Chapter Text
“On the other side of pain, there is still love.” – Madeleine L’Engle
Natasha
Russia…it had to be Russia.
Natasha stares at her plane ticket, St. Petersburg stamped on it in bold black letters. She isn’t sure how long she has been staring at her ticket but she only focuses back on her surroundings when she hears the sound of running water and Lila’s giggles coming from the kitchen. Lunch was over and Natasha was now officially stalling, she’s hesitating because she’s nervous of the outcome this trip will bring. Before all this time travel, before Natasha became a part of Laura and Clint, she had been better at compartmentalizing her feelings. Now, she has opened her heart to her partners and her kids and the team; they all have her in touch with her emotions.
Honestly it was downright annoying sometimes, for example, moments like this when she has to pack because she has to catch a plane because she has to find her estranged sister. But she couldn’t do any of these things because her stomach was absolutely rolling with nerves and it makes her feel as if she’s about to throw up all these time-consuming emotions.
“Nat? You, okay?”
Natasha looks up and smiles as Cooper lingers in the bedroom doorway. While Lila had only been six when Natasha came fully into the family, Cooper had been 9 and switched between Nat and Mama interchangeably. She never thought something as simple as dropping the Auntie Nat to just Nat would make it seem so much more personal, but it did. She crooks her fingers at Cooper and the now 12-year-old boy walks in, he scans over Natasha’s scattered clothes before finally leaning on the bedpost across from her. Both wait a second until they hear the tell-tale click of nails scratching against the floor, sure enough Lucky comes prancing in on the heels of Cooper. Cooper smiles but Natasha rolls her eyes and points at Lucky.
“The dog stays off my clothes.” She says in a soft but firm voice that Cooper continues to smile at as he reaches for Lucky and tugs him by the collar to sit next to him. He scratches the dog’s head while Lucky happily leans in.
“What’s up солнечный луч?” Natasha asks using her affectionate nickname for Cooper. Cooper looks back down at all Nat’s stuff laid out on the bed and it reminds Natasha that she’s supposed to be packing. She bites back her sigh and finally starts to fold her clothes into the small go bag she was bringing.
“You’re going to get Aunt Yelena?” Cooper finally asks and Natasha hums an affirmative noise as she sets a pair of sturdy boots at the bottom of the bag between a tacvest and a pair of jeans. She’s trying to figure out her Stark and government approved passport when Cooper finally mumbles something that causes her to freeze.
“And even if she doesn’t come back, you’re coming back, right?”
Natasha’s head whips up and looks at Cooper who is determinedly staring down at the floor. The fact that the thought even entered his brain shall not be allowed to continue. Natasha walks around the bed until she’s standing in front of Cooper. She shoos Lucky away and the dog whines but steps away and lays down beside them on the floor. Cooper is still looking down so Natasha tucks her finger under his chin and lifts his head up until he’s looking her in the eyes.
“Cooper, I promise you right now that as long as I am able, I will always come back to you.”. Cooper is her sunbeam and Lila her little sun, one can’t live without the sun. When Laura and Clint talked to her about the three of them Natasha became their parent too, she became Mama.
No one, not even her sister could ever make her walk away from them.
Cooper swallows and wraps his arms tightly around her.
“You just seemed so weird and quiet and I thought you got bored.”
Natasha winds her arms around Cooper’s shoulders, noting that he was growing like a goddamn weed.
“I was worried солнечный луч, I’m worried that my sister will not come back with me. I’m sorry I scared you.” She dips her head into her son’s hair and smells the minty pine scent he insists on using for his shampoo. She feels Cooper shrug under her hold.
“If she doesn’t want to come back with you then she’s crazy because you’re the best.” Natasha smiles and kisses Cooper’s head; she allows herself this moment. She’s memorizing the feeling of this hug because if Yelena chooses to be a stranger, if she has lost her sister, she’s going to need to remember that it’s no longer her last chance.
She won’t lose everything if she loses Yelena, but she still holds out hope that she can have both.
*
After her good luck hugs from Cooper and Lila, Natasha stands in the driveway smothered by Laura’s hugs. Natasha’s convinced being a hugger is a genetic trait. Clint stands next to them with his arms crossed and a smile on his face, but it’s just for show. Nat can see he’s planning about a thousand different backup scenarios in case Natasha ends up needing help. Laura finally lets Natasha out of her warm grip only to reposition her grip onto Natasha’s wrists.
“Stay safe and good luck.” She says as she squeezes Nat’s wrists and leans in for a quick kiss. The brunette pauses, giving Natasha a soft smile.
“And don’t worry, no matter what happens we’ll be waiting here for you.” Laura leans in for another kiss and Nat manages to shake off Laura’s grip and cradle the woman’s face, dragging out the small peck. She knows what Laura is implying, after all the woman ran away from home herself and never looked back.
The three of them know that some people never come home.
The kiss finally broke and with a last smile Laura starts to walk back to the house, knowing that Clint and Natasha need their own moment alone. Natasha watches Laura walks away, she will never stop being amazed at how big of a heart Laura Barton has.
“She’ll come with you.” Clint says and Natasha glances at him to see he seems completely sure of himself, almost begging her to contradict him.
“Is that a fact? No future knowledge I should know about?” It makes Clint chuckle before he shakes his head, still smiling.
“She’ll come with you because I know what it’s like to give you up…I almost missed my chance with you. Anyone would have to be crazy to walk away.” He takes a step closer and Natasha grins.
“You auditioning for Prince Charming?” Natasha jokes, it makes Clint roll his eyes and groan and finally Natasha laughs. Clint looks back down at her and shrugs.
“Not falling for it?”
“Nope.”
“Okay then, if she says no drag her ass back here anyway and Lila will hug her so much that she won’t be able to leave.”
“Solid plan.”
Clint rolls his eyes again and wraps Natasha into a hug that has her surrounded entirely by his steady warmth. Natasha closes her eyes for a second and melts into it. She has nicknames for all of them, always spoken softly in Russian, her kids are her suns and Laura is her beloved, Clint is both her annoyance and her savior.
Clint kisses her head then ducks down and pecks her lips before Natasha steps away from him and towards the car.
They don’t say anything more, they don’t need words to reassure the other.
Natasha turns back once more and the two of them bob their heads at each other in a slight nod. It’s what they do on every mission either together or apart, it means I’m coming back.
Natasha climbs into the car and finally makes her way out of the driveway and onto the road.
*
She forgot how annoying airports were and that statement alone makes her want to punch Tony Stark for making her soft. He would just say she’s gotten use to the finer things in life like private jets and avoiding security lines. He would be right and that is why she would punch him. Still, as her ticket somehow gets magically upgrades to first class, it’s nice to know that the luxury she craves she can actually have. Natasha’s phone chimes with a text and a small smile breaks out on her face reading over Pepper’s text to have some champagne on her. It’s another reminder that Yelena isn’t her last hope, yet that in itself reminds her that she doesn’t know enough about the Yelena of now to even guess what her decision would be.
The unknowable is what Natasha can admit she’s most scared of.
Still, she boards the plane because whoever Yelena Belova is now she is worth it.
*
Her seat is spacious and her outfit is just that right touch of risqué rich woman, Natasha clocks the looks the men and handful of women give her bare crossed legs as they pass her. Natasha hadn’t had to play rich tourist in a while but she knows how to do it. She smiles coyly at all the right people and makes sure that she is both pleasant but all around forgettable to all those around her.
Towards the end of the flight the pilot announces their landing and Natasha gets a glimpse of the sumptuous tops of St. Petersburg palaces. The history, architecture and glamour run rampant in this city making it the perfect place to hide.
She takes her time getting off the plane, still letting people insist on helping her, Natasha puts on a big smile and speaks in atrocious broken Russian until someone takes pity on her and places her in a cab heading to the heart of the city.
The Taleon imperial hotel is bedecked in so much marble and lace it makes Natasha dizzy just standing in the lobby, but it fits with the façade.
She has a little flirt with the front desk girl and smiles as the young girl’s cheeks go bright red. She will be remembered here; with her room key and a dazed wave from the young girl Natasha has her alibi. She sets her bags in her room and digs out her phone, she slips in Stark’s inscription chip and sends a quick text to everyone.
Arrived. Going Dark.
Natasha turns off her phone and stares at the black screen for a second.
She’s on her own now.
She moves to her room’s window and throws the curtains open, taking in the view of the river and the small beautiful buildings built one on top of the other. The sun shines through making everything sparkle from the water and just for a moment Natasha is lost in far off memories of two girls running through the still cold spring air. Memories of loud laughter and a whistled note echo through her ear.
She hasn’t heard the returned whistle in years.
Natasha turns from the view and finally drops the persona, feeling her expression and heart harden to prepare herself for what would come next.
She changes into durable clothes, jeans and a leather jacket. She tucks her hair up and slips her tac vest under her shirt.
She slips two knives into each of her boots and her widows bites she keeps well hidden under her jacket.
If anyone questions a woman walking around in a leather jacket in June, they’ll just call her a silly American.
She tucks her guns in her waistband, built small by Stark just for an occasion like this. After that she allows one last look at the city before she leaves her room and moves down the hallway. She takes the stairs down and slips through doorways leading to the kitchen and then the loading docks of the hotel, no one noticing her as she passes. She turns left and starts the long trek through the city. It takes a while but once the buildings become condemned and the streets become quieter, she knows she’s headed in the right direction.
After all, even if home was only a Russian safe house it would still be home.
***
Yelena
Hundreds of thousands of feet below where Natasha was sipping orange juice in first class, Yelena was putting a bullet in her latest target. This one had been easy, the woman had been competition for Yelena’s boss but she also was a child trafficker, Yelena was almost too eager to put a bullet in this one’s head. Yelena watches as the woman suddenly stops walking, she waits until the slight quiver of a falter step happens and then she’s ducking down. She smoothly dismantles her rifle and puts each piece back in its case before throwing the whole thing on her back. She takes a deep breath and counts to three before slowly leaning up and looking over the building’s edge.
The whole scene paints a morbid but pretty picture, the red puddle of blood around the woman’s head could almost be taken for a halo.
Ironic knowing that this woman had put children in cages for the right price. That is what makes Yelena smile as she looks to the security camera down the street, the traffic light will have captured everything while successfully hiding Yelena in its blind spot. By the time anyone figures out what building the shot might have come from the trail will be cold.
She gives the bloody corpse one last goodbye before running towards the other side of the roof allowing herself to gain enough momentum that when she jumps, she easily clears the space to land on the next rooftop. Yelena flies across the rooftops of the Russian row houses knowing the world had just woken up to a new day. It felt as close to freedom as she would ever get, like she could just keep running and running across the connected rooftops until she found open fields and no one chasing her. She doesn’t stop running until she hits the last rooftop about a block away from her safe house.
It used to be their safehouse. The sad little place where three years ago she had helped plan a mission that she thought meant she would be safe.
Then it had been over and Melina and Shostakov had been off and once again Yelena was on her own, only this time she was fully awake and able to realize how much she hated being alone. She feels the anger roaring through her but pushes it down. She doesn’t know how long she’ll actually have to stay here, there had been so many back-to-back hits that the two weeks she had gotten here had nearly given her an anxiety attack thinking that she missed something. But nothing has come for her yet so her time was better spent making sure she had clean clothes and a shower rather than throwing metaphorical darts at her “family.” She shimmies down the drain pipe and once she hits the street she pulls up her hood and walks with her head ducked down. It’s enough to go unnoticed, this neighborhood like all the others she inhabits are full of people with their own problems. One “hoodlum” stalking around the streets isn’t going to cause alarm. She walks the last few blocks and turns into the alleyway and through the building’s basement door, after that it’s only six flights of stairs until she’s “home sweet home.” She barely makes a sound as she unlocks the door and then quickly locks it behind her. Not allowing herself to relax until she’s heard every single creak in the apartment and located its cause.
Things still feel off but Yelena longs for a shower and a few hours of sleep so she keeps her tac gear on and her rifle case close as she makes her way to the tightly packed kitchen where her laptop sits on the small table.
She opens it up and waits for the black cursor and 1980s green blinking text that still makes her eyes roll at the dramatics of it all.
Target Terminated.
She waits as the cursor blinks back at her and when it takes a beat too long, she feels the hairs on the back of her neck start to raise.
She’s reaching for her weapon when the response finally comes in.
Wait.
Yelena blinks and her mouth falls open, it takes a second but she’s seriously considering throwing the laptop at the wall.
Wait. What the hell does that mean?
She really truly hates cryptic instruction; in her experience not knowing the whole story usually leads to something bad.
The control however is out of her hands, so, she does what she can in this moment, she sits at the table and waits for more of anything.
Once the imprint of the blinking cursor can be seen on the inside of her eyelids she sighs and slumps in the chair, letting her feet spread out and her head hang back.
She gets to fifty-five in counting cracks in the ceiling plaster before she finally gives in that waiting is going to be a little bit longer than she wants it to be.
Also, if she has to sit here with her scalp screaming at her to be washed and dirt still caked into her fingernails, she may still toss the computer across the room.
She knows how to lay low in filth and squalor but she reminds herself that she doesn’t have to do that anymore.
She gets up and looks down at the rifle case that she had dropped by her feet, something is telling her to take it with her and even though the Red Room and its entire “training” program can go to the bottom pits of hell, Yelena does know to trust her instincts because they’re usually right.
She snatches up the rifle case and finally moves towards the bathroom. She’s turning the water on and unzipping her bullet proof vest when she finally hears the sound she had been unconsciously waiting for, a floorboard creaking.
There were forty-six creaky floorboards in the apartment, twenty-one of them would creak a few seconds after you stepped on them as the wood settled back into place.
Most of those were by the doorways where the heaviest traffic flowed.
That creak though, came from the middle of the living room, right where Yelena knew a splintering floorboard laid. The sound was distinct, it wasn’t the house settling it was from an almost nonexistent amount of pressure from a soft footstep.
Yelena looks out the open doorway not seeing anything yet but knowing that someone is there.
Maybe this is what that ridiculous “wait” had been about.
She starts moving around the bathroom again as if she had just played off the creak as nothing. She zips her vest back up and slowly opens her rifle case, she can’t use it here but taking the bullets and hiding them and the silencer behind a loose tile will keep the gun from being used against her. She walks to the edge of the bathroom and plants her feet evenly on the ground before taking a deep breath. She throws her arms up to grab the bathroom door frame, using the momentum to swing from it as if she were on a set of monkey bars. She pumps her legs forward and back hooking her feet on the door handle and pulling the bathroom door closed. She swings forward and lands in the living room, bypassing the front hall with a straight view from the front door to the bathroom.
The water was still on and the door had been closed.
Now she just had to wait.
***
Natasha
At first Natasha had been following the instructions set out by Clint’s research and tracking, but once she found herself on a certain block she hadn’t needed to refer to the directions anymore.
She knew this place; some would say it had been a home for her in another life. She moves through blocks of small ramshackle apartments until she stands in front of one that she could map entirely from the inside out. she knows which windows marks the last safehouse she hid in before switching to SHIELD. A place whispered to her by Shostakov years ago, before she and Yelena had been taken.
A chill crawls up her back and Natasha grits her teeth, feeling an anger only the thought of Dreykov and his program can make her feel.
None of the windows in the front of the building belong to the safehouse in question, so Natasha dips into the side alley and searches until she finds a fourth-floor window that she knows for certain will have double locks on it. She waits but no one seems to be coming near the building, Nat has a vague memory that even if a person caught her breaking and entering they would just look the other way.
Hiding in plain sight seems to still be working.
Nat finally scales the fire escape and makes her way over to the window; she approaches it carefully and quietly. Knowing that the second she touches it she could be attacked; she keeps a widow’s bite close at hand and then allows herself to get a good look at the locks.
Bars with electronic codes and alarms wired to them on the outside and inside, manageable and they don’t look like top-of-the-line equipment the red room would produce.
She knows she can fight her way out of this if she has to so Natasha carefully lays the widows’ bite on top of the lock and takes a step back before hitting the kill switch.
The lock sparks and the little red light blinks off, the whole mechanism almost seems to sag with nothing forcibly keeping it locked into place. Natasha grabs the lock and quietly places it next to her on the fire escape. She then squats down and stares through the small windowpanes at the other bar-lock, wondering how to get in without smashing the glass. She rests her hands on one of the small squares of glass and feels it give when her hand leans into it.
She remembers now.
Best case scenario a loose window pane offered a quick escape, worst case, someone got in but the change in temperature and noise would be a dead giveaway.
She wiggles the glass out and drops a widow’s bite to disarm the other lock as quickly as she can.
She waits after she manages to retrieve the widow’s bite but can’t see anything nor hear anyone waiting in a dark corner to attack.
She finally slides open the window, maneuvering around the bar-lock and starts to climb in.
The front door knob starts to move just as both her feet touch the floor.
Natasha freezes for half a second and then she hears it.
A shower running.
Yelena is already home; leaving the water running is too simple a trick, no one from the Red Room would fall for it.
Yelena is home and someone else is on the other side of that door.
***
Yelena
Whoever was here had gotten through her locks, she could tell by the warm breeze that was suddenly cutting through the cold air conditioning. One look and Yelena could see the window pane was gone and her locks had been tampered with.
She waits to hear more footsteps and moves with the almost imperceptible noises, timing herself by quiet steps and loud breaths.
Yelena slinks behind one of the open hallway doors and waits, slowly grips her knife tighter and digs out her handgun.
She’s hoping if she can get them in the throat there won’t be any noise and she can slink off. She stares through the tinted glass, knowing that she was partly visible but also that the intruder was visible to her and that was a far more dangerous risk for the other person.
***
Natasha
The intruder on the other side of the front door is still jimmying with the lock as Natasha slides into the room as fast as she can. She throws the now defunct lock bar back on the window and slides it closed. Natasha looks down at the floor and manages to finds the visibly loose and noisy floorboards to jump over. She moves across the room until she is hiding behind one of the white French doors leading from the front hallway to the main room.
Natasha draws her gun just as someone jumps into the living room and lands silently on the floor.
Natasha freezes and waits for an attack but none come. She looks through the tempered dark glass and what she sees causes her whole body to slump in shock.
Yelena Belova, her sister is just on the other side of this flimsy door.
The last time she saw her, really saw her without the fog of the black Widow program clogging up her sight she had seen a little girl with gaps in her smile and loose blonde curls. The glass may warp her view but the young woman on the other side was the farthest thing from Natasha’s memories of her little sister.
It didn’t matter.
Natasha could already feel the love she had once felt for Yelena growing inside her once again. Before she can move forward Natasha hears the front door slowly opening along with the accompanying creak of the floorboards. Whoever was trying to break in has finally entered. Natasha watches as Yelena’s blurry image disappears behind the other French door across from Natasha.
Nat waits through the quiet steps and loud breaths until the figure that had to be at least six feet steps into the doorway and Natasha’s range.
Natasha raises her gun and aims through the glass.
***
Yelena
Six feet in height and definitely a lug of a person.
Yelena slowly rises from her crouch and lines up her shot through the glass
If she can get a clear hit to the head then shattering the glass doesn’t really concern her.
She breaths in and then out.
She pulls the trigger.
Glass instantly shatters and rains down upon her as something heavy hits the ground.
She moves out of the doorway, ignoring the cuts on her face and shards stuck in her hair, she keeps her aim trained on the man – or corpse – now lying on the floor.
Eyes and mouth open and staring blankly at the ceiling looking like a caricature of the scream painting.
But…
If he’s dead then who else in the room is breathing?
Her gaze and gun whip up to face the person standing across from her and only pure instinct alone keeps her locked in her position.
Red hair. Blue eyes.
Natasha.
***
Natasha
The only sound Natasha is aware of at first is a bullet shattering through glass. She ducks to avoid any shards in her eyes and waits until she hears the body thump to the ground before she stands up straight. What she doesn’t expect is to look right into the warm hazel eyes that she thought she would never see again.
Yelena.
No more blonde angel curls or a gap-toothed smile, the memory has been replaced by a young woman with a determined look on her face.
Natasha also sees the anger and wasn’t expecting any of this to be easy or simple so she’s not surprised when Yelena aims her gun at her.
Natasha matches her stance.
Both stare at each other silently, their aim never wavering for a second.
She does give in when Yelena takes a step back. Natasha follows her slowly, stepping over the body and actually smirking when she successfully avoids slipping on a piece of glass. She can tell by the brief tisking noise she hears Yelena make that the blonde girl had been hoping for that slip up.
Natasha matches each of Yelena’s steps as the girl slowly continues backwards into the kitchen before stopping.
Suddenly both their arms reach out for each other’s guns. It happens so fast neither of them is sure if they made the first move or was just reacting to the other’s movements.
Either way both their hands whip out and grab the gun out of the other’s hand. The safety’s click off again in sync and the two are right back where they were a few seconds ago. Nat keeps her eyes on Yelena and reacts only when Yelena reaches over for Natasha’s gun for the second time.
Nat reaches for Yelena’s gun but Yelena doesn’t let go this time, she grabs both of Natasha’s hands and sends a kick right to her gut; the guns fall out of both their hands as Natasha falls down in surprise. She doesn’t get far, Yelena has her by the front of her jacket, pulling her down then up and around until she has an iron grip on Natasha’s collar. Yelena leans all her weight on Natasha and pushes her as hard as she can into the kitchen door frame. Natasha’s head hits wood and it splinters, embedding itself into the back of her skull and giving her half a dozen shallow cuts. Natasha feels when Yelena’s grip tightens to pick her up and slam her into the other side of the doorway. Her spine hits the frame at just the right angle that Natasha knows there’s going to be an annoying bruise there tomorrow. It doesn’t matter the moment Natasha sees she has a perfect opening to grab Yelena’s neck, not enough to suffocate but enough that Natasha has enough control to force the smaller girl backwards. She latches onto Yelena’s arm and runs until they reach the kitchen counter; she yanks Yelena up so her head slams into the cabinet so hard it breaks in half. Yelena yelps and swats her hands in Natasha’s face trying to get away.
Natasha turns her head to avoid the slaps, she tightens her grip a centimeter and pulls Yelena down so she crashes to the countertop.
“Stay down. Stay down and listen.” Natasha starts to say but is cut off by Yelena’s ragged scream before a plate crashes down on Natasha’s face. It forces her to drop her grip on Yelena and jump back. She looks around the small kitchen as Yelena tucks and rolls off the counter. Nat grabs a towel and turns back right as Yelena throws a punch at her face; Natasha grabs her hand and ties it with the towel then pulls Yelena closer and wraps it around her neck. Natasha spins Yelena around until her back is against Natasha’s chest and starts to press her forward towards the counter. Yelena’s boot comes up and pushes as hard as she can against the sink. Yelena starts to sink to the floor, her legs stretch up and the towel goes tight between the two of them. Natasha is suddenly thrown off her feet with Yelena’s momentum, she’s up in the air for only a second before she’s crashing into the kitchen doorway. She goes down hard under a rainfall of wood and glass.
Both women rest on the floor desperately trying to catch their breath; Yelena starts to rise and Nat has already spun to face her before they both freeze.
Heavy footsteps clomp down the hallway outside the front door and across the floor above them; the rhythm of heavy boots slowly gets closer and closer.
They both track the sound until the footsteps above disappear and the ones in the hall suddenly stop. They share once glance before the front door is kicked open and two of the windows are smashed in as bodies come propelling into the room.
Four men, all wearing cobbled together tac gear and Natasha can tell they aren’t “professionals”. She looks towards the fallen goon at the edge of the living room and figures out that Yelena had been tracked.
Natasha looks back at Yelena and they both just know that whatever shit they have to work through can wait.
***
Yelena
Yelena takes the two that kicked in the door while Natasha turns to face the two who like to fly through windows. She looks behind her for one quick second and easily grabs the large kitchen knife she had left in the sink from last night’s dinner. The two home invaders point their guns towards her and Yelena smirks as the phrase bring a knife to a gun fight pops into her head, to be fair it’s the 2nd rate gang members that don’t have a chance. She stalks forward and swipes at one then the other. So quick that she must be a blur to their eyes but the damage to their hands is quick and painful, a deep cut between their index and middle knuckles. Blood drips down and they reflexively drop their guns when the pain shoots through their hands. They both hiss and Yelena wastes no time kicking both the guns out of reach and ducking down to swipe at both their knees. The goons finally get a clue and start to back up, fists raised but startled looks on their faces as if they just realized what the fuck they got themselves into.
From there it’s a dance for Yelena, quick swipes that hit or miss as the two men try to jump out of her reach. She ducks when one tries to punch her and kicks him right between his legs, watching in satisfaction as he falls to his knees, before kicking him in the head causing him to collapse in a daze.
The other one almost gets a lucky hit; she feels the air whip by her ear as the punch just misses her head. She turns and swipes again at the man to make him back up. She forces the man across the room and can hear the grunts coming from the other fight. Yelena stabs quick and hard forcing the knife in the man’s shoulder before taking quick look over her own shoulder.
Natasha was fighting two men with a frying pan.
To be fair one was unconscious on the floor but still.
Natasha swung the pan in an arc, spun around and managed to kick the guy in the face on the turn.
Yelena meets Natasha’s eyes and gives her a look as if to ask her if she really decided to use a frying pan.
Natasha just shrugs before her eyes lift and she’s winding her hands back and literally throwing the frying pan straight towards Yelena. Yelena ducks and hears the sick crunch as the pan meets its mark; the face of the goon that had been sneaking up behind her.
He lets out a groan and falls to the floor, the bloody knife he had pried out of his shoulder clatters to the ground. Yelena grabs it and turns back around already knowing that another guy would be sneaking up on Natasha trying to do the same thing his buddy just tried.
She’s honestly not that great at aim when it’s not a gun, the Red Room always liked to keep their skill sets specific. Yelena runs the few steps, plants her feet in front of Natasha and thrusts the knife forward. Natasha ducks and the knife lands right in the middle of the goon’s neck.
Yelena is instantly splattered with blood. She scrunches her face in disgust but Natasha is standing back up in front of her and pushing down on Yelena’s shoulder, she bends her back and feels Natasha’s weight as she flips over. Yelena looks up just in time to watch Natasha slit the throat of the other goon. He and the knife drop to the floor at the same time.
Two down, two to go.
Natasha suddenly grunts and Yelena turns around to see one of the two remaining goons has woken up from his beauty sleep. He’s grabbed Natasha around the waist and slams her against the nearest wall. Yelena hears a telltale creak from creaky floorboard #16 right behind her and takes a step forward. She slides her foot under the handle of the bloody knife and flicks it up in the air. She catches it and turns in one smooth motion and slashes across the man’s face. He gasps and flails back from her, that’s when Yelena hears a hoarse yell, she watches as Natasha and the other intruder come stumbling across the room, the gauzy curtains tied in a choke hold around the man’s neck. Yelena turns back around and backs up towards Natasha, not taking her eyes off the henchman as he charges towards her while he tries to blink blood out of his eyes.
It doesn’t take a lot; Yelena grabs the other end of the curtain and throws it over the man’s shoulder before grabbing the end and pulling the him down closer to her. She wraps the fabric in two loops around his neck and then pulls tight. Natasha jumps down from the hold she had on the other man’s waist and shoulders and pulls her end tight. They both force the two men to stumble across the room choking and struggling, watching their faces slowly turn red. Yelena tosses her hold to Natasha and walks up to both men, she crouches down and keeps stabbing them in their knees until they hit the floor.
She makes eye contact with each one before plunging the knife into their necks, one right after the other.
Yelena stands their surveying the once clean apartment now littered with bodies, glass and blood.
She won’t be able to come back here.
“You’ve grown up.” Natasha finally says and Yelena freezes because she didn’t know what she was expecting but it was definitely more than that.
“No shit.”
Finally, the answering sound that she had been waiting for chimes from her laptop and Yelena turns towards the kitchen to see it somehow managed to stay in one piece. But the relief is short lived as she looks around the room again and it dawns on her that she’s in huge fucking trouble.
“Fuck!”
***
Natasha
Natasha is still trying to catch her breath when Yelena runs for the kitchen and picks up a laptop that had managed to slide into a corner of the small room. Natasha watches as the younger woman looks around before sweeping the broken wood and plates off the kitchen counter, letting it hit the floor in a huge cacophonous clatter. Natasha walks towards her as Yelena starts madly typing on the laptop, cursing in a mix of Russian and English under her breath. Languages jumble together with the loud clacking of keys when suddenly all of Yelena’s movements screech to a halt. Yelena stares at the screen and then punches the counter in frustration.
“Fuck!” She yells again. Natasha finally gets close enough to look over Yelena’s shoulder and honestly feels like she’s seeing an old 80’s spy movie with the archaic green letters scrolling across the screen
Fedorov eliminated. Associates countered.
Status.
Threat Neutralized. Followed.
Clean up and Re Trace.
“Motherfuckers.” Yelena mutters as she rips the USB out of the laptop and puts it down on the counter. She spares Natasha once glance before she’s opening a drawer and pulling out a hammer.
Natasha just leans her hip on the table and watches Yelena smash the USB to smithereens. She waits for an explanation but doesn’t get one, instead Yelena stuff one piece of the USB down the garbage disposal and turns it on. Then she runs out of the kitchen and Natasha’s sight. Natasha waits until the crunching noises stop to turn off the garbage disposal and is greeted by silence for the first time since she stepped foot into this apartment. Yelena had turned the water in the shower off, the only noise now came from Yelena’s soft steps and an occasional tapping on the walls.
“Yelena.” Natasha calls, the name sounding foreign in her mouth after so long. She walks out of the kitchen and into the hallway to see Yelena with her ear against the wall.
“Check for bugs. Though I don’t think Fedorov was smart enough to actually find out where I was. Probably just followed me home.” Yelena explains as she moves away from the wall and walks past Natasha to one of the two remaining closed doors.
Natasha knows an avoidance tactic when she sees one; Yelena being this deeply entrenched in the Russian Hitman and Black-Market scene was an unpredictable factor but what else would she have done. Yelena disappears into one of the two rooms and comes out with a duffle bag in her hand already stuffing clothes into it.
“Yelena.”
“Grab my case in the bathroom. I hid the bullets and the silencer behind the loose tile.” Yelena says as she moves throughout the room. Natasha keeps watching her but Yelena doesn’t even look at her, just keeps grabbing clothes and papers and weapons, and slowly dividing them in the three bags she had grabbed out of the bedroom. Natasha sighs and goes to get the sniper case; she wipes off the condensation from everything and puts the missing pieces back where they belong before shutting it and clicking it closed. She carries it to the living room. Stepping over one of the dead bodies in the doorway that they have apparently decided to just ignore. She puts the case down and shuffles over a duffle when it looks like one pool of blood spreads to close to it. Natasha hears clinking behind her followed by a door closing. She turns to see Yelena crossing the room towards her with a key and padlock in her hands. Yelena ignores Natasha and puts both things in one of the duffle bags. When she stands up and begins to turn towards the hallway Natasha grabs her arm before Yelena can pass by her.
Yelena whips around and glares at her but Natasha just tightens her grip.
“Would you just stop for a second?” Natasha asks and that’s all she gets out before Yelena is rolling her eyes and shaking off Natasha’s grip.
“No, because in case you haven’t realized it, I’m blown. They’ll be more where that came from.” Yelena says gesturing to the littering of corpses around the room.
“We need to get our asses out of here. So, either get with the program and pack up or get the fuck out.” Yelena grits the words through her teeth before stomping to the kitchen to grab her laptop. Natasha sighs, she now vividly remembers how stubborn Yelena had been as a child and what a joy it was for her to discover that age hasn’t changed a thing. Natasha decides to go along with it for now, at least Yelena wasn’t trying to strangle her anymore. Natasha moves out to the hallway and checks the bathroom again before looking towards the two doors at the end of the small hallway.
One had been Yelena’s bedroom and the other…well that one had been padlocked closed. Now the door was opened and the whole room looked to be made up of shadows.
Of course, she goes inside.
She regrets it immediately afterwards.
It looks just like Clint’s office at home, walls strewn with maps and diagrams, photographs and drawings with lists upon lists of notes. Strings crisscross the room connecting one piece to another in a deep red spiderweb that all eventually lead to one point.
Natasha crosses the room to the back wall where a few words have been scribbled and crossed out in red sharpie.
BLACK WIDOW PROGRAM.
DREKOV
COMPLETED 2010.
Natasha has to force her body to take deep even breaths when the room starts to spin, she hadn’t even realized she had started to hyperventilate. Only one thing could break through her training and she was staring at it.
Pictures of Dreykov, Melina and Alexi.
The Black Widow Program was gone.
Yelena had destroyed. It.
Natasha hadn’t been able to shoot the bullet through Dreykov’s head herself but she’s at least glad that Yelena might have gotten the chance.
She hears the footsteps behind her and turns to see Yelena standing in the doorway with a box of lighter fluid in her hand; she still looks pissed off.
“What’s this?” Natasha knows it’s a stupid question even before Yelena rolls her eyes at her.
“Nothing.” The blonde practically grunts before she starts walking around the room and dousing everything in lighter fluid.
“Doesn’t matter anyway, can’t take it all and I have a digital copy of everything.”
Natasha steps out of Yelena’s way when she walks towards the back wall and watches as Yelena glares at each one of the pictures before dousing each with gasoline.
“Then why set this up?” Natasha asks softly. She’s trying to be gentle because she’s finally starting to see behind the plain hate and anger on her sister’s face, she sees the exhaustion and the sadness as she walks meticulously throughout the room.
“I like having something physical to layout. I’ll just find a new place for it.” Yelena answers as she shakes out the last of the container and ducks out of the room for more. Natasha watches as she goes and tries to tamp down on her smile. She knows if Yelena hears that she’s similar to Clint Barton then the blonde may actually consider shooting her.
***
Yelena
She should have kept the padlock on the door, she could have just waited until the end, anything other than Natasha looking at her like that. So sad and so proud and in all those ways Yelena had been dreaming about for years. She angrily throws the empty container into the sink and grabs the other one before marching back into the small room. She doesn’t even look at Natasha as she continues her circle of the room, she has to make sure that no one can find any of this, when she was away Król had set up some men to watch over her place but now nothing could be left behind. She douses Dreykov’s picture with an extra splash of gasoline just to make sure his smug face burns twice.
“You took it all down?”
Yelena takes a deep breath in and then out, she wasn’t stupid, she knows not to let residual anger control her decisions. That’s how someone ends up getting caught or killed; she takes another deep breath and finally turns back to Natasha, who doesn’t even give Yelena the benefit of looking surprised.
“You knew this, it’s why you came looking for me alone. If you thought I was still with the Red Room you would have brought back up.”
Natasha takes a moment but she does eventually nod, no words need to be spoken, the fact that Natasha knew and it took her this long to come says enough. Still, Yelena would love to see Natasha try to convince her why she hadn’t been there three years ago. Yelena turns back and continues to pour the gasoline until the container is empty. She throws it in a corner and then heads towards the door knowing that Natasha will follow. Yelena keeps walking until she gets to the middle of the room and the dizzying smell of gasoline is replaced by the metallic smell of blood, so thick in the air she can practically taste it. The scent grounds her, spend your whole life surrounded by something and even the most grotesque can become the most normal. She reaches down and unzips her backpack, shuffling the few papers and files she packed to the side, she finds the green one and simply throws it over her shoulder.
Unfortunately, Natasha catches the whole thing in one piece, Yelena gives her a minute to read over the papers before she starts to speak.
“Melina Vostokoff. She made her way out of the Red Room by looking into their mind control methods.” Yelena takes another deep breath to steady herself.
“She told them she was working to make it more effective, more unbreakable and she did. While also making a loophole.”
“Red dust.” Natasha says and Yelena nods but still doesn’t turn towards her.
“She had been working on it since…the 90s.” Yelena refuses to say the truth, since letting them be taken, or kidnapped, or whatever word you wanted to use. It didn’t matter now.
“She perfected it, then, when she couldn’t find you, when there were whispers that you were on the other side, she waited for me. She got to me and woke me up and after that I refused to waste time. We freed Soshtakov and while you and the Avengers were fighting aliens, we burned the Widow program to the ground.” Yelena stares out the window, that day replaying in her mind remembering how anger has coursed through her veins just as much as her adrenaline had. She had thought she was going to die at least four separate times and each time she swore that if she went down, she would take Dreykov with her. Luckily it hadn’t come to that and her “parents” had proved useful for the first time in a long time.
“Once everything was taken care of, I got as far away from them as possible and made it on my own. End of story.” Yelena then turns around and swipes the file out of Natasha’s hand and shoves it back into the backpack. She’s zipping it closed when Natasha finally speaks.
“Was New York the only reason you didn’t try to contact me?”
Yelena just shakes her head.
“There was no guarantee you would come.” Yelena grinds her teeth together in frustration when even she can hear the bitterness in her voice. She stands back up and turns around only to have Natasha now inches from her face. The taller woman is reaching out and resting her hand on Yelena’s shoulder. Yelena waits for what her “sister” will finally say.
“So, you made your own life.” She says looking around at the bodies and sniper case strewn on the floor. Yelena bristles at the thought of Natasha judging her choices and is about to say as much when Natasha opens her big fat mouth again.
“You don’t have to keep doing this, be a hit for hire.” Natasha starts out and Yelena is already over this and ready to leave Natasha behind. She shakes off the woman’s hand and goes to the duffle to dig the matches out. She’s ready to burn this place down and get the fuck out. Yelena shoulders past Natasha but the redhead refuses to shut up.
“You could come with me. It’s why I’m here, why I found you. I… have people, a family waiting for me.”
At the word family all Yelena sees is red and she’s spinning around and spitting out words before she can stop herself.
“So now you want to play house and family?!” Yelena practically growls and it makes Natasha defensive.
Good.
“It’s not playing, they are real, this is real.”
“And what we had wasn’t?”
Natasha finally seems to have realized her mistake as she takes a step back from Yelena. But Yelena was just getting started because the anger and anguish now had nowhere else to go but out.
“I had a home and a family and it was real and then it ended. I waited and did all I was supposed to do to survive I didn’t have the choice because you never came back!” Yelena screams the last part and can feel her whole body shaking. She swallows several times absolutely forbidding herself to cry in this moment. At least Natasha looks properly shocked, Yelena will take that scrap of a win. Yelena lights the match in her hands then walks over and throws it into the office. It lights up the second the match hits the ground and Yelena doesn’t linger, any attachment she had to her former “home” is dead and gone and buried after this shit day. She goes back into the main room and shoulders past Natasha again to start lifting the bags. She grabs the backpack and the sniper case but one of the two duffels are grabbed out from under her. Yelena looks up to see Natasha standing there holding both duffels with a look of determination on her face.
Yelena scoffs when she realizes that Natasha apparently wants more sister bonding time.
Fine, have it her way.
“We need to find their car, get out the city, it’s going to be a long drive.” It’s all she gives Natasha as they both climb out of the apartment windows and head to the roof.