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Yelena is annoyed with Walker.
Despite knowing him for less than a day, this is not a new feeling.
She has been in a state of annoyance toward him for approximately ninety percent of the time since meeting him, with the remaining ten percent being occupied by moments when she is too busy being shot at and nearly stabbed by him to remember that she is annoyed. He has the arrogant bravado of a man who believes he should be the leader, coupled with the infuriating tendency to charge forward with his own plans as though everyone else should simply fall into formation behind him.
But.
She can admit to herself that his way did get them all up.
Even if he had also nearly let them all fall when he grabbed her baton.
That part she is not forgetting about.
The sudden freefall could have ended with the rest of them becoming very unpleasant stains at the bottom of the shaft if Yelena had not managed to catch Ava after she drove her sword into the wall, then pivoted backward to send her wire after Bob. So, yes, Yelena is considerably more annoyed than grateful. Still, she has to give Walker this much: he had not abandoned them. He could have. He had reached the top already. He had no reason to not escape on his own from there, but he hadn’t. He’d stayed to throw down the hose, so the rest of them could join him at the top too.
So, it seems like their temporary alliance continues.
Yelena glances toward Ava and Bob, who have both regained their bearings now that they are standing on solid ground, but they are not out of trouble yet. She’s sure that Valentina has worked out by now that the incineration attempt failed, and Yelena has no doubt she will try something else to get rid of them. They have already spent hours climbing what must have been at least a mile up that shaft, and they cannot afford to waste any more time standing around. Every second they spend lingering here gives Valentina more time to work out her next measure to send after them.
They need to run, and quickly.
But Walker has not joined them.
He is still standing at the edge of the elevator shaft, exactly where he pulled himself and the others up. He has not moved an inch. His back is to them, his posture rigid, his head angled toward the darkness below, and there is something unnervingly still about him. He is not checking their surroundings or preparing to move. He is simply staring down into the shaft as though he is waiting for something. Or someone.
Except there is no one else down there.
“Walker,” she calls.
He doesn’t react.
Her eyebrows draw together. “...Walker?”
What the hell is he doing?
Yelena shoots a glance at Ava.
Ava sends a questioning look back at her.
Bob looks between them, equally confused.
She decides to approach Walker, and though the metal floor gives a faint groan beneath her boots, Walker remains motionless where he stands.
“Uh, hello?” she tries again. “Earth to Walker.”
Yelena takes another step forward.
Walker does the same.
At once, her heart is seized with panic.
She is moving on instinct.
Lunging forward to close the distance.
Shooting her wire just as his body drops off the edge.
It catches around his leg.
He falls.
The wire goes taut.
The force yanks her forward so violently that her boots leave the floor.
“Shit!”
Her stomach drops as the edge rushes toward her, and her shoulder slams into the wall beside the elevator shaft. Pain explodes through her arm, but she pushes it aside, grabbing for the wall with her free hand. Her fingers slip against the metal before finding purchase, and she clings to it as the wire strains against Walker’s weight. For one terrifying moment, she thinks she is going to plummet after him, straight into the darkness beneath them.
Then, arms wrap around her, hauling her back.
Ava, she registers, as another pair of hands grab on too.
“Got you!” Bob says.
Below them—
SLAM.
Walker hits the wall of the elevator shaft.
The sound echoes up as they catch their breath.
Слава богу.
Yelena caught him in time.
She hadn’t let him fall and die.
Walker makes a distant, pained groan. “Jesus…”
Yelena closes her eyes for a moment.
She tries not to think about how badly her heart had lurched at the sight of him stepping off the edge. How much fear had surged through her in that moment. How suddenly panic had shot through her at the idea that she might have missed the catch. She tries not to think about a cliffside on a faraway planet, or about what Clint Barton had told her about her sister when they’d fought over a sacrifice.
How Natasha had told him to let go.
How he had watched her fall down, down, down.
How she’d died there.
Left behind.
Even that secondhand account of what happened had chased its way into Yelena’s nightmares, and now she feels like she is living one, with Walker’s fall tangled impossibly together with Natasha’s, the elevator shaft becoming a cliff and the darkness below becoming the void that swallowed her sister.
She lets out a breath, steadying herself.
Of course, Walker is not Natasha.
They tried to kill each other, mere hours ago.
They do not know each other.
He is not family.
But they escaped the incinerator together.
For better or worse, they are bound to each other until they get out.
Ava and Bob help her draw the wire in, until Walker is finally within arm’s reach, and she’s able to grab hold of him. She hauls him up, dragging him over the edge and onto his feet, before crouching to disentangle the wire from his leg. Once the wire is free, she straightens and steps between Walker and the elevator shaft, putting her own body in the way as though that alone can make certain he will not try it again.
Her throat is tight.
She refuses to examine why.
Yelena does not want to think about it.
Instead, she turns that tangled knot of panic and fear and grief into something simpler, more straightforward, something she knows how to handle well.
Anger.
Yelena steps up and pokes Walker hard in the chest.
“Why did you do that?” she demands.
Walker counters, “Why do you care?”
His voice is sharp, defensive, but there’d been a flicker of emptiness in his eyes before the words had come. It vanishes almost immediately, buried as quickly as it had appeared, but Yelena had seen it. She had recognized it. That familiar exhaustion. That terrible distance. It is like looking into a mirror, and she hates it. She hates him. She hates herself.
Why do you care?
Why should anyone care?
Why does it matter if she’s gone?
Yelena wonders if Walker knows what it’s like to be alone.
Down in the vault, he’d told them all about his wife and son. That he had a perfect, alive family waiting somewhere for him, people he could return to when his mission was over, but Yelena would go home to no one, again and again, until one of her missions killed her. But now, she has the creeping suspicion that what he’d told them down there was a lie.
She wonders if he drinks too. If he drinks too much. If he also hears the insidious whisper in the back of his mind that does not necessarily sound like I want to die, but asks: What if you stopped fighting? What if you let go? If he sits somewhere in the dark with a bottle in his hand and waits for his thoughts to become quiet. If he has ever wished for the silence to become permanent.
He must, Yelena thinks, to step into the fall like that.
She does not think about how easily it could have been her.
Would anyone have cared to catch her if it had been her?
Walker breaks through her musings. “We getting out of here or what?”
It’s a blatant deflection, with an attempted casualness that makes it anything but. He looks away almost immediately, his attention fixed on anything except her as he composes himself, rebuilding the defenses that had slipped enough for him to seek the darkness. It is almost impressive how quickly he does it. Almost. His eyes flick back to hers for the briefest moment, awaiting her response, and she has the uncomfortable feeling that he sees her too.
What Yelena has recognized in him, Walker has recognized in her.
He looks away without a word.
Yelena lets him.
She has no desire to be the one to drag it into the open. She has no desire to explain why she had been staring at him, or why she had cared enough to stop him, or why his emptiness had felt so painfully familiar. Some things are better left buried. Some wounds become dangerous when they are picked at.
So, Yelena pushes it deep, deep down.
She lets herself return to the mission. Only the mission. The escape. Valentina. She can be useful. She can be dangerous. She can keep moving. She does not have to be Yelena Belova. She does not have to be Natasha’s little sister. She does not have to be someone existing in aching loneliness. She empties herself into nothing, and it is for the best.
She cannot hurt when she is no one at all.
“Not without a plan,” she tells him.
Walker gives a small nod.
The moment passes.