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The last time Yelena was on this swingset was with her sister.
Natasha, who stood behind her, pushing on the back of the swing with all her might to send her sister flying over the woodchips. Yelena thought she could jump free from the swing and soar above the clouds one day.
Her sister died three years ago today. At least, that’s what Clint Barton told her.
Dropped off the side of a cliff on another planet. All for a tiny orange rock.
And Yelena never even got to say goodbye.
“Hey.” A hand slips into her own, locking fingers from the swing beside her. Her wrist is pulled back and forth by the other hand, gently, yet her own swing remains perfectly still. The voice of the other girl is soft, contrast to her typical loud rambling.
Yelena brought Kate here thinking she could act normal. Show her girlfriend her childhood home, no more, no less. She’s an assassin–she can’t fall apart like this anymore. Yet the presence of Kate beside her on the swing only weakens her mental shield. She thought Kate could be a distraction from the sadness, not a magnet to it.
Yelena doesn’t want to cry. She can’t. Not anymore.
Kate squeezes her hand, once, twice, three times. She stands from her swing and kneels behind Yelena’s, wrapping her arms around Yelena’s shoulders and leaning her head beside her girlfriend’s. “You’re allowed to cry,” Kate whispers.
No, I’m not. I never am. I can’t be weak. Yelena fights with herself, her eyes squeezing closed and her body tensing as sturdy as a diamond. She knows Kate can feel her pain, but she can’t show it. Not now, not tomorrow, not–
Chrrrrrrr–rip-rip-rip-rip!
Something brown and red whizzes past Yelena’s eyes. She feels Kate’s head perk up to glance at the colorful blur until it softly perches on the chains of the swing besides Yelena’s.
There, a small brown bird with a vibrant red beak and auburn upwards-pointing head feathers gazes down upon Yelena, its head sharply tilting, as if inspecting her. It lowly chirps at her, waiting for a response as though it believes Yelena can understand it.
“It’s a cardinal,” Kate whispers, leaning closer to Yelena to not scare the bird. “A female cardinal.”
There is anything but a small number of cardinals in Northeastern Ohio. Yelena distinctly remembers watching brown and red birds perching at her mother’s birdfeeder, demanding to refill it the moment the birds would consume every individual grain of feed. Alexei would always claim he loved the male birds because of their bright red feathers–the color of which he made very clear was his favorite. But Yelena and Natasha had always preferred the females. They found the different browns of their feathers mixed with just the perfect amount of red to be much more beautiful than any solid red bird.
Just a little bit of red.
The cardinal preens its wings, delicately picking through each caramel-colored feather with precision, like it’s putting on a show for Kate and Yelena. Its beady black eyes meet Yelena’s green-hazel ones, and for a moment Yelena swears she sees a tiny sliver of blue beyond that mass of black.
Kate takes a sharp yet nearly silent inhale, before lowering down to whisper near Yelena’s ear. “Not that I’m superstitious or anything, but…” she trails off, as if she’s entering risky territory. “There’s a myth that…if you’re visited by a cardinal, it means someone who passed is watching you. Or…sending a message.”
Yelena holds in a breath. The color of the cardinal’s beak and headfeathers is identical to her sister’s hair. She knows–that color is ingrained in Yelena’s mind. The eyes, beyond the beady blackness, have a hint of blue that Yelena can only remember from her sister’s thoughtful gazes.
No. She doesn’t believe in fairy tales.
Yet as the cardinal takes flight and moves closer instead of away , Yelena doesn’t want to hide from the myth. Especially when the bird lands directly on top of Yelena’s hand.
Especially when the bird tilts her head at Yelena and gazes into Yelena’s eyes with her own. When she opens her beak and a chirp softly rings in Yelena’s ears. When she hops up from Yelena’s arm to her shoulder and presses her feathery head to Yelena’s cheek.
A single tear rolls down from a green-hazel eye to the ground. Yelena feels Kate squeeze her hand and feels something soft and feathery rub against her skin. A sob echoes from deep within her throat.
“ Natasha ,” Yelena cries, her eyes closed shut and her hands tightening–one around Kate’s and one on her lap. The bird curls up on Yelena’s shoulder, chirping again, as if to reply to Yelena’s desperate cry.
As if to say, “I’m here.”
Every time Yelena thinks the cardinal will fly away, she doesn’t, staying on Yelena’s shoulder until her last tear falls. Her eyes, watery and a bit red, gaze upon the brown and red bird that so gently sits on her shoulder.
And the bird chirps again, a longer tune. Two notes, one into the other. One low, one high.
She knows that whistle.
“It is her,” Yelena whimpers, a tiny chuckle in her sad voice. “You’re right, Kate. This is her.” A final tear descends from the corner of her eye and falls over her lips, which crack the tiniest of smiles.
The cardinal rests her head against Yelena’s cheek one last time, before stepping back to meet eyes with Yelena once more. Time seems to still and Yelena can hear her sister’s voice in her head.
“It’s still real. It’s all real. And you are the most powerful of them all, moya sestra.”
Yelena and Kate watch as the brown and red bird takes flight and dives towards the setting sun. As it flies away, it lets out one last chirp.
Low to high.
Yelena smiles and purses her lips–then whistles back.
High to low.
_____________
Somewhere, beyond time, space, and life itself, Natasha returns from beyond a setting sun.
It doesn’t matter how unrealistic life–or in her case, what comes after it–may be, if it means Natasha gets to see her sister smile.
She knows Kate will take good care of Yelena. And she knows that, inevitably, Yelena will be content.
And if it means she must embrace the words of a silly myth to watch that happen, to watch her sister smile , then so be it.
She’ll sprout feathers forever if she has to.