Archive of Our Own

Part 1: This Side

One last mission, Yelena had thought. Follow Valentina’s instructions, kill the target, get her paycheck, have a really fine meal with a bottle of expensive vodka and then—and then. She had already said goodbye to Alexei, in their own odd way, left him her favourite gun and hummed along to American Pie together as he drove her to the target’s location, which she had intended to be a nice last memory together. Fanny had been left on Kate Bishop’s doorstep to be taken care of, so that was handled as well. There was nothing else. No one else. Just her final mission, and then she could call it a day.  

Except that her mission got waylaid by other people also on eerily similar missions—a girl who flickered in and out of view, Dreykov’s daughter, that not-Captain America guy who lived up to his namesake by speaking loudly and being over-confident, all sent by Val to kill each other. And then there was the Winter Soldier. Bucky Barnes, who she had thought of as a legend or just a story Natasha spun to impress her, but was real as day, an imposing man with that permanently exasperated expression and a whole other assignment for them. With an actual threat looming, she was swept up in this new mission of protecting New York City, and she thought wildly that this must have been what Natasha felt all those years ago, just a Russian girl in America’s most famous city fighting these inexplicable monsters that would not stop coming.   

She tried her best, she really did. She protected as many people as she could from the Void, and even tried to rescue a dog whose owner had left him tied to a traffic light, but she wasn’t quick enough, and the dog got swallowed up by the darkness. She tried, but she was no match for any of this—and besides, she didn’t know the first thing about saving people. She wasn’t even supposed to be here. She was supposed to be long gone by now.

Halfway through the battle, she found herself on the top floor of a skyscraper, with the Void looming menacingly outside just beyond the shattered windows. Civilians were screaming and running in the opposite direction, all noise and action. She didn’t feel anything for those people. She felt quite at peace in fact, staring into the utter blackness. After fighting it for so long now, she wanted to touch it, wondering how it’d feel. Would she feel it at all? Or would everything just…stop?

She stepped towards the edge of the building. She couldn’t even see the ground now. One step more, and then this could all be over. She could stop fighting, stop trying to prove herself as something she’d never be, just stop. The Void beckoned her home.  

She closed her eyes.

“Yelena!”

A hand closed around her wrist and yanked her back. She struggled but was dragged backwards into the building until they hit a wall, then she was thrown down onto the ground. He immediately bent down after her—Bucky, she realized it now—and gave her shoulders a hard shake.  

“Talk to me, Yelena. Is he making you do this? Are you being controlled?”

“Controlled? What—Bucky, no.” She tried to shake off his grip. “Let me go. I’m going into the Void.”

“Into the Void. You want to go into the Void.” He repeated, and it was a question, except he said it all deadpanned because he didn’t believe her. “What the hell do you mean?”

“I want it to end. I don’t want to do this anymore. I’ve tried, but I can’t live like this—pretending I’m a hero, when I’m just not.”

She looked at Bucky, trying to explain, but—oh, this was silly, trying to explain all this to someone she had just met when her way out was right there in front of her. She needed to go into the Void, now.

“Listen, I can’t save these people and you and the team have got it sorted already. The best I can do now is to just let it end here. No one will miss me, I’ve even said goodbye to Daddy already, so just let me go.”

He had backed away, and she could tell that it was not so much because he was acquiescing to her request, but because he was not expecting her to say what she said—still, she would take what she got. She stood up quickly and darted around him, trying to reach the Void again because she wanted it to end on her own terms, the first choice in her whole damn life that she was making for herself. She made it to the edge again before Bucky caught her, this time by the waist.

“Don’t you dare.”

“Let me go!”

“I don’t think so.”

He dragged her bodily back into the building, and she kicked and yelled the whole time, bursting out in frustration when he didn’t even flinch. She tried everything, twisting out of his grip, trying to get her weight on top of him so she could flip him over, but he seemed to know all her tricks and blocked them without making a sound. He eventually dragged her into a corner of the room and pushed her down—not without force—and she cried out when she slammed into the ground. This time he kept both hands on her shoulders, foreclosing any chance of escape.

“Stop it! Bucky, let me go!”

She made one final attempt to kick him off, but he blocked it with a twist of his knee and brought his whole body weight on top of her, holding her still. All the adrenaline that had coursed through her during their brief fight was forced into a sudden halt, and for a moment she felt like she would explode from it, and then it suddenly gushed out in the form of a huge shudder and then—tears. She gasped with it, choking on the insurmountable tidal wave that was passing through her. His grip abruptly loosened and she clasped her hands to her face, shaking. It felt like the world was roaring.

“Yelena? Fuck. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry.”

She heard fragments of Bucky’s voice through the throbbing in her mind, but she couldn’t focus on it, couldn’t focus on anything but the emptiness inside her that had been there for months and month but now seemed to erupt like a volcano. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to sob, but she couldn’t do anything except let it roar through her. Flashbacks swept through her too: memories of every morning she had woken up aimless and every night she had fallen asleep unbearably lonely, now filling up her lungs with their awfulness. She pulled herself up into a sitting position because she couldn’t catch her breath, and after a moment she felt Bucky’s hand on her back, patting and rubbing until she stopped gasping. It took another minute before she stopped shaking. His touch retreated.

“Yelena? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She said, but the hoarseness in her voice betrayed her. She looked up to see what the damage was, because to her it felt like the world had momentarily ended, but they were still in New York City, and the Void was still floating out there, just beyond her reach. Bucky had loosened his grip on her, but he followed her line of sight to the Void and shook his head tersely.

“Don’t you dare.” He warned before muttering into his comms, “Walker, the thing’s at 1717 Broadway now and I’m a bit tied up. Lure it away, will ya?” before turning back to her. The building was quiet and emptied out now, and the screams of the civilians were distant. Behind Bucky, the Void drifted away and then out of sight. Her opportunity vanished. She slumped in defeat, all energy drained away.

“Did I hurt you?” He asked now, eyes flickering down her body.

“You slammed me into the floor real hard.” She grumbled.

“I’m sorry. I forget my own strength sometimes.”

“Hah.” She said derisively, because that sounded like Alexei’s unsubtle bragging, but then noticed he was serious. “Don’t worry, I’ll live. Unfortunately.”

He flashed her a wry smile, then to her surprise he sat down next to her, back against the wall as if this was just a casual mid-battle breather. They were silent for a minute, during which Yelena tried to get her faculties back into order and not seem like she had just been totally shaken. Eventually, when she felt like her heart had stopped thudding—

“You shouldn’t have stopped me.”

She looked over at Bucky, who stared back, looking remarkably collected, not a single flicker behind those cool eyes. She made herself match his expressionlessness, but it felt a bit of a fool’s errand after she had just sobbed uncontrollably on the floor.

“Why?” He simply asked.

“It was my choice.”

“To die?”

She nodded.

“Not while I’m around. I almost killed your sister three times; I can’t let you die under my watch. Sorry.”

He said it by way of explanation, and that was almost worst, because Natasha was the reason she wanted to go most of all. It wasn’t too far-fetched that Natasha was just beyond, and that if she went into the Void, she could reach her. Maybe if she could find Natasha again, Natasha would hold her, and the world would stop spinning for once.

“I want to be with her.” She said childishly, staring at the empty wall in front of her. “You should have killed me too.”

“Don’t be fucking stupid.”

She flinched at the roughness of his tone. She wanted a physical blow, to be knocked out by his strength, not—this, his palpable judgment bearing down on her, which was no help at all.

“You don’t understand.”

He gave a harsh laugh. “Yeah? Don’t I?”

“You don’t.”

“Try me.”

She kept staring at the opposite wall, hoping to find a narrative there, because she was hopelessly overwhelmed. There were too many things.

“Well, first of all, I’m not a hero no matter what you say. Ava could be, even John and Dad with a bit of work, but—not me. I have killed too many people.” She foresaw his counterargument and retorted before he could say it. “And not just under mind control. I did contract kills after I got out, and I killed the collateral too sometimes when I got angry. I am not a hero.”

Bucky stayed silent, just watching her, and she kept talking to the wall because she didn’t know if she could meet his eyes.

“So I don’t really have a reason for living anymore. The only person who ever loved me is gone. Natasha—because Daddy doesn’t really care. If he did, he would have tried to track me down the last three years. Instead he’s just been moping about his glory days. And Mo—Melina.” She backtracked because calling her Mom made her heart ache. “She’s not here, is she? I have been alone for the past three years and I am tired of it. No one would care if I was gone.”

“It’s not true.”

She scoffed. “Name one person who would care.”

He paused, which was fair enough. He didn’t even know her. She glanced at him, and his gaze had sort of softened and he swallowed. She sure as hell hoped he wasn’t going to suddenly say that he cared, like in those silly Hollywood movies, when he barely even knew her.

“Even if no one cares, you’ve got to keep pushing through. For yourself.”

She didn’t expect that. There was something almost like…sadness that made his eyes crease at the corners, and she found herself curious to find out the reason for it.

“Why?”

“Because no one is fully bad, even if we’ve done bad things. There’s something good inside you and you have to believe that. Sure, it helps if someone else believes that for you, but even if that person is gone, you have to keep believing it for yourself. Otherwise, you’re right. What’s the point? But you can’t live in the past forever.”

“I don’t have to live at all.”

The words fell out of Yelena’s mouth lightly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the blackness spreading even before she heard Walker’s voice crackling out of their comms.

“Bucky, watch out! It’s heading back to 1717 Broadway, and it’s not going slowly either—it looks like it’s got a target!”

Yes, Yelena thought almost happily, her: she was destined for it after all—she was going home, to Natasha, to a world that made sense again. She stood up and didn’t even have to take more than a step. The Void came straight for her, and there was a jerk in her navel, then she was gone.

Part 2: The Void

She landed with her knees and palms on the ground—on pure, white snow. She got up, brushing the powdery snow off her suit as she looked around. She was in dense woods at twilight, and she could even hear the faint chirps of chickadees, the Siberian bird that nested near where she had grown up. Was this Russia? Did the afterlife look like Russia?

“Am I dead?” She murmured to herself, looking down at her limbs. She looked very solid. She could even see the tear in her suit from where the dog she had tried to rescue had bit her in its panic. The snow also felt remarkably cold now, falling from the sky and onto her head and her bare hands.

As if an answer, Natasha stepped out from behind a birch tree. But it was a younger Natasha, not the one who had brought down the Red Room, but one who looked around sixteen, her red hair in a thick braid down her back.

“Natasha?”

“Mladshaya sestra.”

Little sister. Yelena’s eyes immediately filled with tears. She ran forward and threw her arms around Natasha, except it didn’t feel right, because this Natasha was younger and even smaller than Yelena was now, and her gaze was cold and calculating. She pushed Yelena off.

“Focus. The target is almost here.”

“Target?”

“Shh.”

Natasha pulled her behind a larger tree, and together they watched as a man stomped into view, clearly not knowing they were there. He had a fur cap over his head and a long beard. He was eerily familiar, actually. She had seen this target before; in fact, she had seen him in these very woods, and she had…Yelena looked at Natasha again, and realized this was not the afterlife but a memory. Or perhaps the afterlife was made of memories?

“I’m so confused.” She said out loud, and Natasha pinched her.

“Shut up, take the shot.”

Natasha put a rifle into Yelena’s hand, and she panicked, because she suddenly knew exactly which memory this was. She had been eleven, on her first rifling assignment and they had sent Natasha to supervise her. On cue, a young boy emerged from behind a nearby thicket and followed after the man. No, Yelena thought, no, no, no.

“Who’s this?” Natasha asked, which was what she had asked back then too.

“The target has a son.” Yelena whispered. Her hands shook.

“Well, we’ll still have to take the shot.” Natasha said dubiously. “The boy is small; we'll knock him out afterwards.”

Yelena’s hands moved as if of their own accord. She lifted the rifle to her shoulders and put her eye on the rifle scope, centering in on the target. She did it exactly as she did it when she was eleven: took a deep breath, pulled the trigger. A clean shot. The man fell dead with a bullet to his heart.

“Good job.” Natasha praised, and there was a second of bliss before the boy screamed, a heart-piercing sound. There was some movement in the distance. He had alerted the target’s companions to the kill, and to their location.

“Shit.” Natasha wavered, glancing between the boy and the approaching entourage. “Stay down, I’ll knock him out.”

“There’s no time! I’ve got this, Natasha.” Yelena protested, and she knew what would happen before she did it; she was powerless to stop it. She lifted the rifle and took a second shot, but she had done it too hastily and it wasn’t a clean shot this time. The boy went down, but then kept screaming, now in pain as well as a terror. Natasha snatched the rifle out of her hand.

“Yelena!”

“It’s okay, I can fix this, I can—”

Natasha shoved a revolver into her hands. “Fix it. Now!”

The boy was screaming bloody murder, which—of course, he was. The bullet had ended up in his shoulder and a steady stream of blood flowed from it, touching the tips of Yelena’s boots before she got up to the boy. She crouched, looking at his face—and she wish she hadn’t because she would never forget it. Had never forgotten it. His eyes were bloodshot and wide-open in fear, then she put the gun to his temple and the screaming stopped. Natasha was right behind her.

“Go. Run!”

They ran through the birch woods until they were far away enough, then Yelena paused to catch her breath, feeling disoriented. She was still in her twenty-something-year-old body, but the memory had played out exactly the same as it had fifteen years ago, except this moment right now. Back then, they had run all the way back to the Red Room, but now Yelena found that she could slow her steps down and stop. She turned around to face Natasha. Natasha’s expression had hardened, turned stony.

“Natasha, what’s happening?” She asked, breaking the script for the first time. Natasha shook her head.

“Yelena, how could you?”

“What?”

“How could you kill that boy?”

Natasha had broken the script too, because they had never had this conversation. They had simply gone back to the Red Room without discussing it, as if there was nothing about the incident worth noting except in their mission report with a number ‘1’ in the column ‘collateral damage’.

“I don’t know.” Yelena said helplessly.

“You’re heartless. I told you that we only needed to knock him out, you didn’t have to kill him. You just love it, don’t you? You’re a natural at it. All of us other girls were forced into it, but you’re still killing now, by choice.”

Yelena took a step back. This Natasha, young as she looked, was lethal in her words and somehow knew about Yelena’s life after she had died.

“…What’s happening? Where am I?”

The crunch of the snow underneath her foot was real, the freezing wind was real—and Natasha, who now came close to her, looked very real too. Yelena was overwhelmed with the desire to hug her again, but forced herself to stop and think.

“I’m beginning to think this isn’t the afterlife.”

Natasha ignored her comment.

“You’ll need to pay for what you’ve done, Yelena.”

Yelena swallowed, looking down at her hands which still had the boy’s blood frozen over them. “I know. I know, that’s why I’ve been trying to just make everything end. The world doesn’t need any more of me.”

“Ending your life isn’t enough. You’ll need to pay. Come with me.”

Natasha held out her hand, beckoning, and Yelena suddenly noticed that an elegant tar-black door had appeared behind her, hovering above the snow, entirely out of place. She blinked.

“What’s that?”

“Just come with me, Yelena. You’ll see.”

Natasha held her hand, and Yelena almost sobbed, feeling the warmth of her sister’s touch and missing her so badly. But this wasn’t really her, right?

Then again: even if it wasn’t her, would it be so bad to follow?

Yelena stepped towards Natasha and received a smile in recompense—but then suddenly Natasha’s figure shimmered. Yelena blinked, and it was now a different Natasha in front of her, with shoulder-length straight hair and a face that had lost all its softness. She was older, but not the Natasha that Yelena had met most recently either. She took out a gun from her thigh holster, pointed it somewhere behind Yelena and shot. Yelena ducked out of instinct, her ears ringing.

“Natasha!” She shouted, wondering if the target’s entourage had caught up to them, but then she turned around and it was Bucky.

“Bucky?” She gaped, but he took two strides and grabbed her by the neck of her suit, throwing her behind him for the third time that day.

“Stay out of the way, you’re going to get hurt.”

Yelena kept low to avoid being shot at as she crawled to the side, hiding behind a birch tree as she tried to figure out what was going on. Was Bucky appearing in her afterlife, or her hallucination, too? But this was Bucky from today, dressed in his black tactical gear. Natasha shot at him as he advanced until he wrenched the gun away from her. Then she grabbed ahold of his arm and flipped, climbing easily on his back and straddling his shoulders. Yelena watched, wide-eyed—this was exactly the move she had tried on Bucky earlier, but Natasha was actually making it work. Bucky tried to pull her off as Natasha got a wire out of seemingly nowhere and choked him. He stumbled back, face turning white from lack of oxygen.

“Natasha!” Yelena shouted. “Stop it!”

But it was as if Natasha couldn’t hear her at all. Yelena met Bucky’s gaze, and he looked somehow frightened for the first time since she had known him, and if Yelena knew anything about Natasha’s fighting style then she knew that she was fighting to kill. After giving it a moment’s thought, she decided that it couldn’t hurt to jump in. She charged and ran straight into them, knocking Natasha off Bucky until she hit the ground, wincing. Yelena scrambled quickly at Natasha’s wrists and found that, as expected, she had been wearing her Widow Bites. She pointed them at Natasha’s own neck and stung her hard and long enough that she passed out. Then she got away from her and pulled Bucky, who was still choking a little, behind a tree and spoke with urgency.  

“Are you real?”

“Of course I’m real.”

“How did you get into my afterlife?”

“Your after—what?”

“My afterlife. Here.”

He stared at her for a full second. “Yelena, you’re not dead.”

“I’m not?”

“No!”

“What’s going on!”

Bucky looked impatient, glancing over at Natasha as if checking whether she was still unconscious.

“I followed you into the Void.”

“What? I thought you didn’t want to die!”

“It was—not my finest moment, I didn’t think it through, I just couldn’t bear the thought of telling Alexei that I let you die right in front of me. So I went in.”

Yelena’s heart skipped a beat, feeling oddly touched.

“Bozhe moy. And then what happened?”

“I ended up in a memory.” He swallowed, a haunted look flitting through his eyes before he pushed it down with great restraint. “I was in Hydra’s control; they were trying to remove my arm. I killed those men and got out of there, but the other side of that door was here, wherever the hell this is.”

“It’s Siberia. Close to the Red Room.” Yelena said. “But Natasha, Natasha was trying to kill you.”

“Yes, I recognized it as another memory as soon as I got here. 2014, but it was in DC, not here.”

“One of the times you tried to kill her.” Yelena realized, and Bucky nodded.

“She was trying to kill me too. That’s why I told you to stay out of the way, because I remember what she was like back then. You would have been harmed if you had gotten in between us. Back then, I had to shoot her to stop her. One bullet, to the shoulder.”

Yelena flinched, and Bucky looked down at her apologetically.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“It’s alright. I don’t think this Natasha is real.” She finally admitted, sadly. She sat down against the trunk of the tree, feeling so very tired. After a moment, Bucky dropped down beside her.

“What happened to you in here?”

“It was a memory too. I was eleven and Natasha was sixteen, and I killed a little boy. Collateral damage.” Bucky nodded like he understood. “It all happened exactly as it did in real life, but then I spoke to Natasha and she started saying things that she never had before. She said I was heartless and that I had to pay for all the wrongs I’d done. She told me to follow her through that door.”

Bucky looked at the door for the first time and frowned.

“That’s so out-of-place.”

“I know.” Yelena said despondently. “I was going to go anyway, because I wanted to be with Natasha.”

“Even though she’s not real?”

“Well, who else do I have?”

They had gone in a whole circle, it seemed, back to where their conversation had left off before they had fallen into the Void. Bucky sighed.

“Listen, you’re not going to follow a dream-version of your sister into that creepy-looking door. You said it yourself; she was saying things your sister would never say. You could never be happy here.”

Yelena didn’t answer, not ready to admit that he was right.

“What you can do is help us find a way out of here, alright? There must be a way out, because we’re not dead.”

“How are you so certain we aren’t dead?”

“Because if this were heaven, I don’t think I’d still be fighting Hydra and the Widow and talking to—” He glanced at her, then clammed up.

“Talking to me, right? I get it.” Yelena said rather good-humouredly. “I don’t think I’d be in your heaven either. I don’t think I’d be in heaven at all, if there was one.”

“Not the time to debate that.” Bucky said grimly. “We should just proceed on the assumption that we’re not dead. What do you think this place is, really?”

Yelena looked around them. The Siberian woods were so beautiful at twilight, exactly like she had always remembered, except for that door hovering in the air.  

“It’s in our heads.” She said softly, realizing it as she said it aloud. “Someone’s gotten into our heads, and they’re trying to make me go through that door by using my memories of Natasha. This Void—this thing—it knew my deepest, darkest fears and it tried to use them against me.”

“Okay, that’s a theory. It might be the same for me. Getting captured by Hydra is one of my worst memories, but this…” He glanced over at Natasha again. “I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, because that fight with her in DC was not a particularly bad memory. It was a standard mission up till that point.”

“Maybe the Void brought you here because I was here, and you were looking for me. And my Natasha just morphed into the only version of Natasha you knew.”

“Maybe…”

At that moment, Natasha stirred. The sting from the Bites was not strong enough to keep a person down for long, Yelena knew, so she stood up warily, wondering what to do now.

“If she’s a figment of the Void’s making, then maybe she knows the way out of here.” Bucky suggested. “Once she wakes up, you could ask her.”

“Okay. But you should stay out of sight in case she gets all murderous on you again.”

“You don’t think she’s going to try to hurt you too?”

“Not if she’s really based on our memories. In my memories, Natasha has never tried to hurt me.”

Natasha was waking up now, groaning a little and stretching her limbs out, as Bucky disappeared behind a grove of trees. Yelena approached her and held out a hand.

“Sestra, ty khoroshiy?”

Natasha—and it was strange to be talking to this Natasha, because Yelena had never talked to her at this age before—glanced at Yelena’s hand and then at her face.

“Yelena?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

Natasha took her hand and got up, then—to Yelena’s surprise—pushed her forehead against Yelena’s affectionately. Yelena was too astonished to move, then Natasha was already wrapping both arms around her in a proper embrace. This was—she wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, because this Natasha was acting completely differently from the Natasha earlier, but did it even matter? She was finally hugging Natasha again. Yelena sank into it, gripping Natasha’s jacket like it was a lifeline.

“Oh Natasha, I’ve missed you so, so much.”

“I missed you too, mladshaya sestra.”

“I’m sorry, I should have saved you, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright, Yelena…”

Natasha held her as she cried, and she felt solid and warm and Yelena forgot all about her not being real—how could this not be real? This closure she was feeling was real, the ability to finally tell Natasha to her face how much she meant to her. Yelena clung onto Natasha, and Natasha pressed kisses to her hair and smoothed her hand down Yelena’s back like she always did when they were back in Ohio, before the Red Room stole the capacity to show affection from them. Yelena had no idea how long she cried—time had seemed to cease completely—and when she broke away from the hug, her heart felt light for the first time in years.

“I’ll never leave you again, Yelena.” Natasha said gently. “Come with me.”

Natasha turned and Yelena followed without a second thought, something hopeful soaring inside of her. Of course, Natasha had never meant to leave her at all, and she never would again. They had reached the hovering black door when Yelena heard footsteps behind them. Natasha pushed Yelena behind her, as if protecting her, and pulled out her gun.

“Yelena.” Bucky’s hands were raised in surrender, though his gaze was not on Natasha, but on her. “Yelena, you said you’d ask her for the way out.”

Reality flooded in and she fought desperately to hold it at bay—she almost hated the sight of Bucky, because his very presence threatened the dream that she now almost had in her grasp. She took a deep breath.

“Bucky, I’m going with her.”

“Please, Yelena. You know she’s not real.”   

“I’m still going.”

For one moment, she saw Bucky’s expression soften into something almost like pity, and she felt like she had won. Then in the next, he pulled a gun out from his belt, aimed it at Natasha and shot.

One clean shot, straight to the heart. Natasha crumpled.

“No!” Yelena felt like her own heart had collapsed, and she fell to the ground besides Natasha. Her body was still warm, but blood was soaking the front of her shirt, and she was horribly, horribly still. “No, Natasha, wake up! Wake up!”

“Yelena, she’s not real. I’m so sorry, but she’s not real and you have to let her go.”

He was behind her, pulling her away, but she screamed in frustration, clawing and biting at him without restraint. He held on tight despite all of her efforts and eventually turned her around and pressed her head to his chest, his vibranium arm so firm around her shoulders that she could no longer struggle and the other hand in her hair, keeping her down.

“I know how it feels and I’m so sorry, Yelena, but I had to. I’ve got you; you’re going to be alright.”

She wept harder, and he fell quiet, yet still holding her the whole time like he was the very gravity keeping her on the ground. She thought she might stay here forever and grieve until she died of it, if he let her, but the Void was not so kind.

“Bucky.”

Suddenly, there was another man’s voice, and she heard Bucky’s sharp intake of breath. Her cheek was still pressed to his chest, and she could hear his heartbeat accelerate. Her grief faded in an instant into trepidation.

“How could you kill Natasha, Buck? She’s my best friend. She’s the only person I’ve felt safe around and you killed her like she was nothing. You’re a monster.”

Bucky stumbled back, releasing Yelena, and she turned around to see who had spoken. She gasped too, just like he had.

Steve Rogers, standing tall and righteous and furious over Natasha’s body.

“Tony was right. You were never worth saving. Hydra broke you and I was naïve to think you’d ever recover. Now you’ve killed Nat. Murderer.” His voice was brittle, and then broke. “I will never forgive you. Go through that door, Buck. You’ll pay for what you’ve done.”

“Oh no.” Yelena muttered, turning around to find Bucky, who had backed away until he seemed almost frozen against a tree. His eyes were wet and terrified. She grabbed at his hands, which were shaking.

This place was treacherous. She realized it with startling clarity now, even though she should have earlier— it was only now that the Natasha illusion had stopped tempting her that the fog in her mind finally lifted. The sixteen-year-old Natasha who had berated her, the gentle and lovely Natasha who had exuded comfort, and now this echo of Captain America himself, trying to break Bucky—it was all a hoax, all to get them through that door, whatever the hell was behind there. There must be a way out; this bitter half-reality could not be all that was left for them…Yelena looked around desperately for any escape that wasn’t through that terrible door, and suddenly saw it, light beyond the Siberian woods. It glowed like a sunrise, and she felt as clearly as she had felt drawn into the Void that it was the way out.

“Bucky.” She said with fervour, squeezing the hands that were caught in between hers. “Don’t listen to him, he’s not real!”

“I know.” Bucky said through gritted teeth, still staring wildly at Steve Rogers like he was seeing a ghost. “Steve would never—he never—”

“He would never blame you for what you did.” Yelena understood now, and felt an ecstatic burst of hope when she realized that Bucky was far stronger than she was and hadn’t fallen into the trap at all. She put a palm on his cheek, trying to turn his face towards her.

“Bucky, listen to me. We’ve gotta get out of here, and I think I know the way out. Look behind you, there’s the sunrise.”

“The…what?”

“The sunrise, it’s the way out, I can feel it.”

Bucky took a deep breath, turning away from the ghost of his old friend and towards the light that glimmered in the distance.

“God. You better be right, Yelena.”

“At least it’s the opposite direction from this goddamned door.” Was the best she could do, then she took off in a run, feeling Bucky close behind her. There was some yelling—Steve Rogers’ voice, cold and terrifyingly harsh—and the branches scratched their faces, and the snow was powdery and so difficult to run in—but eventually they burst through the dense woods and into sunlight, sunlight, sunlight—

Part 3: The Other Side

For a moment the sunlight was blinding, and she felt as if she was floating through thin air before her feet hit the ground and she staggered forward. Her hands instinctively reached out to shield her from crashing into the wall—a standard American corporate-looking drywall, oh thank goodness—and she breathed a sigh of relief when Bucky landed right next to her.

“Are we out?” He whipped around, and she did too, just in time to see the Void dissipate like mist from the top floor of 1717 Broadway. Something dropped to the ground from within the darkness before it disappeared, and Yelena darted forward. It was a chemical diffuser, black and rectangular; in fact, looking a little bit like the door they had seen.

“Oh!” She said in surprise, holding it out towards Bucky. “It was just chemicals.”

“Seriously? Not again.” Bucky grabbed the diffuser from her and stared at it blankly before throwing it across the room, where it lay looking so-very-innocuous. It was hard to believe that such a small thing was the source of that hellish dreamscape. “I am so fucking done with things getting into my head.”

“I know.” Yelena agreed with feeling.

Time slowed a little. Bucky swiped the back of his hand over his forehead and eyes, and Yelena found herself a little lost now that she was confronted with this part of Bucky, on this side of the Void. In all this time she had known him, he had been snarky and competent and almost emotionless, focused entirely on getting their team into order. Now he turned away from her and she watched as his shoulders heaved, as his exhalations grew shaky.

“Bucky?” She said uncertainly. “I’m sorry about Steve.”

He didn’t respond; instead, he tried to stifle his outburst now that he realized she was watching him, physically forcing his emotions down with a terrible shudder. She recognized it because she had done it far too many times herself.

“Oh, Bucky, don’t do that.” Yelena said, pained. “You can’t hold it all in.”

“Can’t I?” He said roughly. He pulled his hand away from his eyes and tried to avoid her gaze, but she stepped closer by impulse, not wanting to leave him all alone in his grief. So close together now, he couldn’t not look at her, and she watched as a river of emotions flowed through his eyes. Eventually, he settled for a deep breath and a white flag of surrender: honesty. “I know it wasn’t real, but it still fucking hurt to hear those words come out of his mouth.”

“I know. It was the same when Natasha said those awful things to me. I knew she would never, but it felt real all the same. The Void is really scary.”

Bucky gave a small, strained laugh, at her choice of words, maybe.

“Yeah. Real scary.”

Yelena smiled back encouragingly. “Uh huh. But for what it’s worth, Bucky, you’re not a monster. You’re not even a killer. You saved my life.”

Bucky started shaking his head, but she pressed harder.

“You really did. You followed me into the Void. I would have died—or gone through that black door, whatever it meant—if you hadn’t stopped me. The Void seemed determined to break me, using Natasha as a threat, then as temptation, making me think I could have her back…” Yelena took a deep breath herself, fighting to get the feeling of Natasha’s embrace out of her mind. “I wouldn’t be here with you.”

Bucky gave her a sad look, and shook his head again.

“I think you’re stronger than you think.”

“That’s not true. I really would have gone through the door if you hadn’t stopped me.”

“But you found the sunrise.” He pointed out. “You saw the light that became our way out. And I’m not one prone to metaphors or anything but I think you could only have done that if you had hope that there was something out there other than that door. You had hope, and that hope saved us. It saved me.”  

Now she felt her cheeks heat up and suddenly understood why Bucky was so determined to deny the credit she gave him. It felt undeserved, almost unreal, to hear that she had saved someone’s life for a change. God, they were total messes, weren’t they?

“Alright, it’s a draw.” She announced before she could feel any more self-conscious. “We both did an equal amount of saving.”

Bucky chuckled, properly this time. “Sure, Yelena.”

“Thank you.” She said more sincerely, and held out a hand for Bucky to shake. He took it for a short moment before giving it a tug and pulling her into—an actual hug. Her forehead pressed into his chest, and she felt his arms go around her, and the only other time this had happened she had been fighting to escape his grip, but now all the fight went out of her in an instant. She made a small noise of surprise before she melted into it, unable to resist.

No one had held her like this since Natasha—the real Natasha.

She thought he would say something, or let go of her after a second, but they stayed like that for a while, long enough for her to feel Bucky’s heart speed up and then slow, a steadying rhythm to anchor herself to as her world spun. It was more comforting than words, the tangible reality of a person’s touch, the warmth of his body against the shivering inside her. She clung on helplessly.  

“You’re gonna be alright, Yelena.” Bucky said, breaking the silence after she had stopped trembling. “What you said earlier—that no one would care if you were gone? Not true at all. Your father—I can tell that he cares. He kept telling me your childhood stories while we were staking out the Tower last night; he physically could not shut up about you even though we were supposed to be covert. That’s love, for sure.”

“Oh!” Yelena said, not expecting that at all. Oh, Alexei. He had always been like that when they were kids, it was just so hard to imagine it now that she was all grown-up—

“There’s also the team.” Bucky kept saying. “Now, I’ve never been part of any team in my life, not like Steve had, or even your sister, but the group we have going on here—it is sort of a team, right? And they all care about you. No one wants you to die on us, and we’d all fight to protect each other, so that’s something.”

That was true, in a way. She had only known John and Ava for a few days, but she would certainly never let them get hurt on the field; they already felt like her responsibility somehow…

“And then there’s me.” Bucky paused, and Yelena felt her heart skitter in trepidation. “I care a hell of a lot about you, Yelena. Don’t even ask me why. You just showed up and…” He sighed, not finding the words, but perhaps they were not needed anyway. “What I mean is, I understand now, why you feel the way you do. It makes perfect sense, given what you’ve been through, losing your sister when you still really needed her…I get it, I really do. I lost Steve too and it—it really is the worst pain in the world. Everything you’ve felt is justified, Yelena, but I just don’t want you to feel that way anymore. I’ll be here, if you need someone. And I would care if you were gone. Can’t let anything happen to you; I’m keeping you right here.”

He squeezed her tight, messing up her hair a little before letting her go, and Yelena swayed out of the hug almost lightheadedly. She stared at Bucky and nearly demanded to know whether he was joking, because surely this was too sweet to be real, but his eyes were wide and ever so sincere.

“Alright there?” Bucky asked amusedly at her stunned expression.

“I—I’ve never—”

“Never heard that before?”

She nodded, speechless.

“Better get used to it then.”

He gave her the most charming smile, in fact, a proper non-sarcastic smile for the first time, and she felt like she finally knew who Bucky Barnes was now—the real him, not the Winter Soldier veneer she had been fighting alongside.

“Bucky—”

“Hmm?”

“I’m glad you’re here with me.”

“I’m not too mad about it either.” Bucky responded lightly, but she could swear he was pleased to hear it. “Now, if you’re good to go—might want to dry your eyes a little while you’re at it, dear—we should find the team and let them know that the Void is just someone’s chemistry experiment and that if we can get inside and disable the diffuser, New York should be saved.”

Yelena half-glared at him for his comment—she hadn’t even known that she had teared up, again—but he kept up that smile of his like he hadn’t said anything.

“Come on now. Let’s get out of here.”

They stepped around the debris and headed towards the elevator of 1717 Broadway, and as they rode it down, Yelena felt the last of the Void’s nightmarish echoes seeping out of her bones, losing power to the truer reality of the man at her side, the team waiting for them, and the hope that feeling loved wasn’t quite as out-of-reach as she had thought. Then they reached the lobby and stepped out onto the streets—and back into the light, for good.