Chapter Text
Yelena’s gotten good at living in the city in the past couple of months.
Disappointingly, like all of her other skills, that’s due to her Red Room training, but she rationalizes that as long as her knowledge isn’t being used to harm, she’s doing better than they ever were.
(At least, that’s what keeps her from going insane about it.)
She has some takeout from a hole-in-the-wall Chinese place tonight, and she made sure to grab extra fortune cookies for Kate (apparently, she has a collection going of the little fortunes. Yelena’s not sure if she’ll ever understand it).
She kicks the ground as she walks, finding herself kicking a pebble up the street as she walks. It’s bare tonight, she assumes that has to do with it being a Tuesday night and post rush hour.
She walks by a store, surprised when she sees a little photo of Natasha on the front display.
The Black Widow Shopped Here! is in bold underneath her picture, and Yelena smiles softly, even though an ache settles itself in her chest.
She studies the signature on the photo, one she’s seen time and time again. It’s loopy yet refined, and something about it screams Natasha even though it reads Black Widow . She stops, trying to collect her thoughts, but all that comes out is a barely-there, “I miss you, Natasha.”
Yelena forges ahead and arrives at Kate’s apartment sooner than later, trying to focus now on her present. She has a key to Kate’s apartment, she has for a while now, ever since she started to become a more permanent fixture in New York and in Kate’s life.
Her heart skips a beat thinking about it, truthfully, it was weird when Kate gave it to her. She had gotten so used to sneaking in and now she could just walk in like any other human, taking the elevator and walking down the hall and unlocking the door with the 26 (crookedly) on it.
The weirdness dissipated after some time, as things do, but every once in a while Yelena finds herself marveling over how things have changed again.
The lock clicks open and Yelena slowly opens the door, smiling softly to herself when she hears music playing on the TV and sees Kate in the kitchen, singing to herself. Well, Yelena smiles until she realizes that Kate’s in the kitchen.
“This place was already burned down once, Kate Bishop, don’t make it twice.”
Kate whips around, her smile not leaving her face as she finishes the verse she was singing. She walks over to Yelena, a mischievous glint in her eyes as she presses her thumb to Yelena’s bottom lip, getting something on it.
“What is that?” Yelena asks, putting the bags down before moving her finger up to wipe it off, “It’s so sweet.”
“Frosting,” Kate replies, kissing her quickly, “Red, to be exact.”
Yelena crinkles her nose as she shrugs off her coat, “Why do you have frosting?”
“Because,” Kate sing-songs, walking back into the kitchen and reemerging with a little white cake that has words on top in red frosting, “Happy birthday, babe.”
The cake reads Happy Birthday Yelena! and Yelena’s eyebrows raise, “Who told you it was my birthday? I don’t even remember the last time I thought about it!”
“Clint did,” Kate responds with a shrug, cake still steady in her hands, “apparently Natasha never forgot it. April 9th , you’re an Aries, like me.”
Yelena disregards the aries comment, last she checked that was a clothing store and has nothing to do with her. But the Natasha bit has her biting her lip, trying to hold back the emotion bubbling in her throat, “Thank you.”
Kate grins widely before her expression drops, “Oh my god! The candle! Hold on!”
She scrambles back into the kitchen and reappears with a candle on the cake, flame moving ever-so-slightly with Kate’s jittering. Yelena can’t help but smile harder, her heart fluttering at all of the thought put into this just for her . Kate loves her and it just makes Yelena so happy.
“Make a wish and then blow out the candle.”
Yelena doesn’t have to think too hard to know what she wants. She’s known ever since she saw the news clipping in some town in Europe saying that two Avengers were dead; Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff.
I wish to see my sister again.
She blows out the candle and looks back at Kate, who just smiles softly, almost as if she knows (which she probably does, let’s be honest), “Don’t say your wish out loud or it won’t come true.”
Yelena nods, abiding, even though she knows it won’t come true, anyway.
-
Later that night finds Yelena laying in bed with the dogs, listening to quiet music that’s still playing downstairs as Kate cleans up. She recognizes it to be a Taylor Swift song, someone that Kate’s a little obsessed with. She’s heard the songs secondhand so many times now that she knows some of them.
(The one playing right now is Wonderland if she remembers correctly.)
Lucky and Fanny are in bed with her, Lucky spread out on Kate’s side of the bed while Fanny opted to curl up against Yelena’s leg. Yelena absentmindedly strokes Lucky’s back, smiling when he eventually wakes up again and presses his wet snout to her cheek, wanting attention.
Fanny wakes up a second later, turning around and resting her head on Yelena’s stomach, patiently awaiting scratches.
Yelena scratches behind Lucky’s ear and uses her other hand to gently stroke the space between Fanny’s eyes.
“You’re popular.”
Yelena looks up, surprised to see Kate standing there with a little smile on her face, obvious amusement in her eyes, “Did you have a good birthday?”
“For not knowing it existed the first half of the day, yes,” Yelena replies, a small smile on her face as Kate sits down on the bed. She crosses her legs and Lucky immediately curls up next to her, flopping on his back for tummy rubs.
“How long has it been?” Kate asks quietly, and Yelena shrugs.
“Before the blip, obviously,” Yelena hums, “Natasha wished me a happy birthday. We… we were in separate time zones, so it actually ended up being an hour early. She stayed on the phone with me until midnight my time so she could celebrate with me.”
Kate gives her a sympathetic smile, gently tracing little designs on Yelena’s leg with her free hand.
“I wish I knew her. You and Clint,” Yelena tenses a little bit at the name and Kate’s ministrations stop, and then she resumes, “…tell me so many stories about her and I remember looking up to her when I was little…”
She trails off, obviously thinking hard, fingertips pressing ever so slightly harder against Yelena’s clothed leg.
“I don’t even know all of the stories,” Yelena responds dejectedly, “God, I wish I knew more. All I know are the stories in the news that I read and the ones from when we were little.”
Yelena watches as Kate continues thinking, something obviously tugging at her that she hasn’t said yet.
“What’s on your mind, krasivaya?” Yelena asks, her petting of Fanny ceasing as she sits up against the headboard.
Kate sighs, “Do you still hate Clint?”
Yelena shakes her head, “He’ll never be my favorite person in the world, but… Natasha did what she did for a reason. She… a month after everything with Clint, she appeared in one of my dreams and thanked me for letting him live. It almost felt real .”
“I used to have dreams like that. I don’t know about the real part, though. When my dad visited me he always looked… beyond life, I guess.”
Yelena nods, barely paying attention to the conversation anymore. Her thoughts just feel too loud , too muddled, just too much.
Kate starts talking again and Yelena lets herself listen, surprised when Kate mentions a particular detail.
“His kids are on spring vacation next week and he’s been telling me that they miss me. And I bet that he’ll have answers about Natasha,” Yelena looks up at Kate.
“You’re saying we go visit Barton?” she furrows her eyebrows, she knows she just said she doesn’t hate him, but that doesn’t mean she wants to see him.
“They have a guest house, we won’t have to sleep in the same house or even eat there if you want. But Clint and Laura were really close with Natasha, it might help,” Kate explains, and then a sheepish grin appears on her face, “and it’d be a pretty killer birthday gift if you actually benefit from it.”
Yelena can’t help but smile at Kate’s expression, it’s hard to not find everything she does adorable. Kate readjusts on the bed and sits next to her, tangling their fingers and smiling at how Lucky wedges himself between them.
“If I don’t like it, can we leave?” Yelena asks after a couple minutes of silence.
Kate nods, “Of course.”
Yelena hums, “Okay, Kate Bishop.”
Kate looks at her, “Okay, what?”
Yelena’s hand goes to her girlfriend’s jaw, holding it gently before pressing a kiss to her lips, “Okay, let’s go get some answers.”