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It was nearly nine when Natasha made her way to the dining room, a faint smile on her face. Most of the team was there, eating breakfast. Tony looked hungover, Steve was reading a newspaper, Thor was shotgunning pop-tarts, and Clint was playing a video game on his phone. All was right in the world.
Natasha maneuvered around them, making her way to the kitchen cabinets. She had a few caches of weapons stored around the tower, but her favorite was up here. She’d need it.
“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty,” Tony said.
“Are you alright?” Steve asked, looking up. “It’s not like you to sleep in late.” Steve and Natasha were the early risers of the group, usually waking up around five in the morning.
“Fine,” Natasha said. “I was resting up for a big day.”
“Plans?” Clint asked, looking up from his game long enough for some pixelated beast to die. She could see the concern in his eyes. Misplaced, really. He knew she could handle herself.
“Yelena’s coming to town,” Nat said.
Instantly, he relaxed. “Oh, good, I thought it was something serious,” Clint said, returning to his game. “I’ll leave the usual in the cabinets tonight.”
“Sorry, what’s happening?” Tony said.
Nat fished a glock out of the cereal cabinet. “My sister’s in town, so I’m going to try to kill her.”
Tony blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Ah, an excellent pursuit,” Thor declared. “Who better to do battle with than your own kin?”
Steve glanced around, like he was trying to gauge whether or not this was normal for the 21st century. When he decided it wasn’t, he said, “And if she tries to kill you?”
“If I die because of Yelena, clearly I deserve to be dead,” Nat said.
Steve looked around, lost. “Clint?”
“It’s fine,” Clint said.
“I don’t think attempted sororicide is fine,” Tony said. He looked uncharacteristically confused. “Why–”
“Don’t ask me,” Clint interrupted, not looking up from his game. “I’ve been trying to solve that puzzle for ages. I’ve got nothing.”
“Don’t you have a brother?” Steve asked cautiously.
“Bernard,” Natasha said. She weighed the ammo clip in her hands. “Barney. He’s an asshole.”
“We don’t try to kill each other,” Clint assured Steve. “I haven’t even been on the same continent as him in a decade.”
Steve looked between Clint and Natasha. “Then what’s going on?”
Natasha shrugged. “It’s a sister thing.”
—+—
Natasha met Yelena on a rooftop in Queens. She was tempted to text her to meet her in Hell’s Kitchen, if only to mess with Matt. But no, dealing with Daredevil wasn’t worth it. This was a night all about her sister.
“Hello, sister,” Natasha said. She felt a rush just saying the words. Oh, the pleasure of speaking Russian again.
It had been nearly six months since she’d last seen her, but Yelena looked remarkably unchanged. Her blond hair was tied up carefully into braids. The last time they’d fought, Natasha had managed to grab one of her braids and slam her head into a wall. Clearly, she’d learned.
“Good evening,” Yelena said pleasantly. That was all the warning Natasha got before she charged.
Natasha felt, as she always felt when fighting Yelena, like her soul was aflame. She didn’t believe she had a soul except when she was fighting her sister.
In the Red Room, they’d been separated, except for the few occasions they were forced to fight. Their time in Ohio had bonded them together, formed an individual connection between them. The one thing the Red Room hated was individuality. And so, every so often, they’d be brought into a room and forced to harm each other. Natasha would break Yelena’s bones, Yelena would scar Natasha’s skin, and whatever sisterly love they had would be destroyed.
It hadn’t entirely worked out that way. Love was complicated. Too complicated for Natasha’s tastes. It was a stubborn force that stuck with them, even after they escaped. Still, the fighting had broken something in them. They couldn’t bond like normal people. Violence was their expression of love.
Natasha didn’t mind. Normal was overrated, anyway.
The fight was as brutal as always. Natasha didn’t even get a chance to use her gun before Yelena kicked it out of her hand. Neither of them held back, punching and kicking, stabbing and biting. They were silent during the fight, except to comment on each others’ technique.
“You’ve gotten sloppy, sister.”
“An impressive technique.”
“Have the Avengers made you weak?”
“Excellent form!”
After a half hour of this, Natasha’s hair was matted with blood, and she had a knife in her thigh. Yelena wasn’t much better off, though her injuries seemed more internal. Natasha knew from her stance that she had at least two broken ribs.
The sisters fell apart, then circled each other, eyeing each other like prey. Natasha could see the pleasure on her sister’s face. Yelena had never been good at hiding her emotions. It was part of the reason the Red Room had separated them. While Natasha was trained to seduce targets and mine them for information, Yelena was trained to take them out at a distance.
Natasha sometimes wondered if it was better or worse that Yelena had gone through a different torture to her. She didn’t like to think about it for too long.
They crashed together again, writhing until they were both on their back, panting. A dull ache spread through Natasha’s body.
“I missed fighting someone,” Yelena said. “All my targets, they’re just politicians. Easy. You just slip something in their drink and they’re out, or you snap their neck and drop them down the stairs.”
“Boring,” Natasha said. She sat up. “What’s new with you?”
That was how it went. Fight, then talk. The lingering adrenaline made it easier to open up.
Yelena told her about her life. She’d been in Madripoor for a week, Thailand the month before. Her job as a mercenary/assassin/hired muscle/whatever she wanted took her to a thousand places. She spent ten minutes describing the arches in Paris.
“Fascinating,” Natasha said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. She didn’t care much about architecture, aside from where was the best place to position a sniper.
Yelena smiled. “And you?”
“Nothing much,” Natasha said. “A few missions.”
“I saw you on the cover of a magazine.”
Natasha barely suppressed a cringe. It was true, she’d done an interview for some girl’s magazine. She hadn’t wanted to do it, but she was the only woman on the Avengers, and Pepper thought it’d be a good idea for her to deliver some uplifting message to the young women of the world. The whole experience had been horrible.
“‘Natasha Romanoff on being a role model for young girls,’” Yelena recited, quoting the headline. “I liked your hair in it. Curls suit you.”
“Thanks,” Natasha said flatly. She brushed some hair behind her ear. “I hate this.”
“I don’t think you like a lot of things.”
“It was one thing when Clint thought I was a good person,” Natasha said. Clint’s strange insistence on her goodness was confusing. She’d saved his life once, and he’d been convinced she was somehow some amazing, upstanding individual ever since. But the truth was, she hadn’t meant to save his life. It had been an accident, a byproduct of a mission with a completely different target. Afterwards, he followed her around like a lost puppy. It had felt strangely good to have someone tell her how good of a person she was, even if she never believed him.
Natasha shifted, adding, “He’s an idiot.”
Yelena nodded. “Obviously.”
“But now they all think I’m a good person.” She turned her gaze towards Avengers Tower, the letters shining against the night sky. “Not just them. Everyone. I got asked for an autograph last week. No one is afraid of me.”
“It’s not good for an assassin to have eyes on them,” Yelena said.
“But I’m not an assassin anymore,” said Natasha. She hadn’t realized until the words were leaving her mouth. Yelena stared at her, and Natasha burned bright red, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m a superhero,” she said.
“Do you believe that?”
“No,” Natasha admitted. “But when everyone believes you are something, then doesn’t that make you something?”
Yelena was silent for a moment. “I think I prefer punching you to discussing philosophy.”
“‘Lena,” Nat said. She hadn’t called her that since she was tiny. The name felt strange in her mouth.
“We aren’t heroes,” Yelena said. “I know that. You might not be an assassin anymore, but that doesn’t mean you can be this childish.”
“I’m not being childish.”
Yelena fell silent again. It didn’t suit her. Natasha remembered the bubbly, happy child she’d been. Always talking, always commenting, always asking questions.
“I wish I could kill them again,” she said. She didn’t need to specify who she was talking about.
“I kill them every night in my dreams,” Yelena said. “Except for the nights that they kill me.” She let that hang in the air for a moment, then shook her head. “I have a target in Philadelphia. I should leave.”
Natasha watched her stand, brushing off her clothes. “Stay out of the news,” she said, though she already knew Yelena would. She was careful.
“It was good to see you, Nat,” Yelena said. She vanished into the shadows without another word.
—+—
The tower was quiet when Natasha returned. She could smell the aftermath of dinner in the air, reawakening her hunger. She hadn’t eaten since lunch.
She expected the kitchen to be empty, but Bruce was sitting at the counter, bathed in an electric glow from his laptop. The light made him look almost ghostly.
Natasha slunk forward, telegraphing her presence. Bruce said that the Hulk only came out when he was angry, but she had no desire to test the boundaries between fear and anger. No point in scaring him.
“I didn’t expect anyone to still be awake,” she said, heading to the cabinet. As promised, Clint left a selection of protein bars. A sticky note on the top read, “Congrats on not being dead!” with a little smiley face.
Bruce shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. Figured I’d get some work done.”
Natasha paused in her selection of protein bars. “Don’t tell me you were worried about me.” Don’t tell me you think I’m fragile. Don’t tell me you think I need protecting.
“I wasn’t,” Bruce said. “I’ve seen you fight. I knew you could handle yourself.”
“Good,” Natasha said. She picked out her dinner, watching him carefully. Bruce’s attention returned to the screen. She caught glimpses of a physics thesis, but the exact topic seemed like nonsense to her. “You’re not going to tell me how weird it is for me to try to kill her?” she asked.
“I don’t have siblings, I don’t think I’m in a position to judge,” Bruce said.
“I assumed you had a brother,” Natasha said. The words made sense in her head, but translating them into English only made them confusing. When Bruce raised an eyebrow at her, she pointed to her temple. “The Hulk.”
Bruce blinked, a distressed expression crossing his face. He glanced at his watch before responding. “I don’t think I want to unpack that at two in the morning.”
Natasha let out an involuntary snort. “Good night, Dr. Banner.”
As she headed to her room, Bruce called after her. “I’ve never seen you laugh before.”
Natasha paused, glancing back at him in confusion. He’d seen her laugh during undercover missions. They were fake laughs, of course, meant to fool targets. But that still counted.
“Yes, you have,” she said.
“I’ve seen Black Widow laugh,” Bruce corrected. “I’ve never seen you laugh.”
Natasha stared at him. She tried to imagine the difference. Black Widow. Natasha Romanov–or whatever her name was now. An assassin, and a shadow of a person. How much of a difference was there, really?
But Bruce had been right earlier. This was too much to unpack at two in the morning.
“Good night, Bruce,” she repeated. She turned her back on him and tried hard not to think.