Chapter Text
The last thing she expects to see is a young girl sitting on the bed across from her target.
And it wasn’t even because she was a young girl, no, it’s more than that.
It’s her.
Natasha falters and the girl notices her. Her eyes are bright green and Natasha’s heart aches inside of her chest.
No, it can’t be.
Luckily, Clint is on the mission and takes charge, dragging the target out of the way while Natasha’s gun is drawn, frozen in place.
“Mama?” The child asks and Natasha nearly drops her gun. Clint is by her side again and he knows better than to talk in this moment.
Natasha can’t seem to make the words come out of her mouth for a moment, she instead puts her gun away. Because this isn’t possible.
No, Fury had guaranteed this wouldn’t be real. He guaranteed that she’d be safe and out of danger.
It’s been five years, but it feels like yesterday when she watched her be dragged away from her in that town outside of Budapest. She remembers those two years with Yelena like they were yesterday. Remembers how she grew up and how much love she had poured into the child, not truly understanding that she’d be taken away. She hadn’t started in the red room. She was a child that she had been given for the mission. But then… having her girl dragged away at five…That had been her moment, the moment she knew she needed out. The moment when she knew the Red Room needed to be dismantled and let herself get sloppy. There was only a few months before Clint found her and offered her a way out.
Then Fury had offered her a way to take it down. Make sure that no other girls would suffer the same fate as her ever again. He promised that they’d follow the leads back and save the girls.
So no, she wasn’t expecting to see Yelena sitting on the bed across from her.
“Yelena?” she asks softly, but the girl’s guard goes back up. The knife that was hidden is now pressed against her own throat.
“This isn’t real,” Yelena repeats over again to herself. The pressure on her neck causes a line of blood to drip. “This isn’t real.”
“It’s real,” Natasha promises, taking a step forward before Yelena jerks backwards in the bed.
“No, no.”
Clint puts his bow down and crouches forward.
“Put the knife down,” Natasha tells.
But Yelena can’t. If she’s caught… no, she can’t be caught. She’d rather die than be taken. They’d come for her again and she’d be punished. She’s confused because it’s mama and that can’t be right.
“Nat,” Clint whispers but Natasha shakes her head.
She moves slowly forward, her hands out open in front of her. “It’s okay, we aren’t here to hurt you,” she promises as she gets closer and closer to the girl. Yelena is shaking in front of her and she remembers when she was four years old and would shake at thunderstorms so badly that Natasha would have to hold her against her chest for hours on end. All the memories she pushed so far down start to creep back up to the surface.
“I’m Clint,” Clint finally speaks, crouching down so he’s at eye level with the girl. “This is Natasha, we’re the good guys.”
“There are no good guys,” Yelena hisses back. “Only worse.”
Clint isn’t swayed by her words, he instead smiles because Natasha knows he’s had this conversation before. Because he’s had it with her before. “I need you to put your knife down, I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
Yelena falters, keeping the knife against her neck but it drops ever so slightly.
“We are going to get out of here and you can come with us, we’ll keep you safe.”
“There’s no safe, they’ll just come get me.”
Natasha is still silent as she watches the interaction between the two of them. While Clint’s been talking, she’s gotten close enough to the girl to reach out and grab the knife from her hands. She knows if Yelena didn’t want her to, she would have fought harder, but she lets Natasha take it.
“When I first met Nat, she told me the same thing, but you know what?” He asks and Yelena’s eyes are still stuck on him. “They never did. We made sure they never could.”
“How?” Yelena asks, her eyes flick to Natasha’s.
“We’ve got some good friends that can take care of you and make sure they can never touch you again,” Natasha finally adds.
Yelena pauses, thinking about her options, thinking about the knife that’s hidden in her back pocket and how she could escape if she wanted to. She could escape and go back and be punished for failing her mission. She was supposed to get that guy to tell her where the bombs were and then to kill him before he touched her. Missions like this were easy, things she had been doing since she was 8.
She makes up her mind. This is ma—Natasha and some part deep inside her trusts her.
So, she does the only reasonable thing and yanks out the knife before plunging it into her own thigh. Clint gasps and Natasha lurches forward, trying to grab the weapon, but Yelena’s already slit down deep enough to complete her directive. She reaches in past her skin and yanks out the tracking device that was buried within. She barely flinches as she does it, not wanting to show any sign of weakness in front of them.
“Okay, we go.”
They’re on a jet and Yelena’s excited because she’s only been on one once before. She moves across the plane as the other two pilot. Her fingers trail the side of the plane, looking for the weaknesses in the aircraft. A habit that’s developed in the red room. Always know the way out.
“Can I look at that?” Natasha’s voice scares her a little as she turns quickly. She hadn’t been paying enough attention. She motions to Yelena’s leg. She nods and they sit on a bench on the side where Yelena can hear the plane jets rumble.
Natasha’s grabbed a bag of some sort and she sets out on closing the wound.
They fall into a quiet as she patches her up, being careful and gentle as she cleans it.
“Did you—did you come back for me?” Yelena finally whispers. Because she’s still 10 years old and she’s seen her mama again.
She’s been trained to see deception and guilt, so she notices quickly when Natasha looks away instead of answering her question.
It shouldn’t hurt so much anymore. She shouldn’t feel broken inside when she realizes that Natasha didn’t go there to get her out. Just like she’s not come to get her for the last five years.
“Yelena,” she says softly as Yelena slides away from her.
She doesn’t speak again until Clint says they’re almost landing.
“They told me that you wouldn’t come back for me,” Yelena speaks softly, her face has a frown etched upon it. Something Natasha knows has been there for far too long. “But I remembered you. Even though I was little, I remember. I keep thinking, no, my mama will come back for me. And then he would drag me to the TV. He would show me your picture out and remind me that you’d never come back from me.” The little girl laughs shortly to herself, but Natasha can hear the pain within it.. “He was right.”
“Yelena, I—”
Yelena moves away from her, knocking away the hand that had reached for her. “No,” she says as a final statement. She couldn’t handle this.
She turns and wipes her tears quickly, not wanting to show anymore weakness. Doesn’t want to be punished for feeling something. But she can’t stay there with ma—Natasha anymore, when she hadn’t come for her.
Instead, she makes her way to the front of the jet and lets Clint ramble on and tries to feel free.
She’s unsure where she ends up, but she does realize quickly that around her are the Avengers. She wants to shake, but bites down on her cheek hard to make sure she doesn’t move as she watches people interact.
“Pick up a stray?” the man named Tony Stark asks, motioning to her. Yelena isn’t sure what to say, so she listens and learns.
She learns that Natasha and Clint live here, along with the Captain of America.
She doesn’t shuffle in her place, instead she stays deadly still, her eyes moving around the room, looking for the escape.
Yelena finally finds herself being gently pushed towards a hallway and she follows Clint and Natasha. Follows them because even if she didn’t come back for her, she still found her. Still gave her the option to leave.
“This is where you’ll be staying,” Natasha says as she opens a door to a large room with a huge bed. Yelena knows her eyes widen as she takes in the large space.
“For me?” She asks, even though Natasha already had said so. She criticizes herself for looking stupid in front of her. Natasha won’t want her around if she’s stupid.
The rest of the day passes by quickly. Clint is the one that she talks to the most. She can tell he’s good, that he means what he tells her. He brings her dinner and Yelena eats food that she’s only seen in movies. It’s so different than what she’s used to eating that her stomach aches when she’s finished. He seems to know that she’s not ready to meet everyone, not ready to be herself, not when she’s spent years learning how to be someone different.
Natasha is the one that brings her to bed. Yelena is still skeptical of the large space, but she finds clothes on her bed that are too large for her, but she makes them work, tying up the loose ends on the shorts and lets the shirt drape past her knees.
It’s awkward with Natasha, who keeps looking at her like she can’t believe she’s here. But Yelena is here and she doesn’t understand her anymore.
“You alright to sleep?” She asks and Yelena nods. She’ll be okay. Clint’s promised that this base has security to keep her safe. He’s promised that she’ll be safe and she desperately wants to believe him. She doesn’t know if she trusts Natasha the same amount.
She’s left her before, what is keeping her from doing it again?
“I’m right next door if you need,” Natasha says before she closes the door behind her.
Yelena tries her best to sleep, she lays on the too soft bed and tries to close her eyes, but her heart races against her chest as she tries to fall asleep. What if this was only a dream? What if she woke back up there?
Her wrist aches and even when she reaches up, there isn’t a bedframe to grip.
It is hours later that she treads silently out of her bedroom into the hallway. The lights are on dimly as she walks to the room next to hers. She tries to slip in unnoticed, but a voice scares her into a yelp. “Miss Romanoff, someone has entered your room.”
Well, shit, Yelena thinks and turns to rush back to her room where this voice won’t reach her.
“Yelena?” Natasha is pushed up on her bed, taking in the state of the exhausted girl in front of her. “Come in.”
She doesn’t know where to stand, so she inches closer to the bed. She’s tired but wired at the same time. “What was that?” she asks looking up at the ceiling to see if there is anyone hiding above them.
“Oh, that’s just…” Natasha doesn’t quite know how to categorize it to make Yelena understand. “It’s something that comes with the place.”
Yelena nods and sways on her feet as she looks up to Natasha’s bed. “Couldn’t sleep?” she asks gently as she pats a spot next to her on the bed. Yelena is cautious, but climbs up on the bed, sitting cross-legged as she stares at Natasha. Natasha had promised Clint that she’d fill him fully in the morning. She promised that this all made sense—somehow.
She was only five when she last saw her. She looks older, her hair cut short, not like when she was young and Yelena could tug at it’s ends. She’s spent so much time wondering if it was real, if she remembers her mama or if it’s just her hopes.
Sitting in front of her now, Yelena knows she wasn’t making it up.
“Was it real?” Yelena asks staring up at the only person that’s ever been kind to her, the only person she felt safe around. “Did you... did you forget about me?”
“No,” Natasha says loudly, because she absolutely did not. “I thought, we had destroyed the red room. I wouldn’t of, I wouldn’t have left you there. I thought you were safe.”
Yelena believes her because her eyes are wet and her voice is broken.
“You didn’t forget about me?” Yelena’s eyes are wet as she looks at Natasha, her sight is blurred as she tries to keep the tears inside and not letting them fall.
“I thought—I wanted better for you. You deserved a real family. You deserved a better mom,” Natasha says out, tears falling from her eyes.
“But you’re mama,” Yelena argues back, fingers scratching at the sheets before looking back up at her.
Natasha shakes her head, more tears falling before she reaches out her hand and grips on to Yelena’s. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Yelena nods, because she’s tired and believes her. Believes her enough to inch closer until her knees are pressed against Natasha’s side.
It’s been so long since someone’s last touched her like this. Since she felt safe to wrap her arms around Natasha’s body and lets herself relax in the hold that only her mama could provide.