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Vormir is colder than she expected. She had been too busy worrying about the fate of the world, too busy hoping to really think about it- but now, as she falls, it hits her.
It’s cold.
It’s wind biting into her face, tears dried on her cheeks, eyes frozen onto the image of Clint’s hand, still outstretched, as though he could catch her even as she’s already hitting the ground. It’s falling and feeling that cold in her heart, dread and hope and anguish and peace- and she’s hitting the ground, darkness enveloping her. The silence invades her mind with the weight of a thousand voices screaming-
And then she wakes up. Startles. The fork in her hand clatters on the plate and she feels eyes bore into her skull. She blinks, once, twice. Familiarity is creeping in her mind.
“I’m sorry,” a voice whispers, and Natasha looks up.
Melina looks at her with a gaze impossibly sad, and Natasha finds herself following the movements, going with the motions- she’s been here before. She grabs the photo album off the living room table and puts it down at Melina’s “No, leave it.” She makes it halfway out the door, Alexei is telling Yelena they have fruit roll-ups in the car, Melina is grabbing a gun off the top drawer, the car is up and running- and Natasha stops.
She’s been here before.
“Melina,” she starts. “Mom,” and Melina pauses. There’s something like pity, or fear, or grief on her face. Something like anger, but not at her. Melina only looks at her with soft, guilty eyes.
“We need to go.” She says, and they’re going off script, she can almost feel the timeline changing around them. Branching off.
“Mom,” she says again, voice pleading, She glances over at Yelena who is already situated in the car, humming along to a song only she hears and fiddling with her stuffed pony, almost bouncing with excitement in her seat. The sight makes her feel physically sick. She can’t do this again. “She’s only six” she whispers, and watches as Melina’s face crumbles. She follows Natasha’s gaze to Yelena, who is now trying to fog up the window with her breath, and Natasha sees her hands tremble. She looks back at Natasha.
“And you are only eleven.”
Then- something in her hardens, and Natasha wonders- ‘Is this really all it took? One nudge from her and Yelena would have been spared? Was a single sentence all they needed?- then Melina is moving, and Natasha has no more time to think about it. She goes back into the house, Natasha right behind her, and stops Alexei in his place with a wordless glance. He’s holding a duffle bag in one hand, Yelena’s shoes in the other, and he looks at her with confusion.
(“I don’t want to go,” She had said, and he looked at her disapprovingly, something like regret in his eyes.
“Don’t say that,” Alexei had whispered as he cradled her face, and Melina had made a decision.)
She pulls out the gun from her waistband, levels it with his chest. Now, her hands are steady.
“Melina,” he questions, dropping the items and holding his hands out as if to placate her, but she shakes her head. “We’re not going back,” she states.
“Are you coming?” She demands in response to his silence, and he says nothing.
“Alexei,” she nearly begs, tears forming in her eyes. “Are you coming?”
He looks down, sighs, and Natasha’s heart breaks.
“I have no choice,” he says, as if to make them understand, and she almost cries at the irony of it all. “Russia is my home.”
‘Then who are we?’ she wants to scream- but he retreats into the room, spouts some feeble lie about forgetting something, buying them time while maintaining a laughable deniability. He gives them a glance that looks a lot like goodbye- he loves them, maybe, but he will never understand.
Natasha tries not to dwell on it. She runs into the bedroom and shoves everything within reach into the bag, dashing into Yelena’s and doing the same. She makes it halfway out the front door yet again before doubling back for the photo album, and then for the second time in her life, she leaves the only home she’s ever known. Melina meets her out front, closes the car door behind her. Yelena remains blissfully free of tension and doesn’t notice Alexei’s absence until they’ve pulled out of the driveway, and are long on their way to freedom.
“Where’s Dad?” She asks, and Natasha shares a heavy look with Melina before climbing into the back and settling herself beside her sister.
Natsha starts off gently. “He’s not coming with us on the adventure, ‘Lena.”
For a moment Yelena looks confused, but then she shrugs and says she’ll tell him about it when they get home. It’s clear she’s too young to pick up on the finality in her tone, but Natasha doesn’t have the heart to break it to her. Not yet. Not now.
The drive is a long one. She isn’t exactly sure where they’re going, only that Melina seems to have a single minded focus on away. Yelena grew bored within the first ten minutes, so they listened to American Pie on repeat for an hour straight until she finally sang herself to sleep. She finds that she doesn’t mind much- she hadn’t been able to hear the song without crying for years once she’d left the Red Room- but as she watches Yelena drool into her shirt, she figures she can make some new memories of it now.
She turns towards the window and nearly flinches at her barely visible reflection. She’s so young. Her blue hair is just above her shoulders, her skin still so pale. Her ears aren’t even pierced yet. Everything almost feels like a dream, but she thinks her mind has been messed with enough for her to distinguish what was real and what wasn’t. She had fallen, and she had died, that much was sure. But if dealing with monsters and magic had taught her anything, it’s that the impossible was possible.
She’s been given a second chance. Real or not, she’s going to take it.
When she wakes up, it’s because the car is slowing down, rolling into the almost deserted parking lot of a run down diner. Dawn has broken over the sky and the sun is bleeding into the horizon, nearly blinding her in its intensity. Yelena remains dead asleep against her shoulder, snoring softly, stuffed pony in her lap. Melina parks the car and opens the door; Natasha slips out of the way to allow Melina to shake Yelena awake.
She lifts Yelena from the car seat and into her arms as she slowly comes back into consciousness. She peers down at Natasha and tsks, wetting a finger with the tip of her tongue before rubbing at her face, at the apparent mark on her cheeks from a snack they grabbed at the gas station on the way here.
And it’s… weird. Being mothered by a woman she’s cognitively older than at that point in time. But simultaneously, it’s freeing. There isn't much she can do- not now, when she’s in a body that hasn’t even hit puberty yet, grappling with limbs shorter than she’s used to. There is so much to do, so much to change- but she can’t even begin until she’s old enough to be taken seriously. She isn’t even sure where to start.
But she has this. She has them. There isn’t anywhere else she’d rather be to pass the time.
A soft chime rings as they enter the door, Natasha carrying Yelena in- the young girl still floating in a haze of sleep. They settle down in a booth tucked in the corner of the diner, exits visible and backs to the wall. They will be running for a long time, always looking behind their backs and trusting no one but each other. But they will have each other.
They order one milkshake, three straws- just for the novelty of it- and a stack of pancakes. Yelena eats all three cherries the waitress had put in for them, and Melina waits to make sure they have both eaten a decent amount before grabbing anything for herself.
And Natasha knows that she is home.