Archive of Our Own

Kate pulls back the string of her bow, cold December wind whistling through her hair, as her eyes lock on her target. Her slowed, shock-rattled brain picks the woman apart into qualities: beautiful. Blonde. Dressed to kill, as in literally attempting to kill Clint. 

Soulmate, her brain reminds her. She pushes the thought down. Pulls the string back farther, and braces herself. This is gonna hurt them both. A lot.

The woman whirls as Kate lines up the shot, finally seeing her.

Green eyes meet brown.

Kate’s fingers falter.

____________________________________

Ten Years Ago

The marks had started to come when Kate was six, and at the time, she and her parents had thought it was normal. It was normal—little scrapes and the occasional skinned knee, small bumps from mosquito bites that had been scratched at until they bled. There were a few bad bruises (the one time a ten-year old Natasha had tried to teach Yelena a side kick, to protect her from what was coming next) but nothing out of the ordinary. Eleanor Bishop would look at the golden soulscars decorating Kate’s arms and legs and smile. 

“Whoever your soulmate is,” she’d whisper, “I think he’s an adventurer.”

And Kate would smile too. “You think we’ll go on adventures together?”

“I’d count on it, sweetheart.”

When she’s seven, everything changes. 

Kate wakes up one morning with her neck stiff and sore, the way her arms feel after she gets a flu shot. (Two hours ago and a thousand miles away, the needle slips into Yelena’s neck and she goes limp, Natasha falling moments after her. Alexei Shostacov watches armed soldiers take away the girls he’d claimed as his daughters for years, and then walks away without a backwards glance.) In the days following that, her arms multiply with bruises and her head aches. 

One day, she wakes up with burning red eyes and an equally sore throat. Eleanor Bishop stares at her daughter, promises her everything is fine, and then discreetly googles tear gas exposure symptoms in soulscars on her phone. Together, they carefully rinse Kate’s eyes out with milk until the burning stops. 

Later that night, she sneaks onto her mothers laptop and googles protests around the world, searching for places where police deployed tear gas, for places where her soulmate could be.

Everything is fine by next morning, though, and so she and her mother try to shrug the day off as an outlier.

Except it isn’t. In fact, it’s tame to what comes after. 

Hurt explodes on Kate’s skin nearly every day after that. Bruises, cuts, bleeding knuckles—it’s constant. Her soulmate gets stabbed for the first time when she’s twelve, and strangers in New York watch in horror as Kate screams and crumples to the ground on the Manhattan sidewalk, a hand pressed against her shoulder. (Four thousand miles away in Belarus, Yelena staggers to her feet and surges forward, a hand pressed against the wound to stop the bleeding, the other already using the knife to strike back. Her leg flashes forward into a hook kick to the face, and the girl in front of her crumples. As she falls, Yelena is already there with the knife. Already burying it into the girl’s side.

Covered in blood, she stands up.

Her trainer pauses his stopwatch, and tuts, eyes scraping over her bleeding shoulder. “Sloppy.”)

Kate feels the impact on her foot from her soulmate kicking against something hard, and inhales sharply as something (Yelena’s hand, trying to apply pressure) presses hard against the shoulder wound soulscar. 

Her mother flinches when Kate shows her the mark that afternoon. “Jesus.”

“Maybe she got mugged,” Kate says.

(In the back of her mind, Eleanor notes the use of “she” instead of he. Notes it, and puts it aside for later. Kate will come out properly at fourteen, and Eleanor will smile and pretend the news is a surprise.)

“You think h—she gets mugged every day, sweetheart?” she asks, then regrets it as hurt flashes across her daughter’s face.

“Maybe,” Kate says, helpless. “I—I don’t know.”

(A world away, it is evening in Belarus.)

“I just hope she’s okay,” Kate sniffles. 

(A world away, Yelena Belova crumples to her knees two miles out from the Red Room, in front of her former classmate’s grave. The Red Room doesn’t mark them, but she knows it’s the right one. It’s the only one where the ground hasn’t frozen over yet.)

“She just—” Kate’s voice thickens. “She gets hurt, so so often—”

(“I’m sorry,” Yelena whispers. “I didn’t want to do it, I’m so sorry—”)

Kate buries her face in her mother’s arms, her eyes starting to blur with the familiar burn of unshed tears. Her gaze slips to the window behind them. 

Snow.

(It is snowing in Russia, too. Yelena tilts her head up to the sky and watches as flakes drift down, as the girl she killed is buried under a shroud of white. The forest is silent around her.) 

Eleanor holds her daughter tightly. “She’s going to be okay, sweetheart.”

“How do you know?” Kate sits up and hiccups. Eleanor watches her daughter blink rapidly, before—

(Despite the distance between them, the first tear rolls down Kate and Yelena’s cheeks at the same time.)

Eleanor hugs Kate again as she sobs, trying to think of a good answer.

(Yelena exhales sharply in the cold. “I’m sorry,” she says again, wiping away her tear. She’s repeating herself, but doesn’t know what else to say. She doesn’t even know the girl’s name.)

“How do you know?” Kate demands, almost panicked at the pause.

Eleanor runs a hand through Kate’s hair and says the first answer that comes to mind. “Becuase I’m sure she has people to look out for her. Just like how I’m looking out for you.”

(“Вот вы где.” There you are.

In the dark, Yelena whirls, her brain switching back to Russian.

Behind her is her trainer, flanked by two older Widows. Their eyes bore into her—blank, merciless—and she swallows, hard.

“You didn't have to bring two guards with you to get me,” she replies. 

He shrugs. “You didn’t have to run away.” He nods to the Widows flanking him. “Go.”

They raise their arms, Widow’s Bites powering up, and Yelena is hit by two charges at once, her body thrashing.)

A world away, Kate feels the charge at the same time and starts shaking uncontrollably in her mother’s arms, electricity searing through her. Her mother’s arms wrap around her tighter, Eleanor assuming Kate’s reaction is just due to emotion, and Kate frantically throws them off, stumbling to her room. 

“Kate!” her mother calls, chasing her. “Kate, please—”

“You can’t fix it,” Kate shouts back as she staggers to her bedroom door. “Just—just go.” 

Her fingers barely manage to turn the lock before the pain becomes too much and she passes out.

(In Russia, Yelena holds on for a little longer, body trembling. Her eyes stare at her trainer pleadingly, as he watches her shake in the snow apathetically.

When her body finally goes limp, he nods to the Widows. “Grab her.”)

That night is hell for the both of them. Kate stays in her room, huddled up at the foot of her bed while Yelena is hauled back to the Red Room, hands cuffed behind her back. She is pulled into a training room, an older Widow holding her while her trainer unhooks one of the punching bags used for training off of its chains.

He nods to the Widow and Yelena is dragged forward, her arms hoisted above her head. Her trainer adjusts something in her cuffs and locks them onto the hook, setting her hanging. 

She’s left there for an hour, maybe more—long enough for her muscles to lose all strength as she hangs—and she wonders, gritting her teeth, if this is all the punishment will be. It will hurt—it will hurt badly—but Red Room punishments are usually bloodier. 

Then the door unlocks again and Widows begin to file in. 

They’re all older than her. She can see it immediately in the apathy in their eyes, in the way they don’t even wonder why they’re in the room. They’re soldiers; they’re here because they were told to be. They will follow all future orders until they’re dismissed. 

Her trainer walks to her. For a moment, she imagines she can almost see disappointment in his eyes. 

“My dear, your day began so well today. That strike during sparring, knife between the second and third ribs. Good technique. You remember it. Even if letting her hit you was sloppy.” He smiles at her, nods, before his expression turns cold: “and then you ruined it by going and mourning her. Like a civilian. But you are not a civilian, no?”

Yelena says nothing. Her heart beats frantically in her ears. Her trainer grabs her chin and lifts it, forcing her to look in his eyes.

“Answer.”

“No,” she breathes. She realizes her mistake a moment too late when his hand cracks against her face. “No, sir.”

(On the other side of the world, Kate Bishop has woken up again, and cries out in pain when she feels the slap. She stares at the mirror as the skin of her right cheek reddens, then takes on a golden hue.

Not again, she thinks. They were just hurting, they can’t be again—

She’s still so naive.)

“Civilians are the ones who forget the sir, my dear.” Yelena’s trainer grabs her chin again, fingers hard enough to bruise. “You are not a civilian. You are a soldier. You are a tool of an organization much larger than yourself. You know this.” He extends a finger to the other girls, still standing there, silent. “Do you see them? They are farther along than you, they understand what it means to be a tool.”

He stands back, addressing the other trainees. “Girls. You may surround her.” His eyes slide back to Yelena. “It is better to be a tool than a civilian. Because this is how defenseless a civilian is to a Black Widow assassin.” He gestures to the trainees. “Go.”

Everyone in the Red Room knows exactly what that means.

Yelena is punched in the stomach, the gut, the ribs, the face. They kick her everywhere else, blows landing one after another after another before one girl kicks her in the head and almost knocks her out.

(In her room, Kate is writhing on the floor, fingers clutching the carpet as she gasps for breath. She thinks one of her soulmate’s ribs might be broken. She isn’t sure.)

Her trainer raises a hand as black spots flare in Yelena’s vision. The girls stop, and he approaches her. “Do you see them, my dear? Tools—they do not think, they obey. They complete action without interruption. They do not feel pain. Do you feel pain?”

She is crying again, now. “No, sir.”

“Hmm.” He steps back. “You may hit her harder.”

And they do. They hit her hard enough that her vision blurs for moments, hit her hard enough to actually break a rib, hit her hard enough that Kate passes out again on the carpet and Yelena barely stays conscious herself. 

Her trainer peers at her after they pause for the second time. “What do you feel, my dear?”

Tears stream down her cheeks, silently. “N—nothing, sir.”

“Nothing?” He steps back. “You are a bad liar.”

So they begin again.

And again.

And again.

And still, he is not satisfied with her answer—still, the nothing does not fool him.

Fists crack against her jaw, and knees slam into her stomach. When she gasps for air, two girls punch her windpipe at the same time, driving it from her in a harsh gust. 

Eventually, she blacks out. Comes to, a few minutes later, and they are still hitting her, because they are tools and they have not been told to stop. 

She blacks out again. Comes to, again. Time blurs, and after so many hits to the head, her mind is hazy, unfocused, thoughts flying away before she can understand them or never coming at all. Her body is limp, breathing shallow. 

She blinks, or thinks she does, and suddenly, her trainer is pushing her head back up after it slumps forward again, pulling her by the hair. 

“What do you feel, my dear?”

The stare he receives back is utterly blank. The girl who thinks—the girl inside the tool—is gone.

He smiles. “Good.”

The next morning, Kate Bishop wakes up, still on the carpet, and immediately looks in the mirror to assess the damage. 

Her fingers unlock the door. “Mom?”

Eleanor Bishop scrambles into the room and gasps.

Almost all of Kate’s body is golden.

There are soulscars strewn across the girl’s body: bruises everywhere, little cuts everywhere else. For a moment, Eleanor thanks God that soulscars only show up on the surface, that soulmates only feel the pain in the moment and bear the mark after. They don’t bleed, their bones don’t also break, and the marks can go away if the injury isn’t serious enough when their significant other heals.

Otherwise, Kate would have to go to the hospital.

Or maybe she’d be dead.

“Do you think—was she run over by a car, maybe?” Eleanor stammers.

Kate shakes her head, fingers memorizing the locations of every cut. “People were hitting her. I felt it.”

People did this. 

Her daughter felt people do this.

Eleanor sits gingerly on the bed, digesting this.

“What do I do, Mom?” Kate’s voice is soft and scared. 

Eleanor looks up. “I’ll get you painkillers from the doctor.”

Yelena spends four days in the Red Room’s hospital before she is pronounced healed and sent back to train. (She is not healed, but medicine is expensive so she is as healed as they are willing to let her be.) It’s a miracle she even got into the hospital at all—most girls who get as hurt as she had that day are left to fend for themselves and then die. 

Afterwards, she is expected to thank her trainer for allowing her to heal, and does so, and does not forget to add the sir. She fights when she is told to and eats when she is told to and the psychological conditioning that she and the other Red Room girls are influenced by slowly takes effect. They do not run; they train. They practice stances, they load weapons, they point them, they fire. Time blurs and at some point it stops being practice, at some point she starts being activated to kill different people in the country, and she does not care. It feels the same way, anyway—feels like nothing, because she is a tool, because that’s all she’s capable of feeling by herself. 

(She is like an arrow—a weapon that needs direction and permission to fly free, a weapon only useful when part of a greater instrument, a weapon that is hollow so it can move faster, so it can be used better.)

And so: 

She feels nothing when she kills people.

She feels nothing when targets hit her back, or when they make gurgling noises as they die.

She especially feels nothing when Natasha defects and leaves her behind.

Two months after the defection, when Yelena is fifteen, she is placed in a line among rows of Red Room agents. One by one, they go into a room and get strapped into a little metal chair.

They give her a local anesthetic for pain but don’t bother knocking her out. She isn’t the first person to go in and by now they know what it’s about. Mind control, to stop those who are stupid enough to try to run.

Yelena is not stupid enough to try to run. She learned not to three years ago. 

The room is shiny, and Yelena stares at her reflection apathetically as a small incision is made in the back of her skull, as the needle begins to come down.

The man she thought was her father had brought her to the Red Room.

The woman she thought was her mother had invented the treatment that’s about to control her brain.

The girl she thought was her sister had left her to die. 

There is nothing left to care about and so she does not care. She is a tool, she is a tool, she is a tool—

And then the needle goes in and the mantra goes away and then there is nothing at all.

Something in her cries out at the sensation—not in pain. 

In relief. 

(There has been so much pain that the idea of nothing does not seem bad.)

They were right, she thinks. Fuck, were they were right?

(She will realize the answer later, after she realizes what they made her do while she wasn’t thinking. She will stare at her bloodied hands and think, god, no. 

But later is not now, and right now, she craves oblivion.)

It is the last thought she has for a while.

On Kate’s side, the painkillers help, sort of, but if Kate is honest with herself, she barely takes them. They’re heavy-duty (really, Eleanor is not to be blamed for this—if your daughter’s entire body gets hurt, buying her opioids isn’t exactly an overreaction) and Kate hates how they make her feel—hazy, slow, less in control of herself. Maybe it’s the lingering trauma from the Battle of New York (what she likes to say instead of “the day the Chitauri blasted my home apart and killed my father in the wreckage”), but ever since, she’s been unable to let herself be anything less than hyper-vigilant. Avoiding the pain would cause weakness, and she can’t afford that.

When she starts seriously doing martial arts, it becomes almost useful, though. When opponents swing at her or manage to land a hit, she doesn’t spaz out like white belts do. She’s used to pain coming out of nowhere, and no one she’s paired against hits her anywhere close to the strength people hit her soulmate. She absorbs the blows and keeps going, hitting harder, hitting back.

(It’s after she gets her black belt in taekwondo and her purple belt in jiu-jitsu that she begins to recognize why certain places in her body always have golden bruises—her soulmate fights too. Fights like hell, if the marks on her body are any indication.

She tucks the information away and carries it with her in the back of her mind, always. 

The back of her mind, though. It’s not like they’re going to fight when she meets them.

It’s so ironic that that’s exactly what ends up happening.)

____________________________________

Ten Years Later

“Kate, that light is a silent alarm for people that can’t hear.”

Kate, in her Hawkeye suit, in the middle of helping Clint do his—well his whatever, she wasn’t exactly asking her idol questions—task, freezes in the middle of the very creepy apartment and takes a look around her surroundings again.

 She realizes what Clint’s about to say just before it crackles through the comms: “that’s Maya’s apartment.”

“Oh my god.” Her hand clenches reflexively  around the Rolex she was supposed to steal to help Clint’s friend. Her eyes dart around the room again, taking in details this time: photographs, the brand of coffee Maya drinks, the knives in the sink buried under a pile of dirty dishes.

“Kate.” Clint’s voice is crackling through the comm, sounding more and more urgent. “Kate, get the hell out of there.” And when she doesn’t respond: “Kate? Kate, I’m going in—”

And then something hits him, and he’s swearing over comms. 

In the apartment, Kate freezes. “Clint? Clint, what’s going on?”

And then she doubles over in pain.

Someone just landed a heavy hit on her soulmate’s ribs. 

And as Clint grunts again on her earpiece, as another blow lands in time with the noise—and another just after, although Kate feels the impact only on her arm and assumes the blow was blocked—she realizes.

Her soulmate is on the roof.

Her soulmate is fighting Clint Barton. 

The floor creaks behind her and she barely has time to turn before Maya is there, one fist slamming into Kate’s head. She hears a loud grunt on the other end of the line as she drops to the ground and assumes her soulmate doubled over too and Clint took advantage. 

She’s proven correct a moment later as she feels phantom pressure on her airway. He’s choking her.

“Clint,” she rasps. “Maya’s here.”

“No, I’m in the middle of”—he cries out in pain, and the pressure on Kate’s neck is suddenly gone— “fighting her.” 

Maya lunges at Kate and she barely has time to dodge. “No, she’s definitely here, because—”

“Then who the hell am I fighting?”

He lands another hit on his assailant and Kate stumbles, Maya immediately taking advantage of it to throw Kate over the side of the couch.

“I don’t know,” Kate begins, “but—”

Maya hurls a knife at her, missing her by maybe half an inch, and Kate swears. “A little help here!”

“Gimme a sec.” 

Kate feels more blocked blows, and a second later, an arrow slams into the side of the apartment building wall, a cable attached to it.

A zipline. 

Maya lunges for her again, and Kate jumps on without a second thought, sliding across the gap to Clint’s building—

Yelena’s slower to put it together.

She’s on the roof fighting Clint Barton (Clint Barton, who deserved to rot in hell for what he’d done to Natasha) and suddenly a girl zooms across a zip line that fucking Clint Barton had put up, and slams into her. 

Instinct takes over and she flips the girl into the ground and trains her gun on her. 

It is only when she cocks the barrel that she realizes she can feel pain in her back. The pain of being slammed into concrete, in the exact place where it would hurt. 

Clint motherfucking Barton is already moving, already placing himself between the girl and Yelena’s gun, and while really that’s exactly what Yelena should want—really, she should’ve fired by now—all she can do is stare in shock at the girl still on the ground. 

Soulmate. She has one. Fucking hell.

And of course they’d be friends with absolute trash. 

Such was life. 

She raises the gun again, about to fire at Barton—her soulmate being associated with him meant that she had bad taste, not that Yelena had to play nice—when another variable Yelena hasn’t accounted for zooms across the zipline and kicks her in the head. Leather jacket, metal foot. Who the fuck were all these people?

She and her soulmate fall over at the same time, confirming Yelena’s theory, but the Widow recovers faster and lunges for Barton again. The girl keeps getting in the way and Yelena loses patience, strings a rope to her and drops her off the side of the building. Clint fucking Barton tells her to go, and Yelena assumes that will be that, because where she comes from, agents follow the orders of superiors. 

(Forever after, Yelena will attest that the reason Kate got the jump on her later was because she was expecting Kate to listen. Didn’t know her well enough yet to know that there was no way in hell that would happen.

“I had the shot because I snuck up on you,” Kate will say.

And Yelena will roll her eyes. “No. You had the shot because you are an idiot American.”)

But she whirls, and the girl has that bow (why bows?) drawn, and an arrow pointed directly at her chest.

And their eyes meet. 

Her soulmate looks young and scared, a golden soulscar peeking out of the collar of her suit and guilt seizes Yelena. This girl has felt every cut, every kick, every shot that anyone has ever hit Yelena with. Has experienced them without context or warning or training, has been unable to brace herself. To be honest, Yelena deserves that arrow—the girl is not aiming it right anyway, it will not kill her—except it hitting her will cause her soulmate more pain, which is the last thing Yelena wants to happen.

Her mouth opens and no words come and so she just dumbly shakes her head at the girl. 

Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot. Don’t.

And the girl, bless her, hesitates for the briefest fraction of a second.

Yelena’s eyes go to Barton (fuck Barton) again.

She doesn’t know why, but seeing the girl makes her not want to kill him in front of her. 

She will still do it—she has to, for Natasha, because Val had said that he was the reason her sister is dead. 

But her soulmate will not have to witness it. 

Time snaps back to normal as she decides, unlatching her grappling hook from her belt. Barton the Shitfuck realizes what she’s doing a moment too late and lunges for her, but the hook is already in the ground and Yelena is already leaping over the edge of the building.

She lets herself look at her soulmate’s face one more time as she falls backwards through the air. And decides:

I want to know you. 

Maybe this is why she spends hours researching (stalking) the girl that night online, a girl whose name is Kate Bishop, why she shows up at her house later that night, why she makes macaroni. Her training convinces her that this is a waste of time—she should have already completed the mission—and she’s only able to soothe her conscience by convincing herself that she’s doing this for information-gathering purposes. It is bullshit—utter bullshit—but it works, she goes. 

Kate Bishop is not there butYelena lingers anyway, looking through the girl’s stuff, trying to piece together who Kate is. The space feels weirdly comfortable and in the blink of an eye an hour has passed and the door is opening and the girl is suddenly there. 

And they talk, and Kate Bishop is so scared, and so Yelena treads gently. Hot sauce, sight-seeing in New York, American Christmas. She pretends she doesn’t notice when Kate’s eyes occasionally dart to her lips as the conversation continues and is silently thrilled when Kate eats the food she’s made. 

She does not bring up that they are soulmates. She does not bring up Clint fucking Barton. She does not spoil—as Americans would say—the vibe.

Kate does. 

“Are you here to talk to Clint?”

The statement is ridiculous, considering everything that’s happened just a few hours ago. She’s pointed a gun at Barton’s head, would’ve fired it if Kate hadn’t been there, and here the girl is, asking if Yelena is here to talk. 

Maybe she just wants to think the best of me, Yelena muses. She’s shocked that there’d be any goodwill left, after how many soulscars Kate has had.

(On the other side of the table, Kate stares at Yelena.

Please say yes, she wills. Please give a normal answer. Please be a normal fucking person.)

The absurdity of the question lies between them, lingers, and Yelena feels obliged to give Kate an honest answer. 

“No. No, no, no.” She puts the macaroni down. “I’m here to kill him.”

Kate is struck dumb by the bluntness of the statement. By Yelena saying it so casually (by the fact that the assassin is just as attractive after she says it as before, and that thought is wrong, it’s really wrong, actually—). As if killing people is nothing, is a job like janitor or schoolteacher. 

Maybe it is, for her. Kate looks at her again—that smile, paired with those empty-as-all-hell eyes. It probably is; she probably feels nothing. Maybe she’s one of those psychos who has to kill to feel something—

No. She stops herself. She wouldn’t be destined to love someone like that. Someone like that couldn’t possibly be her soulmate, there has to be more to this woman than a charming smile and an unnerving ability to scare the shit out of Kate. 

She’s proven right moments later. The conversation is heating up, Yelena’s attacking Clint—attacking the idea of the Avengers in general, the people who saved Kate’s life—and it comes out: “when you choose to spend your life trying to help people, there are going to be things you lose. When you face the kind of threats that he has, there’s going to be collateral damage.”

And suddenly, the emptiness in Yelena’s eyes vanishes, and there is so much rage. 

(Rage. And grief.)

“My sister,” Yelena hisses, “is gone because of him.” 

Kate blinks, frantically backtracking. “What? No. No, that is not—”

“She is gone. Because of him.” Yelena’s eyes bore into Kate’s. “Is she collateral damage?”

“No,” Kate insists. “There is no way that is true—”

“How long have you known Clint Barton?”

Kate’s throat bobs. “Bout a week?”

Yelena leans back. “It will not be difficult for me to complete this assignment.” She is eyeing Kate with utter disgust—at being associated with a man that she considers to be such a piece of shit—and it makes Kate want to crawl into the floor and die.

Before her brain catches on something else. “Wait a minute. Someone hired you to kill him?” And when Yelena looks away, at that: “all I’ll say is that, if there’s someone out there who’s telling you that Clint is a bad guy, then maybe you should ask yourself what kind of person hired you. He’s not perfect, nobody’s perfect, but he is good.”

She can tell it’s the wrong thing to say the second it comes out of her mouth, as all the messy emotions in Yelena’s eyes vanish, thoroughly repressed, as if she’s decided that Kate isn’t worthy of seeing them. 

“However he convinced you,” the assassin says, slowly, choosing her words very carefully, “about who he is, or how many people think—or call him—a hero, truth is, it doesn’t matter. We are defined by what we do. Not by nice words. Like it or not, there is no escaping this.” 

Kate looks crushed as she says this, and Yelena wonders at how much she seems to love Barton. How can someone love a man this much after only knowing them for a week? 

But she has upset Kate Bishop, and it is too late to fix the damage. 

So. To the reason why she is here. 

She looks away for a moment, resetting herself—she feels nothing, she is supposed to feel nothing—before she lets her eyes land on Kate again. “So. Where is he?”

Kate’s mouth opens. Closes. 

“I don’t know.”

Yelena chooses to believe her. “Okay.” She stands. “Thank you for the girl’s night. Truly.” 

It was very nice to meet Kate Bishop, she decides. Other than the fact that she idolizes a murderer, Yelena likes her. And it is a forgivable flaw; she herself has many worse ones, she’s sure.

Kate opens her mouth and Yelena can see the apology forming—probably an I’m sorry about Natasha, and she can’t stand those—so she strides to the window without looking at the girl and embeds the grappling hook into Kate Bishop’s very nice carpet.

(She could leave through the door. Easily. But she likes Kate Bishop, and she likes the incredulous look the girl gets when Yelena does something she considers impossible, and she wants to see it again.)

“Oh, and Kate Bishop.” Kate’s eyes snap to hers, and she holds back the urge to smile. “Do not get in my way again.”

She lets herself fall out of the window. 

This time she does not track Kate’s expression on the way down.

Kate watches her fall, mouth open. 

This woman—this gorgeous, terrifying woman, her soulmate—was going to find Clint. And kill him.

We are defined by what we do. Not by nice words. Yelena’s statement is still ringing in her ears. 

Clint is only a hero because he does things, because he protects the people he cares about from other people, people who want to hurt them. 

And suddenly Kate is lunging for the bow and arrow set in the corner, running to the window and yanking the hook out of the wall. She glances out of the window just in time to see Yelena fall the last couple feet—about half a story, they were four up, she’d made it most of the way down—before taking one of Clint’s trick arrows out from her quiver and lining up the shock.

Yelena looks up from the pavement. “Kate Bishop. Why—”

Kate lets the arrow fly. Yelena hurls herself out of the way. “Kate.”

The arrow tip hits concrete. 

And explodes.

Yelena flies backwards, hurled by the explosion into the sidewalk, and Kate hisses as she feels the impact on her own shoulder and hip. She barely has time to recover, though, before Yelena is standing, an arm extended, the device on it powering up—

The Widow’s Bite projectile hits Kate directly on the neck.

Kate’s body contorts in pain, spasming wildly, and she falls out the window, tumbling into the hedges below them. Yelena’s body is trembling with hers, electrocuted simultaneously by the Bite, but she manages to climb to her feet, eyes locking with Kate’s. 

“Kate Bishop,” the assassin pants, “you should really decide whether you want to kill me or not.”

Kate grits her teeth and rips the Bite out of her neck, throwing herself to the side as Yelena lunges—

“I thought you said you were unarmed,” she pants, dodging the kick and stumbling back on the sidewalk.

“I also said I lied.” Yelena’s fist connects with Kate’s face, splitting the girl’s lip, and the assassin swears in Russian as she feels the impact of the blow on her own mouth. 

“What’s that one mean,” Kate breathes, leg snapping out with another kick—

—only for Yelena to grab it, flip her off balance, and send her flying.

Kate gets up again, staggering. “That word.” She lunges, tries to land a punch.

Yelena blocks it easily. Swings back. “Cука?”

Kate ducks. “Yeah.”

“It means—” Kate lands a kick to Yelena’s ribs. “—bitch. Fuck.” 

Kate feels the wind knocked out of her in the same moment and stumbles back, clutching her stomach. “Shit, that really does hurt—”

Yelena takes advantage of the moment immediately, and sweeps her off balance, flipping her into concrete. Kate struggles and Yelena pins her hands over her head, using her bodyweight to crush her into the sidewalk.

“Kate,” the assassin growls. “Stop.”

“Cука—” Kate pants. “Does it mean fuck or bitch? I couldn’t tell.” She thrusts her hips upwards, trying to roll Yelena off of her like they do in BJJ, but the assassin counters effortlessly and slams Kate back down. 

Yelena’s hand tightens on her wrists. “Kate Bishop, you should be more scared right now.”

Their faces are two inches apart at most, and the distance is making Kate stupidly bold. She grins. “I don’t think so. I don’t think you want to hurt me.”

Yelena exhales. “I don’t want to hurt myself. There is a difference."

“What an amazing excuse.”

“You are so annoying.”

“If we’re soulmates, I bet you like it.” 

Yelena stills. Reconsiders the position that the two of them are in as if she’s just noticing now. 

Opens her mouth. Closes it. 

Kate grins. “You have nice eyes.”

Yelena gapes at her—

—and Kate thrusts her hips to the side again, this time successfully throwing Yelena off of her. Quickly, she swings a fist. Yelena barely blocks it.

They stand at the same time, eyeing each other warily.

Yelena glares at her. “Flirting is not fair. You are not fighting fair—”

Kate tackles her and Yelena stumbles backward, back hitting the nearby wall before pushing off of it and slamming Kate into it instead—

The wind is knocked out of Kate again as Yelena leans forward, lips dangerously close to Kate’s ear. “What else do you like about me?” Her voice is low, husky—

—and fully distracts Kate from the knee that slams into her gut a second later.

“Fuck,” Kate groans. “Ow, ow, ow—”

“You see?” Yelena staggers back and slides to the ground,  cradling her own stomach as Kate collapses onto the sidewalk. “You see how flirting is not fair?”

Kate exhales, and forces herself to stand back up. “I play dirty.” 

She smirks at Yelena, who raises a finger. “Kate, no.”

“You wanna go again? It’s in the service of a great cause.”

“Clint Barton is a shit cause.” Yelena’s eyes meet Kate’s, and with effort, she stands, matching the archer. “I am serious, though.” Her tone darkens. “Stop. Getting. In. My way.” 

“Why?”

Something flickers in Yelena’s gaze again. (The emotions, Kate thinks. They’re back.)

“I do not want you to see me kill him,” the assassin says. She turns to walk away.

“Yelena.”

The woman pauses.

Kate smiles. Feels it as the gap in her split lip widens and starts to bleed. “I was serious when I said you have nice eyes.”

The assassin snorts. “You are such a shit, Kate Bishop.” And then, after consideration, for the sake of reciprocity: “But your hair is very nice.”

It’s such a throwaway compliment.

But Kate still stares at her, gaping, until Yelena turns around the corner. 

They fight again. Obviously. Yelena crashes the Bishop Christmas party looking for Clint and Kate chases her down a hallway, into another elevator, down another hallway, and at some point they start hitting each other again. Yelena’s clearly pulling her punches—she has a gun and doesn’t draw it—but a hit is a hit, and hits hurt. 

The problem is, having experienced the exact same amount of pain, their pain tolerances are the same. They recover at almost exactly the same time after each blow. It’s endless, and it hurts, and eventually, Kate’s had enough. 

She throws herself in front of the doorway that Yelena’s trying to walk through. “What are doing? I mean, it’s Christmas Eve—let’s grab a drink, huh?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Something in Kate’s heart lurches. “Really?”

“Yes. After I kill Barton.”

Kate’s eyes widen. “No. No, that’s not what I. Come on that’s not what I meant—”

She cries out as Yelena kicks her directly in the stomach. “Ow. Fuck you, you—cука.”

The assassin snorts. “You do not even know—”

Kate steadies herself, a hand on her stomach. “It means bitch. I looked it up. You are—” she stands up and points, panting, “—a cука.”

Yelena shakes her head. “No. No, that is my thing. I say that.” And she is lunging again: “you have to come up with your own thing.”

She pulls out a baton and swings, only for Kate to knock it out of her hand. It goes into the window behind them, promptly shattering it.

“Ow,” Yelena complains, shaking her wrist. She looks at Kate. “Did that one not hurt as much for you? That one hurt.” And after a pause: “Cука.”

She lunges again, Kate dodging just in time.

“So we’re doing nicknames now?” the archer breathes.

Yelena studies her. “You should stop flirting with me when I am trying to hurt you, Kate Bishop.”

Kate cocks her head. Aims a kick. “Then stop making me like you.”

The assassin grins. “I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”

Kate’s mouth opens. “You see, you’re—you’re flirting back—”

But Yelena’s focus has already shifted behind them, to the open window. To business. To killing Clint.

“Bye,” she says. Her eyes drift to Kate again and she grins. “This was really fun.”

“Yelena, don’t—”

The grappling hook hits the floor.

Yelena jumps out the window.

Kate swears. Every single one of their interactions would have to end this way. Of course. Because nothing could be easy, could it?

She presses a hand to her ear. “Clint, duck, Yelena’s on her way down—”

A moment later, she hears gunshots and Clint swearing over her earpiece. 

His voice cracks through her comm just after: “I’m okay.” A second after that, Kate feels strain in her knees—Yelena must have landed. 

The Tracksuits come rolling up inside trucks, and Kate gets caught up in fighting them with Clint, and her body stops hurting, and so, despite her best efforts she forgets about Yelena. She and Clint get cornered on the ice rink outside Rockefeller Center and start shooting down Tracksuits and the moment they’re done, she sprints away from the rink to search for her mom.

Her mother, who works for Kingpin.

She still hasn’t come to terms with that.

(She doesn’t notice a blonde woman carefully watching her from the sidelines.

She’ll wish she did.)

From the lobby of a nearby building, Yelena waits until Kate Bishop runs away from Clint. The girl’s head is scanning the buildings almost desperately, and something in Yelena calls out to her, urges the assassin to help Kate Bishop with whatever she needs.

Instead, she cocks her gun and heads to the rink. She has a job. Has a sister to avenge.

She doesn’t know if Kate Bishop will forgive her for this. 

But she has known Natasha longer, and family must come first.

Across the street, Kate sees her mother being escorted into a car. Sees a man in a white suit—Fisk—walk up to the car and kill her mom’s escort, rip the car door off.

He starts to say something to Eleanor, but by then Kate has already run to the car, already drawn her bow.

“Step away from my mother,” she orders.

(At the rink, Yelena’s eyes lock on Barton. He is standing on the staircase, taunting a man on the other side of the ice. She leaps, tackling him onto the rink and rises as he groans, clutching his leg.

“You’re pathetic,” she hisses. “You’re so pathetic.” And her leg rises to kick—)

Kate lets the arrow fly into Fisk’s shoulder.

(They make contact at the same time.)

Kingpin snaps it in half, rushes forward—

And the car her mother was in crashes into him.

Kate gapes as he’s thrown into a nearby store, then looks at the driver’s seat. Her mother smiles weakly at her, sagging against the car door.

 I’m sorry, she mouths, and promptly passes out.

Kate stares. Her mom clearly has a concussion, maybe worse. 

And that’s when Kate feels pressure at her neck again. Not her pain. Yelena’s.

She’d felt it before moments ago, pain on her leg and hip like Yelena had crashed into something, but had ignored it because it didn’t hurt that much and could’ve been from anything.

But this? This was from a fight.

Which meant that Yelena had gone for Clint again. 

 Kate freezes as more pain ripples across her body—blocked blows and counterhits, and from the pace of it, the two of them are fighting hard—and as she does, Kingpin rises in front of her.

She has a choice here.

Her mother is unconscious, and Kingpin might kill her.

Clint isn’t, but he was wounded, and Yelena has a gun and a vendetta and a hell of a lot more training.

But Kate knows her. Likes her—likes her a lot—despite trying not to.

I wouldn’t be actively falling for a cold-blooded psycho, she thinks. I have issues, but they’re not that bad. I wouldn’t.

If she gives him a shot to explain, he’ll do it, and he’ll do a good fucking job, and she’ll listen.

She’ll spare him.

(That last statement is more prayer than fact, but Kate thinks it with as much confidence as she can. It’s a plea to the universe that no one will hear, an order to Yelena that she’d never dare give.

Spare him. Please spare him.)

She readies her bow and charges after Fisk. 

Wins. 

Barely.

She staggers back outside—she’s hurt, but not badly, he threw her around but into, like, soft stuff—and helps her mom out of the car. Eleanor Bishop babbles frantic apologies, justifications, and promises for her behavior, desperately trying to prove its necessity.

“Some has to take responsibility,” she begins—

Kate just hugs her. Tightly. Doesn’t let go.

Her mother doesn’t understand why until the police pull up behind them. Until the officer steps out:

“Ms. Bishop, you are under arrest for the murder of Armand Ducant the Third.”

A murder that Kate’s mom did, actually, commit.

Another thing Kate hasn’t processed.

Eleanor stares at Kate in horror. 

“You’re right,” Kate says, stepping away. “Someone has to.”

Eleanor’s hands are cuffed behind her back and she stares at Kate as she’s pulled away. “Is this what heroes do? Arrest their mothers on Christmas?”

“I’m sorry,” Kate breathes. Her eyes water, and she blinks, frantically. “I love you, mom.”

She watches as the officers drag her mother away. Walks back to the rink.

Clint is standing in the middle of it. Banged up, but alive. Yelena is nowhere in sight.

The archer turns. Sees Kate and gives her a weak smile and two thumbs-up. 

Kate finds herself smiling back, her split lip twinging at the movement.

In the back of her mind, she hopes Yelena notices the pain, and realizes that Kate is smiling because of her.

(Far away in an alleyway, Yelena stops short and puts a hand to her mouth and frowns. 

She doesn’t connect the dots. 

But she does think of Kate. 

And after she thinks of Kate, she smiles, too.)

____________________________________

Later that Night

When Kate Bishop finally walks into her apartment, Yelena flicks on the light switch. 

Kate immediately turns, surprise coloring her expression. Yelena waits for a quip or joke, but the archers says nothing, only waits.

Silence is new for them.

Yelena cocks her head and breaks it: “You are not going to throw the bottle of hot sauce again, Kate Bishop?”

Kate cracks a smile. “You could go through the door like a normal person.”

“I did. I picked your lock this time.” She stands. “It is a very bad lock. You should get a better one.”

“Yelena—” Kate begins.

“Maybe two locks.”

“Yelena—”

“You were right about Barton.”

Kate stills. Opens her mouth, closes it again.

“I’m really sorry,” she finally says.

Yelena steps closer. “It is still Christmas, Kate Bishop.” She lets herself smile again, pretends it doesn’t hurt. “Do you want to get that drink?”

They never make it to a bar. It’s early in the morning by now, and all the good places that aren’t clubs are either closed or at last call. Kate takes Yelena to the nearest 24-hr liquor store, and they buy a bottle of vodka instead, cracking it open on the way back to the apartment and passing it back and forth.

The conversation is slow at first, but neither of them love awkward silences, and so they trade anecdotes and questions between them until they’re actually talking. 

Kate unlocks the door to her house— “wow, this is the first time you’ve actually been inside legally, aren’t you excited,” she says to Yelena, who snorts—and they end up lying on her kitchen floor. Wind blows in through the still-not-repaired window above them, and the blare of traffic is continual. 

It’s shockingly nice.

An hour later, Kate is midway through telling Yelena about the time she accidentally destroyed a clocktower, but Yelena’s barely listening. Instead, her focus is on Kate’s hair ruffles in the wind, the lights from distant skyscrapers outlining it like a halo. Before Yelena can stop herself, her hand is already reaching out, tucking a stray strand behind the girl’s ear. 

Kate’s eyes turn to hers, questioningly and Yelena’s hand freezes in place. 

She retracts it. “I’m sorry.”

Kate’s eyebrows furrow, and Yelena sees something in the girl’s expression shift. “Yelena, I’m going to do something, and if you don’t want me to do it, just stop me.”

Yelena’s eyes narrow. “Kate, what—”

And then suddenly, Kate’s lips are on hers. 

Not hard. Not demanding. Nothing like that—Kate kisses her like she’s fragile, like she’s afraid to break something, and Yelena almost wants to tell her how funny that is, because they both know exactly how much pain they’re each capable of handling.

And then Kate is gone, and they’re staring at each other, both unsure of what to do.

Out of nowhere, Yelena hears her trainer’s voice in her head. Tools feel nothing. Do you understand that? Do you understand what you are?

(She has killed everyone who has tried to make her a tool.

And she is so, so tired of feeling nothing.) 

Her hand reaches out and cups Kate’s chin. Brushes a thumb against her cheek.

Kate looks at her, questioningly. “Yelena—”

And that’s all she has time to get out before Yelena is kissing her back. Not soft. Hungry, harsh, biting. For a split second, Yelena wonders if she’s doing it wrong when she feels the echo of pain in her own lip, but before she can finish the thought Kate’s hand is fisting in hair and pulling and Kate’s mouth is opening to hers and Yelena stops thinking entirely.

(This is not like the oblivion she experienced when she was fifteen.

This is the good kind.)

They come up for air a few minutes later. Kate exhales softly, hair now spread out against the wooden floorboards of her apartment. “Now I’m really glad I didn’t shoot you.”

Yelena rolls off her. “You are still funny, Kate Bishop.” She grabs the vodka and takes a swig. Her eyes go to Kate, roaming across her body, before they spot a few of the golden soulscars that peek out from under Kate’s shirt. Her smile fades, and she raises the bottle again. “To your good health.” She drinks again, this time deeply. 

Kate raises an eyebrow, following Yelena’s gaze to the soulscars—scars Yelena also has. She extends a hand for the bottle. “To your good health.” 

She tips the bottle back, matching Yelena’s sip, and is barely able to hide her grimace. She doesn’t drink as much, and when she does, it’s usually not straight vodka. Something changes in Yelena’s expression, and Kate wonders if the burn she feels in her throat counts as pain, if Yelena can feel it with her. 

“I am sorry you have those,” Yelena says. Her eyes are still pinned to the scars on Kate’s collarbone. 

Kate shrugs off her jacket, suddenly feeling warm. “It’s fine. Makes for good stories.” Unfortunately, her coat has flattened the collar of the dress shirt she’s wearing underneath, and because of the way she wears it—two buttons undone, because who buttons a collared shirt all the way up? Sadists—her collarbone, part of her neck, and half her shoulder are all visible, and the soulscars they carry are on full display. Cuts from knives, little burn marks, a gunshot wound in the shoulder.

Yelena’s eyes notice every mark. She cocks her head, eyes flicking from Kate’s scarred shoulder to her eyes and back. “Stories?”

“I tell people you’re a cage wrestler. Safari guide. Professional bull-fighter.” Kate smiles. “Depends on my mood.”

“I hope I win against the bull in your stories.”

“One bull?” Kate snorts. “Please. Three.”

“Wow, your soulmate sounds like such a badass, Kate Bishop.”

“She is.” Kate drinks from the bottle again. “And she can drink me under the table, too.”

Yelena laughs again, before it fades. She takes the bottle, drinks, hands it back, before her free hand traces over the marks on Kate’s neck and collarbone and shoulders. Kate watches as Yelena’s mouth moves, silently counting out how many there are, tracing them, then trying to trace back to how they were obtained.

“In the Red Room—in training,” she finally says, “we weren’t supposed to hit the faces or neck in a way that could scar.” Her fingers pause before they hit the gunshot wound. “You know. Security cameras, police. Face scars can be distinctive, they can catch people like that.” Her finger taps the gunshot wound. “So. You do not have this because of my training, you have this because I decided to do contract work after I was freed and got sloppy.”

Kate stares at her. Drinks from the bottle, processing.

“I am sorry,” Yelena says again. 

Kate shrugs. “We’re both still here, aren’t we?”

“Kate, I am trying to apologize—”

“You have nothing to apologize for.” For a moment, Yelena is caught off guard by how vehement Kate’s tone is. “Not to me. I’m here, I’m alive, I’m literally fine. You’re good.”

Yelena studies her as Kate drinks from the bottle again. 

Kate Bishop is not fine.

She has killed people today, maybe for the first time, and called the police on her own mother (a mother who hired her soulmate to kill her idol), but she is here, and she is making jokes while they sit in her trashed apartment, and she is smiling. And when she thinks of something that makes her think of her mother, of sad things, she is drinking to make them go away.

They are alike in that way, Yelena thinks. Everything will be fine and a joke until it absolutely cannot be. Why cry when you can take a shot to numb it and then laugh?

(Why process when the world offers so many beautiful distractions?)

But nothing is bad yet. They’re still in joke territory, have-fun territory. 

So she smiles. Drinks. “It must be so fun to have so many stories about matador soulmates.”

“Oh you have no idea.”

“Did you do research? To know what cuts to talk about?”

“I might’ve googled a few things.”

“You are such a nerd.”

“Well I had to know if being gored like a bull hurt as much as being stabbed, didn’t I?”

And this time, Yelena doesn’t apologize for the scars again. Instead, she cocks her head. “It hurt, did it?”

Kate eyes her, unsure of where this is heading. “Little bit, yeah.” She takes another swig from the bottle. 

“Does it still?” 

Kate raises an eyebrow, mid drink.

Yelena catches the bottles as it comes down and removes it from the archer’s hand. “Does it still hurt, Kate Bishop? Do you want me to kiss it and make it better?”

Kate almost chokes as her mouth promptly forgets how to swallow vodka. 

“That was terrible,” she says, coughing, trying desperately to recover.

“I am better at killing people than flirting. You will have to deal with it.” Yelena considers her. “And you are flustered. So I win.”

“You do not win.”

“You are blushing, Kate Bishop.” Yelena is leaning closer. “I win.”

“You do not—”

Yelena kisses her again. The fight to control the kiss lasts for only a second before Kate gives in.

“I said, I win,” Yelena breathes, pulling away. 

Using amazing self-control, Kate summons her remaining wit and smirks. “Congrats. Didn’t you want to make me feel better?”

Yelena laughs and kisses her again, deeply. Kate grabs the back of Yelena’s jacket when her soulmate’s focus moves down to her neck, mouth tracing over every soulscar that runs across it.

For the first time, Kate’s glad that there are so many.

Yelena kisses the stab mark on Kate’s shoulder—twin to the gunshot on the other side—and looks up for a moment, eyes gleaming.

“Merry Christmas, Kate Bishop,” she breathes, fingers unbuttoning Kate’s dress shirt.

Kate grins, knowing Yelena will understand this time as her split lip twinges at the movement, and brings the assassin’s mouth to hers. 

“Merry Christmas, Yelena Belova.”

Their lips meet.