enough or strong enough.

Soldat, wake up, she almost says again.

But of course, he’s already woken up, hasn’t he. He’s already woken from his long nightmare, and Yelena needs to wake the hell up too.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m good.”

Yelena wants very badly to make herself scarce when the assorted law enforcement and alphabet agencies show up to handle the cleanup, paperwork, and finger-pointing/scapegoating; unfortunately, she has the girls to think of. She won’t leave until she knows they’re safe, and that means she won’t leave until she sees them safely delivered to their families, or to one of the homes Natasha had set up. She’s not about to risk saving these girls from one Red Room only to see them sent to another.

So she attaches herself to Wilson and Barnes, and follows the stream of first responders to the nearest high school gymnasium, the closest place large enough to act as a staging and triage area for sorting out what to do with over three dozen traumatized girls ranging in age from toddler to teenager. Neither Wilson nor Barnes take exception to this, Wilson just shooting her a smile as he does what she presumes is his Captain America thing, making calls and ordering people around. Soon enough, the gymnasium is filled with cots and blankets, social workers and paramedics, toys and food.

She makes herself useful by talking to the fiercest of the rescued girls, the ones who are still on edge and watching everyone with wary, cornered predators’ eyes, the ones who won’t find comfort in Wilson’s soft words or Barnes’ reassurances. Yelena gives it to those girls straight, lets them keep the improvised weapons they think they’re hiding, and just asks them about their names, their families, where they come from, anything that could help get them home.

Yelena’s about to commandeer a cot of her own and settle down to keep watch for the rest of the night when Wilson calls out to her and waves her over.

“You planning to stick around?” he asks her, and she nods.

“Until all the girls are safely settled.”

Wilson takes that with equanimity, a glint of something that might be approval in his eye, and they go over the logistics for a bit, because apparently Wilson and Barnes intend to stick around for a while too, to do a few sweeps for any remaining HYDRA stragglers. Though if Wilson wants to get started on that, he’ll have to peel Barnes away from babysitting duty, and also he’ll have to stop being evidently captivated by the sight of Barnes on said babysitting duty.

It is, admittedly, a rather novel sight to see the Winter Soldier in full tac gear with a weepy toddler in his arms, pacing back and forth as he murmurs gently to her. The child has been weeping inconsolably since the older girl who’d been looking after her had to go get checked out by the medics, and for all that Barnes had looked extremely alarmed and mildly panicked when a wailing toddler was shoved into his arms, he seems to be managing alright now. Better than alright, if Wilson’s adoring stare is anything to judge by.

“Wow,” says Yelena, taking in the way Wilson is looking at Barnes. If cartoon hearts appeared over Wilson’s head right now, she honestly wouldn’t be surprised.

Wilson glances at her for a second and says, “What?” before immediately staring at Barnes again.

The toddler’s tears are subsiding now, and she’s blinking sleepily, her chubby cheek smushed against Barnes’ shoulder. Barnes slows his pacing and shifts to a practiced-looking rocking sway, still murmuring quiet nonsense to the child, his expression gone sweet and soft in a way the Soldier could have never risked in the Red Room. 

It’s the sort of thing that should make her feel warm and fuzzy, that would probably be the normal person’s reaction, and yet panic prickles cold along her spine, and adrenaline makes her pulse pound. Her instincts are screaming that she’s been compromised, that she’s about to be caught, but she’s not doing anything, there’s no threat here. 

She tears her eyes from Barnes, and does a hopefully casual-looking sweep of the gymnasium. 

“You look like you want to have his babies,” Yelena tells Wilson, absently.

“What? No, that’s not—I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s just—you know, cute, is all. Buck’s good with kids.”

Social worker, EMT, social worker, a few teachers clearly just roused from bed to help wrangle this whole situation...her eye catches on a guy who looks slightly shady, but no, that’s the head of the closest FBI field office and he only looks shady because he too got woken up in the middle of the night for this. And yet she still feels like she should be shouting at Barnes to take the kid and run, only he’s doing the exact opposite of that, settling the now-sleeping child onto one of the cots. He sits down beside the kid, resting one big hand on her back, as if in reassurance. Phantom warmth on her own back makes Yelena shiver, an old memory—Alexei’s hand, or the Soldier’s? She can’t chase it down. 

Wilson sighs, and despite her edginess, Yelena grins and says, “Uh huh. Still sounds like you want to have his children.”

Wilson sighs again, now more aggrieved than lovesick. “You haven’t been talking to my sister, have you?”

Yelena snorts, and is about to make some retort, when the teenaged girl who’d been looking after the toddler returns. They’re not sisters, at least not by blood, not with such different coloring, the toddler olive-skinned and dark-haired, and the teenager milk-pale with hair so blond it’s almost platinum. But the older girl certainly acts like they’re sisters as she checks on the sleeping child, pressing a kiss to her tousled curls. Her face crumples as she does, and Barnes murmurs some reassurance to her.

This, evidently, is all the encouragement the girl needs to burst into tears and now Barnes has another girl crying on his shoulder. There’s a tinge of awkward panic in his expression at first, and then Yelena can actually see his older brother instincts kicking in and taking over, and that’s not safe, that can’t possibly be safe, someone will see and they’ll— 

“You got some kind of history with the Winter Soldier?” Wilson asks, and Yelena startles.

“What makes you say that?”

“The way you looked at him, earlier, on the plane. Like you were expecting him to be someone else, or like you were trying to figure something out. And the way you’re looking now.” 

She stays silent, doesn’t say anything, tries to get her traitorous face under control even as she realizes her lips are trembling. Goddammit. There’s a side effect of breaking brainwashing that no one ever tells you about: she’s got a shitty poker face now that she actually has to put effort into keeping her expression blank. 

“Listen, whatever that history is, it might do both of you good to talk about it with him,” says Wilson. “I promise you, he’s not a danger to those girls. Bucky’s been trying to make amends for his past, and if there’s anything you think he can do for you—”

And that’s it. The idea that the issue here is her being afraid of Barnes. That’s what makes Yelena snap.

“For me? For me? I’m the one who should—” She shuts her mouth with effort, then continues more carefully, “Does he—has he said anything, about the Widows?”

“The Black Widow program?” asks Wilson, and she nods. “No, nothing.”

“Did he—did Natasha talk to him, before—”

“A few times,” Wilson says, slowly, frowning now. “After he came out of cryo in Wakanda. I don’t know the details, but I got the impression it was about the trigger words HYDRA had implanted in him, and some other HYDRA intel.”

So, Natasha might not have known. And why should she have? They’d been separated by then, their little family destroyed and dissolved like it had never existed at all, and Natasha might have already graduated by then too.

“She might not have known, she’d have graduated by then, I think.”

“She used to call it assassin high school,” offers Wilson. “I’m guessing I don’t want to know what that graduation ceremony was like.”

“No, you don’t,” says Yelena with a grim smile, before continuing. “The Red Room collaborated with HYDRA, sometimes. They sent the Winter Soldier to the Red Room once, when I was a girl. To train the Widows, to—I don’t know, they were probably doing more evil science too, but all I knew was that we had a new trainer called the Winter Soldier, and he had a metal arm.”

The way the handlers had talked about him, Yelena had been expecting a monster, or maybe some kind of terrifying robot. But he’d just been a man: one with a metal arm, sure, but still a man, looking hollow and exhausted. When they’d brought him to the training room, all he’d done was stare, blinking a couple of times like he’d never seen a group of baby assassins in training.

They’re children, he’d said, and his voice had not been the terrifying growl Yelena had expected, nor had it been dark and foreboding, it had just been soft and hoarse, like he didn’t speak much. The handlers had ignored him. They’re little girls, he’d insisted, and the handlers had explained the Black Widow program, but the Soldier had just shaken his head and said again, they’re little girls.

He’d trained them anyway, of course. He’d had no more choice than the Widows had.

“How old were you?” Wilson asks.

“I don’t know, ten or so? Anyway, they had the Soldier train us for a while.”

“Jesus Christ,” mutters Wilson.

“No, it’s not—I mean, yes, it was awful, super traumatizing, whatever, but the Soldier, he was—he was kind. He didn’t hurt us the way the other handlers did, he’d braid our hair, he—”

The Soldier hadn’t offered the kind of rough affection that Alexei had, he hadn’t been loud and cheerful like him. He’d been quiet and patient and sad, careful in a way that no one else in the Red Room had ever been with the expendable Widows. Yelena can guess why, now: I had three little sisters. Maybe being a big brother had been in his DNA somewhere, so deep and ever-present that all the mad science experiments hadn’t been able to burn it out.

She clears her throat, continues, “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. He tried to get us out. They’d left him out of cryostasis too long, and I guess that let the conditioning fade. He could have escaped alone, we were so close, but we—the Widows—weren’t fast enough. They caught us, and they caught him, because he wouldn’t abandon us. They put him in this thing, this chair, and he screamed and screamed, and then they took him away and we never saw him again. So he probably doesn’t remember.”

Wilson takes in a slow, shaky breath. When she looks over at him, his eyes are closed, lines of pain on his face that Yelena doesn’t entirely understand, and when he opens his eyes again, they’re bright with tears.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he says, low and shaky, until his voice steadies when he asks, “Do you want to tell him?”

“Will you?” she counters.

“I won’t promise I’ll never tell him the broad strokes about the Red Room, about him having been there. He lived that, and he has a right to know about it, whether he remembers it or not,” says Wilson slowly. “But I won’t tell him about you, not if you don’t want me to.”

“Alright,” she says, and then, “What would be the point in my telling him? It’s not like it’s a good memory, for either of us.”

“You just said he was kind, though.”

“And look where that got him,” snaps Yelena, and okay, yeah, no, she gets it now, understands the odd panic she feels looking at Barnes. 

Even now, so far removed from the Red Room, there’s an old terror in her, a terror of being caught, of being punished. A certainty that any moment now, someone will come to drag the Soldier—Barnes—away, and she will be that useless little girl again, watching him screaming in agony.

“It got him here, Yelena,” says Wilson, solemn and certain. “He’s free now, and so are you, and no one’s going to take either of you away again.”

Yelena laughs, feels tears scatter on her cheeks. “Bullshit. It was Natasha first, who tried to get me—us—out, you know? She was my sister, and they took her away, and then I got her back, but where the hell is she now, huh?”

Wilson’s silent for a long moment as he takes in this new information, and if he starts interrogating her, she’ll punch him, she doesn’t care if he’s Captain America—

“I miss her too,” he says. “Do you regret getting her back in the first place?”

It would be so simple, if she could say yes. If she could say it hadn’t been worth it, to reconnect, to understand exactly what had happened to her family, to have reestablished a relationship with Natasha. But she can’t say that. 

“No.”

Wilson nods, accepting this, then he says, “Listen, this is your call. Once all this is wrapped up, you can leave and never see us again, if you want. But the way I see it, you and Bucky both have some opportunity for closure here. You have to do what’s best for you, but for Bucky? I think telling him would be a kindness. And I think both of you could use more friends.”

“How? How could it possibly be a kindness?” she demands.

“I think it would help him to know that his time as the Winter Soldier, it wasn’t all—it wasn’t all just death and destruction. That even as trapped as he was, he tried to do right by you girls. And that it meant something to you.”

She’s not sure it should matter, given that it hadn’t worked. But, she allows, Barnes might have a different perspective on it than her.

“I’ll think about it.”

It’s almost dawn, and Yelena’s still keeping watch. Neither Wilson nor Barnes have tried to dissuade her yet, no one’s told her to stand down, but Barnes is approaching her cot now, cup of coffee and a grease-stained paper bag of food in hand. She remembers what Wilson had said: I think both of you could use more friends. 

“Early breakfast,” Barnes says, and he squats to set the food on the floor beside the cot. 

The coffee smells kind of burned, like it’s been sitting in a pot for too long, not that she cares. She sips it gratefully, bitter and burned or not, and peeks inside the bag: a banana, a couple of eggy smelling sandwiches of some kind, a muffin. 

“You didn’t have to,” Yelena tells him. “I have—uh, I have protein bars.”

“That’s not real food,” he chides, and nods towards the bag. “At least eat something that has some flavor.”

“Fine,” Yelena says, and tosses him one of the wrapped sandwiches from the bag. “We can share.”

He catches the sandwich, blinking in surprise. “Thanks,” he says, and sits on the floor by Yelena’s cot.

They eat in comfortable enough silence, and when they’re done, Barnes moves to get up again. 

“Soldat, do you remember me?” she asks. The words come out more plaintive than she intends, but it’s too late to take them back now.

Barnes goes still for long seconds, even his face unmoving as he stares at her, then he sits back down with a thump, his expression caught between a kind of stricken horror and hollow resignation. He’s got a shitty poker face too, Yelena thinks. His face hides nothing.

“What did I do?” he asks, and she sees it in his eyes and hears it in his voice: he’s blaming himself already. 

“No, it’s not—that’s not—“ she says, and reaches out to take his hands in hers, holds on tightly. “It’s nothing bad. Not like that. I promise.”

“How could it not be?” he says, raw and wounded. He searches her face, as if he can find something in it to help him remember her.

“When I was ten, they sent the Winter Soldier to the Red Room to train the Black Widows. But he—you—did more than that. You tried to get us out. It didn’t work, we slowed you down too much, but—you tried to get us all out. You tried to save us.”

“Tried,” he echoes. “So it didn’t work. I’m sorry—“

“That’s not—you don’t need to apologize for fuck’s sake, I just wanted—I wanted you to know. I wanted to tell you.”

He closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them again, pleading and determined. “So tell me,” he says.

And she does.

Chapter Text

“How soon can you get to upstate New York?” asks Bucky the moment she picks up his call.

Yelena blinks, then starts packing up her stuff. Fuck, she hopes the world isn’t ending again or something. It has to be serious if Bucky is skipping all his usual fussing about how is she doing and has she eaten a proper meal lately, and how’s Fanny doing, Yelena needs to send him more photos of Fanny, and how she remembers that she can stop by his and Sam’s place any time, right, blah blah blah. Could use a friend my ass, Wilson, she thinks. Yelena’s gained a fussy older brother more than a friend. It’s not the worst, she supposes.

“I’m in Oregon, but I’d have to drive, I have Fanny with me. Why, what’s up, what’s the rush? Are you and Sam getting married, is this you two eloping in a fit of passion?”

Yelena has a secret bet going with Sarah Wilson about just when her brother and Bucky will get married. Sarah says her brother’s a ‘moving molasses-slow’ kind of guy and that it’ll take another couple of years for him to ‘put a ring on it.’ Yelena, having seen exactly how disgustingly, adorably lovey-dovey Bucky and Sam had been over Thanksgiving at the Wilsons last year, thinks Sarah ought to be preparing herself for an early fall wedding this year. 

“What? No, why would you—that’s—no!” splutters Bucky.

Yelena grins, delighted by how flustered he sounds. Normally she’d tease him more, but probably she should figure out if there’s some emergency first.

“Okay, so, what, is there another big alien invasion?”

She frowns, surveys her weapons. She’s not sure she’s sufficiently armed for an alien invasion.

“No, no aliens. And can’t you stick a service animal vest on Fanny and bring her on a plane?” asks Bucky, and he sounds kind of distracted.

“That would be illegal,” says Yelena primly, as if she hasn’t done just that when necessary. “And seriously, what is going on?”

“I don’t think I should tell you over the phone,” he says. His tone is odd enough that Yelena wishes this was a video call so she could see his face. He’s a truly terrible liar, he wouldn’t last a minute lying to her face. “But it’s nothing bad. I promise it’s nothing bad. You’re in Oregon, you said? Hang on, I think—yeah, Hope and Scott can pick you and Fanny up in their Quinjet.”

“I want a Quinjet,” mutters Yelena. “Do I need to be an official Avenger to have a Quinjet?”

“Pretty much.”

They hash out the travel logistics quickly enough, and by then Yelena has packed up her things from the Airbnb she’s rented. She’ll have to email or something about her early checkout, but at least she’s already gotten the latest batch of freed Widows safely settled.

“You really can’t just tell me what’s going on over the phone?” Yelena tries one last time.

Bucky laughs, a startlingly joyful sound. So it really must be something good. Yelena can’t even imagine what good thing could possibly merit both that laugh from Bucky and her having to haul ass across the country, if it’s not him and Sam getting married.

“You really wouldn’t believe me,” he says, his voice brimming with joy. “Just get here, okay? Morgan’s excited to see you.”

Hope Van Dyne and Scott Lang, who identify themselves as part-time Avengers and accept Yelena’s vague I work with Cap and Bucky sometimes, don’t have any more of an idea of what’s going on than Yelena does. They’re cheerful and welcoming enough when they pick Yelena up though, and Fanny seems to adore Scott, who adores her right back.

“You know what this is about?” Lang asks her as he pets Fanny.

“No, just that whatever it is, Bucky’s very happy about it. Did he tell you anything?”

“Cap called us,” offers Van Dyne from the pilot’s seat. “He sounded pretty happy too, but he wouldn’t say what about, just said it’d be easier to show us. I kinda thought it might be a surprise wedding or something, like, him and Barnes are eloping.”

Yelena beams at her in vindication. “Yes, thank you! That’s what I thought too! They’re ridiculous about each other, right? So much meaningful staring into each other’s eyes. But Bucky said that’s not it.”

“I brought a suit, just in case,” says Lang.

The Quinjet’s speed makes even a cross-country flight short, and the company’s not bad. Scott’s the sort of good-natured that’s so sincere that it’s hard to be annoyed by him even if he does chatter non-stop, and Hope has an air of no-nonsense confidence that Yelena’s always found reassuring. Yelena’s glad of the distraction of Scott’s conversation anyway, since Bucky’s not answering her texts about just what the hell is going on with anything other than a series of happy and encouraging emojis and cryptic nonsense.

you’re over 100 years old aren’t emojis beneath your dignity

lol what dignity

TELL ME WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT ALREADY

if i tell you, you’re just going to be furious and not believe me anyway so i figured i’d skip that whole thing and not tell you, but i swear it’s something good. you’ll understand when you get here, just know that it’s real, i promise.

When Yelena steps out of the Quinjet in the middle of some field in upstate New York and hears a beloved, familiar whistle, she starts to understand just what Bucky had meant, why he’d needed to promise this is real. Even so, she doesn’t believe it, thinks she must be imagining things, but the whistle sounds again and when Yelena rushes out of the Quinjet, Natasha is there.

Natasha is right there, alive and well.

“Yelena,” she calls out, and it’s her sister’s voice, hoarse and low, wavering with emotion, but she’s supposed to be dead.

“It’s really her,” Yelena hears someone say—Bucky. “Yelena, I promise, it’s really her. I wouldn’t have told you to come, if we weren’t sure.”

She tears her eyes away from Natasha and sees Bucky, bright-eyed and beaming, already kneeling in the grass to greet an ecstatic Fanny. He’s surrounded by Captains America, current and former: Sam on one side, Rogers on the other, and they’re smiling too.

Yelena looks at Natasha again, her glowing face, her smile, the tears already spilling down her cheeks.

“They told me you were dead,” says Yelena, and takes careful, halting steps towards Natasha.

Her hands can’t decide if they want to reach for her sister, or for a weapon, in case this is a trick, or a trap. But Bucky says it’s real, Bucky is promising that it’s real, and he wouldn’t lie to her, not about this.

“Yeah, well, you were dead for a while too,” counters Natasha.

“Yeah, I was, and you didn’t even get me a grave? Some sister you are. I got you one, it’s a really lovely headstone. People—people leave really nice flowers and letters and things on it. Alexei visited and drank a whole handle of vodka, cried for hours.”

Fuck, now Yelena’s crying too.

“Okay, well, half the planet’s population died, gravestones were kind of at a premium,” says Natasha, still smiling. “I made sure you were on one of the monuments.”

It’s exactly the kind of thing Natasha would say. But Yelena has to be sure. “What was the song me and Alexei always sang along to?”

“American Pie, all eight goddamn minutes of it,” Natasha answers, without hesitation. “Your favorite part was ‘this’ll be the day that I die,’ you morbid little weirdo.”

So okay, yeah, that’s definitely her sister, and she’s apparently been miraculously returned to life. Yelena has a lot of questions and she wants to demand answers for all of them right now, but Natasha’s taking careful steps towards her, like she’s not sure of her welcome, and that’s ridiculous. Yelena runs to her then, and Natasha takes her into her arms with familiar, ferocious tightness, like she’s always trying to keep anyone from taking Yelena away from her. All of Yelena’s questions can wait: for now, she hangs onto her sister just as tightly.

Yelena wants to have Natasha all to herself to demand more information, and also because as Natasha’s sister she’s pretty sure she has dibs. Instead, Yelena has to share because people keep showing up at Pepper Potts’ lake house since Natasha’s resurrection and Rogers’ return have been deemed an excellent and necessary occasion for a party. Yelena doesn’t object to a party, especially not when she sees caterers arrive as if by magic, bearing delicious-looking food and an awful lot of what looks like very expensive alcohol. (Forget about alien gods and supersoldier serums, excessive wealth is its own superpower.) Yelena still kind of wants to steal some of the vodka, take Natasha, and run.

Thankfully, she doesn’t have to: between rounds of assorted Avengers and their associates arriving, Natasha grabs Yelena by the hand and drags her to one of the lake house’s spare bedrooms.

“Catch me up on what I’ve missed while I get ready,” Natasha orders.

“I got a dog,” says Yelena.

“I saw that, she’s very cute and fluffy,” says Natasha, indulgent, as she pulls a deep green dress out of the garment bag on the bed and starts changing.

“Oh, so you had time to go shopping before telling your beloved baby sister that you’ve returned from the dead. Which, no one’s explained that, by the way.”

“Wanda magicked it up for me,” is Natasha’s blithe response. “Gotta look good at my resurrection party. And it’s kind of a long story involving Steve and the Soul Stone, it’s not important right now. Now c’mon, I’m guessing you getting a dog isn’t the only thing that’s happened in the last year.”

Yelena flops onto the bed and glares at Natasha, but she does add, “Bucky and Sam are probably going to get married in a few months. I have money on this fall, but Sam’s sister thinks it’ll be another couple of years. You want in on the pool?”

“Have to admit, I did not see that one coming, but they are very cute together. And yes I want in, but I need to gather some intel first,” says Natasha as she shimmies into the dress. “You seem friendly with them, when did that happen?”

“Here, sit down, I’ll do your hair, it’s a mess,” Yelena tells her, and when Natasha sits on the bed with her, Yelena gathers her hair up and eyes the blond ends, proof of an old dye job. “Aww, you went blond? First you take my vest, then you go blond, you’re such a copycat.”

Yelena combs out Natasha’s hair, and settles into the comfortingly familiar routine of braiding.

“Yeah, yeah, now c’mon, how’d you meet up with Sam and Bucky? And Morgan was excited to see you, when did you hang out with her and Pepper?” asks Natasha.

“I met Pepper and Morgan at your grave. Which I arranged for, I’ll remind you, and it wasn’t cheap,” Yelena says, and yanks on Natasha’s hair just a little.

Natasha sighs. “You’ll never let me live that down, will you.”

“Nope. And it’s your turn now, what’s the deal with you and Rogers?”

Because Natasha and Rogers have been awfully touchy-feely every time Yelena’s seen them today, and Rogers can’t seem to keep his eyes off Natasha.

“Nothing,” says Natasha, the liar. “It was just...intense, the whole resurrection experience. And we became a lot closer, after Thanos won.”

“Uh huh, sure,” Yelena says, finishing one thin braid and starting on the next, with the intent of leaving most of Natasha’s hair loose, save for the four braids she’ll pull back and weave together. “Well I look forward to you introducing the ex-Captain America to Alexei as your boyfriend or husband or whatever, Alexei will probably demand to fight him, you know.”

Natasha groans, and jabs her with an elbow that Yelena dodges easily, grinning. “You’re so obnoxious and I missed you so much. Now c’mon, tell me how you met up with Sam and Bucky. Was it a mission or what?”

So Yelena tells her about the Winter Soldier and the Red Room, the failed escape attempt, running into Sam and Bucky. She tells Natasha about Thanksgiving at the Wilsons, about how Bucky dog-sits Fanny sometimes and spoils her rotten, and about how his and Sam’s too-earnest protege Torres has a baffling crush on her. She tells Natasha about Melina and Alexei too, how they’re holding up, and about how the Widows are doing, how so many of them are safe now, and how so many of them are helping to make others safe, with the children’s homes Natasha had set up. She talks and talks, long after she’s finished braiding, until Natasha turns, tears running down her cheeks.

“You’re going to make your face all puffy and red,” chides Yelena, but Natasha just pulls her close, rests their foreheads against each other.

“I’m so glad, Yelena. I’m so glad you haven’t been alone.” 

Yelena blinks, a little startled to realize the truth of it. 

“Well, yeah, of course I haven’t been. I’ve had our family, haven’t I?”

And not just their small, once-false family, but the bigger family Natasha had built too, a web of people all across the world—hell, all across the galaxy judging by the spaceships parked nearby right now—who she’d held together through the worst, who she hadn’t given up on, and who she’d died for. It’s a family Yelena’s been welcomed into, not even for just Natasha’s sake, but for her own.

Natasha smiles, then pulls back just enough to kiss Yelena’s forehead. “Yeah. Yeah, this is our family, isn’t it?”

"See? I told you that you shouldn't have given up on it," says Yelena, and Natasha laughs.