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Natasha rolled onto her back, staring up at the sky. Too bright. It swirled around in a blurry blue-and-white mess, like the blueberry-vanilla twist flavour that Mom always got at the ice cream store. Natasha blinked a few times. It didn't stop spinning, but a peach-coloured blob came into view on her left, making high noises that stabbed right into her ears. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to breathe normally as her head throbbed painfully in time with her pulse. Her mouth was sour like metal and rust.
"—asha! Natasha!" A shrill and frantic voice tore its way through the cotton muffling her brain. She grit her teeth, trying to force away the pain. "Natasha, please!"
Scared. She's scared. That wasn't right. Natasha was meant to keep her safe. She wasn't supposed to be scared. Natasha couldn't let her be scared—she tried to fumble upright, raw palms against the pavement, but dizziness hit her like a brick. "Y'lena?"
Her tongue felt too big for her mouth, mushing her words around until they didn't make any sense at all. Yelena, she thought, and blinked away the tears and dizziness, trying to get her brain to function through sheer force of will.
It was working. Kind of. She remembered why she was lying on the road, at least.
Because they'd been running down the big hill, just like Davey on the corner always did. He'd told Yelena at school that it felt like flying, so she'd insisted on trying it too. (And Natasha knew that he was lying, now, after trying it for herself. It didn't feel like flying. Natasha felt more like she'd been hit by a car.)
Still with her back against the pavement, still with her eyes shut against the swirling sky, she wiggled her arms and legs. Nothing seemed broken, at least, which was good because breaking bones hurt. This hurt too, but not as bad as she'd been hurt then, in the before-Ohio time. Stop thinking about that.
Her head still throbbed unpleasantly, and she couldn't breathe through her nose, and her hands and knees had definitely lost at least a whole layer of skin. She was okay, though. She was in Ohio. She was… with…
"Are you okay?" Asked Yelena, who was here and scared. That thought, now matched with a slightly tear-blurred face, finally made Natasha haul herself into a seated position. Because her baby sister shouldn't have to cry. She shouldn't make her baby sister cry.
"Mmh," she said, rubbing the back of her hand over her face. It felt wet. "I'm fine," she said, because now that she was no longer reeling from the shock, she could tuck all the pain away where it belonged. (Ohio made you weak, that familiar voice said, sending her stomach rolling.)
Natasha looked to the side, at the girl who was crouching nervously at her side, blonde hair all over the place, little nervous crease in her forehead. At her little sister. She gave her a reassuring smile.
Yelena shrieked.
Shrieked and lurched back from where she'd been crouched, falling into a clumsy crabwalk and scrambling further back. Natasha startled, whipped her head around frantically to see whatever it was that Yelena was so scared of.
She's scared of you, Natasha realised with a sort of confused horror. And that hurt like her head and her hands and her knees, just on the inside this time. She swallowed roughly, bitter-sour-thick. Her stomach swooped, like she was going to throw up. "Yelena?" She asked, voice wavering slightly.
"Your mouth is all red," sniffled Yelena, staring with those wide blue eyes, snot dribbling down to her lips. Natasha was pretty sure she was all snotty too, because her face felt wet. Wet and—
Red? Natasha brought a hand up to her chin, drew it back—it came away sticky-scarlet. Oh. The foggy head-pain had mostly abated, and with it returned her mental clarity. It was the blood—it had been the blood that scared Yelena, not Natasha herself. She wasn't what made her little sister scramble back like that. Yelena was just… scared of blood.
She should have guessed that, honestly. Yelena was scared of monsters under the bed, and the sound of the furniture creaking at night, and the crocodile from the Peter Pan movie, and just all sorts of silly things. Mom said that was normal because Yelena was a little kid, but Natasha was pretty sure that when she was a little kid she wasn't scared of all those things. She definitely hadn't been scared of blood.
"It's okay," she said, using her shirt to rub at her face. "See? I'b fide." With her nose pinched to staunch the bleeding, her voice sounded like she had a really bad cold. Yelena did the same, even though she didn't have a nosebleed.
"We soud fuddy!" She giggled, tears suddenly forgotten. That was one of the many reasons Yelena was great. When she was upset, you just had to make her laugh and then she was fine. Not like Natasha. When Natasha was sad, it would cover her all day like a cold grey blanket.
Suddenly, "Are you okay?" she asked Yelena. Because the two of them had been running together—had Yelena fallen too? She'd been so worried about her own dumb headache-maybe-concussion and nosebleed to think of her little sister, who she was meant to protect. With a new burst of nervousness, she looked over Yelena's smooth little-kid skin, which seemed relatively unharmed. A bit bruised up, but just old ones from trying to play tag in the dark and tripping over toy ponies. Natasha let the breath she'd been holding puff out in relief.
"Yeah," said Yelena, indignant in that kindergarten-way at the fact that Natasha would dare to imply that anything could have happened to her. She stuck her hands on her hips. "I'm really strong!"
"Yep," Natasha smiled, taking Yelena's small hand and starting back up the big hill, a lot more carefully this time. "You really are."