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Yelena sat on the deserted swings. It was nearing midnight, and the night was cold and rainy, despite being June. People were home, with their families and loved ones. The swings creaked weakly, under Yelena’s weight. The White Widow sighted. What was up with her, lately ? She felt… lonely. At that thought, though, she scoffed. Lonely ? Her ? Pfff… She liked being alone ! People were slow and confusing and they would betray her or abandon her the first chance they got ! She was better without them ! Sure, she’d occasionally team up with a selected few that were slightly less annoying, but that was it… And, it’s not as if she hadn’t tried not to be alone !
Surprisingly, she was the one who had tried the most to keep the former Widows together. For a time, they even resembled an actual team and had been known as the Free Widows Network, but that ship had quickly sailed. While they shared similar traumas, there was also way too much tension between them to actually form a family-like bond. From a young age, they had been competing for the right to live. It was unfair and unjust, and it wasn’t their fault, but it was hard to forget. Once they had made it to Widow, they would more often than not be sent on mission alone. That was, after all, their entire purpose ! As female operatives, they could penetrate in places (and in people) armies of men couldn’t. Rare were the missions where several Widows were needed, and when those happened, what mattered was to come back having completed the mission. How many Widow came back counted for very little in Dreykov’s eyes. Again, it was a competition for who would make the kill, who would get the intel first, who would come back alive. Even if all the Free Widows agreed it had all been forced upon them, it was still hard to completely relax around each other with all this history of violence and distrust between one another, and that was without mentioning the fact that working as a team didn’t come easy to them. It had worked, for a bit, when they were liberating their sisters from the serum, but the following lack of clear objectives and defined missions had ended up complicating things greatly. Plus, some of them resented Yelena personally for being Natasha’s sister or being freed first. And it was without taking into account the fact that most of them weren’t blipped, like Yelena’s was, creating an additional rift between those who stayed in the New World, and those who were dust for five years. The Free Widows were still on good terms, and, in dire circumstances, they would always have each other’s back. They’d even been known to occasionally team up, for short and very precise missions, and Yelena was glad and proud to call all of them her sisters, but, still, they weren’t family – not in the way the Bartons were, not in the way she and Natasha had been, hell, not in the way the (Young) Avengers (according to Kate) were! And, again, it wasn’t because she wasn’t trying to find her found-family!
She had joined the Thunderbolts for a little while, but they all knew how that turned out… They were no better, if not worse, at bonding and trusting each other than the Free Widows were ! Plus, it had taken a very personal turn. Working with Red Guardian was literal hell. He still treated her like a child, and tried to fix their relationship as if she was still a nine-year-old girl and the more he tried the more it appeared clear to Yelena that, no matter what, he would always be the man who sold her out to the Red Room. He and Melinda had apologized, they had made amends, they were righting their wrongs and, yes, Yelena had forgiven them. They had been trapped in Dreykov’s game the same way she had, and during the Cold War at that, so she understood and forgave. But she couldn’t forget. She was a child ! Maybe, if Nat was still there, they could have grown closer, but Nat wasn’t there, she was dead, and Yelena couldn’t bear to play house with Melinda and Alexei without her sister. Taskmaster’s presence – while Yelena deeply empathized with her and never resented the poor woman – didn’t help with forgetting the past and moving on… And then, there was Bucky. The one she had grown the closest to, the one she had actually, genuinely, befriended.
He was calm and collected, sarcastic like she was, and provided a worthy opponent for hand-to-hand training. Plus, just like with the other Widows, they shared a similar trauma – being tortured for an extended period of time by evil Russians and then sent to do their bidding, hurting a lot of innocent people doing so – but without the weight of a shared past. Plus, Bucky had known Natasha a bit, but not enough to make Yelena feel like she had lost a sister she never even knew she had. She and Bucky clicked. They also shared a similar vision of what the Thunderbolts could be : a force for good that could, unlike the Avengers for instance, operate in the shadows and weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty, if the greater good demanded it. “A force for good, but not a goodie-two-shoes force”, as Yelena had once phrased it, earning a laugh from Bucky. Working with him had been a blast, once they had tamed each other. For instance, Yelena had to learn to never speak Russian in his presence and, even less so, directly to him. Yelena had grown close to him. He was…his person, to some extent. Expect, he had wanted more. Yelena, for all her super-spying abilities, had been bling to it – or, she had forced herself to be blind to it, still unsure about her own identity and stance on the matter – until there was no plausible deniability anymore. After a perilous mission, where they barely made it out alive, he had confessed his feelings for her. She turned him down, as gently as she could – which, honestly, wasn’t really that gentle, she wasn’t exactly the most subtle one out there, but still. He had been a gentleman about it, really. He had even let her rent about how she was, with enough certainty, asexual and aromantic. He didn’t try to pin it down to her trauma, he hadn’t implied he – or a good psychiatrist – could cure her, and it even led to him confessing he was bisexual and had been, for a long time and maybe even forever to some degree, in love with Steve. (A revelation to which Yelena had to physically bite her lip to not say something along the line of : “No shit, Sherlock ! You’re, like, the last one to know, buddy !”). Yet, after that heart-to-heart conversation, Bucky had started to be more distant and cold toward her. She let it slide for a bit, but then, decided to confront him. It turned out, to Yelen’s bafflement, he couldn’t bear to be as close as they used to be, because, despite her rejection, he still had feelings for her, and it hurt. It had left Yelena deeply confused: sure, she had rejected him, and, sure, it must hurt, but, how could reversing back to mere acquaintances could be better, less painful, than remaining friends ? Like… Sure, she didn’t love him in a romantic way, but she still loved him, as a dear friend ! They were still the same persons, and shared the same closeness and interests, they could still be friends, right ? Like, what was the big deal ?
“I don’t really know how to explain it Yelena, or even what to say, except that that’s not how non-aromantic people see and feel it…” he had answered.
Oh.
With Bucky’s sudden coldness and Valentina’s way of sending the Thunderbolts on shadier and shadier missions, all while being very elusive on what the end goal was, Yelena had left the ship, with a lot of noise. Last she heard, Bucky and Red Guardian had, too, taken their distances from the team, but she didn’t know about the others. She also didn’t know where Bucky was. She could have found it out, if she had wanted to – and a part of her really wanted to, he had been the brother she never had and she missed him – but he had been clear regarding their relationship and she would respect that. As for her father, he kept sending her messages, begging her to come home, but, as she had stated multiple times, it wasn’t home to her. She would swing by, once a year, on Natasha’s chosen birthday date when she visited her grave, but that was it.
Laughters derailed Yelena’s train of thoughts – or train of self-pitying, really. A young couple, probably drunk, was crossing the park. Spotting Yelena, they stopped, evaluating the menace. They decided Yelena wasn’t one – how ironic – and kept walking and giggling. It was a lesbian-passing couple, and Yelena couldn’t help but smile a little. Spotting queer people in the wild was always a heart-warming experience, albeit a bittersweet one too. A reminder of what she could not have. A reminder of what she didn’t experience, didn’t feel, and yet, craved.
It was all very confusing. She was aromantic. She didn’t feel romantic attraction. And, yet, she craved having her…person, for lack of a better word (or persons, really, the more the merrier, as long as she didn’t constantly feet like a third wheel…), to get back to at the end of the day. She craved the bond, the closeness, the… Yes, she wanted to be someone’s number one priority, she wanted to be someone’s first call to share joys and sorrows alike, she wanted to be someone’s better half, she wanted to be someone’s home and have a home in someone’s arms – except not in a romantic or sexual way. Was it an impossible dream ? She hoped not, but it definitively felt like it. Was she selfish ? Maybe. Was it trauma-induced ? Probably. After all, she had never been loved that unconditionally, she had never felt that safe. Not for extended periods of time, at least, and, even then, the only time she could recall was her oh-so-short time with Natasha. Hell, she never even had proper friends up until recently! So, of course, her “inner child” or whatever the fuck that hippie therapist she had gone to once had said, wanted to experience that deep and healing love and care and safety ! But not the way most people with these kinds of fears and traumas did, which made it all very complex and complicated. For a long time, she had wondered – she had even been sure – that she couldn’t be aroace and it was just all due to trauma. Then, she had seen former Widows have enjoyable one-night stands or get into healthy relationships. One of them was even getting married this September. Yelena had yet to respond to the invite. How could people who shared the same trauma as her get over it so quickly? She had felt really alone and broken, then. But it had also planted the idea that, maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t just trauma and she saw actually aroace. (Was she 100% certain ? No, she wasn’t! She probably never would. There would always be a part of her wondering “what if?” But she was certain enough that, for now, it was her truth, and she would live by it.) Except that it was hard to live by it, with her life, her past, and what she wanted from the future.
Of course, being in a QPR – queerplatonic relationship – had crossed her mind. In a way, it was what she wanted. But… How could it work ? The aroace dating pool was already small enough as it was for regular people, but for her ? She could barely make friends! How could she find someone with whom she clicked enough and who clicked enough with her, who was also aroace, and who would want, on top of all that, to stick with her ? How could she find someone who’d bear with her nightmares, and her moods, and her secrecy and her demons ? She couldn’t ! That was it! Despite her deepest desires and dreams, she was condemned to loneliness. Condemned to always be the third wheel, the second – or third, or fourth or tenth – call, the friend you invite out of habits rather than because you genuinely want to spend time with, the weird one, the one you have pity on, the one you ultimately see less and less and forget a bit more every day, because, you know, life… The lonely one.
A depreciatory snort made its way past her lips. Nobody heard, the couple was long past, and the park was otherwise deserted. How had she even survived the Red Room with that much self-pity in her ? Such feelings would have had her executed faster than she could have said “self-pity”! Maybe it would have been b… Ding !
Her phone rang. Intrigued – it was late and since leaving the Thunderbolt, she was trying to take some distance with her Red Room acquired skills, meaning fewers calls or texts at weird hours – she took it out of her pocket. It was a text…from Kate Bishop!
Soooo… Reallly drunk rrright nw. Jacks (bf), Franny, Greer, & Peter made me do shots! Fing shots! (Whicjh, oc, are nothing to u, but like shoooost) Anywy, I
Yelena, for all her self-pitying, couldn’t help but smile. There was a certain cuteness to Kate Bishop that never failed to make her smile, since their first fateful meeting, two years prior…
Oops, hit send too ealy
Anwayyy, I was wondering if next time ur in fown, Fanny and Lucky could habe a playdate ?
Yelena smiled, and typed back:
Hi, Kate Bishop ! I am in town right now !
The response was almost instantaneous :
Eaoezooihd Yelenaaaaaaaaaaaa! Should have said so! If u want, were at Shaw s bar! Comm koin us !
And tomorrow hour dogs can have a meting!
Wait! 2rrow will be hangover… The day after tomorrow !
Yelena hesitated. She couldn’t stand Jackson . (To be fair, she had never actually met him, but she kept tabs on him. She didn’t have a lot of friends and was fiercely protective over the ones she had – especially when they were as naïve as Kate Bishop. She hadn’t found anything on him. He was harmless as a dove, yet something about him didn’t agree with him. He wasn’t right for Kate Bishop.). Greer and Franny were okay. Kate was friend with them since high school, they were decent people, and, while Yelena would have never in a million years spent alone time with them, they were okay in her book). Peter – Yelena assumed it was Peter Parker – was always fun to mess with. He knew who Yelena was, and how dangerous she could be. He knew she could kill him in twenty different ways with a single finger even with all this spider nonsense, and, while he knew she wasn’t in the killing-innocent-people-business anymore, she always had a fun time making him doubt that last assertion. As for the canine playdate… Yelena didn’t understand how her well-behaved and obedient Fanny could get on so well with the furry mess that was Lucky, but the fact was that they did. Both dogs genuinely liked each other!
I’m on my way, Kate Bishop!