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Foreign and persistent, Yelena tried futilely to shake the all-consuming agitation reverberating through her every cell. The remainders of the day presented themselves without pause, taking and taking from a well she had assumed to be empty, her body and mind going through the motions, driven by muscle memory and perhaps the smallest amount of spite.
The walls of the room she was now supposed to see as her sanctuary of rest, haven on a world that lately had felt so unwelcome, were too perfectly white, too straight, too pristine. Yelena's lungs were begging for oxygen despite the abundance of air around her.
It took her maybe half an hour of painfully introspective solitude to name what was wrong with her. She played around with a few names, emotions she was not sure she had ever let herself consider feeling. Her conclusion was to call it 'overwhelm'.
What now?
Human beings were not built for the cascade of horrifying experiences she had lived in the last two days. Yet maybe worse than the dread and the panic was the silence that invaded her system when they vanished.
The emptiness. The void.
She considers going back to old tactics for a moment. Not out of ignorance this time, not out of stupidly presuming she can handle it. Yelena feels a pang of shame at the fact a few mere hours ago was preaching about sharing and now she is back to trying to hide. Knowing she needs help does not make it easier to seek it.
The thought of the New Avengers creeps up into her mind before she can stop it. Part of her wants to embrace the opportunity. Live like a hero, do something that matters just like she had done that day. But the circumstances were not the best. Valentina was involved, for starters. No one had had a say on the matter. Sure, everyone rolled with it and there was a silent agreement after what happened with Bob that they would stick together in some way, yet none of them had voiced any deeper thoughts on the matter.
The rest of the day had been a blur and now Yelena was paying the consecuences of it.
Perhaps the worst part is she had embraced it unconsciously. She had put Valentina in her place, talked to the press, pretended she was ready to lead a team of... superheroes? Her, who had been trying to stand up and shower for, seemingly, two hours. And she really had to get to that soon—the grime and blood were sticking to her skin and hair in a way that only enhanced the hurricane of thoughts attacking her relentlessly.
Yelena sits up. She feels herself choke up with tears and lies back down.
Funnily enough, it is only a few minutes later that Bucky Barnes knocks on her door. Her voice cracks when she tells him to come in despite her best efforts.
"I'm here because I lost a bet", he claims. It doesn't quite ring true.
Bucky carries a plate of food on his right hand. Yelena notes that the fancy ass vibranium arm (is it vibranium? She never asked) is nowhere to be seen. She can only imagine this is as dressed down as he can be in this scenario.
She somehow finds the strength to sit back up.
"Dinner?" She asks, then realises. "Ah, wait. Right. It's well past eight. My bad."
Bucky nods and hands her the plate. "We all ate already. Alexei really wanted to be the one to bring it in, but we all voted against it."
Yelena finds herself unable to contain a small smile.
"He's too loud", she explains, stuffing her mouth with some of the pasta on the plate. She doesn't bother to swallow before speaking again. "But he grows on you. Like a garden weed."
Bucky nods. Yelena can see how conflicted he is, how hard he wants to speak but not say the wrong thing.
"You don't need to do any of this if you don't want to."
It is clearly an ambiguous statement by design, but Yelena knows he means the New Avengers. She feels the asphyxiating sense of responsibility return. Somehow, she wishes they could just be the Thunderbolts instead. No expectations.
"I want to", she surprises herself with the conviction in her voice. "But I don't know if I..."
If she can fill in those shoes? If she can be more than a trained assassin with a kill count too high for anyone to compute?
But it all circles back to why that doesn't matter: she wants to do is to make sure none of them feel alone again.
Yelena takes a deep breath. "I don't know if I have the... emotional capacity?"
Bucky hums. "For what?"
She considers it for a moment. "I don't know. Everything? Leading a team."
"You don't have to lead it."
"I told the press I would."
"That doesn't mean anything."
Deep breath. She moves her pasta around the plate, frowning. "I want to do it but I don't know if I can?" She confesses.
He contains a laugh. "Sure, okay. I'll help you in that case. We'll all help. Bob already offered to do the dishes twice a day. Ava is going to do a cleaning schedule–"
Yelena makes a face. "We have to clean? Valentina, that cheap bitch."
Bucky pats her head and then seemingly regrets it. "We'll figure it out all together." He pauses and rubs the back of his neck with his palm. "Do you... want the number of my therapist?"
Yelena's brain goes blank, the word 'therapist' echoing over and over. It terrifies her, the idea of baring her soul to someone equipped to point out all of the unfairness that has been protagonist on her life ever since she can remember.
"Do you think I should?" Her voice is more quiet than she had intended.
"I hate to admit it, but it does help." Bucky sounds like he means it.
Yelena simply saves the number on her phone. The silence that follows is far from comfortable, but she knows he is there because he cares, and that is enough. As she finishes eating and Bucky is about to leave, she stops him.
"Bucky? Can you make a group chat? With the others."
The New Avengers group chat is created 13 minutes later as she makes it out of the shower. The messages blow up pretty quickly, and Yelena somehow falls asleep reading how Walker and Alexei argue about potato salad, the ghastly void on the back of her mind a bit less daunting.