Work Text:
Christmas was Yelena's favourite holiday, once. Her ‘family’ had gone all out, trying to seem more American, she assumed. They'd decorated the whole house with lights and tinsel, and given Yelena candy canes to pass out at school, and every room smelt like pine from the tree Alexei had bought. He always got one that was slightly too big, so they couldn't fit a star on the top because it would be bent over a little, as Natasha didn't want him to cut more off the bottom because ‘how would you feel if I cut your ankles off?’.
And then she went into the red room, and suddenly she didn't have holidays anymore. She didn't even have favourites. Days came and went and the only thing she looked forward to was getting to sleep at the end of it.
When she got free from the mind control, from the cage, Yelena naively allowed herself to entertain the idea of a good Christmas again. Then the blip came, and Natasha was dead, and nothing would ever be good ever again. She spent that Christmas trying to ruin it for someone else.
Yelena had plenty of reasons to be glad she hadn't killed Clint Barton, but a certain energetic, positive archer with a ponytail was probably the best one.
It’s the 23rd of December. Yelena has just finished cooking herself dinner- well, cooking is a stretch, she microwaved one of those frozen TV dinners- when someone knocks on her door. She opens it to reveal Kate Bishop in a garish sweater, holding an armful of boxes. Kate pushes inside without a word.
“...Hello to you too?” Yelena says, watching as Kate dumps the boxes on her kitchen table, which is already cluttered.
“Hi!” Kate starts opening things, still providing no explanation, but the piece of fake tree Yelena can see pretty much answers her questions. She asks anyway.
“What are you doing here, Kate Bishop?”
“We're having Christmas at yours this year. I figured I'd come help decorate.”
“...What?”
“Well, we had it at Clint's last year-”
“Wait, Kate, what do you mean we?”
Kate finally stops what she's doing and looks up at Yelena. “I… I know this year has been hard. For you, for me…” She swallows. Her mom is still in jail. “So, Clint already asked if I wanted to do Christmas with him again. And I figured, why not do it with you, too? He's gonna come over for a bit- it would be the whole time, but he wants to see his family too-”
Yelena wanders over to look down at the box Kate brought. Lights, tinsel, a fake tree, ornaments, Santa hats, stockings… everything. It's just like when she was a kid. She wants to say no, but…
Would it really be so bad?
Yelena picks up the bottom part of the tree. “Kate, this is a disgrace. If we're doing Christmas, we're getting a real tree.” Kate's face splits into a grin.
“We have to watch a Christmas movie.” Yelena says, watching Kate pull a chair over to the tree. It smells just like Yelena remembers.
“Yes!” Kate says, grabbing Yelena's shoulder for balance as she stands up on the chair. “What's your favourite?”
“I have not seen many. As a kid I liked the one… you know the one with the weird little animals? The frog and the pig… puppets?”
“Muppets!” Kate says, stretching up to put the star on. It falls, and Yelena catches it. “I love the Muppet Christmas Carol. It's such a classic.”
“They're very funny.” Kate puts the star on successfully this time, and Yelena helps her down. “And then the… Home Alone? The one with the boy who tortures the home invaders?”
“That's not exactly the main premise of it, but yeah. I didn't think you'd actually know any.”
“I lived in America for a little while as a kid… we had a couple of Christmases. The red room kind of spoiled it… but I remember.”
Kate looks sad for a moment, then pats her shoulder. “Well, we can un-spoil it.”
“If you want-” Yelena pauses, wondering if she's actually going to say this. “We could invite Barton's family. If you think they'd want to come.”
Kate grins again. “That is a fantastic idea.”
Kate goes home after three movies. Yelena sits on her couch, looking around at the decorations. Christmas music is still playing faintly from the Bluetooth speaker they'd set up. Yelena picks up the photo of Natasha she keeps on her coffee table.
“You should be here.” She whispers softly to her sister's face. “These people were your family, not mine.”
But as she sits there in the house that, for once, is not silent, she decides that maybe that's comforting. Maybe if she spends this day with these people, these people who had loved her sister almost as much as she had, she'll feel Natasha again.
There's another knock on her door the next morning. She's already awake, and she opens it to see Kate and Laura, Clint's wife. Laura pulls her in for a hug.
“Yelena! It's lovely to meet you.”
“Hi, you too.” Yelena pulls back. “You're… here early? Christmas is tomorrow, no?”
“We're here to cook!” Kate says, dumping stuff on the kitchen table for the second time in 24 hours, this time a bunch of shopping bags. “Christmas isn't Christmas without a feast.”
“I wasn't sure what you liked, Yelena, but I bought ingredients for some stuff Natasha told us about, and I looked up a couple Russian meals. I would say you can tell me now what else to get, but the supermarket is a nightmare on Christmas Eve. Kate and I got there as soon as they opened and the parking lot was already almost full.”
“No, that's… this is perfect.” Yelena says. “I don't know if I have enough space in my kitchen.”
“Your fridge is depressingly empty, you'll be fine.” Kate says.
“I hope you're okay with me hijacking your house.” Laura says with an apologetic smile. “Kate told me you'd ‘have to accept it’.”
“It's fine. I don't know if I'll be much help… I'm not a very good cook.”
“Me neither.” Kate says. “Laura's just gonna boss us around.”
“It's my specialty. Cooper said he's going to come help us later, but he won't, and Lila and Nathaniel are at the archery range with Clint, so it's just us.”
“Let's get started then.”
By the end of the day, Yelena's fridge is no longer ‘depressingly empty’. It's full to exploding with devilled eggs, pirozhkis, pryaniki, ham, stuffing, potatoes, cake, all either cooling down or waiting to be cooked the next day. She was under strict instructions not to eat any of it tonight, but Laura had made a salad and some pasta for her dinner before going home. Kate told Yelena, with no room for argument, that she was going to stay the night.
Yelena wakes up to Kate ‘sneaking’ into her room, and she sits up.
“Fuck.” Kate mutters.
“What's wrong? Are you okay?”
“Hm? Oh no yeah I'm fine! I was going to sit on the end of the bed and wait for you to wake up and then dramatically go ‘merry Christmas!’ but you're a light sleeper. I should've expected that.”
“Aww, I'm sorry… I can lie down and pretend to go back to sleep for you?”
“No, it's ruined now. Merry Christmas, Yelena!”
“Merry Christmas.”
“Are you ready to do presents?”
“You got me a present? Kate, you shouldn't have.”
“Don't try that with me. I saw the gift wrap in the bin, I knew you were going to get me something and just not tell me because you didn't want anything in return.”
Yelena sighs. “You are too nosey for your own good.”
Kate drags her out to the living room, where there are two presents under the tree… and one of them is the one Yelena had thought she'd hidden well. Damnit.
Kate puts Christmas music on while they open them. Kate got her a custom made utility belt, no doubt crafted by the larpers. She got Kate a rug with a bow on it.
“This is so cute!”
“Yes, well, your apartment floor is way too cold in the winter. It's not healthy.”
Kate hugs her. They make pancakes.
The Bartons come over around eleven. There's more hugging, and Clint and Laura have brought presents for Kate and Yelena as well, and Kate reveals that she got presents for the kids. Things get busy fast. They cook, and the kids fight, and music plays, and they dance, and Nathaniel talks about making a snowman but Lila points out that there's no snow outside so Yelena gives him a bowl of mashed potatoes.
“That's a waste of good food, Yelena.” Clint scolds.
“But look how happy he is!” Yelena protests. “Plus, there is no way anyone is going hungry today, Barton.”
“She's right.” Kate says.
“Also, Yelena made those potatoes. If she wants to use them for potato men, that's her choice.” Laura says with a smile, kissing Clint on the cheek. He shakes his head and mutters something about feeding the chaos, but goes back to carving the ham.
Nathaniel is getting tired, and Cooper has been on his phone for an hour, so Kate decides to put a movie on for them. The only issue is that they can't agree on what.
“We saw that a week ago.” Lila says.
“We saw everything a week ago.” Cooper groans. “That's kind of the point of a movie marathon.”
“We can watch-” Nathaniel starts excitedly.
“We are not watching Polar Express again.”
“Why not?”
“It's creepy!”
“You're creepy.”
Yelena's chest squeezes, and she mumbles something about watering the garden and steps outside.
She sits down on the wooden steps of the back porch. It's cold out here, but there's no wind, so it's just a dry kind of cold that settles in your hair. This kind of weather reminded her of Natasha. When she'd first come home with blue hair, she'd told Yelena that it was because she'd gone out in the cold with wet hair, and it had all frozen and turned blue. Yelena had wet her hair every time before leaving the house for a week after that.
She should be here.
“You okay?” Clint's voice comes from behind her. Yelena deflates, resting her head on her knees. “Yeah, that's about what I thought.”
He sits beside her, and puts his arm around her shoulders. She doesn't tense up. That's new.
“This sucks.” Yelena manages past the lump in her throat. It comes out strangled and wet.
“Yeah. It really does.”
“She should be here.” Her voice cracks. “You were her family. Not mine.”
“You're her family. You're Kate's family, too- yeah, it's true- and she's mine, too. I think when we have that many coincidences, we may as well just become family.”
Yelena is silent for a minute, and then she gives a small laugh through her nose. “I hope you know that was not inspiring.”
“Really? Damn. I was thinking of putting it on a T-shirt.”
“Big T-shirt.”
“Maybe it's a two person T-shirt?”
“They make ones for two people?” Yelena sighs. “Americans.”
They go quiet again. Yelena can hear someone singing a Christmas carol from down the street.
“Holidays are bitter-sweet. And they always will be. Christmas will probably always be one of the hardest days of the year.” Clint looks back toward the house, where they can hear Kate and Nathaniel singing along badly to ‘You're a mean one, Mr Grinch’. It combines with the carolers to make a strange orchestra. “But you just have to surround yourself with people who make the sweetness stronger.”
“...Yeah.” Yelena swallows, and then grins at him. “Now that, you could put on a T-shirt.” Clint pumps his fist in the air. Then he stands up, and offers Yelena a hand.
“Come on. We've still got dessert to eat.”
Yelena groans as she stands up. “I'm so full…”
“You have a second stomach for dessert. That's science.”
“I don't think it is.”