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The reveal happened surprisingly enough when she and Kate are deciding what to have for dinner.
Given they’re now living in Kate’s horrifically small apartment together in New York, it’s not like they don’t have enough choices to go over. Plus, given the amount of get togethers they’ve either hosted or been to in the last couple of weeks, they've pretty much managed to traverse the city at this point (or at least Kate’s part of the city) culinary wise - so this decision shouldn’t be as hard as it currently is, as they just keep going around in circles.
Kate wants pizza, Yelena doesn’t want pizza again for the third weekend in a row. Yelena wants Chinese, Kate’s not particularly good with spice and so on and so on.
(Sometimes, Yelena thinks she’s never away from work, as arguing with Kate has turned into basically her trying to diffuse a diplomatic situation with a politician who happens to be brunette, really hot and Yelena has the pleasure of seeing naked most of the time.)
They’re on the fifth or sixth round of throwing through delivery apps to decide what to have when Yelena’s phone suddenly starts ringing, Yelena unable to keep the smile off her face at the contact number.
Apparently, it’s very jarring to her girlfriend to see her with a smile. “Woah, where’d that come from?”
“Papa is calling me, one second-“
“I didn’t know you were still in contact with Red Guardian.”
“Not that Papa, my actual Papa.” is all Yelena says (which is far more confusing considering Kate thought Yelena was adopted) before she brings the phone to her ear. “Privet, papa, kak dela u tebya i u ottsa?”
(Hello Papa, how are you and Father?)
A voice answers her back and Kate just stares as Yelena laughs, shaking her head. “Papa, ty zhe znal, chto zabrat' Anyu budet neprosto. Otets dazhe preduprezhdal tebya zaraneye. Tebe ne stoit udivlyat'sya.”
(Papa, you knew that getting Anya would be a handful. Father even warned you beforehand. You should not be surprised.)
The voice answers back sounding annoyed, but it’s cut in by a different sounding voice, one that makes Yelena’s shoulders drop significantly. “Privet, otets.”
(Hi, Father)
The voice, far gentler than the other person, talks a little slower and a lot more soft, Yelena’s smile twisting into a small sad grimace. “So mnoy vso v poryadke, otets. Obeshchayu. Seychas ya v N'yu-Yorke, naveshchayu svoyego…”
(I'm fine, Father. I promise. I'm currently in New York at the moment, visiting my…)
Finally, she turns and looks at Kate. She seems nervous in a way, but that soon smooths itself out along with that sad twist in her lips as her smile comes back. “Ya naveshchayu svoyu devushku. Moyo serdtse. My seychas zhivom vmeste.”
(...I'm visiting my girlfriend. My heart. We actually live together right now.)
There is silence from the other end of the phone and Kate wonders just exactly what your learner has said before there is an indignant squawk and rapid fire voices that sounds suspiciously like two people - men by the sounds of it - telling Yelena to put them on speaker.
Predictably (or maybe not so much considering Kate has no idea what’s going on), Yelena snorts before speaking over them. “Nyet, ya ne budu vklyuchat' gromkuyu svyaz', ya ne pozvolyu tebe yeyo otpugnut'. I ne smey rasskazyvat' babushke Yume do togo, kak ya privezu yeyo na Rozhdestvo, inache ya nikogda ne uslyshu kontsa svoim zhalobam.”
(No, I will not put the phone on speaker, I will not let you scare her off. Don’t you dare tell grandmother Yuma either before I being her for Christmas or I’ll never hear the end of it.)
While Kate is not the best at Russian, she does recognise one word in the entirety of the conversation. “Wait, grandmother? Yen, what is happening on the end of that phone? Is someone dying?”
“No, no, nothing like that.” Her girlfriend finally speaks English, chuckling. “Papa and Father are being nosey. Is very bad habit that I picked up from them.”
Kate can almost hear the phone line crackle with the sound of someone laughing, the other person that is with them grumbling loud enough for Yelena to hear as she has to roll her eyes and respond back. “Prosti, papa, no papa prav. Ty zhe pishesh' mne soobshcheniya raz 50 v den'.“
(I'm sorry, Father, but Papa has a point. You do text me about 50 times a day.)
There’s a response before Yelena melts, shaking her head. “Znayesh', otets, ya by razgovarival s toboy chashche, yesli by mog, no rabota otnimayet u menya ochen' mnogo vremeni.”
(You know I would talk to you more often if I could, Father, but my job keeps me very busy.)
There’s more chatter back-and-forth as Kate watches, mostly in Russian, but she doesn’t really care anymore as she can watch Yelena’s emotions in real time - the laughter, the soft smiles, the hugging of her phone close to her ear, all stuff Kate used to do with her mother before all that betrayal - it almost feels more natural than Yelena’s normal personality.
She’s only brought out of her stoop when Yelena says something that she must guess is goodbye before she pockets her phone again and turns to her. “Sorry for that. As I said, Papa and Father are nosey when I don’t text them back for a while.”
“You never told me you had, like, actual parents.” Kate can’t help her blurt out.
Yelena stills for a moment, then sighs reluctantly. “I do not talk about them much. Not because I do not want to, but because they are well-known and I need to stay hidden, if you get what I mean.”
Kate did get what she meant. Kind of. “Well known? Like famous? Sort of like my mom?”
“Sort of, yes.” Yelena leaned against the kitchen island. “Papa and Father adopted me when I was younger from Russia and I grew up in Canada. At time, they were still very famous and had lot of money, so my childhood for the first few years was good. Played soccer, did ice-skating, did a lot of things.”
She traced the woodgrain sadly. “I only got involved with Black Widows after cousin convinced me to visit her at her ballet school in Soviet Union. Natasha was student there. She and I both got kidnapped. Papa and Father searched for months and couldn’t find me as I was in the Red Room. Red Room held me prisoner and turned me into Black Widow before I had to fake being found, saying I had been kidnapped after being missing for years.”
She flexed her fingers into fists. “Of course, everyone bought it. I left a teenager and came back as a killer, but all they saw was a young girl who had been taken away from her parents and locked away.”
Her expression twisted again, Kate’s heartbreaking at the sight of her eyes, wide and vulnerable for once, suddenly looking at her.” They don’t know. About what I do. What I’ve done. I never want them to find out. They think I work for global tech company, go around the world fixing other people’s problems. They just don’t know that the problems I fix are more different than they know.”
Kate doesn’t say anything for a moment, but then steps forward, placing her forehead on Yelena’s and cupping her face gently. “I can’t imagine what your parents felt like.”
Yelena laughed wetly. “Papa spent all his money trying to find me. Father…” She swallowed hard. “It almost took him from us. They almost both got taken from me, from grief. They held on thankfully, so I could come back, but not an auto goes by that I wish I had-”
She cut herself off, shaking her head. “I cannot change the past, but I’m trying to give myself a good future, even if most of it is obtained in ways I hoped I could leave behind.”
“That’s a good thing, you know. I’m sure they know it too, in their own way.” Kate pursed her lips. “Soooooo, does that mean your name is not really Yelena?”
Thankfully, the joke landed and the ladder laughed, shifting so that her hands were around Kate’s waist as she pulled her closer. “Nyet. My name’s still Yelena, just not my last name. Last names is actually Rozanov-Hollander. Too long to put on business card and work in industry, needed to change to hide identity.”
Kate snorted, shaking her head. “Oh hell yeah, that is a long name, the font that you would have to use to get it all on there- wait.” Her eyes narrowed. “Those last names sound really familiar.”
“Papa and Father were hockey players. Good ones too. Names are Ilya, who is Papa and Shane, who is Father. Considering your mother was a socialite, you probably ran into some of the people they played against, like Scott Hunter and his husband Kip or Carter Vaughn.”
Now that Yelena had mentioned it, Kate did remember a Mr. Hunter that had approached her mother at a gala, looking for sponsors for a hockey charity that he was representing. There would be another man with him on his arm, but given Kate was quite young at the time and just trying to keep out of her mother’s ire, she hadn’t really been paying attention. “Huh. Maybe.”
“They are retired now, but still run hockey camp in Ottawa and Montréal. If they weren’t so busy with that and the foundation that they run the camps with, I expect Father would continuously call me without break, like you do when I am in kitchen and you are in bed.” Yelena couldn’t help but grin.
Now it was Kate’s turn to roll her eyes. “If I remember correctly, you usually answer me.”
“That I do.” Yelena paused, reaching out one of her hands to put a lock of Kate’s hair behind her ear. “I always will, no matter what happens.”
“Even if we both stink at finding food for each other?”
“Even then. As I said to Papa and Father, I bring you for Christmas, then we don’t have to choose food.”
“Yeah well, Christmas isn’t for another four months, so c’mon.” Kate tugged her arm towards the couch where Lucky sat proudly, having watched the entire conversation play out, but not putting in his opinion for once. “Back to the food ordering apps. Just because we’re in the city that never sleeps doesn’t mean I don’t want to be asleep by midnight tonight with an empty stomach.”
Feeling warm inside, Yelena just lets herself be pulled away as Kate starts talking and scrolling again, watching the woman she loves and thinking maybe just maybe, like her Papa and Father thought of her, Kate was special. Completely, utterly special.
She hoped once they met her that her family would think the same of her too.