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I.
There are many things about gaining her freedom from the Red Room that are terrible. The fact that she killed Oksana, for one. The reality that she is powerless to help the other Widows on her own, for another. But the one that is the most unexpected and cuts the deepest is the realization that she doesn't know who she is, without the Red Room.
She has spent her entire life focused on survival. There has never been time for her to wonder who she would be without the brainwashing, without the constant threat of death looming over her head if she slips even a centimeter. Thinking about a life outside the Red Room was a fantasy, a quick way to end up dead—and Yelena had outgrown fantasies and daydreams of happy lives the day the rumors reached her ears about Natasha escaping the Red Room and leaving without so much as a backward glance.
The problem is that now she has survived, and she is free, and she has absolutely no idea what to do with that. She gets to the safehouse coordinates Mason sends her on autopilot, and she follows her usual routine for securing the location, and then...she stands in the middle of the room, frozen and not sure what comes next. It has been years—her breath rattles in her chest at the reminder that she has spent the last decade of her life living only for the whims of others, killing for those whims—and now there are suddenly limitless choices in front of her.
Well. Not limitless. She has hardly any money, and she knows that the Red Room is hunting her relentlessly. It is not as if she can simply walk out the door and do whatever she wants. And yet she can walk out the door right now, if she wants to, and that in and of itself is a novel concept.
She turns and stares at the door with a speculative look, half expecting bars to slam down in front of it when she takes a tentative step towards it. When nothing happens, she grasps the handle and slips out of the flat, locking the door behind her before practically sprinting down the stairs and out onto the street.
Even that simple choice—leaving the flat because she wanted to—feels forbidden, and it takes her a few blocks for her heart rate to calm and her breathing to even out again. The less time she spends on the street, the better, and she ducks into the first shop that catches her eye. The windows are filled with mannequins dressed in an assortment of clothing, and the musty smell of old fabric fills her nose as she blinks and looks around the shop's interior.
There are rows upon rows of clothes, racks running from one end of the shop to the other with narrow aisles barely wide enough for her to squeeze down in between them. The merchant nods at her in greeting, and Yelena nods back before slowly making her way down one of the aisles. She trails her fingers along each of the pieces of clothing, feeling the texture of the fabrics beneath her fingertips as she takes in the dizzying array of colors and patterns. Her hand brushes over a crushed velvet gown and a flash of memory hits her—
a black velvet dress, dark enough to hide the blood leaking from the stab wound in her side as she stumbles away from the gala, knowing she has precious few seconds left to make her rendezvous with the extraction team before they abandon her there. She can still feel the mark's hands on her, the way she'd grabbed onto the extra fabric of the dress when he'd shoved it up around her hips, the precise texture of the crushed velvet breaking beneath her fingertips as she counted the breaths until the mark was sufficiently distracted and she could snap his neck
— she comes back to the clothing shop with a bitten-off gasp, jerking her hand away from the gown like it's scalded her. The urge to run is strong, and her legs shake beneath her with the barely-restrained desire to sprint from the shop and not stop running until she's left the sliver of memory far behind.
But she refuses to let the Red Room win, refuses to let them maintain control over where she goes or what she does through the scars they have left her with. She is suddenly determined to find something to buy at the clothing shop. Not because she absolutely needs to (although having something to wear other than her blood-soaked tactical suit and the mismatched sweats left in the safehouse will be nice), but because she wants to find something that she likes. Something that will be for her and her alone, with no way for the Red Room to taint it.
She continues down the aisle, and she runs her hands along the clothing defiantly, daring the memories to come. They don't, of course, which she is simultaneously irritated by and also grateful for, but all other thoughts melt away when her fingers glance over something buried far back in the rack of clothes. She tugs it out and sees that it's a vest, the fabric a stiff olive green with a heavy-duty zipper down the front. One of the buckles dangles at an odd angle, and she can see that some of the stitching around one armhole and the hem has frayed and come loose, but she knows: this is the one she wants.
The shopkeeper's eyebrows raise towards his hairline when he sees what she's holding, but she hands him the money and he doesn't say anything else.
"Köszönöm," Yelena says, draping the vest over one arm and heading back out of the shop. Her mind is already spinning with the possibilities for how to modify it, and she glances down at the vest when she gets back to the safehouse. If she repairs the buckles and stitching and adds a few panels of material with a little more give to it, she thinks it will be perfect.
(Has she ever sewn a piece of clothing in her life? No, but there's a first aid kit with a needle and thread in the corner of the bathroom, and she figures if she can do her own stitches after being stabbed, how hard can sewing clothes be?)
She's about to set the vest down when another thought occurs to her and she grabs it back up, turning it this way and that as she inspects it to see whether her idea is possible. She gives a satisfied nod as she decides that yes, there is room, and she adds pockets to the mental list of modifications to be made.
II.
"What's your favorite thing that you've ever done?" Yelena asks. She and Natasha are currently cruising through the sky in the junky helicopter that Mason procured for them, and she's been trying to think of the best way to start this conversation for the past hour. She'd hoped when she asked Natasha that first night if she'd ever wanted kids that Natasha might volunteer more about what her life had been since she escaped the Red Room, about the things that she likes and dislikes, what she wants from the world when there is nobody deciding that for her. But Natasha had deflected (and Yelena doesn't know why she even bothered attempting such a roundabout method), so now that she and Natasha are essentially trapped together for at least another two hours, she's decided to take full advantage of having a captive audience.
"What are you talking about?" Natasha asks, glancing over at her from the pilot seat. That's another thing: Yelena knows that she's technically the younger sibling, but it's so annoying how Natasha seems determined to take control at every turn—with the scooter, then the car, then another car, and now the helicopter. It's not as if Yelena is incapable, but Natasha didn't even give her a chance to steal the keys from Mason.
Yelena rolls her eyes, unsure whether Natasha is being intentionally obtuse or if maybe her sister just isn't actually as bright as the rest of the world believes sometimes. "Your favorite thing." She makes an impatient gesture with her hand. "You know, like the favorite thing you've eaten, or your favorite hobby."
"Avengers don't really have hobbies," Natasha says, and Yelena scoffs.
"Please. I read an article in a magazine once where the god of thunder talked about how he likes to crochet in his free time, and I have it on good authority that the bird man is an excellent chef."
"You really think I'm going to believe that they let you read Avengers interviews in the Red Room?"
Yelena blows a bubble with her bubblegum and snaps it obnoxiously loud. She might have missed her chance with the helicopter keys, but she did at least manage to lift Natasha's pack of bubblegum. "Oh yes. They liked to give us plenty of time to unwind and relax at the end of a long day, and lighthearted reading material was a must. The whole thing was very cozy. Sometimes they would even tuck us in and read us bedtime stories."
She sees the way that Natasha goes tense at the joke, and she decides to throw her a bone solely because she really does want Natasha to answer the damn question. "I had a lot of time once I got to the safe house. And it just so happens that there is not exactly a shortage of reading material related to the Avengers."
Natasha is quiet for a few minutes, and Yelena almost gives up on ever getting an answer.
"I like paprikash." Yelena glances sideways at her, but Natasha is staring diligently through the windshield of the helicopter. "One of the other Avengers was from Sokovia. She would make it sometimes, before—" Natasha stops, but Yelena knows what she was about to say anyway. Before everything fell apart, the way that it always does for people like them.
"Wanda?" she asks instead, giving Natasha an opening to keep talking about something good rather than getting lost in her head about Avengers angst for the rest of the trip.
"You really did your research, huh?" Natasha mumbles. Yelena just shrugs.
"Like I said. I had a lot of time."
There is silence for another minute, and then Natasha asks, "What about you?"
Now it's Yelena who turns to look out the window, studiously avoiding any eye contact with Natasha. "I don't know."
She leaves the That's why I was asking you unsaid, but she feels suddenly pathetic for trying to get answers for how to live her own life from Natasha. How many years has she survived on her own? How many years has it been since Natasha left her to live or die in the Red Room with no one to rely on but herself? And yet in the span of two days, Yelena is already looking to her for guidance as if she never left, like they are still children in Ohio with no concerns other than scraped knees and bad grades on report cards.
Part of her wants to refuse to say anything else just to prove a point—to prove to herself that she doesn't need Natasha, that she can figure this out on her own. But there is a much louder part of her that longs for Natasha to just tell her what to do, to hear advice from somebody that she can trust—at least as much as she can trust anyone in this world.
"I don't know what I like." She still doesn't look at Natasha, but she can feel her sister's eyes on her anyways. "For so long now, the only thing I have liked was staying alive, and not even that sometimes." There is a quick intake of breath from Natasha, but Yelena pushes on, not wanting to dwell on what she's just admitted. "I thought maybe it would help if I made a list, but it is hard to even know what to put on it, where to start."
"What—" Natasha pauses, and Yelena can tell that she's choosing her words carefully. "What do you have on the list so far?"
"On the list of things I like: my vest with pockets, hot sauce, not being mind-controlled, and you. And on the list of things I don't like: getting drunk, people touching me or getting too close, and having an obnoxious older sister who never lets me drive." She kicks at Natasha's calf as she says the last bit, ignoring the sharp look Natasha gave her at the other items on the list. She silently wills Natasha not to ask questions that neither of them are prepared to answer, and she's relieved when Natasha just angles her foot so she can gently tap Yelena's leg in return.
"I've got way more experience than you do. You would probably already have crashed this heap of junk into the tundra from pushing it too hard."
"I am not the one that could not even get out of a parking space without hitting multiple cars," Yelena grumbles, but it's good-natured and she has to bite her cheek to keep from smiling.
"It's a good list," Natasha says after a moment. Yelena huffs, because obviously it's a good list, but that's also not the point.
"It is not the things that are already on the list that are the problem," she says. "It's figuring out how to keep adding things. Do I have to just try everything in order to know? And what if things change? There are so many things that I don't know, and I do not even know where to start for most of them."
"What if—I mean, we could work our way through some of the things you're not sure about together. If you wanted."
"Really?" Yelena leans back in her chair and crosses her arms over her chest, trying to hide just how much she wants to say yes to what Natasha is offering. It feels too simple. Ever since she saw Natasha in the Budapest safe house, there has been a tiny voice in the back of her mind screaming at her not to get too attached, that Yelena was never Natasha's real family or she wouldn't have left her and gone to stay with the Avengers, that Natasha will drop her again as soon as their mission is done.
If she lets herself believe that Natasha is genuinely offering something beyond just taking down the Red Room and Natasha rescinds the offer later—Yelena doesn't think she could survive her heart breaking like that a second time. "The famous black widow would take time away from fighting aliens and saving the world to what—hang out with a damaged former child assassin? Yeah, okay."
"Yelena—"
"Forget it." She punches at the buttons on the dash harder than necessary, making a show of checking their altitude in spite of the fact that they have been flying steadily with absolutely no change throughout the entire conversation. She's torn between impulses. Between making Natasha hurt the way that she had when she'd found out that her sister had left her, but also never wanting to be a source of pain for Natasha. If they continue down this path, she isn't sure what words might come spilling out of her mouth, so she says, "Tell you what. If we make it out of this alive, we can talk about you helping me with my list. Deal?"
She glances over at Natasha and finds her sister looking back at her, her expression more serious than Yelena thinks she's ever seen it.
(Not that she's seen much of Natasha at all, over the last twenty years.)
For a second she worries that Natasha is going to push, to ignore the unspoken request to let it drop for now, but then Natasha nods and gives her a small smile. "Better start thinking about what things you want to check off first, then. The Red Room hasn't killed us yet, and I have no intention of letting it start now."
Yelena snorts, and the thump of the chopper blades returns as the only sound in the cockpit, but she feels lighter, somehow. She might not be able to admit it out loud just yet, but the knowledge that she isn't alone in this—that Natasha might stick around this time—makes everything feel more manageable.
Yelena adjusts her headset and lets herself fall into the familiar pre-mission lull, running over the plan in her mind as they draw closer to the prison. There will be time for cataloging likes and dislikes later. For now, she has a feeling it's going to take their full attention to get Alexei out and keep the helicopter—and themselves—in one piece.
III.
"That's horrifying," Natasha says mildly, watching as Yelena dumps half a bottle of hot sauce onto her pizza. They're sitting tucked in a booth at the back of a diner, their paths crossed for a single night in between freeing Widows and running from the government.
"What? It's delicious!" Yelena gives the bottle a final shake before admiring the small puddle of hot sauce now covering the surface of her pizza.
"I wasn't aware the Red Room had started removing taste buds, now, too," Natasha mutters. The comment draws a laugh from deep in Yelena's chest, and she shakes her head.
"No, although that honestly would have improved the rations they gave us."
She carefully folds her piece of pizza in half, angling the sides to try to avoid letting any hot sauce escape as she takes a bite. Some dribbles down onto the table in spite of her best efforts, and Natasha balls up a napkin and throws it at her, bouncing it off of her forehead. "You're ridiculous."
"Yeah, well, I like it. At least I'm not a monster eating boring unseasoned food."
Natasha grimaces, but when Yelena wakes the next morning to find Natasha already gone, the sting is eased when she sees a bottle of neon-green hot sauce sitting on the counter with a note that says To torture your remaining tastebuds with.
IV.
It's a strange thing, to finally have the chance to experience the world for what it really is, to claim each day for herself and no one else. She feels like a sapling tree coming out of a long winter, hardened bark peeling away to reveal fresh green wood beneath. There is so much of herself that she's never known existed, so many simple pleasures that she's never experienced, and she wants to dig her roots deep and drink up every possible second of it to make up for the time that she's lost.
Trying to figure things out is still overwhelming sometimes though, and that's part of why she's thrilled when Natasha shows up one day at the tiny motel room Yelena has commandeered as her base of operations while she plans out which Widows to free next. Natasha gives Yelena a pointed look until Yelena laughs and follows her out of the room and down to a tiny red Volkswagen beetle.
It's easier, now, to be around Natasha. Now that she knows Natasha isn't going to leave again at the first opportunity, now that Natasha comes back, now that she is finally not alone after so many years. She trusts that whatever Natasha has in mind will be worthwhile, and so she simply cranks the radio up as they drive down the highway, wind whipping in through the windows as Yelena sticks her hand out and feels the silken air slide over her skin.
Two hours later, they're on a beach in Sagres, and Yelena wonders if this is what it's like to be a normal person—to feel beholden to no one but herself and the people she loves, with no one to force her hand and make her do things she doesn't want to.
Natasha drags her into the water, laughing when Yelena splashes her before diving beneath the surface and cutting sleek strokes through the ocean like a seal. Natasha follows her under, and they play tag for a few minutes, weaving among stacks of coral as they chase each other.
When they both finally break the surface of the water again, gasping for air, Yelena rolls onto her back, letting the waves buoy her. She glances over and sees Natasha doing the same, red hair fanning out around her head in the water like a halo, and she is happier than she's ever been in her life. She tilts her face up and lets the heat of the sun soak into her skin, savors the tang of the ocean as she licks her lips.
She feels Natasha's hand brush against her own, their arms stretched out to their sides as they float and let the ocean currents carry them farther out to sea. Neither of them move to grasp onto each other, but the occasional slide of Natasha's fingers through her own is real and solid and good in a way Yelena can't even begin to describe. She almost regrets the moment ending when Natasha flips over and gives her a challenging smirk.
"Race you back to shore."
After, when they pile back into the beetle, sand coating the seats and carpet (and sand is something that Yelena is definitely going to add to the list of things that she doesn't like), Natasha turns to her.
"So. Like or dislike?"
Yelena rolls her eyes at the question, knowing that Natasha already knows the answer. "Thank you," she says, the words coming out just this side of too genuine. Natasha blinks, a flicker of something like regret in her eyes before it's covered with a smile and a shrug.
"Well, I did tell you that I would help you figure things out. Just trying to make sure I keep that promise."
"Wow, is this what being a hero means? Turning you into a person concerned with being a woman of her word?" Yelena teases, but she can't help leaning sideways until her head rests against the edge of Natasha's shoulder.
"Thank you," she says again, and she knows that Natasha will understand that she means it for more than just the day. Natasha's head tilts to the side until it's a warm, steady weight against the crown of Yelena's head, and Yelena breathes out a little sigh when Natasha shifts and presses a quick kiss to her forehead.
"Any time."
It is the last time she sees Natasha alive.
V.
Her list becomes messier after the Snap—after she learns her sister is dead, after she realizes that she has no idea what to do with her life now. Some things are more complicated, difficult to fit cleanly into the like or dislike column. She realizes just how true that is the first time that she goes to braid her hair.
She's operating on autopilot, combing her fingers through the snarled strands to untangle them just enough to wrestle them into a messy braid. She doesn't really think about what she's doing until she glances at her reflection in the grimy gas station mirror and her fingers pause mid-braid. Without even thinking about it, she's started to twist the strands into a Dutch braid down the back of her skull, and suddenly all she can think of is Natasha.
Yelena's hands fall to brace herself against the edge of the sink as she bows her head, memories crashing over her in an unrelenting tide. It's not fair, to have lost Natasha so soon after they found each other again. Grief rises hot and fast in her throat as she imagines Natasha alone for five years, trying to find a way to bring everyone else back.
Because Yelena knows deep in her bones that that's exactly what Natasha would have been doing. She can imagine it so clearly that it hurts: Natasha, always so determined to be the one in the driver's seat, the one saving the world, the one dying so that nobody else would have to. If Yelena had known when she said goodbye to Natasha after the beach that it was going to be the last time, she would have done something, anything, differently.
But she can't go back. She can't change what's happened, no matter how much she wants to, and so she scrubs her face to rid it of the tears she didn't even realize were falling and continues to braid her hair. It's bittersweet in a way she wasn't anticipating when she finally ties the braid off with an elastic and looks at herself again. She can see the ghost of Natasha in her reflection, can feel the phantom tug of Natasha's fingers in her hair as she chides Yelena for fidgeting and making the braid messy, and the knowledge that she is alone and will never see her sister again burns.
She is tempted to take her hair out of the braid immediately, to add braids to her list of things she doesn't like and be done with them forever, but she can't quite bring herself to do it. No matter how much it makes her heart swell with regret and longing for something—for someone—she'll never have again, there's also something comforting about seeing echoes of Natasha in this way. It feels like some small way for Yelena to carry the memory of her sister with her, for Natasha to still be with her as Yelena muddles through whatever comes next, and so she releases the braid and lets it fall down the middle of her back as she leaves the bathroom and goes to look for a car to steal.
It is the first time that something falls squarely in both categories at once, and she wonders whether it will be the last.
VI.
There's a sort of art to putting on her tac suit. She used to love the steady routine of it, the process of doing up the buckles and zippers and feeling the fabric close around her like a protective second skin. It might as well have been a physical extension of her being for most of her life, the only clothing that she felt truly comfortable in because it was what she knew, it was familiar and predictable and safer than anything else the Red Room could make her wear.
When she'd left the Red Room she had kept the tac suit, although she'd made adjustments here and there. For a long time, she still took some amount of comfort in the process of sliding into the suit before an assignment, but now...
Now, she feels like a snake that is trying to slide back into a shed skin, like her tac suit is strangling her every time she puts it on. The phrase widow's weeds flashes through her mind on repeat, and she can barely contain a noise that is half-laugh, half-sob as she tugs at the fabric. It's perhaps the most accurate description she can think of, the double meaning encapsulating both her mourning and the fact that she does not think she will ever fully escape her past as a Widow.
Putting on her tac suit becomes just another reminder of where she's come from and what she's lost, but the lingering familiarity is still grounding, and it serves a practical purpose. It lets her separate out Yelena-the-Widow from Yelena-the-person, two halves of herself that form an uneasy whole. She jots the phrase "widow's weeds" in between the two columns on her list right below "braids," but later, when Valentina comes to her with a business proposition, there is no doubt in her mind that “being an assassin for hire” would land firmly on the right-hand side of the sheet. She says yes because it is what she knows and it is what she is good at and she really does need money, but she can't stop imagining the disappointed look Natasha would give her for so easily falling into old habits.
She shoves the guilt and shame deep down inside, a heavy stone thrown into an endless well. Maybe if Natasha was alive things would be different, there would be other choices available. But when Natasha fled the Red Room she had Shield and later the Avengers to help her, to give her options beyond what is available to Yelena, and Yelena...Yelena is alone. Natasha is dead, and Yelena is alone, and so she thinks she deserves a little understanding for doing what she needs to do to survive, rather than running off to try to save the world.
The only part of the world that was worth saving died with Natasha, and so she wears her widow's weeds like a badge of honor and ignores the too-tight feeling every time she puts them on and decides that maybe this is her life now: living in the liminal spaces, only braids and tac suits for company as she stares longingly at the simple delineations in other peoples' lives.
She wonders if maybe this is all she deserves.
VII.
The dog shows up on a Tuesday while Yelena is in the middle of seeking out a potential target. She's laying on her belly hidden behind a pile of brush as she peers through the scope of her rifle and tracks the movements of people in and out of the target's business. A faint rustle from behind causes her to twist around, ready to attack if need be, but she relaxes when she recognizes a four-footed cadence. Just an animal.
She turns her head to watch as a massive dog cautiously moves out of the woods and stops a few feet away, eyeing her warily. The dog's fur is thick and matted, a dingy grey-brown all over that speaks to a life lived in the mud and underbrush. Yelena watches the dog carefully, sizing it up for a threat as it does the same to her. The dog doesn't move any closer, and Yelena eventually goes back to her surveillance, but she keeps one eye on the dog just in case.
Just before sunrise, Yelena picks up her gun and clambers to her feet. The dog doesn't take a step back from where it's still standing and watching her, but its whole body tenses and she sees the way that the fur along the back of its neck in between its shoulder blades stands on end. She feels a sudden pang of empathy for the dog, for the fear in its eyes even as it stubbornly faces off against her and refuses to back down. She drops her gaze and swings her gun over her shoulder. "Thanks for the company," she says, keeping her voice soft and smooth before turning and heading back to where she'd stashed her bike.
The next night, she brings some jerky with her. She tells herself it's solely because she sometimes gets hungry on long surveillance shifts, but when the dog shows up around 2 AM, she reaches into her vest pocket and pulls out the strips of dried meat, peeling off slivers and tossing them to the dog. The dog still watches her suspiciously, but Yelena doesn't mind. She would do the same, if their positions were reversed. She can respect a creature that has a healthy sense of self-preservation.
She repeats the same ritual for the next week until one night the dog comes close enough to take the jerky from her hand. She doesn't reach out to pet it, not wanting to startle it, but then the dog lays down next to her with a sigh, resting its head on her leg, and Yelena feels the hot sting of tears prick at her eyes.
For the first time since Natasha died, she thinks that she's found something uncomplicated to add to her list. The earned trust, the clear mutual understanding she feels with this mangy stray dog, leaves her nearly breathless with the memory of what it is to feel something other than grief and anger. Every time the warm puff of the dog's breath hits her legs, she feels her heart thump in return, and she makes a decision right then and there.
There are a hundred reasons why it's a terrible idea for an assassin to have a dog. She knows that, logically. Getting a dog means that it will be a thousand times harder when she gets called away on long-term missions. She'll need to find someone to watch the dog, she'll need to make sure that all of her housing is dog-friendly, she'll have to figure out potentially traveling with the dog—it's a headache and a half, and she knows it's stupid. Add in the fact that having a dog means that there is something she cares about that other people can target, something she can lose that would actually hurt her, and... Well. Again, a stupid idea.
All of the reasons why she shouldn't do this pale in the face of the reminder that she is still human, though. She is still alive, and she knows that Natasha didn't die just so that she could go back to a life of numbness.
Yelena kills her target the next night, and as soon as it's done, she makes two calls. One is to Valentina to let her know that the assignment is complete so that she can get paid.
The second call is to Mason.
He picks up on the second ring. "Yelena. To what do I owe the pleasure of you calling my personal phone at four in the morning?"
"I need a plane. Preferably one with enough cargo space for a really big dog crate." She has no interest in trying to jump through hoops to import a dog on commercial airlines, and she adds, "It needs to be big enough to make a cross-Atlantic trip."
"That's—wow. That's a lot of money. You know that, right?"
Yelena glances down at the dog, which is currently sitting calmly at her side, leaning its full body weight against her leg. "I'm good for it."
"Yeah, that's not what I—you know what? I don't know why I'm even bothering. Where should I meet you?"
She gives him the coordinates and then hangs up. She scratches gently behind the dog's ears and looks down at it thoughtfully.
"You need a name," she says, and the dog pants happily back at her. Maybe it's because she was just talking to Mason, but a fleeting memory darts through Yelena's mind unbidden—teasing Natasha about the aliases on some of her identification—and she smiles to herself. It feels right, to name the dog something connected to Natasha. Natasha was the first glimmer of hope after Yelena escaped the Red Room, and now this dog is the first following Natasha's death.
"Fanny," Yelena decides with a tiny smirk. She knows that Natasha would absolutely hate it if she was alive, and that just makes her love it even more. She gives the dog a final pat before turning and beginning to walk in the direction of the coordinates she'd given Mason.
"Come on. Let's go home."
VIII.
"Don't eat so fast!"
Fanny gives her a look that communicates clearly that she thinks Yelena is an idiot before she goes back to scarfing her mac & cheese at warp speed. Yelena sighs, poking at her own bowl and contemplating the events of the past several days.
The assignment to kill Clint Barton did not go quite how she was expecting, but she thinks that perhaps it's for the best. Natasha probably would have been more than a little irritated with her if she'd killed the idiot archer, and while there is still a kernel of rage planted deep in her chest at the fact that Clint got so much more time with Natasha—that he could have had five years with her during the Snap and squandered it—she knows that no further harm will come to him by her hand.
Clint is far from the most interesting part of the mission, though. That honor goes to Kate Bishop.
Kate Bishop, who is so entirely refreshing and unexpected, who is severely lacking in the silverware department and runs into traffic to save dogs, who doesn't seem the least bit afraid of Yelena even though she probably should be. Kate might not be an assassin worthy of wearing Ronin's costume, but she has a danger all her own that lies not in her skills with a bow and arrow, or her (passable) hand-to-hand combat abilities.
No, what is really dangerous about Kate is that she makes Yelena want to break all of her rules about not getting close to other people, about not getting attached. In the span of twenty-four hours, Yelena was already invested enough to text Kate about Eleanor Bishop being behind the hit on Clint—a text that Yelena knows she absolutely should not have sent, but she doesn't regret it for a second.
There is something about Kate that drags Yelena in like she's a moon in orbit, caught by the gravitational pull of hopeful blue eyes and enough sincerity to steal Yelena's breath away. If she had any sense of self-preservation she would take Fanny and leave now, go somewhere else and avoid anything and everything to do with Kate for a while until she can figure out how to stop caring so much about the other girl.
Instead, she pulls out her list and taps her pen thoughtfully at the corner of her mouth before adding a new line in purple ink.
(It's a total coincidence that she just so happens to have a purple pen at the moment, but she thinks that maybe it's some sort of sign from the universe.)
She puts a question mark after Kate's name just to try to make it less obvious exactly how rapidly Kate has managed to insert herself into Yelena's life, but she knows that it's a futile effort. Question mark or no, she has a feeling that Kate Bishop is going to be more than a passing presence in her life, and she's only a little concerned to realize that she's more than okay with that.
IX.
It's a terrible idea (maybe even worse than getting a dog, although that has worked out remarkably well, so maybe it's not the best comparison), but Yelena continues to see Kate after Christmas. She starts out small, just occasional run-ins that give her a chance to see whether her initial assessment was off-base. Each interaction only serves to prove that she was right about how dangerous Kate is, how getting close to Kate is a recipe for disaster if she doesn't want to get attached. Because Kate Bishop is a force of nature, and the more that Yelena sees her, the more that she finds herself wanting to know how Kate does it, wanting more.
Her entire life, Yelena has been like a bird with her wings clipped, fighting and clawing for every centimeter of altitude gained, always watching for the shadow of a bigger bird above her. But Kate—Kate Bishop soars like a swallow, playful and vibrant and alive. Her superhero namesake might be a hawk, but she is no huntress. Yelena wants to look at her until she learns how to fly like that, to spread her wings for the joy of it and not because it's what must be done to survive.
She thinks that Kate would teach her, if she asked, but she has no idea what she would say. "Teach me what it means to be free?"
No. Even if Kate would not judge her for it, Yelena still has her pride, and so she contents herself with carefully observing how Kate moves through the world, the dip of her wings as she navigates each new day like it's nothing but a warm summer breeze. And after a while, to her surprise, Yelena finds herself caught on the updraft of a thermal she never knew was there, spiraling effortlessly into the air so that she and Kate can soar together.
They're sitting on a rooftop one night, shoulders nearly touching (but not quite, because that still somehow feels like too much to Yelena, and Kate is perhaps the most respectful person Yelena has ever known when it comes to things like boundaries). Yelena stares at Kate silhouetted against a dusky sky, the smog turning the sunset a hundred different shades of purple. The last fading remnants of light reflect in Kate's hair, glinting mauve and violet by turns, and Yelena thinks that this is a color she could lose herself in willingly. She could replace all the red in the world, all the red in her life that has seeped into her bones, with these beautiful hues, with the way that her heart clenches in her chest when Kate glances over and catches her looking.
"What?"
Yelena shakes her head, unable to find the words for what she's thinking – unsure that words exist that could even do it justice. Kate accepts the response and turns her attention back out towards the city sprawled before them. "Beautiful, isn't it?"
And Yelena stares and stares and drinks in the sight of Kate sitting next to her, trying to commit every detail to memory, and she says, "Yes," because it is. It really is.
(She adds "purple" to the left side of her list when she gets back to her apartment later that night.)
X.
There's one category of likes and dislikes that Yelena has remained carefully distant about. Anything to do with her body, with physical touch and pleasure, has felt far too overwhelming to even consider, but she decides one weekend that she's put it off for long enough. She sends Fanny to stay with another Widow for the weekend so that there won't be any interruptions, and then she takes the F train and goes to a shop on the corner of 5th Avenue in Brooklyn.
She buys what feels like half the store, stumbling back to her apartment with arms laden with shopping bags, spilling galaxy-colored silicone across the kitchen table. She is determined: tonight, she's going to figure out what she does and doesn't like about sex, and like the well-trained assassin that she is, she's made certain that she has every possible tool she might need for the job.
She showers and then sprawls out on her bed after drying off. She starts slowly, methodically working her fingertips over her body and feeling for the spots that she knows make her tremble—the delicate patch of skin just below her jawline, the underside of her breast, the bend of her elbow. She's almost clinical as she maps them all, cataloging her body's reactions and filing them neatly away.
It is not the first time that she has done this. Before, in the days when the serum was not yet perfected, she had done much the same thing but for very different purposes. Then, her logic had been that if she knew where was most likely to draw an involuntary reaction from her body, she could be prepared and head it off if a mark ever touched her there during a mission. There was nothing she hated more in those days than unexpected reminders of everything she couldn't control, actions forcing her back into her body when all she really wanted was to float above it all.
She finds it's hard to separate out the Yelena in the present from that past-Yelena, her body automatically squashing each spark of pleasure she manages to elicit faster than she can draw breath, refusing to let even a whisper of oxygen fan the sensation into flame. It's frustrating, to be so tied to those old impulses, but more than that, she realizes that she doesn't really want to try to override them.
She glances her fingertips just below her rib cage and fights to let the shiver roll through her in its entirety, but it's not a good shiver. It's like being caught in a cold rain, like the discomfort of rough wet clothing dragging against her skin, leaving her raw and exposed. Her body tenses at the sensation, a downed power line coiling on the ground ready to strike at the first sign of contact, and she sighs.
It is not a pleasant feeling.
She stops trying to push the matter and decides that that's fine, foreplay is obviously not something she's going to love receiving, but there are still plenty of other things to explore.
She slides her hands down her body. She takes a slow breath in and holds it, counting to four and then releasing it. Her fingers slide through her folds, pressing lightly along either side of her clit. The same cold, shivery feeling is back, and it contrasts sharply with the flicker of warmth she feels when she presses her fingers together, the steady pressure licking up her spine. She tries to focus on the warmth, determined to see this through.
Gradually, the heat takes over, spreading out through her body until it replaces the ice in her veins and leaves her exposed in a different kind of way. Her hips slowly arch into her own hand, and her eyes fall on the various toys she'd purchased. After a second of hesitation, she reaches over and grabs one of the dildos, opting for a smaller option with a slight curve to it.
The feeling of the head of it pressing at her entrance is like being thrown into a pool of freezing water, and Yelena bites back a gasp at the way her whole body curls in on itself, storm clouds rolling in to snuff out the hesitant sun. Memories rush over her unbidden—
hands that span wide enough to cover her hips and thighs, sinking dark bruises into the pale skin, pain flickering along every nerve ending in her body as she fights to detach
— and she practically throws the toy across the room and lays back on the bed, panting and trying to get her body back under control.
It takes her a few minutes, and she nearly calls it quits right there, but the memory of what it had been like to feel good won't let her go, and so she carefully begins to touch herself again, keeping her fingers just to the area around her clit and never dipping lower.
It's slower going this time, but she finds herself floating in a sort of pleasant haze, fingertips tracing circles around her clit as she rolls her hips up into the touch. She can feel the tension coiling low in her gut, and part of her starts to panic as the waves of sensation grow stronger and start to crest, but she doesn't let up. She pushes her head back against the pillow, biting the inside of her cheek to keep quiet when she comes, moving her hands away from her body and gripping the sheets like her life depends on it as she trembles.
She gives herself a minute, taking note of the way that her body goes loose and pliant against the mattress, the edge of calm at the periphery of her mind. It's not a bad feeling—she doesn't think she will want to do this often, but she knows this won't be the last time she touches herself—but it's complicated.
She stands up and goes over to the fridge, pulling her list off and swiping a few dildos to the side to make room on the table so that she can grab a pen and jot something down.
She pushes the pen into the paper hard enough that a plume of ink spreads out from the tip, but she can't bring herself to write anything. It feels too much like an admission of guilt, like acknowledging that there is something wrong with her, wrong with her body. Not for the first time, she wonders whether how she is now is who she would always have been, Red Room or no, or whether it is just one more thing that the Red Room reached inside of her and twisted until something snapped.
In the end, it doesn't really matter. The root of what she does or doesn't like doesn't change the reality of the here and now, but she still lifts the pen without actually writing any words, leaving the ink stain alone on its own little spot on the page. It's a sort of middle ground, she supposes. Proof that she knows herself in that way, but without having to spell out every detail of it. And that's enough.
XI.
"I didn't know you could cook, Kate Bishop." Yelena raises an eyebrow at the sight of Kate standing by the little stovetop in her apartment, an assortment of bowls and spatulas littering the countertop.
Kate frowns, her brow crinkling in a way that makes Yelena want to smooth the faint wrinkle away with the pad of her thumb, but she doesn't look away from what she's doing. "I'll have you know that I'm a perfectly excellent cook. I mean, baking is hard, but I've been told that I make the best breakfast in town."
"Forgive me for being fooled by the mountain of empty take-out containers that normally populate your apartment." Yelena tries to move closer to see what's currently sizzling in the pan. "What are you making?"
"Nope. Nuh-uh. You don't get to insult my cooking and then micromanage. Go sit down and maybe if you behave yourself, I'll still give you something."
Yelena does as she's told, settling herself into one of the kitchen chairs and gazing over at Kate with her best innocent expression. Kate rolls her eyes and mumbles something under her breath that Yelena doesn't quite catch, but a minute later, a plate is set down on the table and Yelena blinks at the sight of it.
"I present to you, egg in a hole," Kate says proudly, sitting down across from Yelena. And it is egg in a hole, but also—Kate has made the hole in the center of the toast heart-shaped, and Yelena doesn't even know what to do with someone doing something so stupidly sweet and cheesy for her for no other reason than because they felt like it.
"What? What's wrong?" Kate is watching her closely, obviously having picked up on Yelena's discomfort.
"Nothing." But Yelena can't quite bring herself to cut into the toast, unwilling to ruin the heart. Because what if this is the only time something like this happens to her? What if there is never another heart-shaped egg in a hole like this one, and she ruins it by eating it?
The sound of glass scraping across the tabletop draws her attention, and Yelena sees that Kate is sliding the bottle of hot sauce toward her. "I can make you another one, if that's not enough," Kate offers, and Yelena is helpless to do anything but sit there and nod.
"I'd like that."
What she doesn't say out loud is that she doesn't think it will ever be enough—can't imagine ever having enough of these little moments with Kate, mornings with dappled sun streaming through the windows and glinting off the silverware Yelena bought for Kate two months ago, Kate being so sweet and perfect that it makes Yelena's chest physically ache.
No, she doesn't know that she'll ever get enough, but she thinks that if Kate keeps doing things like this that sweep her off her feet like a riptide and carry her out to the open ocean, then maybe that's a pretty good start.
XII.
The first time that Kate tries to take her to a Broadway show, Yelena is very clear that she thinks it's a waste of time. It's expensive, for one thing; why would she want to pay an exorbitant sum of money to go sit in a cramped, uncomfortable chair for three hours when she can just listen to the soundtrack on her phone for free? And then there's the content—obnoxiously dramatic characters singing about their woes isn't exactly high on the list of things Yelena wants to torment her ears with.
But Kate is persistent, and so after making a few stipulations (aisle seats only in carefully-selected rows of the theater to maximize exit strategies, absolutely no tickets for the Steve Rogers musical, and Kate has to agree to sneak in some of Yelena's favorite candy for them to eat during the show), she gives in and lets Kate buy the tickets.
Kate takes her to see Hamilton, and Yelena finds herself unexpectedly enraptured by the energy that ricochets through the theater like shrapnel, leaving her open and raw and exhausted in the best way possible by the time the final curtain drops.
When Kate turns to look at her afterward, Yelena mutters, "It was not the worst thing in the world, but it would have been nice if Angelica or Eliza or Maria or even Peggy would have talked about literally anything other than men. Don't they teach you about the Bechdel test in your fancy liberal-arts college classes?"
Kate just grins back at her and nods seriously. "Of course. I'll take that into consideration in the future."
They go to more shows after that, and each time, Yelena tries to soak up the experience, the way that Kate loses herself in the show with such joy, how it feels to be in a room with hundreds of other people all totally absorbed in the waves of sound and light and emotion that emanate from the stage. She also, however, tries to keep up some pretense of not being completely thrilled, in part because being a musical theater nerd doesn't really fit with the whole "badass assassin" vibe she's trying to maintain, but mostly just because it's fun to needle Kate.
When they go to see Fun Home (which Yelena thinks is a thinly-veiled joke after her comment about the Bechdel test):
"Kate, you did not tell me that the ring of keys was some sort of secret lesbian code! Is this why you have bought me so many keychains? Have you been trying to tell me something this whole time?"
(Kate turns bright red and mumbles something about just trying to be nice, and Yelena laughs and loops her arm through Kate's before saying, "It is a moot point, I am already a convert anyways.")
After Hadestown:
"Did you know that Orpheus was eventually torn limb from limb and killed by a bunch of women during an orgy?"
"...Yelena, what the fuck? How do you even know that?"
"I am well-versed in mythology, Kate. You should probably brush up on it yourself, given the frequency with which superheroes seem to end up pitted against various gods and goddesses."
"Fair point. But seriously—death by orgy??"
When they get a late-night coffee after Wicked:
"Look, Kate, all I am saying is that Elphaba and Galinda would have been an exponentially better couple!"
"I—okay, you know what? No arguments from me on that one, you're right."
The last straw is when Kate takes her to see Anastasia, leading Yelena to go on a particularly impassioned rant about the rampant historical inaccuracies.
("Kate, did you bring me to see this just so that you could watch my blood pressure rise?!")
"I swear, you're going to ruin all of these musicals for me," Kate says with a laugh.
"I am not ruining them," Yelena protests. "I'm just…giving you additional perspective to consider. Really, I'm doing you a favor. Turning you into a more informed and well-rounded theatergoer."
Kate just rolls her eyes. "Whatever. Just admit that you secretly love musicals."
"I hate them. They're the absolute worst," Yelena says brightly.
She decides that Kate never needs to know that she doodled more than a handful of musical notes on her list of things she likes after the very first show.
XIII.
"I've been thinking."
"Oh?" Yelena arches an eyebrow over at Kate. They're sitting on the couch in Kate's apartment, a truly terrible Hallmark movie playing in the background, and Yelena had just been contemplating leaning over to kiss Kate. The shift from friends into something more is still new enough to make her question whether she's made the whole thing up, and she sometimes catches Kate looking over at her like she's thinking the same thing.
"Yeah. I think we should have safe words." Kate says it casually, like it's the most natural thing in the world, but it sends every cell in Yelena's body on instant high alert.
"Just to keep things simpler," Kate continues, "I know you're still figuring out what you like and don't like, and I want to make sure that we have a really clear way of communicating so that I don't accidentally cross any boundaries or push too far."
Yelena's first impulse is to snark back that she's never needed safe words before, and she doesn't need them now. But she swallows the words down, knowing that saying them out loud will likely only result in Kate giving her one of those sad looks that she does sometimes when it becomes obvious just how fucked up Yelena's experience of the world has been.
(She also considers saying that even if they do come up with safe words, she doesn't know whether she would ever be able to make herself say them, but that feels like yet another step too far, a wound she doesn't want to examine too closely.)
"Did you have something in mind?" she asks instead, and Kate shrugs.
"How about the traffic light system? Green for good, yellow for slow down, and red for—"
Her voice fades out as Yelena's mind flashes to a thousand other moments in time—
her hands dripping red, a crimson veil settling over her mind, a bloody smile that she no longer recognizes as her own
—"Yelena?" Kate is looking at her with open concern, and Yelena shakes herself.
"Sorry."
"You don't need to apologize. Was it something I said?"
"No. Not really. When you mentioned the color red, it just made me think of...other things." She knows it sounds like she's being intentionally evasive (which she sort of is), but Kate doesn't press.
"Oh. Do you want to use a different word, then? You could pick a different color—"
"It's fine." Yelena cuts her off with a firm shake of her head, because it really is okay. There's something almost fitting about red being her safe word after it being a symbol of how little choice she had for the majority of her life, and she reaches over and squeezes Kate's hand to try to reassure her. "Will you use the same words if I do anything you don't like?"
Kate nods, and Yelena grins. "Okay. Then if that is all you were thinking about, I am going to kiss you now."
She shifts forward on her knees so that she can kiss Kate firmly, slanting their mouths together and nipping at Kate's lower lip until her mouth falls open so that Yelena can taste her. She presses forward with more urgency, only pausing when Kate pulls back.
"Hey."
Yelena blinks, not entirely sure why Kate has stopped, and she tries to read Kate's expression to figure out if she's done something wrong without realizing it. "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah, just—" Kate slides a hand up to cup Yelena's cheeks, thumb stroking tenderly over the ridge of the bone there. "I'm not going to disappear on you. We can go slow, if that's something you like."
The truth is that Yelena doesn't know whether slow is something she likes or not. It's still such a foreign idea to take the time to pay attention to what feels good in a kiss, rather than just trying to make it into what the other person wants. She doesn't want to say that, though, doesn't want to get into all of her messy history with Kate and ruin the moment, so instead she just leans in again and makes a concerted effort to slow her movements.
It's almost like learning to kiss again for the first time, to do it this way. For several long minutes, Yelena just presses her lips to Kate's, taking in the slick glide of their mouths, figuring out what angles feel best. Kate hums into her mouth when Yelena teases at the seam of her lips with her tongue, and when Kate's mouth opens, Yelena takes her time licking inside.
Kate tastes like bitter currant and raspberry, a hint of dark chocolate from the cake they'd had for dessert earlier that night. This close, Yelena can smell the perfume that Kate's wearing, something amber and earthy that's intoxicating and makes her want to bury her face in Kate’s skin. Yelena has never been one for perfume—it's too recognizable, to have one for herself, to have one for Yelena and not whatever role she needs to play for a mission—but on Kate, she can't get enough.
When she reaches up with one hand to tangle her fingers in the fine baby hairs at the base of Kate's neck, scratching her nails lightly, she thinks that if this is what slow means, then maybe it's not so bad after all. Every ounce of her awareness is consumed with Kate, the smell and taste and feel of her, and she can’t imagine anything better.
Judging by the strangled whimper that Kate lets out when Yelena sucks at her bottom lip, the feeling is mutual.
A burst of panic sizzles in Yelena's stomach as she abruptly wonders whether she's taken things too far, given Kate the impression that this kiss is going to escalate into something that Yelena isn't sure whether she can give yet. But before the fear can flash over into a full-blown eruption, Kate gentles the kiss, sighing happily when Yelena relaxes against her once more.
"See? Still here," she mumbles, and Yelena just rolls her eyes and keeps quiet, because she knows full well that if she admits just how much she liked slow, she'll never hear the end of it.
XIV.
It turns out that going slow isn't the only thing that Yelena has to learn about. She's almost embarrassed to admit that she'd sort of been operating off of the assumption that all sex was more or less the same, that the experience might be marginally different if she actually wanted to be with her partner but the mechanics of everything wouldn't really change.
The first time that she and Kate sleep together, that assumption goes out the window.
Never before in her life has Yelena cared so much about wanting to make her partner feel good. In the past, there was always an underlying motive—a need to get information from them, to get them to let their guard down so that she could kill them when it was convenient. But with Kate, all she can think is how good Kate feels beneath her, how much she loves knowing that she's the one drawing tiny breathy gasps from Kate's mouth, the one making Kate buck against her in search of more.
There's absolutely none of the clinical observation that has colored every past sexual encounter; she's not trying to learn Kate's body to hunt for weaknesses. Instead, she finds herself taking her time (slow, her brain helpfully supplies), exploring every inch of Kate's body and then doing it all over again just for the simple pleasure of learning what Kate likes best.
By the time Kate arches into her mouth, clenching around Yelena's fingers with a moan, Yelena knows that this—this is something that she could love. She makes Kate come a second time just because she can, but she tenses when Kate reaches for her.
"C'mere," Kate says, "I won't touch you anywhere you don't want."
Yelena allows herself to be pulled up the bed until she's sprawled across Kate. True to her word, Kate's hands just smooth across Yelena's back, fingers brushing along the assortment of scars there but never straying beyond previously-established boundaries. Yelena relaxes against Kate, burying her face in Kate's neck and tasting the skin there, delighting in the shiver she earns in response as Kate's hands tighten against her shoulder blades.
"You're insatiable," Kate says with a groan, but she doesn't look at all upset when Yelena lifts up so that she can see Kate's face. Yelena traces a finger down Kate's sternum, scrapes a blunt nail along the underside of a breast and grins when Kate's breath catches and her hips shift against the mattress.
"Red, yellow, green?" Yelena asks, struggling to contain her shit-eating grin as Kate glares up at her, sliding one of her thighs between Kate's legs just to watch the way her head tips back against the pillows, hair falling in dark slides of silk across her shoulders.
"Green," Kate moans out, "So fucking green—" and Yelena leans down and swallows the rest of her words in a kiss.
Sex becomes yet another layer to their relationship—and Yelena doesn't actually write it on her list, because that just seems embarrassing, but it would absolutely, 100% be on there—and Yelena can't get enough. It's addicting, to have that type of closeness and trust with another person, and the fact that Kate is so diligent about respecting Yelena's lack of interest in having anything reciprocated just makes it that much better.
That does not, however, mean that Yelena is immune to what they're doing. After one particularly frantic session in which she shoves Kate up against the wall in a stairwell after a mission, she's almost surprised to find that her own body is on edge and desperate in a way she's rarely experienced.
"Kate," she whimpers, not even sure exactly what she's asking for. All she knows is that she needs something, and she doesn't even realize that her hand has slipped down to cup herself until Kate's eyes—still hazy from her own orgasm—drop to follow the movement.
"It's okay," Kate murmurs, dipping her head to press a messy kiss against Yelena's mouth. "It's okay, Yelena, you can touch yourself—"
Yelena shoves her hand inside the tight confines of her pants, grinding down as she rubs quick, frantic circles against her clit. Kate doesn't move to touch her more than she already is, but even feeling the hot bursts of Kate's breath against the side of her neck is enough to send Yelena rocketing right up to the edge in record time. If the rare occasions when she's touched herself on her own were a warm, slow build, this is a wildfire in comparison—devastating in its intensity, filling her veins with liquid fire as she comes with a bitten-off cry.
She sags against Kate, resting her forehead against the slope of Kate's shoulder as she tries to remember how to breathe. After a second, Kate shifts slightly so that she can look down at Yelena.
"All right?"
Yelena laughs, still a little breathless from the intensity of what's just passed between them, and she leans up to kiss Kate deep and slow by way of answer. When she pulls back, she reaches down to twine their fingers and tugs Kate out of the stairwell and towards the street.
"Let's go home."
XV.
"We should go on vacation."
Yelena turns to glance over at Kate. "Vacation?"
"Yeah, you know—like, take a trip, relax, don't do anything stressful or work-related for a while."
Yelena rolls her eyes. "I know what a vacation is, Kate."
"Uh-huh. Sure. You looked pretty confused, so I'm just saying. No shame if the big bad assassin has never been the vacation type before." Kate is watching her with a mischievous smile that makes Yelena's heart swell even as she frowns.
"I know all about vacations." It's not a lie; she does know about them, from a strategic, mission-centric point of view. She's killed more than a few people while they were on a vacation, so the premise is maybe a little bit linked with an increased risk of death in her head, but she gets the principle of the thing.
She's never actually gone on a proper vacation for herself, though. Probably the closest she's ever come was going to the beach with Natasha, but that had been a single day in the middle of missions, so she's not sure that it really counts.
"What would you want to do?" she asks. Kate's eyes light up like she knows the question means she's won.
"I don't know. Nothing fancy or super major or anything. Maybe just like, a weekend. We could go upstate and hang out in the woods, or maybe drive up the coast and eat lobster or something. Maybe go to a beach?"
Yelena's ears perk up at that, and the wave of melancholy as she thinks about going to a beach without Natasha is eased by the mental image of what Kate might look like in a bathing suit, happy and carefree in the water. "A beach could be nice."
Kate nods. "Sure. It might be a little cold this late in the season, but maybe that will just mean fewer crowds to deal with."
The thought of going to the beach—something she already knows she likes—with Kate, who she also knows she likes, is compelling. "I want the lobster, too. And no beaches with sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and gets everywhere.”
“Please tell me you didn’t just quote Anakin Skywalker at me.” Kate is staring at her absolutely aghast, and Yelena shrugs unrepentantly.
“He made a good point.”
“I knew I never should have let you watch Star Wars,” Kate mumbles. “Okay, so setting aside the fact that you apparently have no problem agreeing with a genocidal mass murderer, I think that can be arranged. Next weekend work for you?”
Yelena grins. “Perfect.”
They take a car (rented, not stolen, in spite of the fact that Yelena grumbled to Kate about it being a waste of money) and drive the five hours up to a small rocky beach that's completely deserted. It's cold enough to need a jacket, but the salt-tinged wind coming off the water is welcome, turning their cheeks a flushed red from the chill.
They stopped at a lobster shack for lunch on the drive up, and it was even better than Yelena had thought it would be.
(To Yelena's endless amusement, Kate had been a little squeamish about peeling the lobster apart to pull the meat out.
"They are like giant, delicious sea cockroaches, Kate. Look at their legs and the plates on their tail—it is amazing what boiling something and drenching it in butter can do! Very tasty. Much better than actual cockroaches."
"Okay, that's really not helping. In fact, I'm not sure I want to eat any more lobster now that you put that thought in my head, so thanks. And also I really don't want to think about you eating cockroaches since I just kissed you a few minutes ago."
"I was out of other food options. And they were not so bad. A little crunchy. But if you are not going to finish your lobster now, I will happily eat it for you. It would be a shame to let any go to waste.")
It's a good day—one of the best in her entire life, Yelena thinks, and she dips a foot in the edge of the waves, kicking the water back up at Kate. She grins at the indignant shriek she gets in response, knowing that they're both liable to end up soaking wet and half-frozen by the time all is said and done, but god, is it worth it. To see the way that droplets of water catch the last rays of late afternoon sun, shining gold and iridescent in Kate's hair and mirroring the heat in her eyes when she tackles Yelena onto the ground.
Yelena plants one foot against the rocks and uses the leverage to flip them over so that Kate is pinned beneath her, and her smirk softens into something more genuine as she leans down and brushes a kiss across Kate's lips, her hands sliding up to press Kate's wrists down against the pebbles. It's not the most comfortable surface, she's sure—although she thinks that a rock beach is superior in just about every way to the coarse sand that she'd found in every crevice of her belongings after going to the beach with Natasha—but Kate doesn't seem to mind. She bucks her hips up against Yelena, struggling just enough to tease.
"I would not have expected you to be interested in public sex on the beach," Yelena says with mock seriousness. "You didn't tell me you were so kinky, Kate!"
Kate's mouth drops open in indignation, and she looks like she's about to protest, but then her expression morphs into something sly and a little pleased. "Well, maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do. And besides, does it really count as public if there is nobody around?"
Yelena considers the question, giving it some thought, and Kate rolls her eyes before reaching up and tugging Yelena down to kiss her again. "Don't answer that," Kate mumbles against her mouth, and Yelena laughs, the sound bubbling up and out of her before she can even think to cage it.
In this moment, she doesn't feel the weight of all of the lives that she's taken, of all the carefree lives she will never get to live. The grief and anger and hurt all melt away in the face of the unbridled joy she feels at being here with Kate, and as she kisses the pout off of Kate's lips and slips between her thighs, she thinks to herself that this is the final thing to add to her list, this thing that she never thought she would like quite as much as she does right now:
Being alive.
