Archive of Our Own

I.

The rink was eerily quiet the moment they took all of the mafia guys down, and the cold air hitting her face was as much of a relief as it was a shock.

The adrenaline keeping her up after jumping down from the twelfth floor and fighting against what felt like an invincible man three times her size slowly went down, still pumping just enough to not make her fall unconscious the moment she had a chance to take a breath.

Clint guided her through the horrors of the night they left behind, making her sit down on an ambulance to check on the bruises on her face, no matter how much she said she had some band aids in one of the small pockets of her suit that would be good enough to hold her cuts before reaching home. But he kept telling her that the cuts were much deeper than what a band aid could hold.

She took in the questioning looks with an equally weary side eye while Clint spoke with the police, most of them marking down his words as true only because they came from him, leaving Kate to step behind and begrudgingly take the quick exams the paramedics ran on her.

She had made some mistakes that night, same as the week before, but she was still proud of her work, regardless of how far she had taken the situation as to put her own mother in jail.

Is this what heroes do? Arrest their mother on Christmas?

Kate shook her head, moving to leave behind the very unhelpful blanket that had been covering her shoulders in order to sneak around properly.

She walked back over to the rink, now empty of people except for the scattered group of policemen checking out the damage. Another thing she would have to pay for using her bow “incorrectly.” The tree had been her own mess, that was true, and she had never seen such destruction on a touristic spot like that one before. She was not at all proud of that, but there was still a giddy feeling about having made a mess for a good reason.

The night was cold, but the LARPers had done an excellent job at making the suit warm and comfortable enough to not need a big jacket, and the rushing blood through her veins was enough to keep her cheeks warm and her fingers ready to pull the string of her bow.

She looked around, mafia members being arrested and taken away, at least the ones that didn’t have life threatening injuries, while the loud sirens of police and ambulance crews rang out every few minutes.

The party members of her mother’s Christmas Eve party were long gone, except for the occasional curious person still roaming the area in search of answers, or anyone to put down their complaints about how dangerous everything had been and how security hadn’t done their job.

Kate looked around, hands grabbing the borders of the rink, cold metal against her skin, and looked at the building one more time. The long cable still hung from where the assassin, Yelena, had taken herself down from the outside.

Where had she gone anyway? Clint was still alive and too relaxed even though she hadn’t received any details about the other woman and what had gone down that night. She was curious. Because besides being an assassin, Yelena somehow didn’t look like a bad person. A killer with laugh lines on her face and the bright eyes of a child that had genuinely enjoyed her first trip to New York, even if she was there for nefarious purposes.

She caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of her eye and turned straight toward it. Her eyes tried to focus through the darkness around the building to catch whatever was there properly.

That was, of course, until her eyes adjusted slightly to the darkness, and she could make out the silhouette of someone familiar enough to know who it was without needing to see her in the light.

Crossing paths with a Black Widow once more was something she would have to start counting. Three times the charm had proven not to be a good omen for her, but maybe the fourth would be the good one.

She stood still, knowing well that she was also being analyzed in silence, but she was giving more of herself away by standing closer to the light. She knew what Yelena was capable of, and she knew that if she was alive, it was because she hadn’t been wanted dead, and wouldn’t be wanted dead if she was still standing fully on her own.

“You’re still here,” she said the obvious, just to add something to the situation, even if it was something she didn’t have to say.

There was movement on the other side, and Kate wasn’t sure if it was forward or backward. Was she actually expecting an answer from that? She hadn’t meant to sound rude with those words. On the contrary, she meant to show surprise that the woman was still around after leaving her task unresolved.

“I won’t be trying anything anymore, you can be assured of that, Kate Bishop,” she heard the Russian say, and the crack in her voice was muffled by the neutral tone she tried to keep up through the rest of the phrase. There was something different in the usual bravado she held up, and she was more than sure it was going to be the only time she would ever be able to hear it.

Kate nodded slowly, not taking her eyes away from the assassin and the weary side eye she was also receiving.

“Thanks,” she said, and it was for far more than just not hurting anyone that night. Yelena turned then, a frown barely visible on her face in the dark. So she clarified. “Not just for leaving Clint alive, but also for telling me about my mother and what she’s been doing all these years. I don’t think I would be able to forgive something like that.”

And she also couldn’t believe she’d had to hear everything from someone else entirely. She had to learn the truth about her own mother through someone that didn’t owe her anything.

It had not been part of Yelena’s job to send her those pictures, but for some reason she did, and Kate was grateful.

Yelena didn’t look back at her words, but her silhouette was a dark contrast against the snow covered floor. As she moved, the light from a nearby street lamp reflected on the side of her face, making Kate notice the dark smear near her temple.

She knew the assassin was going to leave at any moment. She didn’t look like someone that would stay around after a battle, and less so when she was one of the culprits for the gunshots that night. So Kate had to show her gratitude somehow. Or at least use it as a peace treaty.

“Before you go, you have a…” She stopped talking, looking at the sharp eyes now turned toward her, and approached slowly with measured steps. She raised her hand toward her own face, pointing at eyebrow level. “You’re bleeding,” she pointed out.

Yelena frowned deeper and only raised her hand toward her face to touch the slowly dripping blood coming from the cut around her eyebrow. There was no curse or sudden jolt when she touched the wound. It wasn’t a very big one, and if Kate was being honest, she was impressed that the only visible injury on Yelena was that cut, compared to her own probable concussion and multiple cuts and future bruises.

“Here,” Kate said, pulling Yelena’s attention away from the injury and looking back at her, pulling a band aid from the small pocket on the right side of her suit. “It’s totally safe. I just put it in here after taking it out of the box.”

It had been a silly thought at first when she packed them in there, but she was sure they could come in handy if needed, and she had been right, apparently.

The band aid was a screaming purple color that called attention to the eye, but she still extended it toward Yelena in an attempt to make peace between them. There had been no other conversation about her since they saw each other in the building for the last time, but she was sure there were no bad feelings between them, or at least not from her side. She was glad she had left Clint alive and free to go.

Yelena eyed the band aid with an unmoving frown, her eyes looking back and forth a few times before taking it roughly from her hands and stepping back from where she was.

There was no other conversation before she eventually turned around, a few steps away from Kate, and ran around the corner quickly.

Kate had the fleeting thought of following her, looking around the corner to see for herself how the Black Widow had probably already disappeared into the shadows like an actual ghost rather than a person, and to confirm for herself that the interaction had been somewhat real rather than something her probably concussed mind had made up to distract her from her main problems.

But she knew the Black Widow wouldn’t want to be followed, and even more so after the difference in her stance and the way her voice had wavered on some words. Kate didn’t want to interrupt whatever had been happening, and it was probably for the best.

And even if she had wanted to, she had to go back to the ambulance before Clint came back to look for her. She had matters to attend to, people to confront, and inherited problems to solve.

II.

After six months into her new life, Kate found herself in an unexpected situation again.

Since the Christmas situation happened, Clint had accepted to take her under his wing and had been training her for the typical situations she might encounter as a vigilante. She had decided to follow that path rather than anything else related to the heritage of the company that was supposed to be hers, and instead delayed the topic and pushed it around as much as she could to let someone else take charge while she attended to other things.

It had been a long legal battle to get things working again, but she couldn’t let the company fall after everything it had gone through, besides the fact that many of the employees had reached out to her questioning their positions and how safe they were. The legal problem was still an ongoing issue, but it was less pronounced than it had been at first when the news came out and she had been picked apart piece by piece by any and all media outlets that wanted to know more about the arrest and the investigation going on across all of Bishop Securities.

She had stopped feeling guilty about her mother’s predicament after learning what had been done in order to keep the company growing, and had tried her best to ignore any type of contact her mother wanted to have with her before and during the trial.

For six months she decided to take care of other things and to finally do what she wanted with her life after so long. She had taken a few trips back to Clint’s farm and also talked to him on the phone to learn how to prepare herself for different situations, no matter how difficult it was to explain how to prepare trick arrows over a call with a man that had no patience whatsoever with technology.

She considered herself prepared to handle things, or at least most of them, as her mentor had told her.

She had, of course she had, to be proven wrong by one Black Widow entering through her window late one night.

She had moved apartments after the last one had proven itself to be insecure and not the best place to leave a dog alone most of the time, choosing instead a nicer one on a different side of the city that was harder to access for anyone that decided to sneak inside without her permission. Of course, she was sure that all the technology, cameras, and security set up in the apartment were going to be enough to keep anyone away. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

That specific night, she had gone out on patrol after receiving a tip about some shady business happening close to where she usually went, so she had to check for herself if it was actually like that. Trying to make a name for herself as a vigilante had proven hard, but she was doing her best with what she had.

She had come back home with no information or anything particularly important for the open case, only tiring herself out and making her want to sleep for at least twelve hours before trying anything else.

So she got herself ready to sleep the night away before some well earned pizza. One of the few things she missed the most was living on top of a pizza parlor and the familiarity of it, but the pizzas she got now were slightly better than the ones she used to have, so that was a win.

She had laid down on her couch, ready to watch a movie and cuddle with Lucky, when she heard the first noise.

Her new building didn’t have a fire escape like the first one did. She had a good view to each side of the building from different points and different rooms. She lived high up, because it was best to avoid any confrontations with people from the outside again. She was sure a molotov wouldn’t reach the tenth floor without causing damage to other people first.

So the noises outside the window of her bedroom at the end of the corridor were impossible.

For a moment she thought of an animal, the scratching and careless noise against the window sounding like the little paws or claws of whatever was on the other side, but she still sat up on the couch and listened carefully, turning the tv volume down and waiting for anything else to happen.

She heard the scratching come to a stop for a moment, and the next the window was being opened with a loud thud. Her entire body went rigid.

She stood up from the couch, leaving a confused Lucky behind to sniff around the closed pizza box as she padded over to the kitchen counter where she had left her bow.

She stood in the darkness that covered the kitchen area and crouched down near the entrance of the apartment to get a heads up on who she was going to be fighting.

The only light was coming from the tv, and the corridor was right in front of it, so it wasn’t hard to have an advantage point on whoever was going to walk in, besides the fact that she knew the apartment better than whoever was on the other side.

The figure came out of her room with quiet steps. She couldn’t hear the movement but could see the silhouette walking down the corridor in the direction of the living room. The movements were sloppy and strange for someone trying to be stealthy, but Kate was not one to doubt whoever was trying to get into her house.

She pulled the string of her bow slightly at the same time she took a discarded arrow, practiced fingers moving without looking down.

She stepped around once the figure finally stepped into the full light of the tv in the living room and pointed directly at them.

“Who are you?” she asked, keeping enough distance not to be disarmed. The person stood still and looked back from under the mask before raising a hand and making quick work of taking it off.

The blonde hair and pale skin were almost familiar, and she had to lower her bow before taking a proper look at the sharp green eyes looking back at her.

“Yelena?” It was the first coherent thought she could muster, and it was clear that the only person with the capability to find her and enter her highly secure home was her, or so she hoped it was only her. After all, she had done it once before, even if her old apartment hadn’t had the same level of security. “What are you doing here?”

She didn’t notice the slash on her side until she turned on the living room light and Yelena stepped under it, giving her the only reason to step forward. The shiny liquid on Yelena’s dark suit, which she was sure was blood, was hard to miss, especially with the way she was holding her side.

“Oh God, you’re bleeding,” she pointed out as if it wasn’t obvious, and the frustrated glint in Yelena’s eyes made it clear she had just said something stupid. Overly so. “What are you even doing here in New York?” She started to move out of pure instinct when Lucky got too curious and tried to get closer to the blonde.

He barked a few times when he noticed he didn’t know her, and all Kate could do was pull at his collar to keep him back from the still unfazed assassin.

“Are you here again to try something against Clint?” she asked, pulling Lucky out of the way and telling him to go back to his bed in the corner of the room. She had to make sure that her dog and herself were safe. “Or me?” Of course, she knew the assassin wouldn’t show up hurt if she was meant to do anything against her, but still. She was nervous.

She watched Yelena stumble as she moved toward her, and Kate had half a mind to grab her arm and guide her to a chair before she fell and made an even bigger mess while she was still talking.

“And how do you even know where I live?” came the last exasperated question. Yelena was still breathing hard, but didn’t wait a beat to answer once the second of silence was granted to her.

“Kate Bishop,” she said, her husky Russian voice putting Kate on alert just in case. “I need you to shut up.”

Kate’s mouth closed instantly. She looked at the groaning assassin on her couch holding her side and suddenly regained the proper function of her body.

She walked away and hurried into her bedroom, opening the closet and taking out the medical supplies from the big kit Clint had gifted her after she left following New Year’s.

“You have to take out the upper part so that I can—” She was cut off mid sentence when she came back and didn’t find Yelena on the couch. Instead she was inside the bathroom, the upper part of her suit gone and only a sports bra left on, with a bad cut on her side that stretched almost all the way to her back.

Kate stopped at the door, her eyes going somewhere further than just the cut before she snapped herself out of it and moved quickly to bring the kit into the room.

“I have a few things here, I can help you with that,” she said while opening it, but Yelena cut her off quickly.

“I can do it myself.” The Russian accent was thicker than the last time she had heard it during Christmas, and Kate wondered if she had spent time back in Russia during the months they hadn’t seen each other.

Kate wanted to protest, but the flinching assassin was already moving through the medical kit and pulling out pain killers and a suture kit to patch herself up. Kate stayed at the door through all of it.

She could hear Lucky whining in the living room, probably feeling left out, but her eyes were focused on the way Yelena worked.

Kate, luckily, hadn’t had a chance to use the suture kit yet, and even if she had wanted to use one it probably would have had to be on another person, because she was sure she would bleed out before sticking a needle into herself with barely there anesthesia and shaky fingers. She just couldn’t. And she wouldn’t even know where to start, so internet videos would have been her best solution.

So watching Yelena do it on herself was the closest she would ever get to it, and she was glad, if she was honest, because at least Yelena knew what she was doing.

She stood quiet and watched her work her way around herself while looking in the mirror. Kate was surprised by the silent, uncommented work. No grunting or whining either, but her face wasn’t as stoic as Kate had expected.

Kate stayed anchored by the doorframe, looking at Yelena work silently, brows twisted and lips slightly parted.

By the time Kate’s attention drifted back to the handiwork Yelena was doing, the assassin’s body was twisted in an impossible way, trying to reach the last part of her suture but failing.

“You can’t reach,” Kate said out loud, and wanted to punch herself the moment the words came out of her mouth for the instant way Yelena turned to look at her, expression serious, eyes focused, lips pressed together.

Yelena let out a frustrated sigh and looked back at the full length mirror, catching the archer’s eyes in the reflection.

“Don’t make a mess of sewing me, Kate Bishop. I will kill you,” she muttered, shifting slowly to the side while still holding the needle.

Kate detached herself from the doorframe and stepped into the bathroom. She washed her hands quickly, pulled out some alcohol, dried them by shaking them out for a moment, and then grabbed the needle from Yelena’s hand.

“I think I can handle a needle and thread,” Kate said, and if she was being honest, she had never done any type of sewing before in her life, not even on her own clothes, but she was confident she couldn’t do much more damage than what was already there.

As Kate moved behind Yelena, the air in the bathroom felt much warmer than the air outside. She could now see the goosebumps on Yelena’s skin, and the way she would shiver and take a short, almost hitched breath every time Kate laid a hand on her body for balance, even if it was barely a touch. Her skin was surprisingly warm too, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Besides being trained, Kate figured the Russian accent was already a little telling about the other woman’s physical capabilities. Or at least what the general public thought of Russians.

Kate took a breath, passing the needle again with slow precision and noticing the shift in Yelena’s stance and the way her eyes closed.

“Don’t hold your breath,” Yelena grumbled, her eyes now fixed on the mirror and on Kate’s face. “You will get dizzy and fall over, and I am going to have to suture you too.”

“I’m fine,” Kate said, though her voice came out an octave higher than usual. Her entire focus was now on the few inches of jagged skin she had to fix. She made another stitch, passing the needle through the first layer of skin and hearing the hiss from Yelena, who only looked away before Kate could catch her eyes. “Sorry, sorry.” This time there was no answer from the assassin, only a few pure reactions of pain as Kate continued.

She eventually finished, following the quiet instructions Yelena muttered to wrap it up.

“Get out,” was all she received afterwards, and Kate had the fleeting thought of refusing, since, one, it was her bathroom, and two, she was supposed to be helping her.

She obeyed anyway and stepped outside, sitting on the table closest to the door, peeking around to check for any movement on the other side. She knew Yelena couldn’t escape from the bathroom. It was closed off from the rest of the house and the window was far too small for even her to fit through, so she would have no other choice but to come out and face her.

And eventually, she did.

When the assassin stepped out of the bathroom, it was with stiff movements and a grimace on her face that Kate was starting to think was a permanent feature by that point.

“You can sit down on the couch if you want to eat with me,” Kate offered after the silence stretched too long. She studied Yelena’s face for a moment and saw the realization cross it that she was probably still too freshly injured to jump out of the window. A window that remained closed and far smaller than the one in her old apartment, making a clean exit like the first time difficult.

The assassin let out a long sigh before looking back at the couch and the unopened pizza box sitting on the small table in front of the tv.

“I can offer mac and cheese too,” Kate added. She had a stash of boxed mac and cheese she had been quietly saving and adding to every time she went grocery shopping. “And a company dog.” She gestured back at Lucky, who at the sudden attention perked up and trotted to Kate’s side, wiggling his tail and sniffing the air before making his way toward Yelena.

Something shifted in Yelena’s expression then, a slight hint of a smile that settled over her face with something so unexpected it made Kate smile without meaning to.

Yelena didn’t say anything, and instead moved to the couch, followed by the excited paws of the golden retriever that wanted to be properly greeted by the new person in the room.

Once she sat down, Kate noticed the comfortable position Yelena settled into, and then how Lucky instantly followed her up onto the cushions.

“Oh no,” Kate whispered, watching Lucky start licking Yelena’s face as much as he could. “I’m so sorry about him.” She approached quickly, trying to reach for him before he could do any damage to the newly sealed wound on Yelena’s side.

“He’s okay,” said Yelena, and started petting Lucky vigorously. Kate stood still beside the couch, watching the assassin let a smile reach her face and coo softly at her dog before letting him settle down next to her.

The sight was abnormal, to say the least.

“I’ll go wash my hands and be back,” she said, watching Yelena nod slightly but keep her attention on Lucky.

Kate moved into the bathroom again, finding it spotless, or at least as it had been before the bleeding assassin had come inside. Her medical kit was placed on top of the closed toilet seat, shut as if it had never been touched. The floor was clean of blood drops and the rest was as usual.

She had heard very little about Black Widows after her first encounter with one. Clint had been firm about not giving her any personal information he knew from his close friendship with Natasha, so she had resorted to searching up what little was known about them.

Ruthless assassins, trained from birth to infiltrate anywhere and everywhere, masters of different disciplines, and impossible to pinpoint before an attack. They were ghosts with no digital footprint or way to track. Even Natasha had only been traceable for the very few times she had shown herself publicly. Pictures of her were only released after her death, and her face had been a blur in most cases where she had been named.

The others were an even bigger mystery, leaving Yelena as some invisible person Kate only knew existed because she had seen her herself.

The woman currently sitting on her couch didn’t look like a ruthless killer, or even just the angry person she tried to make herself seem. Under the light of her living room she had looked somewhat younger, and she probably was, and the way her face had lit up when she saw Lucky approaching had been a new development that Kate didn’t mind seeing more of.

Or at least, as often as she could when crossing paths with her.

Was her apartment going to become a place for her to crash when injured? Kate thought about it for a moment and found no discomfort in the idea.

Yelena didn’t look like the descriptions of what Black Widows were, even if it was a possibility that all of it was true.

She washed her hands thoroughly, getting rid of the blood still caught in her fingers and nails before drying them and taking a brief look at herself in the mirror. She was presentable at least, and didn’t look as tired as she had expected.

She stepped back out into the living room to find it empty, the lights still on.

She looked closer. Yelena was not on the couch, nor laying on it, and Lucky was nowhere to be seen either.

Her eyes moved briefly to the windows and found them closed as she had left them, so she hadn’t gone. She obviously wasn’t making Yelena a prisoner in her apartment. She could leave if she wanted to, but Kate would have preferred to know she was out of danger first.

“You still have no proper cutlery, Kate Bishop?” she heard from the kitchen, and turned around quickly to find the blonde rummaging through her cabinets. She let out a sigh.

“I’m still one person,” she said, walking over to the open kitchen and gently steering her away from the counter and toward the living room, pushing her and Lucky away from snooping around. “And you should be lying down.”

Yelena didn’t obey, and instead grabbed two plates and continued out of the kitchen.

“You eat pizza with plates?” Kate asked, following behind with two cups filled for them to drink.

Yelena sat down without answering, only looking back at her with a frown and something so characteristic of her that made Kate realize she might have been right about her thoughts on Yelena all along. All the tough act was just that, a mask she tried to keep up.

“Why wouldn’t you,” she asked back, and Kate just shrugged the question off. “It’s manners, Kate Bishop.”

“You don’t have to have manners while eating pizza,” she said, opening the box after leaving the cups on the small table and then grabbing a slice without the need of a plate.

Yelena looked at her with furrowed brows and an extended plate. She held eye contact for a moment, and Kate couldn’t help but accept the offered plate out of pure respect for Yelena’s ways. The blonde only nodded a few times before doing the same and serving herself a slice.

“I don’t think it’s practical. You can use your hands and not wash plates later,” Kate grumbled.

Yelena answered moments after taking a bite of her slice. “You eat with your hands to not wash plates?”

The question was pure disbelief, and Kate had to blush slightly at the accusation, even if it was somewhat correct.

She didn’t always have time to wash her plates, so it was easier to just eat straight from the box.

There was no answer from her, and instead she decided to start eating her slice and looked at Yelena with red cheeks and a full mouth. The green eyes were now shimmering with familiar mischief, and Kate felt electricity run through her veins at it.

“That is all the answer needed,” the Russian chuckled dryly, looking back at the tv and the random movie Kate had landed on while flipping through channels. Kate wanted to defend herself, but she knew it wasn’t going to get her anywhere. The blonde would find a way to dig deeper.

They both finished their slices in relative silence, the only sounds being the tv and the whining Lucky made at not being given a slice. Clint had told her to stop giving him trashy food for his wellbeing, and Kate had eventually accepted that he was right.

Kate looked at Yelena quietly, watching the reactions play across her face at the scenes on tv and the way she would quietly eat, eyes shifting just slightly from her slice to the screen whenever she took a bite. She no longer looked stiff, even if the suit was still on and looked pretty uncomfortable. Her back was against the back of the couch, legs stretched out, expression relaxed.

By the time she was halfway through her second slice, she had to speak.

“What happened to you?” she blurted out, and realized far too late that the topic might take things in the wrong direction.

The night had been going well, and Yelena was relaxed and even being the easy company she had been in the strange circumstances the night she came to her first apartment.

But she was surprised by how quickly the answer came back.

“Another widow did it.” Kate silenced the screaming part of her mind and jumped to other conclusions instead.

How could another widow have harmed her.

The only reason she could think of was the failed mission. Maybe Yelena had been punished by others at some point for letting go of her target instead of finishing the job and was now being threatened because of it. She wasn’t even sure if things worked like that.

“Are you being hunted down?”

Yelena scoffed, and again let her eyes fall away from the tv and back to Kate. A serious expression settled over her like the one from just an hour before.

“Some widows have no choice but to keep following orders, and I am trying to make that stop. That’s all.” Kate nodded, confused by the explanation but accepting it for what it was, a closing of the topic.

She didn’t add any other comment and forced any remaining questions to stay unanswered for as long as they needed to.

Yelena went back to looking at the tv, and Kate did the same, not looking back at the relaxed silhouette of the blonde woman again.

The pizza box was eventually empty and the movie long finished by the time Kate noticed Yelena shifting uncomfortably in her seat.

She stood up abruptly, catching Yelena’s attention the moment she did, and then clarified just in case.

“I’m gonna give you some comfortable clothes. You can take my bed tonight.” She left before she could see the frown deepen on Yelena’s face, rushing to her bedroom and opening her wardrobe to search for something warm for the night.

She grabbed a shirt and some purple long sleeping pants she liked. She checked the bed and changed the sheets in quick succession, then went back out to bring Yelena the clothes.

The Russian was standing in the living room, looking smaller than she actually was, watching Lucky walk around.

“Here you go. You can change in the bathroom if you want, or just the room. I’m pretty sure this would fit you since you’re probably a size smaller than me and these are big on me, but if you need anything else, just tell me.” She pointed to the bathroom and handed her the clothes, watching the confusion on Yelena’s face shift quickly into something neutral.

“You don’t have to—”

“But I want to. Do you have anywhere else close by for the night?” Yelena was injured, and Kate was sure that if there had been somewhere else she could have crashed, she would have done it before even thinking about showing up at her apartment. And even if there was somewhere close, Kate wasn’t going to let her go alone.

The silence grew louder, the only noise Lucky’s paws against the floor.

“That is all the answer I need,” she said then, mockingly echoing the words said to her earlier. “Now move. It would do you good to rest.” She guided Yelena toward the bathroom, watching her walk slowly inside before the door closed.

Once she was sure Yelena didn’t need anything, she moved to make the couch comfortable enough to sleep on for the night, grabbing some pillows and blankets. She was going to be fine with it. It wouldn’t be the first time she slept there.

By the time she finished setting up, Yelena had stepped out of the bathroom, her suit in one hand and boots in the other. She left them down next to the bathroom door and walked slowly closer.

“You don’t have to leave me the bed. I can sleep on the couch just fine.” There was a kind of pride in her tone that Kate knew she would deflect even before she finished.

“No you won’t. You’re injured and need a comfortable place to sleep, so you get the bed.” Kate would have insisted even if Yelena wasn’t injured, but it was a good excuse.

She didn’t add anything else, and Yelena looked at her for a long moment before nodding slowly.

“Okay then.” She waited a beat. “Good night, Kate Bishop.”

“Good night, Yelena. If you need anything, just tell me.”

She watched the blonde disappear down the corridor, her suit draped over her arms and boots forgotten next to the bathroom in favor of walking barefoot. The contrast with the woman she had seen come in just a few hours earlier was striking, and she was very sure of which one she preferred.

When Kate woke up the next morning, she immediately regretted forgetting to close the blinds all the way. The hard light from the sun had caught her directly in the face and woken her up already bothered.

She pushed herself into a sitting position with a groan, realizing it was probably late morning and that Yelena had most likely been awake for some time, no matter how little sleep she had gotten.

She looked around the apartment floor, all doors closed, silence in every corner. And of course, the boots were gone.

She checked her room just in case she had been wrong and Yelena had maybe gotten up in the night to grab them, but she had been right. The bed was freshly made, noticeable only by the way the sheets were folded neatly at the bottom.

She went around the apartment just in case she had missed something.

The kitchen was empty too, but the coffee pot was still steaming, and somehow that made her feel better. Knowing Yelena had felt comfortable enough to use her things. There was a washed mug left out to dry and another unused one set in front of the coffee pot.

What Kate wasn’t expecting when she got herself some coffee to start the morning was a scribbled note attached by a magnet to the fridge, written in quick and perfect cursive handwriting she didn’t have to think twice about who it could be.

Thank you for your help.

You should get more forks for the next time.

The next time, Kate hoped, was going to look different rather than Yelena getting hurt or one of them being chased down. In the meantime, she had time to prepare herself for other things.

And if Kate got herself a new set of cutlery for the first time since moving out of her mother’s house that same week, it was no one’s business but hers.

III.

The following months after that first visit from Yelena were not quiet at all. Besides being joined by a kid with superpowers who was putting together a team to replace the old heroes, Kate had to help her bring the group together and find others willing join them.

Some of them were harder to reach, but they all ended up agreeing with time, some of them for being alone and with no help with their powers, and others for the sake of helping, though she was sure there was also some pull toward the idea of what they could become.

They didn’t have much time to enjoy the win of getting a team before they discovered they were not alone in it.

The New Avengers, as they called themselves, came out of literally nowhere, and Kamala was not happy about it, nor were the others. Because what was the point of having two groups of superheroes in the same city instead of spreading out across the country or the world.

“Still. We have Nick Fury’s support,” Kamala had said the day she delivered the news. They all stood still for a long moment before eventually jumping on her to ask why they had Nick Fury’s support.

The team had been put together by Kamala, but the supervision had been Nick Fury’s all along. Kate couldn’t have been more shocked in her life, or so she thought.

The bigger shock came that same day, an hour later, when Kamala turned on the tv in their hideout to show them the New Avengers, and Kate dropped the cup of water she had been drinking and made a mess before the reporter had the chance to say the name of the blonde she could already recognize on screen.

Her hair was shorter, and her face looked tired, but she was still as stoic as ever, a smug expression in place and a slightly awkward shift in her body once the cameras focused on her.

Yelena Belova. She learned the full name that day.

And for the first time she had more information about the woman who kept crossing paths with her at the strangest moments.

Shortly after, Nick Fury met with them for the first time, representing the new S.H.I.E.L.D. director and making conversation with the overexcited young men and women filling the room about how they were going to start operating and who they were working with.

Their missions were nothing major, at least not the group ones, mainly because he thought most of them were too young to be put at risk for meaningless things. Eventually he pulled Kate aside and asked what she thought about leadership and how well she knew the people she was working with.

She was the oldest, and by default she was being assigned the position of leader for the simple fact that she would be the responsible adult in any situation they crossed. She took it as a compliment and accepted the position only if the others were aware of it and also accepted her as such. They all did, of course, with only some mild jokes in the middle about how she was running around with teenagers for a living.

What she didn’t really expect was being assigned solo missions that S.H.I.E.L.D. thought she would be useful for. And what she least expected was that some of them were going to be near collaborations with other people.

When Nick Fury called her in one evening with the promise of a new mission involving a few different people, she was more than happy to go.

Being part of a team made her happy. She was accompanied by them and they did things together when they were all free, but the team was mainly made up of teenagers that still needed parental authorization to leave their houses when it came to that.

Getting to work with other people not only changed her scenery but also the people she knew, and if Nick Fury was getting her into it, she was more than sure it was going to be a good mission.

She trusted his judgment, and knew that whoever she was going to work with would be a good fit for whatever the mission involved.

The last person she expected to find on the other side of the meeting room was the one and only Yelena Belova, an Avengers hater now turned Avenger herself.

“Kate Bishop,” she heard the teasing sound of her voice, drawing out her last name longer than it should go. For some reason unknown to her, a quick smile appeared on Kate’s face at it, and she had to rein it back.

“Yelena Belova,” she said with an equally teasing tone, and noticed the way Yelena’s expression shifted and one eyebrow raised slightly. They were now somehow equals. “Long time no see.”

The last time had been a few months back, when Yelena showed up injured and used her apartment to stitch herself back up.

Yelena didn’t move, and instead returned a smile that matched hers.

“Very long.”

Kate’s smile grew at that, and she suddenly became aware of the two other people in the room witnessing the interaction.

“So you two know each other? That makes things easier,” Fury said, and Kate nodded as she moved toward the table to take a seat across from them.

Next to Yelena was Congressman Bucky, or rather, Avenger Bucky. She had never quite managed to see him as a politician as much as she saw him as a hero that fought alongside the Avengers, so even if the change had happened some time ago, it was still strange. She was glad he found a way back to the team regardless of how much it had changed.

“We have met, yeah,” said Yelena, without adding much else.

The other two men exchanged a few words while Kate and Yelena stayed quiet. Yelena didn’t look away from Kate, and she suddenly felt like a small prey in front of a hunter. Yelena was still a woman who easily caught her attention. The first time it had been curiosity, something about the confidence someone could carry while standing on the other side of a pointy arrowhead. The times after that were simply an interest in the woman herself, no matter how much she wanted to look past it or act as if she had moved on from wondering. There was still something about Yelena that made Kate want to learn more, all that teasing and mystery pulling at her.

And Yelena’s current appearance looked better than the last time she had seen her on tv during the New Avengers’ presentation. Her hair was slicked back, makeup fresh, with a blue color added that brought out her eyes.

She didn’t look as tired either, though the usual somber light was still there and partially lingering, as it always seemed to be, or at least as much as Kate could tell from someone she had seen a handful of times before. But the mischievous light in her eyes covered most of it.

There was a brief exchange between the two men in the room, and Kate took a short moment to greet Yelena properly.

“I like the new look,” she said first, using the excuse to look her over. And besides the haircut and the makeup, she had a feeling her suit might fit her better now too, or maybe she just hadn’t paid enough attention the first time.

“Thank you, Kate Bishop. I like the new suit,” came the response in a neutral tone that still carried the strong accent. It sent a shiver down Kate’s spine, but she pushed it aside in favor of acknowledging the comment.

“Really? I like it a lot too. I thought having something darker would help with blending in, but I still wanted some color in it. I designed it myself.” She showed off the suit, extending her arms and holding them out for Yelena to take in the color.

She was proud of the design. It fit everything she needed on a mission, flexible and comfortable, and it matched the energy she wanted to put out.

“Alright, people,” Nick Fury said, settling into one of the available seats.

“Oh, it’s just going to be us?” Kate asked, sitting up straighter and trying to look the part.

“It’s a simple task. Shady activity happening at a location we have some intel on, but we’re not certain there’s anything actually going on,” Fury answered as Kate nodded along.

“And why should we focus on something that’s probably police territory?” Kate asked, genuinely curious. Whatever got labeled as shady business usually involved drugs or some other criminal deal happening under the nose of the police department. They didn’t intervene for the simple fact that it could cause them legal problems if someone was already handling it. “I’m pretty sure shady business isn’t our jurisdiction.”

She knew the rules were bendable, especially with the name they operated under and the clean way they tried to handle things. But still, Kate had already had police raiding her old apartment once to check for anything tied to her mother. She wouldn’t like that to happen again.

“It’s Fisk related,” said Bucky, turning to Kate and Yelena, who hadn’t said anything in the last few minutes. “He’s building a task force to hunt down vigilantes, and even though most of the people working with us aren’t labeled as such, he wouldn’t hesitate to come after a few of the New Avengers if they crossed his path.”

Most Avengers, old and new, had been vigilantes at some point, or had worked alone in some capacity tied to taking down anyone trying to hold more power that they could manage.

“And also, Kate, since you were the one that injured him last year.” She groaned and closed her eyes. She had crossed paths with the man a few times before actually fighting him. Her mother had introduced him as a family friend they did business with, and she had never cared enough to pay much attention at the time. She was sure he knew enough about her to track her down if he needed to. “I’d advise you to keep an eye on anything that was once tied to him and to Bishop Security as well.”

“I don’t have direct control over the company,” she said. She had left a temporary CEO in place that she checked in with once every two months, and had a few other people inside the company that would pass along details if anything came up, but nothing beyond that. “But I’m part of the decision making, so I’ll make sure to look into it soon. When is this?”

“Tomorrow night,” said Yelena then, her eyes now fixed on Kate, a small smile on her lips as if she was already prepared for something. “Whatever information we can get is what we bring back. It’s mostly a reconnaissance mission, so there shouldn’t be anything we can’t handle.”

The rest of the meeting moved quickly, straight through the information and anything they needed to know, with extra names thrown in along the way. Yelena didn’t add anything else, and no matter how many times Kate glanced over at her, she stayed focused on whoever was talking.

They received everything they needed, a time and a place, and that was the entire interaction.

Kate arrived the next day with a quick pace and more energy than she should have had for a recon mission that was going to amount to standing watch on a rooftop.

She had followed the instructions and ended up at the top of the building on a starry and cold night. Her suit kept her warm enough to not feel the chill of New York, but she was sure her face was red with cold by the time she sat down and waited for Yelena to appear.

She had been thinking about this night for a few hours straight, trying to calm herself down before acting overly anxious when the time to spend a few hours with Yelena came.

She wasn’t opposed to the Black Widow, if anything it was the opposite, but it had been some time since they last saw each other and last time it hadn’t been under normal circumstances. Even though this time had started on a better note, she couldn’t help but wonder why she had been the one chosen for the mission.

In her team’s case it was obvious she was the only real option, but she didn’t know why Yelena had been selected instead of someone else.

S.H.I.E.L.D. had agents more than capable of doing this job, and yet Nick Fury had gone out of his way to be present during the meeting instead of keeping to the S.W.O.R.D. matters Kamala had once explained to them.

Retrieving information tied to Fisk was a necessary step in covering their future moves, but she still couldn’t quite make sense of why the New Avengers would be involved.

They were all in the public eye since day one, backed by a congressman and another significant political figure like Valentina, even if she also had some questionable dealings of her own and had gone to trial for it. They wouldn’t have to run the same risk of being hunted by Fisk if he didn’t want the trouble that would come with going after them.

Kate sat close to the entrance of the rooftop, ready to stand the moment Yelena came through it. She used the time she had to look over the building they were supposed to be watching.

It wasn’t a residential building, at least not yet. It was currently under construction. No windows or much covering, but the floors were already divided into what would probably become apartments. It looked nowhere near finished, lacked any kind of security, and the physical integrity didn’t look as solid as it should have for an active construction site. And more importantly, it looked completely empty.

“Well, that doesn’t look like a place someone would live in, but—” She was cut off mid sentence, the close voice making her jump.

“I see you have to tire out your words even when you’re alone,” the Russian accent hushed and close, thicker when spoken lowly.

“Yelena! How did you even get up here?” The door hadn’t made any sound, and she was sure the hinges would have been louder if someone had walked through it the same way she had when she stepped out.

“The buildings are very close to one another, it’s easier to cross them,” she said, walking past her and closer to the edge, half of her body covered from anyone on the other side by the structure lining the rooftop.

Kate followed behind her, pulling her arms up to rest against the border and mirroring Yelena’s posture as she looked at the building, as if she hadn’t already been doing exactly that for the last few minutes.

“So what’s the plan for tonight?” she asked in a low voice, not wanting to disturb the silence or Yelena too much.

Yelena didn’t answer right away. She stayed still for a moment too long, and Kate had to look over at her to make sure she had heard before asking again. The side of Yelena’s face would have been difficult to make out in the darkness, but after a few minutes of adjusting her eyes, she could see the faint outline of her jaw and the straight bridge of her nose, completing the delicate lines of her face.

“We don’t initiate contact. We stay here and watch if something goes down,” she said, stepping back a few paces and then finally looking over at Kate. The dark rooftop did nothing for visibility or reading expressions, but Kate figured the neutral one was probably in place on Yelena’s face.

“That’s… okay.”

Kate stepped back too, looking away from the building but keeping her eyes on Yelena. The very little light from the street lamps was the only reason she could tell Yelena was looking back. But no words were shared.

A few minutes passed in silence. Kate turned around every so often to check the surrounding area as if something might come up on them, but there was nothing interesting happening on their rooftop or the ones nearby. The streets below were quiet, and the apartments under them were dark and closed. People sleeping without any idea of their presence.

Kate always thought the only good thing about recon missions and late night surveillance was seeing how different the city looked at night compared to the day. It was a small thought, but it was always interesting to her how differently things moved in each.

Most of the important things that had happened in her life over the last few years had happened at night, and so she had come to treat the two things as equals. If something happens at night, it might matter more, since her entire life now was built around secrecy and events that always seemed to catch her off guard at the worst hours.

One of those night time things was the sole reason she was standing there. It had been a mistake, really. But she had helped resolve the entire situation she caused, and in the end she gained what she had wanted since she was a child and decided she wanted to protect the people she loved.

“You know, this is like the rooftop where we met,” she said then, and noticed Yelena shift in place and turn to look at her with a curious expression.

“It is,” was all she got back, but Kate took it as an opening to continue.

“You have a mean punch. You grabbed me out of the air and threw me into the floor and still kept going. That was impressive.” Kate’s ribs ached just thinking about it, but she wouldn’t lie and say she didn’t find Yelena’s abilities genuinely interesting.

“You were not good at hand to hand combat,” she heard the Russian say, and it was the truth, but Kate was a proud person.

“I’ve always been good at hand to hand combat. I just had never had to actually fight someone that came out of nowhere.”

“I know. Kickboxing from age ten to fifteen, right?” Yelena asked, turning around with a slick smirk on her face to find Kate staring back with her mouth open.

“Just how much did you look into me?” She was genuinely surprised. She had never been photographed at any of those practices, had done well and won a few matches, but nothing notable enough to be posted anywhere. “How do you still remember that?”

Yelena went back to looking at the building, this time sitting down on a concrete block that served as a makeshift bench.

“It was hard not to remember,” she shrugged. Kate stepped closer, pushing her luck by sitting down in the small space left beside her, and to her surprise, Yelena shifted to make room.

Kate had been in the public eye since she was a baby, so it was only fair that Yelena had been able to find whatever she needed online. Part of her life was still easily accessible thanks to the digital record of everyone that had ever spoken about her parents on any platform.

“Not hard to find either, I assume,” she said, and Yelena nodded.

Kate didn’t add anything else, and Yelena was quiet too. She liked that the conversation moved easily without either of them having to drag it back from a bad place.

In Kate’s mind, Yelena had shifted from the Black Widow assassin sent to hunt her and Clint down last Christmas, to what she could see of her now. Just an incredibly skilled woman with a powerful presence and pretty eyes. She was still a Black Widow, obviously, but that wasn’t all there was to her.

Kate looked around for what felt like the hundredth time, eyes drifting away from the building after staring at it for a solid five minutes. The sky was clear, the night mildly cold. The rest of the rooftop was empty apart from some beer cans and a few snack wrappers probably left behind by residents of the building.

She shifted in place, stretched her legs, then her arms, grunting a bit in the process and catching Yelena’s attention. Yelena turned momentarily to look at her, said nothing, but held the look long enough to tell her without words to stay still. Kate caught it easily. She used that same look on Lucky sometimes.

She stood and walked, moving through the darkness of the rooftop and glancing toward the building. It was probably close to one thirty in the morning, since she had arrived at midnight and was sure she had waited a while before Yelena appeared. It felt like little time had passed, but a quick check of her watch confirmed she was right.

“This is a very boring surveillance, you know,” she said eventually. Once she had tired herself from pacing, she had settled back with her arms resting on the border, looking carefully at the lower floors before scanning her way up to the top.

There had been no movement, no light, no reflection, no noise from the other side of the street.

Yelena hadn’t looked away from the building either, her eyes and posture locked at the perfect angle.

“They are not supposed to be fun.”

“I went on a surveillance with Kamala once and we had a great time. She brought snacks.”

“How could you pay attention if you are not listening or watching the objective?” She refuted it, turning to look at her, head rested against the half wall she had been leaning on. Kate got nervous for a moment under the glint of green eyes, and knew it was a losing argument, but she could still push.

“We were watching and listening, but nothing interesting was happening. Like right now.” She gestured back toward the building, still unchanged.

“How can you know nothing is happening when you talk? Maybe your voice is too loud and you can’t hear properly.” Yelena shrugged as she said it, as if it were obvious.

Kate couldn’t help the reaction, and even if it was a bit performed, she put a hand to her chest in mock offense with an equally fake gasp. “I’m sorry, are you calling me loud?”

“I just offered a supposition.”

Kate turned away. She had been called loud before, mostly when she was young and her teachers would ask her to quiet down, and other times by her mother at events when being loud was not what was expected of her. So it wasn’t new, and it wasn’t something she took to heart. This time was no different, if a little more bearable given the amusement plain on Yelena’s face.

“I’m not loud, and I can be quiet and pay attention. I have been this entire time.” It was partially true. She had been watching the building for long stretches, and nothing over there had changed.

“And you broke it easily.”

“Whatever. It’s still no fun,” she said, turning back to look at the building and away from Yelena, as if something might actually happen at any moment.

“Why should it be fun?” Yelena asked, her voice a little less hushed than before and now more curious.

“Because more action would be good, you know.” She gestured toward her things on the rooftop floor, her unstrung bow ready to be grabbed rather than resting folded in its small carry pouch. “Like using our gear, or any of the other surveillance devices we brought with us.” She pointed to the small bag clipped to her belt that held little trinkets that could help in a reconnaissance situation.

There were some compact devices built to collect information from any nearby signal and feed it to a connected computer. They were easy to use and genuinely satisfying to work with when given the chance. It would make the work faster.

Yelena let her ramble, tracking the movement of her hands as they gestured to different things, following each motion as if it were worth watching.

She looked at her and sighed. “Let’s make a deal.”

That was enough to make Kate perk up. “I’m all ears.”

Yelena stepped closer and away from where she was, walking over until she was almost standing over her where Kate had settled near the wall. Yelena spoke calmly.

“If the target does not appear in the next—” She paused, checked her watch, then continued. “Thirty minutes, we go to the lower roof next to the building and do it your way.” The offer was good, and the more likely outcome, which would benefit Kate more than Yelena.

“And if the target appears?” Kate asked, because it was also a possibility. Anything could happen, and Kate didn’t like to lose, because losing would mean doing something she didn’t want to do.

“We do as I say. You stay behind me and you stay quiet.” Yelena said it like it was already settled, and Kate didn’t have to think twice.

“Perfect. It’s a deal.” She extended her hand, and Yelena didn’t wait a second before taking it. Kate felt the calloused grip for a brief moment before it was let go and Yelena stepped back.

The next thirty minutes were painfully quiet, but Kate stood still and waited, quietly hoping nothing would change for the sake of her own ego. Yelena had stood up right after the deal was made, so they were both back where they had started.

Kate checked every corner of every floor for any movement as far as her yes could go, but not even the slightest breeze disturbed anything inside. That didn’t stop her from staying quiet and nearly painfully still.

Essentially, they had been sent out on a night together, because there was absolutely nothing wrong with the building and Fisk was nowhere near it. At least she was sure of that much for that night.

“The building is completely dead,” Kate said once her watch turned the last minute of the half hour, looking back at Yelena with a satisfied smile. “But we can still go check around. I’m pretty sure this device could pick something up.” She pointed to the small artifact in the pouch.

It was built to do a good job, and it would work faster and better the closer they were, so she would give Yelena part of her win too and get them close enough to sweep the area around the building.

Yelena didn’t look back at her, but there was a near somber expression on her face that Kate caught before she turned away. She nodded slowly, accepting the loss, and then sighed.

“Alright,” she said, “but we have to go around the block. There are cameras on the buildings on this street pointing down toward that one.”

She started moving toward the left side of the rooftop behind Kate, and the archer followed quickly, picking up her things and watching as the Black Widow stepped up onto the rooftop border and jumped down to the next one, landing lightly and without a sound.

“Do you think you can be quiet going from roof to roof?” Yelena asked, stepping back a few paces as she watched Kate closely. Kate stood at the edge and jumped as soon as she found her footing, landing not silently but softly enough not to disturb anyone below. “Good enough.”

And then she took off. She moved to the other side, jumping again to the next building, this time a little farther than the last, and Kate followed as quickly and cleanly as she could, trying not to fall behind.

The third one was almost as easy as the first two, and then the fourth was already approaching. It was the last building connected on the street, but it was the one most separated from the others, leaving a gap that was close to an alley.

She stopped before climbing up onto the border and watched as Yelena made the jump without effort. The Black Widow turned around on the other side, expecting Kate to follow, well aware of exactly how far the jump was.

And of course Kate was, as she usually was, completely certain of her own capabilities, even more so after clearing the first three rooftops without trouble. She had been following Yelena and trying to match her jumps and pace without pulling ahead, both to avoid stepping somewhere she wasn’t supposed to and to avoid making a show of herself.

Of course her overconfidence would trick her into not taking a few steps back to get a running start before the longest gap yet.

Yelena had made it look easy, far too easy, and had landed gracefully and continued moving without stopping. Kate was not one to stay behind.

She picked up her pace, put a foot on the border of the building, and made the jump. What she didn’t count on was that the rooftop on the other side was slightly slippery right where she needed to land and stop.

Things could have ended much worse. She could have fallen backward instead of forward, but if that had been the case, at least she wouldn’t have to live with the embarrassment of slipping on a jump that had looked so simple.

When she touched down on the other side, her boot gave out under whatever was making the surface slick, and her full bodyweight pitched forward. Her hands were quick enough to brace before her face hit the hard surface, but she hadn’t counted on the loose brick left sitting right where she went down.

Her chin hit it with full force. She was really hoping the cracking sound had come from the brick and not from her face or her teeth when her jaw snapped shut.

She was stunned for a moment, the only thing she could process being the pain in her chin and the deafening ring in her ears from the impact. Of course, that wasn’t the only thing.

Through the ringing and the pain, she heard an unfamiliar sound coming from just behind her. Not slow or quiet. A full belly laugh.

The laugh that had erupted from Yelena was deep and throaty, and it was enough to wash away the metallic taste in Kate’s mouth and make room in her head for something else. She hadn’t heard her laugh before, and it was as surprising as it was something else entirely. Intoxicating in the best way. She laughed with her whole body, nearly folding over with it. And Kate found out in that moment that making Yelena laugh might be the best feeling in the world, even with the lower half of her face throbbing and her jaw feeling like it had just shattered.

She let out a low whine when she tried to move to stand, and suddenly not even that sound was enough to lift her from the solid rooftop under her. She twisted in place and covered her face for a moment to hide the tears that threatened to come, not from the pain but from the sheer force of the impact.

The laughing stopped, and a moment later she felt a presence close beside her. She lowered her hands from her face and found herself looking up with blurry vision, Yelena’s worried face centered in the middle of it.

She felt careful fingers touch her face, gently tilting her up and pressing lightly under her jaw in a practiced movement. She whined through all of it and tried to push Yelena’s hand away.

“Let me check if you didn’t break anything,” she said, and so Kate let her work, gripping her own arm to stop herself from pushing the blonde away before she was done. She closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and breathed out through her nose instead of letting it come out in embarrassing sounds that would ruin the impression she wanted to make.

The close inspection wasn’t as quick as she expected, and Yelena was probably trying to assess things in the dark of the rooftop.

She was holding her face up, both hands touching her lightly to keep her looking upward. Kate breathed slowly, but she could still feel the warm puffs of air against her neck from Yelena’s mouth after the laugh.

“You’re good. Just a cut,” she heard Yelena say after a moment. She still didn’t let go.

“That’s great to hear, but I feel like I just destroyed my entire skull on that fall,” Kate answered, and felt the cold the moment the hands at her sides let go. She looked back at Yelena, amusement still clear in her expression.

“You are very dramatic, you know.”

“That hit probably just rattled my whole brain, it was so hard.” She groaned, pushing herself into a sitting position and looking up at Yelena now standing over her.

Yelena had a hand extended toward her. Kate reluctantly reached for it and felt the instant jolt run through her the moment contact was made, disappearing just as fast when she was pulled to her feet.

Yelena didn’t step back right away. Instead she stayed close, as if keeping her from going down again, standing just a little too close to Kate.

“Your legs are too long for someone with very little coordination, Kate Bishop,” she said in a low tone, the closeness making anything above a whisper unnecessary.

“I made the jump fine!” Kate didn’t mind being close enough to hear Yelena breathing, and she of course would have said things louder if she could. Even with the lower half of her face starting to properly ache. “That specific spot was slippery.” She lowered her voice this time, coming back to her senses and accepting that maybe she had misjudged the landing and yes, Yelena was right.

She walked with Yelena over to the edge of the building, looking down at the fire escape stairs waiting for them. Yelena went first, checked that it was clear, then looked back up at Kate with a teasing smile.

“Just watch where you step from now on. I don’t want to go back with a squashed Hawk. Nick Fury would not believe me.” She chuckled before starting down, her steps barely making a sound against the metal.

“Oh, I’m very sure he would,” was all Kate could manage before following after her, wrapping her hand tight around the cold stair rail.

The retrieval job was quick and useless, since there was nothing to find. The device did its work and came back negative, which earned a groaning Kate who wouldn’t stop bleeding from her chin.

Yelena walked back with her to her apartment, a long walk that went faster than it should have thanks to the Black Widow’s pace and Kate doing her best to keep up behind her.

Kate hadn’t expected the company, and even though her apartment wasn’t in bad shape after barely spending any time there the day before, she was sure she could have done better.

Once Yelena stepped inside, she went straight into the open living room after taking off her boots, walking as if she owned the place, leaving Kate behind to close the door and drop her things by the entrance.

“It looks nicer. You decorated,” she observed, gesturing toward some of the walls where pictures and different pieces from Kate’s old room at her mother’s house now hung, trophies and medals settled into different corners.

“Just a bit.” Kate moved to the bathroom, quickly washed her hands, and grabbed some gauze before getting a proper look at the small open gash on her chin. “Fuck.” The muttered word bounced quietly off the bathroom walls.

“Where’s Lucky?” she heard Yelena ask, her voice right beside her a moment later, making her jump.

“He’s with some friends. I wasn’t going to be able to take him out tonight so I left him with them.” She stopped cleaning the wound and tilted her head up to get a better look. It didn’t look as bad as she thought.

“Let me give you a hand with that,” Yelena said, pulling her out of the bathroom and over to the couch. She moved through the apartment like she knew exactly where everything was, and Kate wouldn’t have been surprised if she actually did.

“Here,” Yelena said, reappearing beside her with a pack of ice. “Put it on your chin for a moment. I’ll check the cut.” Kate sighed but reached for the ice and did as she was told.

She hissed when the cold made contact with the wound, but watched as Yelena moved back down the corridor into her room, coming out only a few moments later with the med kit in hand.

“There’s a good chance you’ll want to hide that one to your team tomorrow morning,” Yelena said, nodding toward the injury as she sat down beside her. Kate only grunted.

“They are absolutely going to use this against me at some point,” she whispered, chin still tilted up, an exasperated sigh escaping her.

“With good reason,” Yelena answered with amusement.

“You’re enjoying this too much, you know.” Kate pulled the ice away from her face and looked at Yelena, who was rummaging through the med kit with a small smile. She didn’t answer and kept her eyes on the task. “There’s lidocaine in there. And some gloves.”

“New additions.”

“Oh yeah, you will not catch me lacking again the next time someone shows up with a cut on their torso.” She shifted into a more comfortable position on the couch, blood no longer dripping from her face. “How are those holding up, by the way?”

Yelena pulled out what she needed, moving carefully to place everything within reach, and passed Kate a small piece of gauze to press against her face in the meantime.

“Very well. Who would have thought that was your first time stitching someone up,” she said, glancing over at Kate.

“I’m glad. I was honestly surprised you let me.”

“It was that or bleed out,” Yelena said, pulling on the gloves and moving to touch Kate’s face, removing the used gauze and leaning in closer.

“Oh, you know I wouldn’t have let you— Ouch!” She pulled a face, looking at Yelena with watery eyes. The Russian didn’t react, keeping her eyes focused after the quick application of lidocaine. “You know I wouldn’t have let you just bleed on my bathroom floor,” she continued, gesturing around, and Yelena only hummed. “I would have called for help.”

Yelena chuckled, looking back down at the supplies. “The kids on your team?”

“Very funny, Yelena—” Kate hissed, puffing out her cheeks and letting out air slowly as Yelena worked.

“Stay still. I’m going to start.” Kate hummed, feeling Yelena’s closeness and the brief cool touch against her face. Her chin was numbed, but she was still sure she would notice if anything went wrong.

She needed to distract herself. She looked up at the ceiling and was momentarily blinded by the light overhead, so she closed her eyes, breathing slowly as if that might help keep pain away.

She let the air out through her mouth, half watching Yelena work, focused and hair slipped back to keep it out of the way.

Even concentrated, she didn’t look tense. Her face wasn’t scrunched, but her eyes were steady and narrowed just slightly at the wound. Her mouth was closed, lips pressed together, and Kate was trying not to pay attention to the way half of Yelena’s body was nearly pressed against her own to get the right angle.

“What’s it like to be recognized as an Avenger?” she asked, trying not to move her face too much.

“I still think it’s a dumb name. I don’t fully like it,” Yelena answered, not once looking away from what she was doing. Kate felt the warmth of her breath against her neck as she spoke, the words close enough that it almost made her shiver. “But it’s nice to have a public position instead of being used.”

Weaponized. Kate knew the truth of what some Black Widows had gone through. She had asked Clint about it after the first time Yelena came to her apartment and let her stitch her up, and he had shared some very light details of what he knew about Natasha in between.

“Your team seems nice.”

“They are. We are barely figuring out how to run things right, but we make it work.” Kate felt sudden pressure on her chin and knew Yelena had begun passing the needle. She went as still as she possibly could. “Yours also seems nice.”

“Thanks. They’re all great with cool powers.” Kate was proud of her team. They were close, and at the end of the day she was learning alongside them regardless of the age gap.

Yelena stayed quiet for a moment, shifting her weight on the couch slowly. “You’re a nanny. Have you realized?”

“Ugh.” Kate groaned, this time not from pain. She would have thrown her head back if Yelena hadn’t been in the middle of working on her face. “I’ve been told that at least a million times. The reason I get paired with other people is exactly because most of them are too young to be sent into certain situations alone,” she explained.

“So instead of kids with superpowers and magic, they send a girl with a bow and arrow?” Yelena said, and Kate didn’t have to look to know there was a grin on her face.

Kate almost laughed. “Paired with another one with a glock.”

Yelena stilled, looked straight at Kate’s eyes, and received only a tense smile back from her.

“Fair,” she said eventually, going back to the wound. “Stay still. I’m almost done.”

Kate did as told and waited a few more minutes, feeling the pull and push against her chin. Yelena’s hands were careful, or at least as much as Kate could tell through the gloves and the numbing, touching her face only when she needed to reposition her.

She worked quietly, unbothered by the way Kate’s eyes stayed on her longer than they should.

“Stay there. Don’t move.” Yelena pulled back, leaving a still Kate to lower her head against the back of the couch. Kate tried to follow her with her eyes but could only catch her searching through her own suit for something else.

Eventually she came back and settled beside her again, two fingers tilting Kate’s head back into position.

“I’m going to put some gauze on this. Change it tomorrow.” Kate hummed in acknowledgment and waited for Yelena to finish. “And this,” she said, setting Kate’s head back to a normal position after taping down the gauze. She held up something between two fingers, pointing toward Kate’s unshed arm. “Is for your wrist.”

There was a faint brush of dried blood from a simple scratch, nothing serious, but the gesture of the band aid was enough for Kate to extend her arm without a word.

Yelena made quick work of opening it and pressing it over the scratch, and Kate couldn’t stop the sharp intake of breath that escaped her.

“Is that— is that the one I gave you?” There was disbelief in the question too, because it had been more than half a year since she had handed that to Yelena in the dark outside the ice rink.

“Yes. I thought it would be good to keep.” Yelena only nodded, pulling away and starting to gather what she had used to throw in the trash.

Kate stayed on the couch, looking at the purple band aid for a moment before finding her voice once Yelena stepped away.

“Wow. I genuinely thought you were going to throw it away the second you turned the corner.”

“Why would I do that,” Yelena asked from across the apartment.

“I don’t know, why would a Black Widow hold onto a band aid for a cut that small,” Kate said, walking over toward the kitchen to have a proper conversation without having to raise her voice. “You don’t even seem to have needed it anymore. Must have been smaller than I thought.” She got close to Yelena, now comfortable enough to be in her space without second guessing it. Yelena didn’t flinch or step back, and simply stayed where she was while Kate finished studying her face.

“It wasn’t deep. I didn’t need it,” she said, moving to wash her hands at the sink. “But it came in useful in the end.”

Kate let out a quiet yeah and leaned back against the kitchen counter behind her.

She watched Yelena wash her hands carefully, and took the moment to check herself over for anything else she might have caught on the rough surface of the rooftop.

But besides the well treated cut on her chin and the scratch on her wrist, everything was fine.

She was glad Yelena had offered to help rather than dropping her off for someone else to deal with. She had been, even after long periods of training and being the most capable person in the room, underestimated by the agents they sometimes worked alongside, simply for being a regular person. The others on her team had powers and magic and all the advantages that came with them. They could take damage and it made for a more striking story. Kate’s job was less flashy, so the only way to prove herself was to be efficient and clean and stay out of trouble. And Yelena, without knowing it, had helped with that.

The stitches and the scar she could explain herself. She could say she handled it on her own, and no one would push further. And Yelena didn’t seem like someone who went around sharing details of her nights.

“I have to report back. You do too,” Yelena said after finishing, drying her hands with a paper towel and looking back at Kate still leaning against the counter.

“Yeah. I’ll call Fury and go over everything.” She had to, but she was fairly certain that calling Fury at that hour would earn her a trip to a containment cell for the rest of the week. “Thanks for helping me out.”

Yelena shrugged, a small smile slipping through. “You’re welcome.”

Logically that was the moment Yelena would slip away, and as little as Kate knew her from the handful of times they had crossed paths, she knew enough to expect it. But something about this time felt different. There was something in the way Yelena didn’t move, and instead leaned herself back against the counter across from her, looking at her fully. No movement toward the door, no signal that she wanted to leave. So Kate took her chance.

“Would you like to stay for dinner?”

Yelena didn’t flinch at the directness of it, and instead looked like she was holding back a smile. She nodded slowly.

“Do you have that mac and cheese you offered last time?” Kate could only grin, and turned to open the cabinet behind her, showing off the few boxes she had available and letting Yelena step in to pick one.

Kate moved to turn on the stove while Yelena gathered what she needed, also making her way through a couple of cabinets.

“Oh, look at that. You got cutlery. I’m honestly surprised, Kate Bishop.” Kate couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“Yeah, it became a necessity,” she shrugged, watching as Yelena picked out forks and spoons and even the knives, despite them having no real use for mac and cheese.

After the mac and cheese was ready and Kate had pushed a set of comfortable clothes toward Yelena, the same pants she had worn once before and this time a new purple shirt to go with them, they both settled on the couch. The tv was on, led by Yelena who hadn’t landed on anything yet and was still flipping through while she waited to start eating.

She eventually found a movie that had already started, probably halfway through, but Kate still paid attention to what she could, stealing glances at Yelena whenever she reached over to add more sauce to her plate, getting briefly caught up in the easy posture of the woman before turning back to her own food with a small, barely hidden smile.

And there was something new in the way Yelena gradually moved closer while they watched the movie after finishing eating, not the kind of closeness they’d had earlier when Yelena was stitching her up, but Kate didn’t say anything about it and didn’t pull away. Instead she matched it, shifting toward the center of the couch in slow degrees, until she was nearly flush against Yelena’s side for the rest of the night.

IV.

With the last mission they had together being a complete success, even if it was a recon mission and Kate ended up hurt and needing a few stitches, they went back to being paired together a few more times to track down different people of high importance under the same conditions as the first one.

None of them came back with answers or a logical conclusion to what they had been told was going on in the city. So the missions didn’t stop, but the outcome didn’t change either.

By the time they had gone on at least three different late night recon missions, Yelena thought she was getting used to Kate Bishop, being the only partner she could work with without bringing them back highly injured after failing to give them a proper hand when it mattered. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about whoever they paired her with. It was just that she thought there was a bigger importance in continuing with the mission rather than giving up her position to whoever they were fighting against.

This time around, they were finally paired together for more than a surveillance. The building was on the outskirts of the city, and the entirety of both teams was gathered to split into different tasks while they worked in the field.

Yelena thought she had never seen so many people in the Avengers Tower, and their meeting room was filled with overexcited teenagers and one Kate Bishop who couldn’t stop talking about how impressive everything was inside and how much she wanted to look around the place.

Her own team was quieter, but still answering questions and listening to what was being laid out about what they would be doing.

In the end, Kate and her ended up on the rooftop of what looked like an abandoned building with far more secured doors than a place like that should have had. And that was the first sign they were headed in the right direction.

Kate had been quiet the entire time it took them to get there, moving slowly behind her with more stealth than Yelena had seen from her before and more focus than usual.

Getting used to Kate Bishop meant getting used to the absence of quiet during any type of situation. She would talk until she ran out of words and ask questions until she had enough answers.

It meant probable injuries in the middle of a simple night, and it meant having someone around for most of the days that followed. Going back to her apartment and sharing a meal over some random movie and a whiny dog that wanted a slice of whatever they were eating.

And she was enjoying all of it.

For the longest time she had prohibited herself from having anything good in her life, in whatever form it came, out of pure guilt. It had started as grief and sorrow, and slowly turned into a consuming feeling that took hold of her everyday life. She didn’t want to enjoy things. She didn’t deserve it.

She had to work through her own troubles eventually, reconnecting with people and finding out that she didn’t really mind keeping contact with some of them, and that somehow she could forgive things that happened in the past even if she could never forget them enough to erase them from her mind.

But even during that, somehow, injured and in the middle of a post battle adrenaline rush, she had ended up exactly where she needed to be. That night her only real option had been Kate Bishop, and now she was glad it had been.

When she had looked back into the life of the new Hawkeye she hadn’t expected to find more than she was looking for, and having done that had saved her from walking back injured through a cold night in the middle of New York.

After that first time she had sought her out again, this time having the opportunity to take a mission alongside her and taking it the second she was given the green light. She had placed herself as the one for the mission instead of anyone on her team and set Bucky as second in charge to keep up with the rest of the mission details, given his experience.

She did it for the warmth and the somehow funny way Kate Bishop operated. The girl was impossibly lucky in most aspects when it came to missions, and she couldn’t be more pleased to have been let into her life so easily. Trusted enough to be allowed to stay the night in her apartment even after their previous encounters hadn’t ended on the best terms.

The aftermath of every recon mission ended up the same. She would quietly follow Kate back to her apartment, Kate telling her about her day or about something new she and her team had been doing, and she would let herself in once they got there. At first it had been an excuse to make sure the archer got home safe, but the promise of takeout food, comfortable clothes, and movies was something she couldn’t turn down after she had finally had a taste of it.

And that same night, after the mission ended and they went back to report, they would probably follow the same pattern and end up in Kate’s apartment. Yelena couldn’t have been more eager about that, even if she hadn’t shown it.

Entering through the front door would have given too much away, so they found their way up to the rooftop again, finding it quieter than Yelena expected. They swept the place with the small devices, finding for the first time a real lead, far more data and information than they could have gathered manually.

Before they could go in, of course, Kate spoke.

“What’s in this for Valentina?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Yelena answered, looking back at Kate and then back to the front. “It was Bucky who suggested this one, and I offered myself.”

“I thought Val was the one sending your assignments,” Kate said, crouching down on the rooftop beside her.

“She tried to do that at first, but not anymore.” Kate nodded slowly, understanding the situation but still wondering how the team had managed to turn things around. Yelena had barely gotten out from under her handler’s control, and she was somewhat glad for it even if she still had to work closely with her. “This actually goes against her too,” Yelena added, and noticed the surprise on Kate’s face at the extra information shared.

“How so?”

Yelena waited a moment, checking around and scanning the building from the sides. Kate looked back at it a moment later. It was dark, no one near the entrance and nothing drawing the eye to any of the floors. Just a building, and Yelena had the brief thought that the night might be easier than they expected.

“Val is a politician now connected to Fisk, or so we were told by Mel. Whatever we can find on him could be traced back to her.” They couldn’t put up hard evidence against someone like Val. She would find her way out of it like she always did and eventually turn it around on them. They couldn’t afford that, but they could push Val out of the comfort zone she had built for herself and finally get out from under her.

Kate didn’t respond right away, and for a moment Yelena thought she would stay quiet after that, or that she didn’t have anything else to say. But of course it was Kate Bishop she was talking to.

“Fisk would be going after heroes at any point now. His whole campaign is built around vigilantes and how they’re the problem with the city.”

Yelena nodded. Even if she didn’t care much about her hero status, it was a natural reaction to worry about the others. Vigilantes had already been targeted by Fisk’s men. It wasn’t a hard connection to make, and even if she felt for the ones at risk, she was quietly relieved that Kate was already known for being part of a large team rather than working alone, placing her out of his probable list for the time being.

“It would take him a long time before something like that happens.”

The conversation ended shortly after, and they both made their way into the building quietly, Kate following her movements and mirroring her actions at every step.

The first floor was quiet, but clean. Everything inside had been secured and the doors were locked. The building hadn’t been residential for over a decade, and the locked doors weren’t a sign of abandonment. They were a sign that the building was still being used.

Yelena usually preferred to work alone, knowing well that her chances of getting out and getting the job done were higher when she didn’t have to worry about another person in the room. But the last thing she would do was let Kate Bishop go off on her own.

When they reached the fifth floor, though, they realized that part of the building had a much higher chance of being empty, while another section had more people than they could count. The footsteps and the sudden sound of doors closing were enough to tell them where things were.

But Yelena didn’t have a good feeling. There was a hollow weight in her chest every time she heard a door close somewhere in the building, and for the first time she recognized it as dread. Anxiety building through her body with every inch they moved.

She wouldn’t send Kate toward the more crowded part of the building, and they couldn’t work together for what came next, so the best option was to send Kate toward the quieter section and hope for the best.

“We’ll be in touch,” Kate said, pointing to her ear and the earpiece there, and Yelena heard the echo of her voice through her own. She watched Kate turn and move quietly in the opposite direction. A shiver ran down her spine at the sight, but she shrugged it off the next second and moved toward her side.

Kate was more than capable of doing her job, and there was a reason she was trusted to do it. Yelena believed in her.

Her way through most of the corridors was seamless. She found a few people along the way as confirmation that their assumptions had been right. The building had come to life the moment she crossed into the first group of men waiting to attack whoever came too close.

She moved through different rooms, most of them empty or guarded by people protecting nothing worth her time. She was tiring by the minute with each person she came up against, but still holding control of the situation as best she could.

She expected the last few rooms on her side to hold something useful, given that the device hadn’t picked up a strong enough signal from any of the other floors to point toward a data center.

Her own gunshots rang too loud, and for a moment she wondered if it was going to draw more people to her position and cause an even bigger problem she didn’t have the energy for. She hoped, for the sake of the mission’s secrecy and whatever they had locked in there, that nothing else was coming her way.

She was partly glad that the only weapon loud enough to pull people toward it was her own and not Kate’s, and she was glad the archer had gone toward the safer part of the building instead of following her down this way.

The corridor eventually cleared, and she moved quickly toward what was the biggest room yet, the size of it mimicking an apartment unit.

She always found it somewhat funny how things like that usually ended up so poorly protected. Or maybe they were well protected, but the protection itself was just as useless as having none at all.

She had cuts across her body, small marks mostly concentrated on her right leg, where she had also taken multiple hits from one man she had thrown to the floor who made a desperate attempt to get free. Nothing broken, but she felt the ache settling in.

She still had a job to finish. Then she could go back to Kate and have a quiet night in.

She had been thinking about asking if Kate would be open to planning those nights instead of waiting for something to happen as an excuse. That way they wouldn’t have to walk in on a movie halfway through, and instead of calling for takeout they could cook something. She knew Kate would like the idea too.

“Kate Bishop, I’m retrieving information now. Where are you?” She checked around quickly for anyone she should still be worried about.

There was no answer.

“Where are you?” she asked again, pressing into the earpiece with rising worry that maybe the first time hadn’t been heard. “Kate?” she tried once more, but there was no answer and no echo from the other side.

There was a small chance the earpiece had broken or lost connection during the fight, but there was still a low hum in her ear that told her it was working. Which meant Kate wasn’t responding.

“I need your position.” Maybe the silence was to avoid giving away her location. She could be hiding from someone. Yelena hoped that was all it was.

She waited a few minutes, watching the download climb and finish before she received anything from the other side.

She expected a response, maybe a sound or some small confirmation that would finally let her release the air she had been holding. Nothing came for long minutes. She waited a little longer, telling herself there was maybe a situation Kate was still handling, but still nothing came.

“Data secure. Kate Bishop, are you there?” This time her voice was louder, carrying out of the room and into the corridor.

Something had been worrying her since the first time Kate didn’t answer, and now it was heavier, pressing close enough that her blood was moving faster and her chest felt tight. She hadn’t heard anything from the other side of the building, and even if they were far enough apart that most sounds wouldn’t carry, that fact alone sent a chill through her she didn’t like.

Kate was supposed to be around the corridor at the far end of the floor, too far from her current position to see her if she stepped outside. So she had to go find her. She needed to.

She moved through the corridor in long strides, rounding the corner at the end and not finding Kate in the first stretch, but noticing the destruction left behind. Arrows in the walls and holes she knew were from bullets. She hadn’t heard a single one of them.

Her footsteps were louder than she could ever remember them being, and the adrenaline running through her was more than enough to push through the pain in her leg that had been slowing her down minutes before.

She didn’t hear a fight or any movement when she reached the door midway through the second corridor, and for the first time in a long time she dreaded the quiet she found on the other side.

The room was wrecked. The entire thing destroyed. Walls caved in and crumbling, broken concrete across the floor, the electrical system flickering above her. She had her gun ready and her training screamed at her to access an unknown location with caution, but her feet didn’t let her linger at the doorway for long.

She noticed the bodies on the floor, a single arrow through each of them with the kind of precision that didn’t leave room for error, and the dread in her chest spread wider. Her arms felt like static, her throat was tight, and her vision blurred at the edges as she crossed the room, turning to check the corner connecting it to the next one, where she was met with the pointed tip of an arrow aimed directly at her.

She looked at it for a moment before raising her eyes to the woman behind the bow, and the state of her hit all at once.

Kate’s blue eyes were sharp, bloodshot and glassy, but with no tears close to falling. The moment she realized it was Yelena she was pointing at, she lowered the bow and let herself fall back against the wall behind her, dropping the arrow to the floor and nearly sliding all the way down it before Yelena could catch her.

“What happened?” She didn’t think she had ever sounded more desperate in her life. There was something raw in her voice she hadn’t used in a long time, and the need for an answer was bigger than anything else.

She could see the blood coming from Kate’s neck on one side, a long gash that Yelena wasn’t sure how she had gotten, and a rush of blood from her thigh when she shifted down that caught Yelena’s eyes immediately.

“They have shitty aim,” Kate answered, and Yelena couldn’t have been more relieved to hear her still conscious enough to joke about it. The wounds were gunshots, and her entire body recoiled at the realization.

She hadn’t been fully present the first time she saw someone survive a gunshot wound. Her mind had been elsewhere when a fellow Black Widow had gone down, and all she could remember was a woman on the ground, a wound to her side and a hollow expression on her face. She had wanted to help her. She really had. But the conditioning had stripped away the part of her that could have stepped forward and pressed her hands into the wound.

Now that she could, her hands shook when she pressed down on the thigh and the neck, moving quickly to find something to cover both.

Kate’s belt came off first, and as she shifted her carefully to get it free, she was met with grunts and shivers that told her enough.

“I am very sure of that. But who else could go up against the best archer in the world.” The praise came easily, because it wasn’t a lie, but it didn’t work as a distraction the way she had hoped.

The next groan came out sounding close to a sob, and Yelena felt herself slowly breaking even as she tried to hold herself together.

“It has to be tight. I’m sorry.” Her hands were securing the belt around her leg as she said it, trying her best not to touch the wound more than necessary. “Do you know if the bullet went through?” She looked up, searching for an answer in Kate’s expression, and found nothing but a pale face and unfocused eyes staring at the blood on her hands with open fear.

She eased Kate slowly to get a better look at the wound, hearing her protests even in the weakened form they came in.

“Through and through,” she heard Kate say once she was laid back. She had been right. “That’s why there’s so much blood. Hurt like a bitch.” Her lips were slowly losing the color they naturally held, and Yelena caught the way her words were starting to blur together, matching the way her eyes were working to stay on Yelena’s face.

Yelena moved her hand to press against Kate’s neck, and with her other shaking and slippery hand she tried to pull out the burner phone from her pocket.

“It’s going to be fine,” Yelena said, repeating the words she had been saying to herself since she walked into the room. “I promise you it’s going to be fine.” This time she looked Kate in the eyes, and the archer had just enough left in her to smile back.

“I know you can handle it.” She sighed, her eyes drifting tiredly to the wall. “My head is dizzy.”

Yelena looked down for a moment, eyes pulling away from the phone and the hurried signal.

They were surrounded by blood, and dreadfully, all of it was Kate’s.

“Do not close your eyes.” Yelena snapped her gaze back up, her own eyes burning, her vision narrowed, pressing the phone back into her pocket once she was sure the signal had gone through. Her other hand doing everything it could to slow the bleeding.

Yelena had been a trained assassin for what could be considered her entire life. She was used to blood. She had been used to it since she was ten. But she had never had to stay behind with the ones she wounded to keep them alive. Never had to press her hands into a body to hold back what was leaving it. The feeling was new and horrible, and she would have taken any other situation over the desperation she was sitting inside of right now.

There was always a chance something could go wrong, and they had been avoiding that small percentage for the longest time. Now it was all coming at once, and she could see it in the way Kate’s eyes had gone glassy and her lips trembled.

“I won’t.”

“Good. Keep yourself awake.” Yelena’s voice was uneven, trying to sound steady even for herself. She couldn’t let Kate see the panic. She shifted her weight and pressed harder on the gash at Kate’s neck, careful not to cut off what little air she was getting.

The warmth of the blood against her palm was a sharp contrast to the winter cold of the room, and the pulse under her fingertips was still firm and rhythmic. They still had a chance.

“Tell me about the dog,” Yelena said. She looked straight into Kate’s eyes and held them there, pulling her attention back from the wall and the flickering lights. She needed to keep her awake and focused. “Tell me what he had for breakfast.”

Kate’s head lolled to the side to look at her without lifting it from the wall, her eyes slowly tracking the flickering lights around the room. “He stole some pizza,” she whispered, her voice barely making a sound in the quiet. “Plain cheese. He’s a snob.”

“A snob? He eats trash food almost every day, Kate Bishop. Focus.” She raised her voice on the last word. Kate’s eyes flinched at it, but held.

Yelena’s hand was slick, her fingers cramping from the pressure she was keeping on the thigh. She looked away for a moment toward the open door, quietly praying for the sound of hurried footsteps and someone on their way. Someone with the tools to help. To make Kate alright.

“Yelena?” Kate’s voice was smaller now, everything from before already distant. Yelena turned back quickly, and locked onto the blue eyes in front of her. Kate was trembling slightly under her hands.

“I am here,” Yelena answered, knowing how much she needed to hold herself steady for Kate and feeling the weight of it.

“Your hands…” Kate reached up, her own bloodied fingers touching the black fabric of Yelena’s suit, leaving red marks along the sleeve. “They’re shaking. Don’t… don’t be scared.”

It was absurd. The girl bleeding out in front of her was the one doing the comforting when it was supposed to be the other way around. Yelena knew how to be ruthless. She knew how to be the only steady person in a room. How could she be so visibly shaken that Kate could see it in the state she was in.

A sob tried to climb up her throat. She pushed it back down, tasting copper and salt.

“I am not scared,” Yelena lied, eyes burning as she turned back to the door.

“Liar.” Kate’s voice was barely there, far weaker than it should have been. She leaned her head into the hand pressing against her neck, not pulling away but searching for the warmth of it. “You’re… a terrible… liar, Yelena Belova.”

“You are losing too much blood to be a judge of that.” Yelena’s eyes went back to her. The faint smile was still on Kate’s face even with unfocused eyes that couldn’t quite land on her and skin colder than it should be.

“That’s why I have you.” Kate’s voice wavered, and for the first time Yelena’s eyes filled completely, her hands aching but still holding on.

She tried to keep the burning at bay, and the tight knot in her throat. She tried to speak.

“That’s why you have me.” Her voice broke on it, and she felt the pulse under her fingers quicken. “We’re a good team, right?” She pulled in a breath. Kate’s eyes stayed unfocused, moving slowly across Yelena’s face, trying to find green.

“We are.” A whisper, with no real tone left to tell apart. The hand that had been resting on Yelena’s arm moved to her own leg, fingers doing their best to add their own pressure. Yelena felt it, but all she could do was hold Kate’s gaze.

“So don’t let it end like this.” The sob came out this time and she couldn’t stop it, and she was certain she had never felt so desperate before. The first sob brought another with it, and then the tears, rushing down her face.

Kate exhaled, a sound that was probably meant to be a laugh but came out broken instead, making her cough twice. Her body tensed under Yelena’s hands, and her eyes went wet with it.

“You’re gonna… be so bored… without me to talk to,” she said, her eyes closing slowly, heartbeat picking up under Yelena’s fingers.

Yelena nodded, the tears falling freely now. The slow loll of Kate’s head was all the confirmation she needed of how urgently they needed help.

“I will.” The words came with a sob. “So please hold on a little longer.” She pleaded it to anything that might be listening. She needed Kate.

She hadn’t realized how much she had wanted the closeness and the connection with the archer until she was already too far into it to pretend otherwise. She had gone looking for her with the excuse of familiarity, even when she knew of closer safe houses she could have used instead. But she had needed someone else.

She had needed Kate and her willingness to help without question, the way she extended trust to people with so little time to earn it, the way she was so infuriating when the moment didn’t call for it and how somehow that was still charming when she did it.

She had sought out the connection without fully admitting it, but willingly all the same. And she couldn’t just let it go as if it meant nothing. Not again. Not if she could help it.

Kate didn’t answer. Instead the hand that had been pressing on her thigh rose in a slow, heavy movement, reaching up to her face with a faint smile and cold fingers.

“You’re freezing, Kate.” Yelena choked on the words, but leaned into the cold hand anyway. She wanted to wrap herself around her, to give her the warmth she needed, but she couldn’t let go of the wounds.

“You’re warm.” Kate’s pale lips barely moved, and there was a small shift of her thumb against Yelena’s cheek, pressing lightly and brushing away a slow streak of tears.

Yelena was about to tell her to stay focused again, to keep her eyes open with a firmer voice than she currently had, but she caught the echo of something down the hallway outside the room before she could.

Footsteps, coming up fast.

All she could do was twist toward the door.

“Yelena! Where are you?” The voice wasn’t one she knew well, but she recognized it, and she had never been so glad to hear anyone in her life.

Before she could do anything else, she screamed.

“In here! Kate is hurt!” The scream emptied her lungs completely, and her hands found more strength in them to hold on a moment longer, to keep Kate there.

The rushing steps were multiple, and they found the room without hesitation.

The first person through the door was, of course, the one who had suggested the mission in the first place.

Bucky stopped just past the doorway, taking in the destruction inside and the flickering lights. His face was unreadable as it usually was, until he moved further into the room and reached the inner corridor, where he saw Yelena crouched on the floor and the pale figure of the archer beside her.

Yelena felt the beam of flashlights enter through the door before she could see them properly. It hit harder than it should have, being suddenly able to see with full clarity the state Kate was in, and the way what little strength she had left was being used to stay close to Yelena.

The hand that had left a mark on her face was now resting back on her thigh, but the strength behind it was not the same.

Yelena’s eyes found Bucky’s in a desperate reach for someone to reassure her, to tell her it was going to be alright no matter what, because she couldn’t keep doing it herself. What she found instead was the expression of someone who knew things didn’t look good, and despite her best effort, Yelena let out a choked sob.

The light that flickered on the side was different this time, and in a quick second the space behind Bucky warped and expanded into a star shaped portal with white light bleeding through from the other side.

An armed group passed through and crossed the room and out the other end at Bucky’s orders without a second glance, and through the portal Yelena could make out the small group of barely grown heroes watching from the other side.

Wiccan came through quickly, and the gasp that escaped him was all Yelena needed to confirm that what was happening was real and it was bad.

She looked at Kate. Eyes blinking slowly, pulse quickening under her fingers, and a tear running down her cheek as she looked back at her. Yelena was sure she was a mess too, but she couldn’t help it.

“Yelena, you have to let us help.” The voice was young, and she thought he was far too young to be witnessing this. To see her like this, and to see what had happened to Kate.

Even so, his tone was firm, and a pair of glowing hands appeared beside her.

She shook her head, unwilling to let go.

“I can’t.” The words came out with a sob. Bucky moved quickly to her other side and held her arms. “If I move she bleeds. I can’t move.” She shook her head back and forth, looking at Bucky with pleading eyes, needing someone to fix it.

“Yelena,” Billy said, and she had to look back at him. “I can handle it. She won’t bleed.” She wasn’t pulled away. Instead she felt the hum of magic settling under her fingers and knew something was covering what her hands had been holding back.

When she looked down she was partly relieved to see the wounds at Kate’s neck and thigh covered by a blue and gold light, and the low sound coming from Kate was the only reassurance that she was still there.

There was a lost look in Kate’s eyes when she glanced back at her for a moment before closing them, her breathing too slow and shallow for Yelena’s liking. The blue eyes were the only thing her mind could hold onto. Glassy, bloodshot, barely conscious blue eyes.

The rest happened too fast to follow properly.

Bucky helped her up, and she had every intention of fighting the grip on her arms but her legs had gone too heavy from being in that position for so long, so she let herself be held. She watched a stretcher come through, Kate lifted onto it, and then she was gone through the portal.

Yelena couldn’t move. She didn’t say a word.

Once the only light left in the room was the blue glow of the portal and the only sound was the heavy boots of the armed group and her own heartbeat, she looked down at herself.

Her suit was black, as it usually was for any mission, easier to disappear into. She always tried to keep it clean, and had spares in case she wasn’t able to. She didn’t have a favorite one. But now she had one she hated. The one she was wearing was darker in patches, the lower half of her legs stained through, and her hands were fully red and sticky. The smell of copper filled the air around her and the bitter taste of it lingered in her mouth alongside the salt of tears she hadn’t been able to stop.

She looked down at the floor and noticed how the once pale tiles were now red. Fully red, and still spreading. And all she could do was sob.

“We need to go, Yelena,” she heard Bucky say, his hands still steadying her before she could go down. She could only nod, and let herself be led out.

She felt very small when she crossed through the portal and found herself under the white light of the medbay in the Tower. There was movement at the sides and she didn’t have to look back to know that both groups of heroes were trying to keep themselves quiet around her. She heard a few gasps once her eyes adjusted to the light, and she steadied her steps and moved to hold herself against one of the walls.

Her feet were aching and her steps slowed by the stickiness in her boots. She didn’t want to look back at the trail she was leaving behind.

“Where is she?” she asked in a rough voice, looking around as if Kate might appear from around a corner. Ava was beside her quickly, and explained quietly that Kate had been taken into surgery almost immediately after coming through.

“You need to shower and rest.” She heard it several times over the next stretch of time, from different people, but she couldn’t move from where she was standing even if she wanted to.

The doors to the operating rooms were closed, and she had the brief thought of going to find Kate even knowing she wouldn’t be able to see anything from wherever she stood.

She was eventually guided out of the medbay after being checked and treated for the wounds she had herself. She knew there were some bad cuts somewhere on her body, but there was a numbness inside her that had kept her from feeling any of them.

“When she wakes up she’s going to need you there, and you can’t look like this.” It was a blunt way to put it, even if Ava meant for it to land softer. But even knowing that Kate’s chances of being alright at the end of it were uncertain, Yelena knew she was right. She had to be in some kind of shape to be present when it mattered, and she knew she wouldn’t be let out of her room until she listened. So she did as she was told.

She walked to the bathroom slowly, her hands numb, the tips of her fingers pulsing. The adrenaline was draining out of her by degrees. When she looked at herself in the mirror she saw the full extent of the mess.

She had been crying since she crossed the portal, stopping only while she was being treated, so the dried tracks were still fresh on her face, and so was the headache pressing in at her temples.

But besides the tears and the redness around her eyes that made them heavy to keep open, the dried blood left behind in the shape of fingers was what held her attention. And all she could do when she saw the marks Kate had left on her face was sob again, alone in the bathroom. This time she let it out fully.

After coming back from the building, Yelena spent forty eight hours without hearing Kate’s voice.

The surgery had gone as well as it could have, and what followed was a medically induced coma to let her body rest, with ventilation to ease the strain on her heart as it worked to recover the oxygen lost in those long minutes that had felt like hours to Yelena.

Yelena didn’t leave the side of her hospital bed after the first time she was made to step away, and watched as the young Avengers came and went multiple times over those two days, checking on Kate and trying to check on Yelena too. Her own team did the same, but Yelena hadn’t said much in response to any of the attempts. She sat beside the bed and stayed there for as much of it as she could.

Kate had been swollen and still terribly pale, but her hands were warmer, and besides the wires and machines connected to her from all sides, she was alive.

On the third day, Yelena couldn’t have been more grateful for the startled sound she heard from Kate Bishop late in the evening after the sedation and the ventilator were taken away. A frightened reaction and a near upright movement that should have alarmed Yelena too, but even disoriented and reaching for something to defend herself with from whatever her memory was pulling back up, Kate kept asking for Yelena in a rough and dry voice, even though Yelena was already standing right beside her. She guided her back down with a steady hand, Kate’s sharp movements slowing under it and eventually settling as the pain caught up with her.

Kate Bishop was alive, and Yelena cried for the second time in a short stretch when she watched her sleep that same night with no machine breathing for her.

V.

Kate’s recovery was, so far, going great. Only because she had been strictly watched over by one ex-assassin and Black Widow trained to follow a target with precision. Kate had become her new personal target, although in a very different way.

She had been bedridden for two weeks before being cleared to leave. During those two weeks she heard from absolutely everyone just how worried they had been, and just how much it had shown in Yelena during the entire time she spent in surgery and the recovery room while Kate was under induced sedation.

Once she woke up, startled and scared with very little memory of that night, she couldn’t help but look for Yelena too.

The last thing she had seen before closing her eyes had been her. The only source of warmth she’d had while her body slowly froze on the floor of an abandoned building had been Yelena, and she had also been the last one to look at her, to talk to her, to just be there.

She had thought she was going to die, and the blood slowly leaving her body had made her dizzy enough to accept that with relative calm. Even if she had been terrified the moment she was shot and realized just how dangerously fast the blood was coming out of her leg.

She was glad Yelena had found her and broken her own rules to get to her. She owed her her life and more than that.

She didn’t remember details or full conversations. Her mind had already been too far gone to hold onto things properly, but she remembered the looks, and Yelena’s glassy eyes seen through blurry edges and half-heard words.

She hadn’t asked Yelena again after the first time she did during those two weeks she didn’t leave her side. Once she was able to talk without her throat feeling like it was tearing, she asked for the details of what had happened, but all she got was a dark look and twisted brows as an answer, and some vague pieces that were not at all what she had wanted, but she took them anyway. According to her team, Yelena had barely spoken during the two entire days Kate was under sedation, and Kate decided that the memories must have been too heavy to revisit and put into words.

Bucky came around once too, during a quick moment when Yelena had stepped out to grab something for her to eat, presenting himself only to say sorry for not having checked the information properly beforehand. He got a small smile from Kate, a shrug, and a quiet, “We all make mistakes. It’s totally okay. Besides, I’m good.” He didn’t say anything else, only stood awkwardly for a moment before offering one more thing.

“Yelena was worried sick. They all were. But it might have hit her differently.”

Ever since then, Kate had been doing her best to show she was doing well, to not give Yelena any more reason to worry than she already had. Even so, the blonde had been around her like a hawk, checking on her and bringing her things and doing everything she could so Kate could rest.

And of course, any attempt to do something she wasn’t supposed to without help was met with a firm no from Yelena, and whenever she had to make a strange movement to reach anything, there was always a steady hand at her back to guide and support her. She was nowhere near inclined to fight that or complain. It had come from Yelena’s own choice to be the one helping her.

After she was cleared from the medbay, she was supposed to stay close to the tower so that everyone could assist her. Nick Fury had accepted her stay at the Tower and the cooperation of her team to help her get around while she followed medical orders to rest. But Yelena had decided that a better option was somewhere familiar and comfortable, and offered herself as the one to take care of her, delegating all leadership duties to Bucky and leaving the moment Kate was allowed to go, straight to her apartment.

Yelena had checked everything to make sure it was safe and secure for her to be around, even if the security system had already been doing its job properly. She would take Lucky on walks every morning, evening, and night, keeping them to fifteen or twenty minutes at most to avoid leaving Kate alone for too long, and would come back and check on her, cook homemade meals she had looked up recipes for, and change her bandages and tend to her wounds every time it was needed.

She helped her move and get through her day without letting her into any action that required her to put weight on her leg or move any extremity enough to pull at her stitches.

Kate was grateful, but also getting restless.

She hadn’t been looked after like this since she broke her leg as a child, and she understood that the situation was far more serious than a broken bone. But still.

The first two weeks in the medbay of the Avengers Tower had been worse, that much was certain. Medical staff had been around her almost constantly during the first days, and Yelena had been in no mood to receive any of them, and Kate was glad she kept them from hovering too much and let her actually rest. She had been more than on board with going home instead. She was stable and healthy enough to be out of there.

During the small windows of time she had to herself, she would try to move around without Yelena’s hand too close. She had been given crutches for the first week and the promise of a cane in a few more. She wasn’t exactly thrilled about either of them, but it was probably an easier way to get around.

And during those small stretches she had alone, she would test just how far she could push her body.

She had already started physical therapy. Yelena would drive her there and stay for the entire session until they left together. The only times Yelena wasn’t present was when Kate’s team came to visit, which became less frequent as the weeks passed even though they still had specific days set for it. But besides that, very little effort had been made by anyone to let her pick up her bow again.

She missed the pull of the string against her fingers, and her shoulders were stiff from the lack of movement. And it was entirely her own fault that she nearly tore open her wounds because of that need.

Yelena had left after serving her breakfast, and Kate had used those fifteen minutes to reach for her bow and pull some dull arrows to test her aim.

She had pointed to the end of the corridor and toward the wall to see how far she could push her luck, and the first one went well. But after letting go of the second arrow she felt the painful pull at the side of her neck. She lost her balance flinching back and let the bow fall to the floor, and in order to protect her wounded leg she stumbled backward until she landed in a sitting position in the middle of the living room.

Of course, that was exactly how Yelena found her when she came back.

There was real panic in Yelena’s eyes when she caught the scene in front of her, Kate sitting on the floor trying not to wince with every breath. It faded quickly once she noticed the bow and the discarded arrows. Lucky had also quickly read the room and retreated the moment he was free of the leash. Traitor.

“How can you be so reckless?” Yelena asked, moving her to the couch.

“It’s been four weeks since I was let out. I haven’t been this far from my bow since I was a child,” was all Kate could offer against it.

Yelena didn’t look angry when she spoke, even if her tone and her whole demeanor were serious. Kate had spent enough time around her by then to know that the woman was very good at pulling up masks, and even now she could see past it.

“It’s the doctor’s orders. You will be able to practice again in a few weeks.”

“A few weeks is a long time.”

“But you can’t ignore what you’ve been told. How do you expect to heal if you don’t rest and instead decide to reopen your wounds?” The sharpness in Yelena’s tone made her recoil slightly.

She was right, and Kate hated being corrected after doing something wrong. But Yelena wasn’t obligated to be there, and all that was being asked of her was to stay still and take better care of herself.

The pain dulled and what was left was the itching of the stitches. She shifted slightly under Yelena’s hands as she checked the state of her leg.

“Stop wiggling, Kate Bishop. I won’t be able to do anything if you keep doing that.” Kate huffed, tilting her head back into the couch and lightly touching the skin around the wound on her neck.

“It itches,” she complained. She couldn’t see the wound, but she was sure it was red just from touching it.

“Well you shouldn’t have tried to use a bow and nearly torn the wounds back open.”

Yelena sounded sharp, and yet one look made it obvious she wasn’t actually angry. Kate shifted slightly to let her work, lifting her leg and letting Yelena redo the bandages and lay gauze over her neck. Even if she wasn’t angry, she didn’t look pleased.

“You should be more careful. You can’t act like this when your instructions were so clear.” Yelena looked her in the eyes while she said it, and Kate could see the feeling behind the words.

With that she left her side and went to throw away the old bandages. Kate stayed on the couch, unable to move without the crutches and not wanting to move after the clear message Yelena had put across.

It was true that Yelena had been taking care of her and had made sure Kate wasn’t put into any situation that would delay her recovery. But alongside all of that, there had been nothing Yelena had done to take care of herself.

She would wake up and be watching over Kate, had a routine of waking up before her, preparing breakfast, and serving a plate for Kate before doing the same for herself and after taking Lucky out, following the same pattern with the rest of the meals through the day. At first Kate had thought it was just how things were going to be momentarily, and then she started to notice the way the Black Widow would keep watch over her in every way she could.

She would go with her to physical therapy, stay awake until Kate fell asleep no matter how late it ran, and then be there the next morning before Kate had fully opened her eyes.

Kate could see it clearly. The somber quality to her eyes, the dark circles under them, the faded green that had gone dim. She was exhausted and doing nothing to change it.

Kate didn’t know how to help, because every time she offered Yelena to lie down or to rest while she watched a movie on her own, she would refuse. She would go quiet for the rest of the evening instead, getting up only when something needed doing.

There had been no direct conversation about it, mainly because at first it hadn’t felt possible to have one. Yelena had closed herself off the way she had in the very beginning of their knowing each other time. No hostility, but none of the easy conversation they had built up either, no matter how much Kate tried.

Yelena came back, eyes on the plate on the table with its half eaten breakfast. She picked it up and turned toward the kitchen.

It was hypocritical to correct Kate about how she was handling her wounds when she wasn’t taking the most basic care of herself.

“Yelena.”

She waited for her to turn around. The green eyes were strangely empty, missing the usual mischief in them, and it reminded Kate of the very first time they had met, when Yelena had no real reason to be kind to her. The difference now was the feeling behind her eyes.

She tried to hold Yelena’s gaze, but the blonde was looking somewhere else entirely and not coming back to her.

“Why won’t you rest?” Kate asked, the exasperation clear but not unkind, still trying to catch her eyes. “Why won’t you just lie down for a moment, or do something that isn’t taking care of me as if I couldn’t do anything for myself?” She didn’t want to take her frustration out on her. The last thing she wanted was to push Yelena away. “And this is not a complaint at all. I’m very glad you’ve been helping me. But why won’t you rest? You haven’t done so since we came back from the mission.”

She hadn’t seen Yelena eat or sleep with any real intention behind it, and she was sure she had been doing both, but probably just enough to get through the day.

Yelena stopped walking toward the kitchen. Kate watched her take a slow breath in and look up at the wall across from her, away from where Kate was sitting. She was quiet, and Kate could only stay in place and wait.

Then she moved, setting the plates back on the table and leaning herself against it, facing Kate’s direction but still not looking up.

The early morning light was enough to see her properly. She looked tired in a way that sat deep, bags under her eyes and shoulders slightly curved in on themselves. The image people had of the Black Widow had been left behind the moment she walked into Kate’s life, and Kate had known that for a long time. Yelena was not what people assumed, but she tried hard to make them believe she was untouchable and indifferent. Kate had seen enough to know exactly how much she cared, and the quietly worn down woman leaning against that table was proof of it.

“You looked dead.” It wasn’t hard to hear her voice, but it was so flat and low that Kate had to almost lean toward her to catch it properly. She didn’t have to wait long for the rest. “And you were so cold, and incoherent, and there was so much blood everywhere.”

Kate didn’t remember the details. Only the pain and the striking fear she had felt up until Yelena reached her. She remembered being held and spoken to, but her mind hadn’t held onto much beyond that. She knew what happened to a person who lost too much blood, the way they became erratic and incoherent fast, how pale she must have been, but she hadn’t considered how much the image had settled into Yelena’s mind after.

There were tears on Yelena’s face, and it felt like the first time, now that she was conscious and her vision wasn’t tunneled or blurry at the edges.

Kate had the impulse to stand up and pull her into a hug, and she wished she could have done it on her own instead of having to watch her while trying to hold herself together.

“I felt your pulse under my hands, and I watched you lose consciousness, and I couldn’t stop the bleeding or do anything more to help you.” Kate was sure she had never seen her like this. There was pain running through her voice, and her hands gripped the table behind her.

Kate would have preferred any other way to offer comfort than words, but she couldn’t ask Yelena to come closer just to help her stand and give her what she needed.

“If I hadn’t found you when I did, you could have even…” Yelena didn’t finish it. There was a broken sound when she pulled in air, and Kate felt her eyes prick with it.

She waited a beat, then answered.

“I’m okay, Yelena. And I’m alive. You don’t need to keep making yourself sick with worry over me.” She kept her tone even, without any edge in it, and hoped Yelena could hear that. “I’m not pushing you away by saying this, but you have to sleep, and you have to slow down before something happens to you. I can’t help you from where I am if something goes wrong. So I need you to please be okay.”

Beyond feeling the weight of Yelena constantly close whenever she needed to do anything, she knew where bad habits led, and she wouldn’t forgive herself if Yelena ended up worn down by them because she couldn’t stop long enough to take care of herself.

“Rest with me, eat with me, and then go out and leave for longer than just Lucky’s walks. Go to the tower for a night with your team, or wherever you want to go. I’m going to be fine when you come back, and I promise I won’t do anything I shouldn’t. You need to unwind too.” The mission had taken a physical toll on Kate, but in Yelena it had been a different kind of weight entirely, and it had been building since they came back.

Yelena’s posture shifted slightly. She still wasn’t looking at Kate directly, but the tears on her cheeks were quieter now, and instead of just looking tired, she looked smaller somehow, and Kate hated that she had been the one to bring that out of her.

“Yelena.” She called her name softly, and the green eyes came up to find her, still glassy and rimmed red. “Please come here. I can’t stand properly.” She opened her arms, offering the space for Yelena to settle against her.

There was a moment of hesitation, but Kate kept her arms open. Yelena moved slowly away from the table and crossed the room in small, careful steps before sitting down on the couch and accepting the hug.

In all the time they had spent together, they hadn’t properly hugged each other. Kate noticed it the moment Yelena was pressed against her side, and the warmth of it was something she hadn’t known she was missing.

“Please talk to me. I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong.” Yelena didn’t say anything, and all Kate could feel was the slight trembling of her body against her. She wrapped her arms around her carefully, almost as if trying not to hurt Kate, even as Kate pulled her closer.

Comforting Yelena felt right. Kate liked the way she settled against her side even in a moment like this.

She understood the need for silence and accepted what Yelena was giving her, even if it meant not hearing it in words. If she could have sat there holding her for hours if it meant she would be better for it afterward, she would have done it without question.

“I’ve lost many people before. And I thought those feelings were behind me, but I can’t stop thinking about what could have happened, and everything that could have gone differently.” Her voice broke between intakes of breath. “And I thought things wouldn’t go back to feeling that way if I had everything under control. But they did.”

Yelena let go of the hug, and Kate felt the absence of it immediately.

“I felt scared,” she said, looking into Kate’s eyes as if she was trying to pass the feeling through the look alone. “I was so worried I thought it was going to be the last time I ever heard you, and that it was going to be my fault for not doing enough.” Then she looked down at her hands, her fingers slightly unsteady, and Kate didn’t have to think twice before taking them between her own.

Yelena took a slow breath, closed her eyes, and looked back up. Green eyes full of tears and things she hadn’t put into words yet.

“I enjoy being with you. More than I thought I would. And I never got the chance to say it before that happened.”

“I enjoy being with you too. I like when you stay the night and let yourself relax and be comfortable around me. But you haven’t been doing that lately.” The real topic was still sitting untouched between them. “I don’t blame you for what happened,” she said, because she needed Yelena to hear that clearly. She could never put that on her. “And you shouldn’t feel guilty. We both knew what we were getting into, and like it or not, it was always a possibility.” She shrugged slightly, wanting to take some of the weight out of it.

Her injury had been serious, and she knew that. But she would never put the guilt of her own decisions onto someone else. She had chosen to go alone and told Yelena to go the other way. Whatever happened was on her and the people inside that building who had wanted her dead the moment they spotted her.

Yelena didn’t look convinced. Doubt filled her eyes alongside the tears that were still falling, slower now and fewer than before.

“I can’t predict the future or promise that things are always going to be fine.” She knew she couldn’t make that guarantee. What happened could happen again, and things could end up differently next time. “But I can promise that I will do everything in my power to come back well and in one piece every time I have to leave.”

She could promise to be better at what she did. More careful, less willing to jump into something before thinking her way out of it.

“I know that might not fix things right now. But I promise I’ll be in touch whenever I have a mission. You’ll know the details, and you’ll hear me talking for hours until I have nothing left to say.” She ran her thumb over Yelena’s knuckles. “I’m still here because you found me, and that’s something I owe entirely to you.” And if she had found the right moment before now, she would have said it sooner.

“It shouldn’t have been like that,” Yelena said, her eyes still wet and quiet.

“I know. But with what we found in there, there’s probably not going to be a second time of this.” She meant it, and she hoped it was true, because she had been the one hurt and she still hoped it. She thought she might have been the same if it had been Yelena on that floor instead.

She would never be able to promise she would always come back without a scratch. Life was never going to be that generous. But there were other things she could promise.

“I won’t leave you to handle things alone, so you don’t have to hold everything back or feel like you need to keep control over all of it. You can trust me.” Yelena nodded, clearing her eyes, and then shifted closer. Kate didn’t hesitate to take her hands and pull her into a proper hug this time.

No tears this time, and no tension between them.

“Thank you,” she heard Yelena say against her shoulder.

“There’s nothing to thank me for. But I’ll only ask that it goes both ways.”

“Of course it does.” A watery laugh came with the answer, and Kate couldn’t help but smile at it.

+ 1

The rest of the time Kate spent healing went by quickly, even if some days felt like an entire year had passed in twenty four hours.

Some evenings she would be too tired by the end of the day, but she made sure Yelena was following her own promise to rest, and the way to know she was keeping it was the number of mornings Kate woke up and found her sleeping peacefully beside her.

That was also a recent development.

Yelena had been making her way into Kate’s life more directly since that conversation, and Kate had left the space open for her to do it.

The first of Yelena’s things to appear in the apartment were some books she had been reading. On quiet days when Kate worked at her computer, Yelena would sit nearby or straight beside her and read until Kate was done. Even after finishing them, the books would end up on a table or shelf with an open space for them. Kate was quick to buy her some bookmarks, which were well received and quietly appreciated.

After that came the obvious part. Her clothes.

While she was taking care of her, Yelena had needed to make a few quick runs back to the tower for clothes and then return, and sometimes she would ask someone on her team to bring some over, which led to Kate meeting a few of the New Avengers in the process.

Her wardrobe had never been completely full, but after one long day when Yelena left to take Lucky out, Kate used those now thirty minutes to herself to start making space. Half the racks and drawers were cleared and ready by the time Yelena came back. She had looked genuinely surprised by the directness of it, and Kate had to explain that it made more sense if she was going to be around for as long as she had been. Yelena had accepted that without much pushback.

Her toiletries followed, no longer left sitting in a bag each time she used them but set out beside Kate’s. And with them came the passing thought of ordering a proper bed for Yelena so she had her own space in the apartment. She would clear the small spare bedroom of her Hawkeye things and make room for her. She wanted her to be comfortable.

When she told Yelena the idea, though, she refused entirely. For a short time Kate thought it was because she didn’t want to share a space in that way, but then the real reason came around on its own. Yelena didn’t want Kate clearing out her own things for the sake of making her comfortable.

“I won’t mind at all,” Kate told her. “If you’re staying here, then I’d like you to have somewhere that feels like yours.” And so even if Yelena kept refusing and would steer Kate away from the room every time she tried to clear it, Kate did it anyway.

One evening after sending Yelena out and telling her to spend the day with her team, she ordered the mattress and bed frame and had it put together before Yelena was anywhere close to being home. She moved her things out with slow, careful movements that her arm and leg allowed, organized Yelena’s in a way that wouldn’t disturb anything, and had the room ready before she came back.

When she showed her the space, the last thing she had expected was a negative reaction.

The room looked nice. She expected Yelena to accept it even after refusing at first.

“You moved your things out. This is your home, Kate.”

She wasn’t yelling, so she wasn’t angry, but Kate could see she was upset.

“‘Lena,” she said, once she found the opening to speak. “I’m off duty until I finish treatment. That’s going to take some time, and I’m very sure the last thing you’ll let me do is train with my bow before then. So in the meantime, this is yours too.”

In some way Kate knew it was also a way of showing gratitude for everything Yelena had done, but there was something else mixed into her feelings about it too.

She liked having her own space. Liked having her things where she wanted them and making her own decisions without someone else hovering nearby. It was the main reason she had left her mother’s house in the first place. She valued her independence, and she stood by that.

But she also liked the idea of sharing it with someone.

And if she could choose who that person was, she would choose Yelena without hesitation.

Even if her heart did something irregular whenever she looked at her in the low light of late evenings, playing with Lucky and keeping the enthusiastic dog entertained when Kate couldn’t get up and do it herself.

Or how her face would go warm when Yelena talked slowly and low during late nights while making dinner, following a recipe from a magazine, her accent somehow stronger in that tone and in those hours

Or how much her stomach would hurt from laughing whenever Yelena tried hard to keep a neutral expression while losing at a board game. Or just how much she laughed whenever Yelena was close in general.

The way a permanent smile settled on her face whenever Yelena laughed at something she found funny, a full and deep laugh that Kate smiled at without realizing she was doing it.

A roommate would be good. Even if there were small glimpses of something different she would find herself wanting late at night when sleep didn’t come quickly. A different kind of closeness she kept stored away quietly in her own mind.

Yelena ended up accepting the room, even if she didn’t use it.

Her things found their way into the apartment regardless. Small trinkets here and there, a pair of boots by the door, the particular spicy snacks she liked, and things she had picked up during missions in different countries that she decided looked better in Kate’s apartment than in her room at the tower. Everywhere Kate looked eventually held some reminder of Yelena.

But the room stayed quiet. No more than two books on the nightstand and some clothes in the drawers that she had placed there and would occasionally go for. She preferred, as Kate did, the shared space.

Most nights they would talk before sleeping in Kate’s bed, and eventually that would become an unplanned staying over most nights, or the excuse of a movie together would be used to share the same bed. Kate never said anything about it, even if she would wake up the next morning to an empty side.

It was nice, sharing a space and living with someone, even if it was meant to be temporary.

Kate had never wanted anything to heal as slowly as she wanted her leg to heal those months. Even if it meant not going back to what she wanted most.

By the time she reached the third month of recovery and physical therapy she no longer needed a second hand to get around, but the living arrangement hadn’t been brought up again, and neither of them said anything about it.

By then she could also say there was a familiarity in lying down beside Yelena. She knew which side she preferred to sleep on, even if Yelena had never said it out loud, and she knew the particular way she liked to sit on the edge of the bed before slowly lowering herself down.

That night was no different from any other. They had finished dinner, turned off the lights, checked the doors and the security system, and gone to Kate’s room to watch a movie until they were too tired to keep their eyes open. But instead of following the screen, she let her mind drift for too long into the what ifs of where they were, and only came back to herself by looking down at Yelena’s hand, resting in her own lap and crossed over the other.

She looked at the way it extended without much marking on it, except for a small patch covering a faint slit just under her thumb, catching the shifting light from the tv with each passing scene.

She got curious about it.

“What happened here?” she asked, and Yelena looked back at her. Kate took her hand gently and uncrossed it from the other, running a finger over the slight scar sitting there.

“I fell when I was a kid. I got that one and one on my knee at the same time.” She pointed and then pulled back the covers to show the smallest of marks on her kneecap. “I think I was five.”

“It healed nicely,” Kate said, still not letting go of the hand, checking the one on her knee too.

“It did. It was bigger. I was playing with Natasha in our backyard and fell. She tried to help herself before calling our mother to patch me up.” Yelena’s eyes didn’t find Kate while she spoke, drifting down toward the scar as if it held the memory inside it.

Yelena hadn’t offered many details about her life in the time they had spent together, and anything she did share Kate had accepted without pushing for more. So instead of asking, she stayed quiet and let Yelena give whatever she wanted to give.

“I think I have a few more from that time,” she said, almost to herself, looking over her legs as if searching, still holding onto Kate’s hand while she did. “My mother was good at keeping them treated, so most of them are small.”

“I can see that,” Kate said, her voice low. “They do seem small.” Her other hand moved to the raised knee, touching the small crease there lightly.

“She’s still good with them. She patched me and some of the other widows when we found each other after taking down the Red Room. She was injured herself but still took care of me even when my wounds were small.”

“She sounds like a very good mother.” Yelena nodded, looking back at Kate with a glint in her eyes.

“She is. She took care of us while she could.”

“Is she your real mother?” Kate asked, slipping past her own usual rule of not pushing, afraid of making Yelena pull back. But the blonde didn’t take long to answer.

“She’s not. Black Widows can’t have children. But she’s the only one I ever had, so she is to me.” Her tone was soft, even with the faint crack underneath it and a brief shadow that crossed her face when Kate tilted her head to look at her.

Kate didn’t say anything about it, of course she wouldn’t. But the implication sat with her, and she had a quiet thought about what it meant, even if she didn’t let it go too far.

Yelena didn’t add anything else, and instead let go of Kate’s hand, leaving Kate with a brief cold feeling before a light warmth replaced it in her cheeks, when Yelena started to lift the hem of her sweater and shirt slightly.

In the dim light of the tv she could see the scar on the side of Yelena’s abdomen. The fair skin was marked by a few moles, and the big scar was the only thing that covered that area.

“Widows were sterilized as a graduation ceremony.” Her voice was quiet, and there was a sadness in it that Kate wished she could have taken away from her. She looked back up at Yelena’s eyes, and the glint there was from something different than just the light of the tv. “It was easier for them. It made us more ruthless, with nothing to fight for.”

Kate felt the fury rise in the few seconds it took Yelena to pull her clothes back down and cover herself with the sheets again. She looked somehow smaller than she was, and the expression on her face as she searched Kate’s was completely different from what it had been just moments before.

The weight of what Yelena had gone through for most of her life was something that always hovered near whenever it was brought up publicly, usually by media or by anyone who got the chance to say something about it, and even then people knew almost nothing real about it. None of it had been shared with her before. Alongside the fury that had grown inside her, there was a quieter feeling underneath it, something warm and private, about being told something so personal.

“Thank you for telling me that,” Kate said, and extended her hand again, reaching for some small contact. Instead, Yelena extended her own and laced their fingers together. “And I’m glad you took care of the people who did that to you.”

After that came more nights with different stories. Kate showed her the marks left by the silly accidents of her childhood, and didn’t leave out the ones she had picked up in her short time as a vigilante.

They got comfortable with each other, and Kate shared more of herself, the details Yelena wouldn’t have found in any search.

And getting comfortable with each other meant Yelena being more fully herself when it was just the two of them.

She would move through the apartment in Kate’s clothes, taking them most of the time without asking, and when Kate’s eyes stayed too long on the familiar purple colors or the shirts she recognized on her, Yelena would just say it was the first comfortable thing she found and that she would return it when she was done. Kate never claimed any of it back, and never said anything when she found the clothes in Yelena’s drawers after they sorted laundry on weekends.

They took turns with the dishes now that Kate was allowed back in the kitchen after Yelena had checked her wounds herself and decided they were healing well enough. Even on the days it wasn’t her turn, Kate would stay in the kitchen with Yelena and listen to her talk through the missions her team had run while they hadn’t been in contact.

Yelena had been the one handling Lucky’s walks, but Kate had started going with them at a slower pace once she was finally allowed to leave the cane behind. The outings got longer, partly because she couldn’t exactly run with Lucky to speed things up, but also because Yelena would make her stop and rest, insisting on a different café to try almost every day, even if only for a quick coffee.

They both cooked during the week, but on weekends they would argue over where to go for dinner, and Kate would usually end up letting Yelena choose after she said she just wanted to try something new, and then quietly let her take the better portion of whatever they ordered so she could drown it in sriracha. Yelena, as it turned out, was someone who genuinely loved food. Everything she ate was bathed in hot sauce first, but she was an enthusiastic eater with an appreciation for whatever new flavor she could find.

And on some late nights when neither of them could sleep, Yelena would slip into Kate’s room and bed, as she did on most nights she had tried to stay in her own room, and she would whisper old memories from whatever time she could remember as a kid. The school friends she could still picture, the football team she had been part of and how bad they were at it, the nights when Melina would tell her and Natasha stories before bed, the way Natasha would play with her and cheer her on even when she wasn’t doing well, and all the small memories of what it had felt like to be loved. Kate held every one of those stories carefully, and held Yelena together when the memories became more than she could carry on her own.

By the fourth month of her recovery, she knew something of the cruelest parts of the Red Room. No detailed account had been given to her, but there was a quiet confession in the things Yelena didn’t say out loud, a silent telling of the suffering she had lived through. And Kate’s anger at it was softened only by the knowledge that those responsible were long gone, even if they should have paid longer for what they did.

The fourth month also meant being able to move around with much more ease, and getting to spend a few hours in training since her neck and leg had healed well enough for it. Yelena had offered the training space in the Avengers Tower since the apartment didn’t have the room for it, and Kate had accepted the moment it was offered.

It also meant getting to know Yelena’s team, spending time with them in shared spaces, and coming back with Yelena to the apartment afterward.

By the end of the fourth month, Kate had been cleared by her doctors to train and sit in on briefings and reports for the Young Avengers without taking part in any of the activity, which meant she could finally be present for her team and do her job as their leader properly again.

The same day she received the news she told Yelena, grabbing her arms with excitement and celebrating after all the time she had been waiting for it. She was happy to share it with her, and Yelena had been genuinely excited for her, matching the energy without holding any of it back.

Yelena had even gone out of her way to make a special dinner in celebration, with dessert of Kate’s choice added on top.

Kate liked being appreciated, as much as Yelena did, and the feeling growing quietly inside her could only find more room in the small things Yelena did without being asked.

She knew what it would mean to be fully cleared and returned to normal life. But she was hoping Yelena wouldn’t bring it up for at least a little longer, so Kate could find some indirect way to say that she didn’t want her to go, if she got any say in it at all. And she hoped she did.

Yelena had never felt more at home in her life.

She had a vague memory of what it was like as a child, sweet things stored somewhere in the back of her mind that surfaced once in a while to remind her of what she could have had.

Even if those memories could never be replaced, she knew most of them had never been real. Or at least not the foundation of them.

Everything that had happened in Ohio had been the product of a long mission for the Red Room. The memories were the bright side of it, and essentially the wishes of a small girl who had believed she had a family that was truly her own.

If she was being fair, those memories gave her something and took something at the same time.

What they gave her was knowing what she wanted for her future. She knew she wanted to come home to someone, and to know that the foundation of it was real. That the other person was there because they wanted to be, not because it was their job to be. She wanted to feel the warmth and the love she had once known.

And what made them difficult was that she didn’t know how to find it on her own. How to look for it. Her skills didn’t extend into social territory that reached further than those old, borrowed memories.

In the end, and after many years of not knowing and her own hard won reality, she realized she didn’t have to look very far for it at all.

It had been a quiet surprise to find it in Kate Bishop, and in a home that wasn’t technically hers, and the only reason she had noticed it at all was right after Kate was cleared to go back into training and be part of her team again.

She had been excited about the news. Kate had been waiting for it for a long time, and Yelena couldn’t not be happy about how much it meant to her. She had grabbed Yelena by the arms the second she came out of the appointment, and Yelena had matched her energy without thinking twice.

She knew how fortunate she was to have Kate Bishop in her life. But the only reason she was in her apartment to begin with was that she had been there to help her navigate until she could do things on her own, and Kate had been able to do that for a long time now. At this point she was just staying.

Kate hadn’t said anything about it, and she was sure she wouldn’t, just to avoid getting to an uncomfortable conversation. But Yelena knew she would have to go eventually. If she could do it slowly rather than all at once, she could manage that.

She would start with a few things, take them back to the tower, and gradually get back to where she was supposed to be.

She would have to tell Kate, though. No matter how much she would rather avoid the conversation and stay in what they had without disturbing it, that wasn’t an option either.

The evening after Kate was cleared, it was Yelena’s turn with the dishes after lunch, and she was doing well at ignoring the conversation she needed to have until a better moment in the night, but Kate brought other things up first.

“What do you think we should do in spring?” Kate was on her phone beside her, sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, scrolling quietly. She didn’t let Yelena answer before continuing. “Clint called the other day and asked if we’d want to come to the farm. I told him I’d ask you. I was thinking we could do a road trip there, but I won’t be much help with the driving. Maybe a little if you get too tired, but I’m pretty sure my doctors would prefer to have me tied to the bed.”

Yelena had stopped with the dishes and turned to look at Kate, a frown she couldn’t quite remove settling on her face.

“If you’d like to go, of course. We can make other plans if not.” The last part was said slower, offering a way out if she wanted one.

She didn’t really know what to say.

“Does he want me there?” she asked, only because there was a good chance Kate had been the one to include her, and she wouldn’t be opposed to that if it didn’t mean staying longer than she had already decided she should.

“He’s never been angry at you, ‘Lena.” The answer was sincere, and the soft way Kate said it made something inside Yelena go soft too. “And he would be more than glad to have you there.”

Yelena would love to go, even if it meant facing someone she wasn’t quite ready to face yet, if only for the chance to spend more time with Kate under the pretense of accompanying her.

“What’s wrong?” Of course Kate would notice something was off, and would try to get her talking before she had the chance to close herself off.

Telling the truth instead of lying to the only person she genuinely liked was the only way forward.

“I was just thinking about starting to take some of my things back to the tower.” She finished with the dishes and left them to dry before turning to Kate, who was now looking at her fully.

“Oh.” She set her phone on the counter and turned to face her directly. “Don’t you like staying here?”

There was nothing Yelena loved more than being there with her. All the days and evenings, hearing whatever Kate wanted to share, going on walks together and still being there to help with the small things around the apartment. She wanted nothing more than to keep doing that for as long as she could. She wanted to keep feeling at home.

“Kate Bishop, this is not my place.”

“But what if it is?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, your things are here. And I know you might need to be at the tower since you’re practically the leader of the New Avengers and everything. But wouldn’t you like to still be here?” Kate had stepped down from the stool and was closer now, trying to share what she meant through the simple act of looking at her. “With me?”

“This is your home. I couldn’t intrude.” That was the last thing she wanted. Yelena held her gaze.

“Yelena, you have been welcome here since the first time you somehow got yourself inside while bleeding.” She reached out for Yelena’s hands, a gesture that had long since become natural between them. “I gave you your own space because I wanted you to be comfortable and to have somewhere to go if you ever got tired of spending most of your time with me. But it’s basically been an excuse for you to just stay.”

“I didn’t want to take up too much of your life. I only wanted to help where I could.” She had felt the guilt of everything at first, and helping had been the only way she knew to work through it.

“And I know that, but you have never been an intruder and you have always been more than welcome to live here.” Kate squeezed her hands lightly, a quiet smile on her face. “If it’s something you want, I would love for you to stay. And instead of moving your things out, you can bring everything else here.”

There was a beat of disbelief before Yelena’s heart started moving faster, her whole body feeling like it was slowly coming alive under the blue eyes waiting patiently for an answer. Her breath caught for a moment in her chest, making it hard to respond right away. She had the impulse to look away from Kate’s eyes, and it took real effort to do so. The feeling was stronger than she had expected to handle, if she was going by the way her heart was trying to make itself known over the simple fact that Kate wanted her there. Permanently. Not as a guest or as a favor. Just wanted.

“Have you planned this?” She had to ask, because there was a glint in Kate’s eyes that reminded her of a child hiding something amusing, and the small laugh that came from her next only made it worse. Yelena was fairly sure anyone close enough could hear her heart trying to give itself up entirely.

“My plan is for you to stay,” Kate whispered, amusement still warm in her voice, her hands moving to hold Yelena’s face gently. “Is that okay?”

Yelena didn’t have to think twice.

“Yes. It is.” The excitement was plain in her voice. “More than okay.”

Even if that was all Kate would give her, and even if it was only a fraction of what her heart wanted, she would take it if it came from Kate.

So she closed the small distance between them, slowly enough that Kate could see it coming, and pressed her lips to hers. Kate’s hands stayed where they were against her face, warm and steady, and Yelena felt her smile into it before she kissed her back. It was soft and unhurried, and Yelena let all the things she hadn’t said out loud be carried in it.

When they pulled back it was only by a breath, and Yelena kept her eyes closed for a moment longer than necessary, holding onto it for as long as she could.

“So,” Kate said, waiting a beat for her to open her eyes, and when she did she found blue ones already looking back at her with a warm and glimmering gaze, hands still resting against her face. “Spring with the Bartons?”

Yelena laughed, fully and freely, and Kate laughed with her. And Yelena found herself thinking that this, right here, was exactly what home was supposed to feel like.