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So Yelena will be the first to admit the mission did not go as planned.
The good news is the mission was in Estonia, an area that not only did Yelena know well, but James did too.
Yelena could've found them a safehouse, but it wouldn't be the sprawling, four bedroom haven that James found (or, remembered from his captivity).
For why they had to find a safehouse…well, she'll give the quick rundown…
The base they were supposed to storm was already evacuated and cleared. No agents, no information, no files. A complete bust.
And then there was a blizzard incoming, A long one. Like, two weeks of complete white out and inability to get anywhere long. So not only did they get nothing out of the mission, but now they were trapped for half a month. They managed to get to the safehouse before the worst of it started, but now it was hitting in full force- they were unable to see anything but white through the windows.
Yelena's first order of business was making sure they could stay alive during those two weeks.
James checked the safehouse kitchen immediately after making sure the place was empty, and there were plenty of cans of food and bottles of clean water to last multiple months, even with there being six of them, half of whom were super-soldiers. And, worst comes to worst, there was snow outside. It wouldn't be clean, but it would be water.
They wouldn't starve. They also had plenty of wood to keep the fireplaces running, so they wouldn't freeze.
Next, making sure Ava and Antonia were going to be okay.
Yelena's not quite sure how it all works, but Ava's friends had managed to find a way to get her pure, quantum energy directly into her body. Every month they gave her an infusion of quantum energy, and that prevented any unintended glitching and pain for that month.
Toni was a little more complex. Her paralysis is severe, but one of the Avengers’ geniuses had made her an exoskeleton suit so she could walk. It also helped her move her arms, and, most importantly, helped keep her heart beating and her lungs breathing. The problem was that with the severity of her paralysis and how hard the suit had to work to keep her alive, batteries had to be replaced every two months.
Yelena had no idea how long it's been since Ava's last infusion or Toni's last battery change.
“Ava.” She began, after James confirmed they have more than sufficient amounts of food and water. “Your infusion?”
“Two weeks ago.” She stated immediately.
“Okay.” Yelena sighed. Two weeks. Hopefully they'll be out by then.
“Toni? Battery change?”
She held up two fingers.
“Weeks since? Until?”
“‘til.” She scratched out. Speaking was difficult for her, due to the burns in her throat, so she only spoke in short, clipped sentences, only a few words at most at a time.
Yelena sighed again.
Two weeks. That was their max.
“I'll call Olivia.” John said.
James snorted a laugh. “Good luck with that. Unless you got magical cell service, you're not calling anybody.”
John snarled at his phone as James was proved right.
“We will just have to wait out the storm.” Yelena declared. “We have two weeks at most until it becomes dangerous for us to not be back home.”
James shifted uncomfortably from where he was leaning against the kitchen wall.
“Who is hungry?” Alexei clapped his hands together. “I will make you all famous war meal. We have Spam?”
“Lots.” Yelena replied.
“Excellent! Sit back, brave team. I will feed us.”
Yelena's not so sure how that will turn out.
James directed a side eye at her and slowly exited into the hallway, back into the bedrooms, while the rest of the team argued, as usual. Yelena wasn't listening to them. Instead, she followed James into the hallway.
“James.” She called down the hallway at him. “You have a problem?”
He turned around to face her, and then motioned his head towards the bedroom he'd claimed. Ava and Toni would probably share, and her dad would want to share with her. John would get his own room on the qualification of nobody wanting to room with him.
Yelena followed him into the bedroom, and he shut and locked the door behind him.
“You going to kill me? Poor time to do it.” She commented with a scoff, sitting down on the bed.
“I only have a week.” James says in desperation.
“For?”
He grabbed his backpack that was sitting up against the bed, and pulled out a case that resembled a pistol case.
“Again, poor time to kill me.”
James opened the case without another word.
Inside, there were seven slots for syringes and small vials. Six were filled with a clear fluid, while one was empty. On the other side of the case was various first aid equipment, including alcohol wipes and gauze, and a red container with SHARPS written on it in bold capital letters.
“What is this?” She questioned, trying to inspect the vials closer. She couldn't make out anything except James’ name on the label.
“Drugs.” He said plainly, closing the case and sitting down on the bed next to Yelena.
“When I was with HYDRA, they drugged me to keep me compliant. They gave me such a high dose so often I became dependent on them. Extremely dependent. I'm unable to detox from them without dying, and even that would take over a month of withdrawal. So instead I'm on this. Doesn't have a lot of the danger and side effects of the other drugs, but keeps me from going into withdrawal. I have to take them every day.”
“And you only have six days.” Yelena replied. Not a question, but James answered anyway.
“Yes.”
“What would happen? When you are in withdrawal?”
“Um.” He swallowed thickly. “Sweating, fatigue, headaches, fever, vomiting, delusions, hallucinations, seizures….”
A lightbulb suddenly goes off in Yelena's head, a possibility for rescue before this gets bad. “You live with Captain America, right?” Its a rhetorical question, of course. She knows he lives with Sam Wilson, he talks about him all the time. “He will see you are missing, and come to save you?”
James shook his head. “Sam's away on a long mission. He won't be home for a while, won't notice I'm even gone.”
Well, there goes that plan.
“Please don't tell the others.” He said before Yelena could speak again. “I don't want them to know.”
“James.” She shook her head. “Unless we get out of here within the week, they are going to have to know.”
“Let's just hope we can get out of here before then.” James sighed.
Yelena could tell he was not very hopeful.
She was not either.
~~~~~~~~~
Yelena knocked on James’ door early on the fifth morning.
“One minute.” He grumbled out, which Yelena could recognize as really meaning “Go away”.
“James.” Yelena called through the door. She doubted he would be weird about letting her in. The rest of the team may be told to go away, but it was different with them. There was an odd connection due to how well James had known Natasha. It felt like they were family.
Silence hung over them for a moment.
“Come in.”
Yelena quickly entered and shut the door when she saw James was sitting on the bed with the case open and a vial and syringe in his hands.
“You're not weird about needles, right?” He asked.
She scoffed. “I was chemically brainwashed, James.”
James glared at her. “Yeah. Where do you think the Red Room learned it from.”
Regret immediately clouded his features.
“I'm sorry, that was mean-”
She shook her head. “No apology. I understand.”
He nodded, uncapping the syringe and drawing from the vial.
“You just come in here to hang, or you wanna talk?” He said in the middle of drawing after noticing how Yelena was just standing awkwardly by the door.
“I did not want to disrupt your focus.”
“I don't need to focus. I've done this every day for years.” He grabbed an alcohol wipe from the case, holding the now full syringe between two of his metal fingers and ripping the wipe packet open with his teeth.
“Well…you only have one day left, correct?” She inquired, and James nodded as he wiped the inside of his right thigh.
“Yeah, after this one.” He moved the syringe so the tip was right by where he'd just wiped, and stuck it in. He grimaced a bit as he depressed the plunger. Once the syringe was empty, he pulled it out and threw it into the sharps container on the case.
“Does it hurt?”
He shrugged as he closed the case. “Just cold as it goes in.” He slid the case back under the bed. “I assume the blizzard isn't letting up and I'm gonna be forced into withdrawal.”
Yelena didn't know how to confirm that yes, he'd in fact have to suffer and put himself in grave danger because they're snowed in in the middle of nowhere during a once in a generation blizzard, so she didn't say anything. James would take that as confirmation enough.
“It'll take me about a day for symptoms to start, after my last dose.” He began rattling off information. “It'll start out small but get gradually worse. I shouldn't be at risk of death until at least a month in, but I won't be able to do anything. Once the fever sets in I'll likely be delusional. I'll probably need to just lie in bed until we can leave…and I'm not sure how you're gonna get me out of here in that state.”
“Once we can leave, I will send the rest of the team out. They can contact the government-”
“Sam.”
Yelena nodded, if only out of courtesy. She'll be happy once they can contact anybody. “Okay. And they can call for help. But I am staying here, with you. The whole time.”
He looked over at her, and then quickly looked away. His eyes were shiny.
Yelena didn't know it, but he was thinking about how much she looked like Natasha.
Natasha had visited him in Wakanda. Told him about her sister. Told him that when, not if, he's better, he can meet her. That they'd get along well.
He had promised her he'd protect her like she was his own little sister.
He'd failed on that promise so many times. He came back to the States, out of Wakanda, and didn't even try to look for Yelena. She was suffering, missing Natasha just like he was, letting her anger fuel her, and he failed to protect her then, like he had promised. He didn't even meet her until a world-ending scenario brought them together, thrusting them straight into danger, and he regrets that they met that way every day.
And now here she was, having to protect him.
The world seems to have a penchant for irony.
“It'll be rough.” He states. “I'll be crazy. Hallucinating. I'll probably throw up everywhere, make an absolute mess.” He sighs. “You don't have to do this. I can try and handle it myself-”
“I am not going to let you do this alone.” She said in a definite tone, placing a hand on his right shoulder. “After all, what are sisters for?”
~~~~~~~~~
On the seventh day, everything went as normal.
Alexei made some borderline terrible, but edible, food. They entertained themselves by playing cards. John and Toni got mad at each other and got into a bit of a physical fight. Not that unusual for them, they all got into fights with each other and usually solved them with a bit of physicality. Never enough to actually hurt each other, but enough to decompress. Probably not the healthiest way to solve things, but they were not the healthiest team.
Yelena notices that James begins to act off after dinner. It may have been subtle to anybody else, but it was obvious to Yelena. His skin got paler, and sweat was beading at his temple despite the fact the whole house was pretty cold. Each room had a fireplace for warmth, but James wasn't anywhere close enough to the one in the main room for sweating to be normal.
None of the others seem to notice nor do they think it's odd that he retires to his room early. Yelena does the same ten minutes later, trying to space it out from when James left so it wasn't suspicious.
“James?” She calls as she knocks on his room.
“Come in.”
His voice already sounds weak.
When Yelena enters, she finds him lying on the bed, his body shaking ever so lightly. His face is covered in a sheen of sweat.
She goes over to the closet in the room, finding a spare blanket and pillow. She lays the blanket out on the floor, next to the bed, with the pillow next to it.
“What…” He swallowed thickly. “What are you doing?”
“I am going to sleep here tonight.” Yelena says, matter of a factly.
“You…you don't have to. Won't be…comfortable.” He says, voice cutting in and out.
“More comfortable than dirt. Or concrete. Or mud. And I have slept on those many times.” She watched as more sweat dripped from his temples. “I am going to go and get a cold towel, okay?”
James didn't respond. Yelena began to worry that the hallucinations may have already started.
Nevertheless, she leaves the room, heading to the nearest bathroom, praying she wouldn't bump into anybody.
They didn't have running water, but they did have many buckets and, of course, snow. Each bathroom had multiple buckets filled with either water or snow that was in the process of melting. Yelena got a washcloth from the cabinet and dipped it in one of the buckets where the water was cold, but not freezing. She wrung it out a few times until it wasn't dripping, and snuck back over to James’ room.
His eyes were shut, but she could tell he wasn't sleeping. His chest was rising and falling more rapidly than usual, his breathing sharp.
“James.” She said gently, and he made a hum of acknowledgement.
“This will be cold.” She warns before placing the washcloth over his forehead. He takes a deep inhale, then exhales slowly, his shoulders relaxing further down into the mattress.
“‘s nice.” James gets out in a breathy voice.
“Do you need anything else?” She asks, but he quickly shakes his head, as best he can with his head firmly pressed into the pillow.
“I'm…I'll be fine.” He insists.
The sweating, shaking, and rapid breathing said otherwise.
~~~~~~~~~
Yelena woke up with a start when she heard James hacking.
She got up quickly and went over to the bed. James was hanging his head over the side, right arm gripping an empty bucket, as he heaved dryly.
“James-” Yelena went to hold his hair back. It was clear he was trying to vomit, but it was unsuccessful.
After so much heaving that Yelena thought he would crack a rib, something finally came up.
Yelena just continued to hold his hair back as what must have been the contents of his entire stomach were emptied into the bucket.
His grip on the bucket faltered as he continued, getting weaker with each heave, and Yelena used the hand not in his hair to grab the bucket instead. She had helped many Widows detox from the chemicals the Red Room used, and that detox did sometimes include vomiting, so this was not an unusual task for her.
By the time he finished, he wasn't holding onto the bucket at all, and he sagged back down into bed. There were tears on his cheeks- from emotions or from the strain of vomiting, Yelena didn't know. Perhaps it was both.
“I will be right back.” She promised. She loathed to leave him like this, but the bucket needed to be emptied and she needed another washcloth to wipe his face.
When she comes back, she doesn't even think James noticed she was gone. He's laying in bed, eyes screwed shut, breathing heavy once again.
She sets the emptied bucket down, sits on the edge of the bed, and begins wiping his mouth and chin clean. He flinches at first, but quickly settles, letting her help.
“James.” She says as she finishes. “Are you awake?” Really, she means to ask if he's aware, but she'll know the answer either way if he responds.
“Hm. Kinda.” His voice sounds even worse now, coming out like a scratched record.
“‘s better than last time.” He says. “I tried. To go off ‘em. When I first got back to The States. Gave up after two days.”
Yelena doesn't respond. She's not sure what to say. Nevertheless, James continues.
“Y’know, some of the shit, probably actually helps me. Antipsychotics and muscle relaxers and shit. Probably be on those anyway.” He laughs dryly. There's no humor behind it. “But they had to make this fucked up cocktail that I'd get horribly addicted to. That was probably the plan. Make me more dependent on them.”
“Dreykov loved that.” Yelena replied solemnly. “The control. The dependence.”
“I freed over thirty Widows.” She says. “They all had it rough, in the aftermath.” She remembers one, Celine, who nearly died during the detox from dehydration and seizures.
Yelena does not mention her own struggles with alcohol after she came back from the snap. She spent many a night with her head over the toilet as her stomach ejected anything in it. It doesn't compare to all James is feeling, but she does know personally what it's like to be dependent on a substance, not only from her own chemical brainwashing, but from alcohol too.
James’ eyes have clouded over.
“James?”
He blinks for a moment, looks up at her.
“Natalia?”
She swallows thickly, patting his leg and getting up from the bed. “Try to sleep, James.”
She's not sure if he does, but she doesn't hear him for the rest of the night. She does not get any more sleep, wondering how they'll get through the week if the hallucinations have already started.
~~~~~~~~~
“Where's Bucky?”
John is the first to notice his absence in the morning.
Yelena had left him in his room, told him she'd be back soon. She knew she at least had to make an appearance for breakfast, or suspicions would be high. She's not sure how long they can go without the team figuring things out, but they can try for as long as possible.
“In his room.” Yelena responded casually, trying not to act like anything was out of the ordinary.
“Is he okay?” Ava asks. “He disappeared last night.”
Of course Ava would have noticed. The girl is too observant.
Yelena shrugs. “You know him. Likes to be alone.”
That works, enough, to placate them for the day.
Yelena brings him back some breakfast, but he rejects it.
“I'll be fine.” He insists. “You go hang out with the rest of the team, I'll be okay here.”
Yelena does not believe him, but does as he says, hanging out with the team for the day and checking on him occasionally. He seems to get paler throughout the day, but continues to insist he's okay.
By nightfall, that is proven wrong.
“Yelena.” He calls out, breathless. She's sitting on the makeshift bed on the floor, cleaning one of her guns, but rushes to his side.
“James.” She's about to ask him what's wrong, but then his muscles tense, his eyes gloss over, and he begins to shake.
Seizure.
She rolls him onto his side, but otherwise keeps her hands off of him. No restraint, in a safe place, on his side. Basic first aid. That's all she can do, until the seizure subsides. It makes her feel helpless, even as she knows it's best. Watching him shake, laying there, not in control of his own body…this was not the first time she had seen a seizure, far from it, but it feels different with James. This man, that she'd been told horror stories about as a kid, this man Natasha had talked about with such high praise, this man she'd worked with, fierce and strong and never giving up…
This man she's watching go through the throes of withdrawal…
Yelena is not stupid. She knows sickness, pain, it doesn't discriminate. Everybody is weak at some point, whether from illness or injury, mental or physical, knows that he has already been through hell and back, but watching him suffer, no control over what's happening to him…
She feels powerless. Weak. And yet she knows that's only a fraction of what he must feel right now.
Eventually, after what feels like an eternity but was probably only about two minutes, he stops shaking. His eyes focus again, and his muscles relax.
“James.” She ventures, still not touching him but only a few feet away.
“Yelena.” He croaks out. She takes that as confirmation that he's back. He tries to sit himself up, but his movements are still uncoordinated, so Yelena helps him, sitting the pillow up as well so his back and head aren't up against the hard wooden headboard.
“You feeling okay?” She immediately asks. His breathing is a bit rapid, but it had been for the past day, so she's not sure that has anything to do with the seizure.
“Okay.” He nods. “How long was it?”
“Two, three minutes?” Yelena guesses.
“Mm.” He hums. “That's good.”
Anything less than five minutes is good, Yelena knows. Anything more could result in long term damage.
“I have a stopwatch in my bag. In my room.” She says. “I should get it. In case there is a next time.”
“There will be.” He said, matter-of-a-factly. “I'm okay now, if you want to get it.”
Yelena looks at him with a worried expression. “You sure?” She knows she cannot be too overbearing, she doesn’t want James to think she's coddling him, that would only lead to him forcing her away, and he needs somebody who knows the situation, who's helped people through detox and withdrawal before, to help. She's trying to detach, to give him space, to listen when he says he's okay, but it's difficult when more often than not, his declaration of being okay is a lie. She doesn't want to leave him, but if he tells her to, she can't put up too much of a fight without risking the trust he's put in her to take care of him through this.
So when he nods, Yelena begrudgingly leaves, heading up the stairs to the bedroom she and Alexei were using (or, at least, Yelena was using, until James had needed her help).
When Yelena entered, Alexei was sitting on his bed, scribbling something in a notebook.
“Yelena!” He greeted upon seeing her, putting the notebook down. “Sit, please.” He patted the bed next to him.
“Sorry, I am a little busy-”
“No, come sit. We need to talk.” Alexei's tone was serious. Yelena feared perhaps she was about to learn another one of them would barely survive the remaining week thar they were trapped here.
She went over to the bed cautiously, taking a seat next to Alexei. She really was never sure what the next words out his mouth would be, but she was especially scared this time.
“Look, I know, you did not sleep here last night. You slept in the room, with The Winter Soldier, and I want to make sure you know how to protect yourself.” Alexei lectured, punctuating his words by holding one finger of his right hand up and pointing it in Yelena's direction.
Yelena stared at him. “I know how to use a gun, Alexei.”
“Oh, oh yes, of course you do, yes. Ever since you were a little girl.” He has that look on his face, of nostalgia, of a time when they were simply a normal family. Or, at least, that's what they were to Yelena, too young to understand what was really happening. “I mean…protection, for when you go to that stage-”
Suddenly, it clicked in Yelena's mind.
“Ew, dad, no!” She got up from the bed. “That is not…no, that is not what is happening.” Yelena cannot believe he was about to give her the birds and the bees talk. Or that he had thought Yelena was hanging out in James’ room because they were…like that.
“This is a colossal misunderstanding.” She clarifies. “James is….he is sick, I am caring for him.”
She knows she told James she wouldn't tell the others, but she's not telling Alexei exactly why James is sick, and she had to say something. And she's sure James will understand, if she tells him what Alexei thought was going on.
“Oh!” Alexei seems relieved. “Oh, that is good. Okay!” He rises from the bed, looking like a twenty pound weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “Good, okay. I will go make soup then. Good for the sickness.”
Before Yelena can protest, he's out the door and heading down the steps. She shakes her head and grabs the stopwatch from her bag, the only thing she even came up here for.
~~~~~~~~~
“Alexei knows you are sick.” Yelena says as soon as the door to James’ room shuts behind her. “Not why you are sick, but he knows you are sick. He is making soup.”
“Oh.” She sees that James has laid back down. “That's…okay.”
“I know I said I would not tell, but he thought I was sleeping down here because we were…” Yelena, with the stopwatch still gripped in her fist, makes an uncoordinated motion with her hands, middle and index fingers touching her thumbs, and then each hand touching each other, trying to mimic a kiss.
It takes James a moment, whether that's because of the brain fog from the withdrawal or because it was simply a bad representation of what Yelena meant, she wasn't sure, but she could see it in his eyes when it clicked.
“Oh.” He brings his right hand up to rub at his temples.
“I was not really conscious as a teenager and he was in prison. Making up for lost time.” She shrugs. That's the thing, about her and Alexei and Melina. Yelena only had them as parents when she was very young, and now, it's almost like they're making up for lost time. She knows they see her as capable, that they don't think she needs their guidance, but they provide it anyway, as if trying to fill in the gaps they missed.
It wasn't as if she was really ripped away from them, however. Sending her to the Red Room was always the plan, but over the years, after Natasha came back to them and the Widows were freed...they both seemed to course correct. They were indoctrinated from a young age, made to think what they were doing was good. The evidence of the trauma inflicted onto Natasha, Yelena, Antonia, and all the other Widows was almost like it's own antidote, snapping them out of their beliefs and making them turn to something new. Alexei moved to America and ran a limo business before all the Thunderbolts stuff broke out, and Melina was somewhere in Eastern Europe (probably not that far from them now, actually, if they had any way to contact her they could likely get rescued), still doing her experiments last Yelena heard, but not to come up with better methods of mind control, but rather coming up with antidotes.
She wishes her mom was here now. She would know exactly how to help James. James has said the smartest girl in the world created his arm, Yelena assumes the same girl made the medication he's on now. If she couldn't figure out how to safely get James completely off of drugs, Yelena doesn't think Melina could, either, but at least Melina would know how to best help him through the withdrawal. She would know something, some technique, some treatment that they could do even with the bare minimum they had in the safehouse.
There's a knock on the door, and she watches as James' entire body flinches at the sound.
“Alexei?” Yelena calls through the door.
“One and only.” He declares on the other side. “With soup!”
She turns to James, silently asking if he could be let in. James shrugs, as if defeated, but ends up nodding.
She places the stopwatch on the bedside table and opens the door just a bit, enough for her to get through but not enough that James was visible or that Alexei could get through. Alexei is standing in the doorway, holding a bowl of soup, more patient than Yelena had ever seen him, waiting for the door to be opened for him rather than just punching through it or ripping it off the hinges.
“Pantry only had vegetable soup. But! I put some pasta in it!” He says proudly, handing the bowl over to Yelena, eyebrows suddenly furrowing in concern, eyes darting as if trying to look for James in the room. His expression momentarily flashes with extreme worry when he realizes the half-conscious person on the bed is James.
“He is…he is contagious? Because if he is, I should stay with him, I have immune system of a champion.” His voice gets low and he whispers, not wanting James to hear, but Alexei has never been able to be quiet, and with James’ heightened senses, including hearing, she's sure he could hear him.
Her suspicion is confirmed a few moments later, as before she can even respond, James says, “Not contagious.” He then follows it up with, “Let him in, it's okay.”
Yelena is hesitant. She knows her dad. He is minorly Winter Soldier obsessed, majorly Captain America obsessed, and incredibly over-the-top. If anybody here was going to end up smothering James, it would be Alexei.
Nevertheless, James said he could come in, so Yelena opens the door more, moving to the side as Alexei enters.
“Hi.” James gives a weak wave. There's no fight in his body, his entire figure nearly melting into the mattress. “Thanks. For the soup.”
It is then Yelena remembers she is holding the bowl of soup, and it is exceptionally warm, nearly burning her hands, even as she still has her gloves on from cleaning her gun, which is still sitting on the makeshift bed, half clean, dropped suddenly. At least she had a good reason- seizures did not care about happening at a convenient time.
She sets the bowl on the nightstand. It makes a clink sound in the eerily silent room, with Alexei standing, arms crossed, staring at an ill Winter Soldier.
“You are sick.” Alexei says, like he thought James had been faking. “I have not gotten sick since before the serum.”
“It's…it's not like a cold.” James seems to weigh his options in that moment, deciding whether to tell half of the truth or the full truth.
In the end, he seems to settle for the full truth. “It's withdrawal. From drugs. Hydra put me on them.”
“Hm.” Alexei ponders, for a moment. “When will you be better?”
“Um, a little over a month. Then my body will just give up and I'll die.”
Oh, Yelena thinks. He's telling the entire truth.
Alexei, for once in his life, looks speechless.
Silence stretches between them.
Finally, Alexei says, “Enjoy the soup.”
Then, he turns on his heels and leaves, shutting the door behind him.
“Odd.” Yelena comments as soon as he's gone. She's never seen Alexei like that, like he's not sure what to say, since she was just a little kid and they were fleeing from Ohio.
She tries to shrug it off. “Well. Should not waste this soup.” It has cooled down significantly, to the point Yelena no longer feels like her hands are burning as she holds the bowl. “Sit up.”
James obeys, sitting up slowly, hands planted firmly on the mattress as he tries to get leverage to help himself up. Yelena wants to help him, but his expression is determined, and she thinks he'll just turn her down if she offers any help.
After a few minutes, he's up, back up against the headboard.
“Here-” Yelena grabs the pillow and sits it upright as well. “-that is better.”
Yelena sits on the edge of the bed, right up next to James, holding the soup and a spoon. Carefully, she scoops some up and brings it up James’ mouth. She expects him to refuse, retaliate even, insist he's not a baby and he doesn't need to be fed like one, that he can feed himself despite how uncoordinated he is at the moment. But he does none of those things, instead just opening his mouth and accepting the spoon. His eyelids look heavy, fluttering under the moonlight coming in from the window. This close, she can see the beads of sweat at his forehead, the flushed skin on his cheeks.
When the soup is all gone, Yelena gets up. She's planning to leave for a moment, bring the bowl out to the kitchen, but James calls her name.
“Yelena.” He says, in that breathless voice again, and at first Yelena fears another seizure is on the way. That would not be good, not only with how close it was to his last one but also because he just ate.
Then, there's a mechanical noise. Yelena turns around to face James, and finds him with his metal arm detached and laying on his lap.
Yelena tries not to let her shock show on her face. She supposes she knew the arm could come off without being blown or torn off, but it's still a bit of a surprise to see it.
“Can you…put this under the bed?” He asks, holding it out.
“You do not want it?”
James shakes his head. “When I get worse…when the delusions and hallucinations start…it's better if I don't have it. In case I get violent.” He sighs. “Like, I'm strong in my other arm, but the metal is still strongest.”
Yelena decides not to tell him that the delusions and hallucinations may have already started- he's already called her “Natalia” once. She fears if she tells him that now, especially since it seems like he doesn't remember it, he'll get too freaked out about already losing control of his mind. So, for now, she'll just omit that little bit of information, considering it's not like he did anything else besides call her the wrong name.
She takes the arm from him, momentarily surprised by how much lighter it is than she thought it would be, and kneels down to gently places it in the space under the bed. It's enough to keep it out of James’ reach when he's laying in bed, and that's enough. It just needs to be unavailable for James to grab, just in case there's an incident.
“If you ever want it.” She begins, rising up from the floor. “Let me know.”
He nods, but Yelena can tell in his expression that he's not going to do that. He's made the decision, that he feels better with it off and out of his reach, and she will respect that.
James’ eyes are shut by the time she rises from the floor, even though he's still sitting up. He seems relaxed, either nearly asleep or already asleep, so Yelena decides it's a good time to take the bowl to the kitchen.
She sneaks out without James as much as stirring, but runs into Alexei in the kitchen. He's cleaning the pot he'd used for the soup.
“Hey. You…left a little abruptly, there.” Yelena broaches. Alexei is good at hiding his emotions, but Yelena can see a hauntedness in his expression.
“That is by design.” He simply says, not looking up from scrubbing the pot.
Yelena tilts her head to the side in confusion. “What is?”
“The withdrawal. They wanted him to need them. If the Winter Soldier ever escaped…he would just come crawling back for the medicine.”
Yelena sets the bowl on the counter. “Yes?”
Alexei seems confused, conflicted, but she can't understand why. They know HYDRA are terrible, they know it's full of sick individuals with horrible ideologies. They know how they treated The Winter Soldier, like a weapon, as if he was incapable of any emotions yet they still planned around every possible deflection or escape, contradicting their own beliefs. If he was nothing but an object, something that felt no happiness, sadness, desire, then he would never feel the need to escape, yet they kept him drugged and restrained and tracked.
Much like the Red Room, the things HYDRA told themselves to placate any inner voice telling them what they were doing was wrong were thin logic, even the slightest thought into them poked holes in their rationale. Their stated “beliefs” were a far cry from their actions.
Why does Alexei seem surprised that they kept James drugged, to prevent disobedience and defection?
He shakes his head. “Yelena, by the time you were born, he was a hushed secret within the circles. When I was young, he was simply a given. Even when we were in the same place, both under the Soviets, they told us he was a monster, by choice. A…how do you say, uh, sociopath.” The pot has been scrubbed for long enough now, but he's still rubbing the sponge around the same spot. “They told us, he is good soldier. You can be good soldier too. They put us under this guise. That he was doing all the killing by choice, because he knew this is best. They used him, his obedience, to make us obedient.”
“Alexei.” She says, softly. “We have known, he was not acting of his own volition.”
He's still scrubbing that same spot. “It has now sunk in.”
“It is clean.” She says, instead of touching the subject further. “You can stop scrubbing.”
He does not respond, or stop scrubbing.
Yelena leaves. She can recognize when he needs space.
Alexei, for all his flaws, and there are a lot of them…he is still her dad. The only dad she's ever had. Yelena has long since come to terms with the fact that she had been lied to her whole life. Natasha was not her biological sister, Melina was not her biological mother, Alexei was not her biological father, and the whole situation in Ohio had been a ruse. But there came a time, when push came to shove, that they all realized their own transgressions, all realized all the things they had been lied to about since they were young that put them in the positions they were in now. That they did come together, and become a family. Ohio may have been fake, but what they had now, that was real.
Yelena thought Alexei had realized a while back he'd been lied to since he was just a child. Perhaps he had. But being directly confronted with the evidence that the figure they used to convince him to obey wasn't a willing participant, maybe that was a lie he hadn't quite come to terms with yet.
James is still asleep when she comes back to the room.
She lays down on the makeshift bed on the floor, and tries to sleep.
~~~~~~~~~
For the second time in two days, Yelena was woken up by James vomiting.
Yelena held the bucket and his hair back again. The soup did not stay down.
Yelena had been worried about many things going into this. Seizures lasting too long, delusions and hallucinations that caused him to lash out, his body giving out sooner than expected.
Yelena having to face Captain America once they got out of here, and telling him they couldn't save James.
Those were all still very possible fears. But now, she has a new one: dehydration.
She's not concerned about starvation, a non-enhanced human can go 3 weeks without food, and since James has the serum and is just laying down, not burning many calories, by the time he would starve, they would already be in dire straits. She doesn't think Toni can live very long without her batteries, and Ava would be struggling greatly by the 3 week mark. Yelena wouldn't be surprised if he could last even longer than that. She thinks he probably has, he was on the run for nearly two years. She's not going to ask him, of course, but the point was, starvation was not even on her radar. There were a million other more pressing matters.
But dehydration can come on quick, especially considering James hasn't managed to keep anything down, including water, for a whole day now.
“James.” She tries, once he's finished vomiting.
He mutters something. Yelena can't make it out.
“James.” She says again, but there's no response. He's still holding his head above the bucket, even though there can't possibly be any more for him to throw up.
“Don't…don't wanna.” He whines into the bucket.
“You do not want to what?”
She's not even sure if James is hearing her. He's not really showing any signs that he's aware Yelena is even there.
“Ugh.” He loses his strength, nearly face planting into the soiled bucket. Yelena is only able to prevent that by the grip she has on his hair.
She sets the bucket down, tries to ease him out of his hunched-over pose, laying him back down on the bed.
“Ice.” He says. His eyes are shut, head against the pillow, face flush. His forehead is drenched in sweat, splotchy red lines all over his cheeks, capillaries burst from the strain of vomiting.
“I can get ice.” Maybe not actual ice, but she can definitely get snow. She has to go and clean out the bucket anyway. “For your forehead? Or to eat?”
“I need…need the ice.” He's definitely not hearing Yelena. “Malfunction. Need ice.”
She freezes as she realizes.
He's not asking for ice. He's asking for the ice. For cyro.
Yelena briefly wonders what he's seeing now, where he thinks he is, but quickly remembers that she'd rather not know. He's nowhere good.
“Sorry, James.” She replies, even though she knows he's not aware enough to listen. “No ice.”
He groans, then stills. Yelena watches, but it doesn't look like a seizure, he's not shaking or tensed up, just motionless. His chest is rising and falling in the same rhythm it has been since the withdrawal began. It seemed like he just fell asleep.
Yelena sighs, then goes to clean the bucket.
~~~~~~~~~
By lunchtime, Yelena's level of concern had skyrocketed.
He'd gotten pretty out of it now. Sometimes, he'd open his eyes, and he'd see her and relax. Other times, his eyes are shut, almost painfully so, as he cries out and begs for the ice.
She sits beside him on the bed, waiting for him to snap out of whatever is happening in his mind. He is saying names now, begging for them to help him. Yelena doesn't recognize any of the names. Rumlow, Rollins, Karpov. Some are in English, some are in Russian. He pleads, says he's learned, please stop the punishment.
Suddenly, his eyes open.
“Sam.” It comes out as a breathless whisper, but it's said in relief, instead of fear like the other names had been.
That name, she recognizes.
“I am sorry, James.” She's not sure if he's going to be with it enough to hear her this time, but it's worth a shot. “It is just me.”
He turns his head, looks at her.
“Natasha.” He fumbles with his hand, reaching out towards her. “Your hair…”
Yelena isn't quite sure what to do here. She doesn't want to feed into the delusion, doesn't want to deceive him, but she doesn't want to tell him he's wrong, either. She doesn't want to risk him lashing out.
So she just…doesn't address that he thinks she's Natasha. Instead, she helps him sit up. He accepts the help, willing, calm, even. He grabs a piece of her hair, twirls it around his finger.
“I like it. I like it blonde.”
There's a lump in Yelena's throat. Everything about this feels wrong. It feels wrong to have him here, calling her by her sister's name, her dead sister's name, too messed up from drug withdrawal to realize who she actually is. She wants to correct him, say, no, James, my name is Yelena, my hair has always been blonde, I am not Natasha, Natasha died years ago, but she knows he's not thinking clearly. How could he be, they're on day three without the drugs he's been on for decades.
“How are you feeling?” She asks, trying to ignore the fact he thinks she's Natasha.
“Hmmm.” He seems to ponder, for a moment. “I…”
His eyes rolled back into his head before he could answer.
It's second nature for Yelena, at this point, all the detoxes she's helped Widows through. She lays him back down, rolls him on his side, grabs the stopwatch from the bedside table and starts it.
The seizing stops after 3 minutes and 5 seconds.
“James?” She ventures. There's no telling what version of him will come out of the seizure.
“Yelena.” He groans out, and the air is nearly knocked out of her lungs.
This is good. He recognizes her. He's not thinking he's back with HYDRA, he's not thinking she's Natasha. He's here, in the present, seeing her.
His eyelids flutter. “It's…it's bad.”
She nods solemnly. “Yeah.”
“I'm sorry.” His eyes are fully closed now.
“No apology. I am here. You are safe.” She grabs his hand, holds it tight. His breathing has quickened, pulse thumping, likely from stress, but as she holds his hand his breathing and heartbeat slow down to a more acceptable level.
Yelena takes the opportunity, with his hand in hers, to gently pinch at the skin on his wrist. When she releases it, it takes just over 5 seconds for the skin to get back into its normal position.
James doesn't even seem to notice that she did it. In fact, she thinks he's fallen back asleep.
But he has failed the pinch test. He's dehydrated, no doubt, nearly to severe levels.
She needs to come up with a solution, or her worry of having to tell Captain America that James is gone will surely become a reality.
~~~~~~~~~
After about an hour of James sleeping soundly, Yelena detaches herself from him, carefully separating their hands. He stirs, and a small whine escapes his throat, but Yelena places his hand on the edge of the blanket he's laying on, and he grips onto it like a lifeline, snuggling into it like it's the softest thing he's ever felt. He's far too warm and feverish to be sleeping under any blankets, but at least he can get comfort from the ones he's laying on.
Yelena waits until she's sure he's fully asleep again, body relaxed into the mattress. Then, she exits the room, shutting the door firmly behind her.
She knows James wanted to keep this all a secret from everybody else, but the situation is dire enough. Ava is the smartest on the team when it comes to medical things, she studied medical textbooks for years to try and find a treatment or cure for her phasing. Toni is the best at field medicine, many different procedures programmed into her brain that she can copy and apply like it's nothing. If anybody knows what could be done for James to keep him from dying of dehydration, it would be those two.
When she gets out to the living room, everybody is there. Alexei is sitting on the floor, playing Jenga by himself. They'd found some various games in a closet, they'd been playing them to pass the time. Ava is reading a book that she brought, Toni is reading a book she found in the house. John is cleaning his gun. He cleans it twice a day now, definitely just for something to do.
“Dad.” She begins. “Why are you playing by yourself?”
“It is not fair to play with them.” He replies without looking up, carefully removing a block from the middle of the tower.
“You're just saying that because me and Toni have beaten you every time.” Ava comments teasingly.
“Well, if Johnathan would play-”
Walker throws an empty bullet casing at Alexei. It hits the base of the Jenga tower, knocking it over.
“Hey!” He shouts out. “I was winning!”
“You play alone.” Toni grits out. Her voice always sounds the same, quite monotone, but Yelena can tell by her expression, her eyebrow on the side of her face that isn’t burned quirked up, that she is amused. “You cannot win.”
Alexei huffs as he begins to rebuild the tower.
“Well, I am sorry to interrupt.” Yelena chimes in again. “But I need to talk to Ava and Toni, if possible.”
Ava puts the little sliver of paper she’d be using as a bookmark in between the pages she’d been reading. “Is it about Bucky? He hasn’t been out of his room in a couple days.”
Oh, trust her, Yelena knows.
Alexei very pointedly ignores the conservation at hand, focusing on building the tower back up.
“James is fine.” She lies. Ava does not look convinced. “It is not about him.”
“Why can’t you talk to all of us?” Walker interjects.
“I did not think you wanted to hear about my menstruation.” Yelena is a master of thinking on her feet. She’s sure Walker doesn’t know that she is lying, she doesn’t get a period, of course she doesn’t, but how would he know?
Alexei and Antonia would, though. Likely why they are looking at her strangely.
Walker’s face turns red, embarrassed, and he goes back to cleaning his gun, deciding he no longer wants to hear whatever Yelena had to say.
“Ava, Antonia?” Yelena tilts her head in the direction of the hallway. Ava puts her book down and gets up immediately. Toni does the same, although she’s looking at Yelena suspiciously.
Ava and Antonia’s bedroom was on the first floor, just a few doors away from James’, and they all file in and shut the door.
“Okay, what do you need, I have three different sizes of pads and some tampons-” Ava springs into action, grabbing her bag and ruffling through it.
Yelena puts her hand out, signalling for her to stop. “Put the bag down, I am not on my period, I do not have a uterus.”
“Me either.” Toni says.
“Oh.” Ava slowly puts her bag down. “Um, well. I guess I know I always need to pack my own pads, then.”
“What is wrong? With him?” Antonia asks immediately. She saw through Yelena’a ruse, knows that this is about James.
Yelena sighs. “He is sick. He is…he was put on drugs, when he was under captivity, and now he is addicted, but he ran out. He is going through withdrawal, and he is getting dangerously dehydrated.”
Toni shifts uncomfortably. Ava is just staring at Yelena, unmoving.
Yelena presses on. “Any ideas? Because I am out, and he will die soon without any fluids, but he cannot keep anything down.”
“I have an IV kit.” Ava says.
Yelena’s eyes go wide. “What?”
“I, uh, pack a very robust first aid kit. It has an IV kit in it. Tubing, needles, bags…I don’t have any medicine, but we can make saline, we have water and salt, we boil some water, add some salt, put it in the bag.” Ava puts her finger to the crease of her elbow, mimicking putting an IV in. “Inject it, no more dehydrated Bucky.”
“Huh.” A wave of relief crashes over Yelena. “That is..that is good. Good solution.”
“Homemade saline isn't necessarily the safest, but if we're out of other options…” Ava trails off, looking to Yelena, trying to gauge her thoughts.
“Well, it is either “not the safest” or death, so…”
Ava gets the message. “I'll start boiling.”
“Do not tell Walker why.” Yelena warns as Ava heads towards the door. “Alexei knows, about James, but John does not. James wanted to keep it all a secret, but…” She sighs again. “...that is not really much of an option, at this point. Still, I do not want to tell Walker unless I must.”
Toni gives her a thumbs-up as she follows Ava out the door.
~~~~~~~~~
Yelena heads back to James’ room. His eyes are open, but he’s still laying down.
“James.” She goes to his bedside. “Can you hear me?”
“Mhm.” He hums, but it sounds pained. “Fuzzy. But…but I’m here.” His voice is barely a whisper, Yelena wouldn’t even be able to make out the words if she wasn’t right next to him.
“You’re dehydrated. Ava has an IV, her and Toni know how to make saline.” Yelena grabs his hand, squeezes it. “I know…I know it will hurt. And that you did not want to tell them. But it is our last option.”
“Yelena.” He looks directly at her. He’s lucid, perhaps the most lucid he’s been in days. “Whatever you have to do. To keep me alive. Do it. But…” He bites his bottom lip, as if in pain, whether that pain is physical or mental or both, Yelena isn't sure. “...if I end up getting too crazy, too violent…put your life above mine. Put all of your lives above mine.”
She swallows thickly as she processes what he means. There's a lump in her throat. She feels like she can hardly breathe.
Before she can respond, even try to argue, he’s fallen asleep again.
~~~~~~~~~
Yelena sits on the floor, next to James’ bed, still holding his hand. Any kind of touch, whether it be a blanket or Yelena's own hand, seems to ground him, comfort him, enough to keep him calm, and she will do anything right now to give him even the slightest bit of comfort.
She doesn't think about what he said, about putting everybody else's life above his. She just tells herself with how sick he is, he's too weak to really hurt any of them right now…or at least she hopes.
Yelena has made these complicated decisions before, whether to pull the trigger or show mercy, but for James….for somebody who was so, so close to her sister, a man she already felt like she knew even before meeting him from all the stories Natasha had left her with…she's not sure if she would be able to do it, to put a bullet in his skull, no matter what he was doing, how much of a threat he may be posing…she doesn't think she could do it.
She is hoping, praying, that life throws her a bone for once and she never has to even be in that situation, but with how her luck has been going…she's not too confident in her odds.
A knock on the door startles her out of her thoughts.
“Yel? We have the stuff ready!” Ava's voice comes from the other side.
“Come in.” Yelena urges, desperate to get fluids into James as quickly as they can. Maybe his delusions and hallucinations would improve as he became hydrated again.
As they enter, Ava's arms are full of medical supplies, while Toni is carefully holding the IV bag. It's full, with one of the top corners cut and secured with a clip. They're both wearing blue medical gloves.
Toni doesn't seem bothered by James’ state, the way he's lying still, hair and face drenched in sweat, face flush from the fever. His clothes are gross by now, they haven't been changed since the withdrawal started, his t-shirt stuck onto his skin with sweat. It's a miracle none of the vomit had stained his shirt yet. She should probably try to help him change, but again, many things were more pressing at the moment than changing James’ clothes. Nevertheless, Toni isn't phased, she simply goes behind Yelena, to the headboard of the bed, humming in approval as she finds the IV bag can hang off of one of the poles at the edge of the headboard, one of the little balls at the end the perfect size to go through the loop at the top of the bag.
Ava seems a little shaken up by the sight of him, but she presses on, laying a towel down on the floor and lining up all the supplies.
Regrettably, Yelena lets go of James’ hand and moves to the foot of the bed, out of their way. The bed itself is pushed into a corner, but James’ right side is outwards facing, so at least they have easy access to his arm without having to move him at all. That's good, she thinks. If he can stay asleep for this, that's probably best.
Toni moves methodically, each movement is necessary and carefully executed. Even with how dehydrated James is, she doesn't even need a tourniquet to find a vein. She rubs an alcohol pad in the crease of his elbow, inserts the cannula, and removes the needle, all with quick precision. It took longer for Ava to set all the materials up than it took for Toni to insert the IV.
Ava helps Toni as they attach everything together, and soon, the saline begins to run through the tubing. As it first reaches his veins, he flinches, winces a bit, but his eyes stay shut.
“It's running.” Ava says, pride in her voice. With the gloves still on, she holds her hand up for a high-five, which Toni happily returns.
Yelena gave a sigh of relief, however temporary that relief may be. “Thank you.”
“Hm.” Toni starts, cautious. “Not yet. Thank us when he is better.”
“Well…that will not happen. Not until he's out of here.” Yelena remembers what James had said, when he told her about what would happen, how his symptoms would only get worse and worse with time. “But, it keeps him from death. That is good.”
Toni shrugs. “Thank us later, then.” She pulls off the medical gloves. “I will go help Alexei..." She swallows, working herself up to speak again. Yelena and Ava do not interrupt, they know Antonia, she can get maybe five or six words out at a time, then she needs a pause to get her voice back. “...with dinner.”
“Please do. Maybe we can avoid having Spam for the fifth night in the row.” Yelena laughs, but it has only the slightest bit of humor behind it. It's all she can manage right now, joy being so rare since the failure of a mission, the stress of James’ illness and the looming threat of Ava running out of energy and Toni's batteries dying.
Half of them will be in grave danger if the blizzard lasts another five days. James said he could last at least a month before the withdrawal kills him, but it seems like it's progressing faster than even he thought. It's very possible they have much less time than originally expected. Yelena hasn't asked, but she doubts Toni can go long at all without batteries, considering it keeps her heart and lungs going. She's not sure about Ava, she has told her she can go a while without any quantum energy, she'll just be in a lot of pain once she starts getting low.
And there is absolutely nothing Yelena can do about the situation they're in. She can't get them out of here, they have no communication methods that are working, they're at least 200 miles from any form of civilization, and it's below freezing and a whiteout outside. Even the supersoldiers in their group would freeze to death before reaching help, and that's if they were on a straight path right to civilization, when the more likely case is that they'll end up going in the wrong direction or get turned around more than once.
As Antonia leaves, Ava cleans everything up, placing the towel with the unused supplies on it on top of the dresser in the corner. She asks for a basket to put the used needle into, so Yelena retrieves the case that had his medicine in it and showed her the attached sharps container.
“I only have two more IV kits.” Ava says, taking off the gloves. “So hopefully it doesn't get blocked.”
“I am more worried about him tearing it out.” Yelena admits, as she goes back to standing with her arms crossed at the foot of the bed.
“Did John ask you? About what you were doing, when making the saline?” Yelena knows they cannot keep James’ state a secret from Walker forever, especially if he continues to deteriorate. At some point, he'll get suspicious, and go looking for answers, or they'll end up in a situation where they need his help. But it was James’ wish that it was kept a secret for as long as possible, and Yelena will respect that. The least she can do now is give him some autonomy.
As long as that autonomy isn't having Yelena, or any of them, kill him. That is a no.
“Ah, he got tired of Alexei asking him to play Jenga, so he went to his room. I think he said he was going to nap.” Ava comes over to stand next to her, watching James closely, observing with clear worry knitted into her brows. “What…happened? To his arm?”
“He took it off. Wanted me to put it out of his reach. Said he didn't want to hurt anybody with it.” Yelena recalls. “It is under the bed, now.”
They stand there, in silence, for a bit. James looks rather peaceful, if you ignored his pale face, the loose strands of hair caked onto his forehead from sweat, and the IV in his arm.
In her peripheral vision, Yelena can see Ava start to fidget nervously with her hands. Yelena doesn't prod at all, doesn't want to make her potentially more anxious, and for all Yelena knows, it's the stress of the whole situation finally getting to her.
“I have a confession.” Ava finally says, turning to face Yelena.
“Oh?” Yelena doesn’t take her eyes off of James. Even though he seems to be sleeping now, that could change in an instant. One short glance away and everything could turn to shit. “I hope it is not that you have better food stashed somewhere you have been hiding.” Yelena loves her dad, but there is only so much he can do with Spam, calorie replacement bars, and copious amounts of canned soup. And he's not that great of a cook anyway.
“No.” There's a hint of a smile in Ava's tone. “I wish.”
“It's. Um. It's about Bucky.” She continues, still fidgeting. “I…I was worried, not seeing him for days, so last night I kind of…snuck in here.”
“Oh.” To Yelena, that is a very mundane confession. They're all spies. That's just a spy doing spy things, noticing something off and investigating.
She does have one question, though. “I was with him all night. How did you get in without me knowing?” Yelena is a light sleeper, exceptionally so, and the hinges on the door to James’ room creak ever so slightly when opened. Even if Ava had managed to time it perfectly and sneak in during the three hours of sleep Yelena got, she would've heard the door opening and woken up.
“I just…y'know…” Ava took her hand, palm down, and moved it forward in a line, mimicking a fluid motion. “...through the wall.”
Oh. Right. Ava could phase through things. Yelena forgets that sometimes.
Well, she doesn't forget it on missions, when Ava is all suited up with her mask down, expertly executing a plan. But that's…that's spy Ava, operative Ava, ghost Ava. When she's here, face visible, in a grey sweater and sweatpants, she's just Ava. Ava, who knows more about science than Yelena could ever imagine. Ava, who seems to be some kind of plant whisperer, who could liven up even the deadest garden. Ava, who tries so hard to put on a brave face through everything, even when she's clearly struggling. Ava, misunderstood and misadventurous, seemingly always in the wrong place at the wrong time and suffering for it.
Ava, who always tries her best, even if it ends up not being enough.
Logically, Yelena knows, the Ava on missions and the Ava standing next to her are the same person. But they feel different, the Ava that has a one-track mind and just wants to get the mission over with as soon as possible, and the Ava that curls up on the couch and reads impossibly long books.
“I promise I don't do that any other time.” Ava pulls Yelena out of her thoughts, still visibly nervous. “I just got worried. About Bucky.”
“I'm not mad.” Yelena assures. “He wouldn't be, either.” She nods towards James. “It is…nice. That you care about him.”
“You know.” Ava starts. She seems to have relaxed a bit now, less anxious now that Yelena has told her there's no anger from her confession. “I met him. When I was young. And being experimented on.”
Huh, Yelena thinks. She wonders if anybody on the team hadn't crossed paths with James prior to them becoming a team. She'd heard stories from Natasha, of course, but there was still the time when Yelena was being trained that she doesn't remember all that well, and there's a good chance The Winter Soldier was a part of that training. She thinks the same must be true for Antonia, at least to some degree- she was raised in the Red Room, she must've come across James at some point. Alexei claims to have crossed paths with him before, and John had worked with him, although John may be the only one to not have known James when he was under brainwashing.
“It was only once, I think.” Ava continued when Yelena doesn't respond right away. “I passed him, when I was being led to a lab. They were giving him something through an IV.” Her eyes fixate on the tubing going into him now. “I wonder...I wonder if they were giving him those drugs, then.” She says it in a hushed tone, as if she doesn't want James to hear.
“You feel guilt.” Yelena says. It wasn't a question.
Ava doesn’t reply.
“You were just a child. I was too..” Yelena shook her head. “We were all tempted with things. Glory, affection…an escape from the pain. Kept in the dark, away from the truth. Lied to.” She looks at James, still asleep but looking less peaceful, eyelids tightly shut as if there's a struggle in his dream.
“Poisoned.” She adds as she watches the careful drip of the saline out of the bag, through the tubing, and into his veins.
James wasn't a child when he was captured, but he was still young, too young, everything taken away from him. And when you wipe a mind clean, there's nothing for it to do but latch onto whatever it's told, because that's the only thing it knows. A blank slate is easy to manipulate. Yelena knows that all too well.
James’ wrist twitches. At first, Yelena thinks a seizure might be incoming, but instead, James bends his arm at the elbow, and begins scratching at his bicep, hard.
“What's he-” Ava begins, but Yelena has already sprung into action, going to his bedside.
“I think. He is trying to pull the IV out.” She says. With his other arm gone, he can't quite reach the crease of his elbow where the IV is, but he seems to be trying.
Still, even though he can't pull the IV out, at least not with his hand, he needs to stop. Yelena can see blood coming out from under the sleeve of his t-shirt.
“James. Stop.” She tries, first, seeing if he'll respond to words. His eyes are still shut tight. He's somewhere else right now, in his mind. To him, he's not in a safehouse with saline going into his veins, but in a HYDRA base with drugs burning their way into him.
Ava comes to the side of the bed as well. The scratches are getting even more rough, digging deeper into already raw and bleeding skin, the majority of which is hidden under his sleeve, but the small bit Yelena can see looks as if he'd be in a fight with a wild animal, angry, red, bleeding streaks all over his upper arm.
In that moment, Yelena makes what is not a smart decision. A decision she even knows is not smart when she does it, but she needs to do something, anything, to get James to stop.
She grabs his wrist.
He slips out of her grip before she even has a chance to react, and swings.
Yelena is knocked to the ground, back against the wall, her hand instinctively going up to her cheek, where the punch had landed. She didn't hear anything crack. She runs her tongue over her teeth, all still in-tact. Vision uncompromised.
She's fine. She doubts that's the worst James can do. She's seen him knock people out with punches. He's still in a weakened state, so perhaps it was lighter than it could've been.
It still hurt like hell, but it wasn't that bad.
James has bolted up in bed, eyes wide, looking at Yelena as if he'd just watched everybody he'd ever loved get shot right in front of him.
“I…I…” He stutters, horrified, and there's a split second of his face turning green before he gets sick all over himself, bile staining his shirt.
So much for the bucket.
Ava is gone. Yelena doesn't know where she went. The door is still closed.
“Gun. In the top dresser drawer. Right to the temple-”
“James.” She practically shouts as she rises from the floor. “I am not doing that.”
“I hurt you.” He looks like he's going to be sick again. Yelena grabs the bucket and holds it in front of him.
“I get hurt all the time.” She shrugs. “No broken bones, no broken teeth, just a bruise. No problem.”
“Stop…stop being so…casual. About this.” Even as he argues with her, he takes the bucket, hanging his head over it. His arm is still bleeding. It's getting on the sheets.
“No.” She simply says.
He spits more bile into the bucket.
There is a sound, almost like static, and then Ava is there, phasing back into the room, a first aid kit in her arms.
She sets it down on the bedside table and gets to work. She grabs an ice pack, squeezes it a few times, then hands it to Yelena.
“For your cheek.” She says, pointing at her own cheek as she speaks.
Yelena nods, placing it to her face, then turning her head towards her shoulder, so the ice pack stays there but her hands are free. James is going to need medical attention of his own, and Yelena will need her hands free for that.
She hears somebody coming down the stairs.
John.
He must've heard all the commotion. He's coming down to check on them.
Yelena and Ava turn to each other.
“Um.” Yelena eyes the first aid kit. She can see wound wipes, bandages, cream…
“You good at lying?” Yelena asks.
Ava blinks.
“I'm…okay. I think.”
Yelena takes the bucket from James, setting it aside to be cleaned later, before turning back to Ava and pointing towards the door. “You, go lie to John. I will patch up James.”
Ava nods, quickly leaving, through the door this time, although she shuts it behind her.
Yelena turns to James “You. Lay down.” She commands, looking through the first aid kit. “You attached to that shirt?”
James does lay down, but Yelena suspects that's more out of pure exhaustion and inability to hold himself up any longer than her orders. “You don't need to. I'm fine.”
She scoffs. “Yeah, because a skin infection is what you need right now.” She finally finds what she's looking for. “You are getting patched up, that is that. Again, you attached to that shirt?”
“I mean, it's covered in blood and vomit anyway.” He sighs, and Yelena watches as his muscles visibly relax.
He's done arguing and fighting her, then. That'll make this easier.
As she cuts through his shirt, she hears John approach, stopping just outside the closed door, which Ava is guarding.
“I heard fighting.” John's voice is muffled, having to travel through the wall to be heard, but Yelena can still make it out.
“Yeah, just. Um. Heated game of Monopoly.’
Yelena almost snorts a laugh.
Even without being able to physically see him, Yelena knows exactly the kind of face John is making, disbelief and confusion all rolled into one. “…I heard a crash.”
“Ah, yeah, just Yelena…knocking over a lamp.” Ava tries.
A look of confusion is on Yelena's face now, too.
“Well, if there's broken glass, I should come help clean up-” Yelena hears John begin to move towards the door, and then a thud as Ava practically throws herself on it, keeping him from even turning the door handle.
“No, no glass. It didn't…break.”
Yelena's not sure how Ava ever succeeded as a spy on her own. She is a rather terrible liar.
James winces as she peels away the final remnant of his shirt, the one over his wounds, as the motion tugs on the cuts left by the scratches. Yelena can see his skin already trying to knit itself together. Of course, his advanced healing is helping this, but obsolete in the face of his withdrawal. Yelena supposes if his sickness was caused by a virus or bacteria, perhaps he'd get better quicker, but this is his body being dependent on a substance and greatly struggling to live without it.
“You should go help Toni and Alexei.” Ava attempts desperately to change the subject, to get John to leave. “They're making dinner.”
There's a few beats of silence. Yelena deposits the tattered remains of the shirt into the bucket. It will need to be cleaned anyway, no harm in disposing of the ruined garment at the same time.
“Yeah.” John finally says. “Yeah, okay.”
Ava waits until John's footsteps can no longer be heard before she comes back in.
“You-” Yelena starts, ripping off the top of the packet of a wound cleaning wipe. “-are an awful liar.”
“Hey!” Ava looks at her, indignant. “I was thinking on my feet.”
“Ah, yes, so it would be better if you had time to think?” She comments, as she uses the wipe to clean the blood off of James’ skin.
“Yes! I was improvising!”
“Oh.” A sudden gasp from James interrupts them. “That…what's in that?”
“The wipe?”
“Uh huh.”
Ava grabs the packet Yelena discarded on the nightstand, and begins listing off ingredients. “Benzethonium chloride, benzocaine, aloe juice…”
“It feels bad?” Yelena questions, when James doesn't respond to Ava.
“No.” He breathes, heavy, but with a sense of relief behind it. “Feels…good.”
“Benzocaine is a pain reliever.” Ava explains. “The aloe probably helps, too.”
“You expected it to hurt?” Yelena is almost done with the cleaning now, although she had to open multiple more wipes to completely clean his skin of the blood.
“I expected you to just pour alcohol over it.” He says nonchalantly.
Ava and Yelena share a look of horrified bewilderment.
“Um, no. We are not an evil organization.” Yelena tries to sound sarcastic, but it just comes out sounding alarmed.
“Mm.” James hums. “Sorry. I shouldn't have…shouldn't have said that.” The words shouldn't have compared you to them are left unsaid, but Yelena can tell they're there, hidden behind what he did say.
Ava rarely divulges much from her past, especially the things from when she was being experimented on, but Yelena can imagine her comfort wasn't placed first then. Yelena has certainly experienced what James was referring to, can still feel the sting. She's not sure if Ava has, but if not, she's probably gone through something similar, needles and gloved hands probing with a complete disregard for the well-being of the person they're doing it to (because they weren't seen as a person, then, just a weapon, an experiment).
James doesn't even seem to feel when Yelena applies antibiotics cream all over the cuts, and wraps a bandage around it.
“You have any other shirts?” She asks once she's done patching him up. She's pointedly tried to avoid looking anywhere except his bicep, not wanting him to catch her with her gaze on the littery of scars over his chest and the starburst of them around his prosthetic port. Yelena has her own scars, she wouldn't want to see somebody staring at them either.
“Top drawer.” He says, and Ava goes over to the dresser in the room to get one.
She pauses when she opens the drawer. “There's just one shirt and a gun in here.”
“Yeah?” James seems puzzled. “That's all I brought. Well, that and the case of injections.”
“All you brought was a shirt and a gun?” Yelena stares at him, baffled.
“Well, and some knives, but they're in my jacket.” He tilts his head as best he can over to the coat rack by the door, where his leather jacket is hanging.
Yelena sighs. “When we get out of here, I am giving you a lecture on how to properly pack for a mission. At least bring some first aid supplies.”
Ava hands the shirt to Yelena. Somehow, the IV and tubing stayed connected during the struggle, and the saline infusion finished. Ava carefully disconnects the tubing from the cannula, so Yelena is able to get the shirt over his arm, although she still takes a lot of care when pulling it over the cannula that's still in James’ arm. There's some kind of medical tape over the IV site, keeping it firmly in place, and Yelena makes a mental note to ask Ava later what brand the tape is, that it manages to keep the line in place through the chaos.
It's a little bit more difficult to get it over his head and body, James is still weak and can barely lift himself up enough for Yelena to pull it over his torso, but they make it work.
“Your shirts.” Yelena tsked, pulling the bottom hem down to his waist. “Always so tight.”
“Th’y're my fightin’ shirts.” James is beginning to slur his words, his eyelids seemingly going heavy. It won't be long before he's back asleep.
“You packed no pajamas?”
“Didn’ know we go’nna be stuck.” There is the faintest bit of an accent coming in through James’ voice. Brooklyn, Yelena places.
“Well, yes, James, none of us did. But pack for the worst case scenario, yes?” She feels like a mom, lecturing him.
She hears her own words in her head, a bygone of a different era of her life (or perhaps it was the start of the current one?).
You’re such a mom.
She had said that to Natasha.
Yelena knows they are not biological sisters. They really only spent a small bit of time together as kids, too. But she believes, somehow, they were always cosmically destined to be sisters. When this universe was created, the facts of it were that Yelena Belova had a father named Alexei Shostakov, a mother named Melina Vostokoff, a sister named Natasha Romanov. And, perhaps, there was also the fact that later in life, after she had lost her sister, when she was down at her worst, trying to find purpose, trying to find meaning, she’d meet a man named James Barnes, who would become her brother.
The door creaks open. Yelena hadn’t even heard anybody coming, too enthralled in her own thoughts. She was a spy, she needed to be sharper than that. Being trapped in a safehouse has thrown her off her game.
Luckily, it’s just Toni.
“More saline.” Toni holds up the container in her hand as a greeting.
“I thought you were helping Alexei with dinner?” Ava inquires.
“He did not want help.” Toni shrugs. “More gloves?”
“Ah.” Ava goes back over to the first aid kit, pulling out a pair of nitrile gloves. These ones are clear, as opposed to the light blue ones from before.
James makes a pained sound, sits up abruptly, scrunches up his face. He gets impossibly paler, his skin going nearly translucent in the span of just a second.
Ava is the closest to the bucket. She grabs it before Yelena can even think, heading over to James and holding it under his chin.
She pats his back as he retches, only bile coming up again. There’s no food for him to reject. Yelena comes to his bedside and holds his hair up as Ava keeps hold of the bucket and continues her efforts to try to soothe him, alternating between patting his back and rubbing circles into it.
He throws up for a while. Eventually, the bile stops coming out, but he keeps dry-heaving for a bit after that.
“S’rry.” He says, once he’s stopped. He lifts his head back up, spit and bile on his chin. Ava, without a second thought, wipes it off with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, not seeming to care at all that the end of her sleeve is covered in vomit.
Toni had stopped preparing to refill the IV bag when James started puking, instead standing off to the side, but she seems entirely unphased as well. Yelena didn’t think any physical symptoms could bother Toni, Yelena had watched her stitch up some of the nastiest wounds with a completely straight face.
“It’s okay, Bucky.” Ava tries to comfort. “It’s okay.”
“Doesn’t feel okay.”
“Yeah.” Ava slowly takes the bucket away, now that it seems that he’s actually done. “Yeah, I know.”
“James.” Toni cuts in, holding new tubing for the IV line. “May I?”
He nods. Yelena helps him lay back down. He flinches, just a bit, when Toni’s gloved hand touches his elbow, steadying his arm as she attaches the new tubing to the cannula. She had refilled the bag while James was coming down from the vomiting episode, so she’s able to start the new infusion once she gets everything connected.
“James. Is it okay…” Toni starts. “...if I stay with you?”
Yelena snapped her head around so fast she thought she might’ve broken her neck. “What?”
“So you…so you can have dinner.” Toni clarifies. “With everyone.”
“Of course.” James says, eyes closing. “Gonna sleep.”
“James, I do not have to leave-”
“Go.” He says, firmly. “Go have dinner. I’m fine.”
Hesitantly, Yelena obeys. She tells herself it’s fine, dinner will only be 30, 45 minutes at most, but she hasn’t left James for more than fifteen minutes since his symptoms began. She knows Toni is more than capable of caring for him in this state, she knows how to spot and handle a seizure, knows to watch for signs that he’s going to be sick or that he’s taken a drastic turn for the worst, but still, Yelena worries. How could she not, when it’s possible that this withdrawal will kill him?
As Yelena and Ava begin walking down the hall towards the common area of the house, Ava says, “I can watch him sometime, too. To give you a break. I’m used to caretaking.”
“I can tell.” Yelena thinks back to how she had handled James puking. “You should probably change your sweatshirt.”
“Ah, yeah.” She looks down at her sleeve. “Come up to my room with me?”
There is clearly something Ava wants to tell her, so Yelena follows her up the stairs and into her and Toni’s room.
“So.” Ava begins, pulling her sweatshirt up over her head. “My friend, really he’s more of a surrogate father, had cancer.” Ava says it nonchalantly, as if she’s told this to a million people a thousand times over. “Treatment hit him pretty hard. I’m just desensitized to vomit, at this point, I think.”
“Oh.” Yelena’s not really sure what to say to that. “I am sorry.”
Ava waves her off as she rifflies through her bag, looking for a new top. “He’s fine now. In remission. They actually declared him cancer free right after we got off our first mission.” She smiles softly. “That’s why I never told you guys. By the time I was comfortable with you all, he was doing better.”
“I just wanted you to know-” Ava finds another sweatshirt in her bag and puts it on. “-so you know you can trust me. To take care of Bucky.”
Yelena worries her bottom lip between her teeth. “I will think about it.”
Ava nods. “That's all I'm asking.”
After a few beats of silence, Ava offers, “So, Dinner?”
“Dinner.” Yelena agrees.
~~~~~~~~~
“Yelena!” Alexei nearly shouts as they enter the kitchen. “You join us for dinner?”
“As long as it is not Spam.” That’s a lie. Yelena would join no matter what. She just hopes it's not Spam. Alexei likes it way too much and he’s insisted on being the main chef. Most meals since they’ve been stuck in the safehouse have been Spam based.
“It is chilli!” Alexei says proudly. Yelena can see John at the table, setting it, placing down spoons and napkins at each place setting.
“James and Toni will not be joining us.” Yelena tells him when he begins setting out the fifth place. “Toni…Toni went to take a nap.”
“And let me guess. Bucky “just wants to be alone” again.” John actually uses air quotes when talking about James wanting to be alone.
So he is catching on that there’s something going on with James. That’s not good.
“Yes.” Yelena says, anyway, trying to keep up the ruse as best she can.
Alexei begins scooping the chilli into bowls. He makes five, but one stays on the counter. For Toni, for later.
As she brings two of the bowls over to the table, Ava behind her with the other two, John looks up from the table for the first time and immediately notices the redness on Yelena’s cheek, the swelling that will be black and blue by tomorrow, and raises a brow.
“Monopoly?” He says sarcastically.
Okay. He definitely knows something is up.
“Yeah, uh. The lamp…fell on her.” Ava fills in, gesturing to her own cheek.
Yelena flashes her a look. Ava just shrugs.
Luckily, John drops the subject. He certainly doesn't believe them, but he doesn't prod any further, and they all sit down to eat.
Sitting at the table with John, with a rightfully suspicious John, feels odd. The rest of them all know a secret, except him, and yet they’re all sitting around pretending there’s nothing they’re hiding despite all of them knowing everybody but John knows. It almost feels like they’re playing a trick on him.
Nevertheless, Yelena sat there, she ate, she conversed with them as if there was nothing wrong, as if they weren’t trapped by a blizzard, as if Ava and Toni weren’t getting closer and closer to being a near-death experience, as if James wasn’t already in one.
Alexei tells old war stories. Ones Yelena had heard at least three times already. John argues with him, tells him there's no way he defeated an entire army with one arm tied behind his back, and Alexei argues back.
It would be nice. Domestic, even. But she just feels guilty. Feels guilty for lying to John, feels guilty there's nothing she can do to ease the fear Ava and Toni must be feeling, feels guilty that she's not right by James bedside, watching him, caring for him. He's in there in agony, weak, nauseated, and struggling to hold onto his mind, and here Yelena is, just eating dinner, something so simple yet it feels so, so wrong.
Yelena nearly runs to James’ room once dinner is over. She fears she'll walk in, and James will have no pulse, be cold, be dead-
But not only is James alive, he's sitting up. He's sitting up in bed, with his back to Antonia, who's sitting on the mattress as well and carding her fingers through James’ hair.
“I am almost done…” Toni starts. “...untangling.”
“I have a brush.” Ava, who came in after Yelena, offers.
Toni holds up her hand in rejection. “No need. I am done.”
Yelena feels all the air leave her lungs as she sighs, both in relief and in minor shock. None of her worst fears about leaving James seemed to have even come a little true. He looks perfectly okay. Actually, he looks the best Yelena had seen him since the withdrawal began. The saline infusions seem to be working, his lips don't look as dry and his eyes are brighter. Even with his vomiting episode earlier, he looks to be getting better.
“James.” She approaches as Toni gets off the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Mm. Good.” He sighs. “Can I…can I go to sleep?”
“Of course, James.” Yelena places a hand behind his back and helps him lay down. He's still quite warm, so no blanket over him, but she makes sure it's near him, so he can grab it. He likes to sleep with the blanket tight in his hand, held up against his cheek.
When James’ eyes have shut and his breathing slows, indicating he's fallen asleep, Toni looks at Yelena and tilts her head in the direction of the door.
Yelena gets the message. Toni wants to talk. Alone.
“Ava, can you watch him for a minute?” She asks, and Ava nods.
Toni heads into the hallway, and Yelena follows, loitering in front of James' door.
“What happened? Seizure? More vomiting? Did he hit you? Did he hit himself?” Yelena rattles off all the bad things she can think of, but Toni just shakes her head.
“He is very touch starved.” Toni reports, instead. “He needs comfort. He is already sick. He does not need…the added stress…of touch starvation.”
Yelena just stares at her. “I do not understand.”
“You have heard of touch starvation?”
“I mean, yes, but that is not James. He does not like touch.”
“He does.” Toni insists. “Maybe…only from those he trusts. Or only when sick. But he does.”
Yelena swallows thickly.
Is that true? Was James’ improvement under Toni's watch not just a result of the infusions, but also because Toni was playing with his hair?
Could she have been helping James more this whole time by providing him more comforts, more touch?
Is she failing at being a caregiver?
Can she even be a caregiver? Or is violence all her hands are capable of?
“There is a softer blanket.” Toni's voice interrupts her thoughts. “Upstairs. I will go get it.”
Toni is gone before Yelena can even respond.
~~~~~~~~~
Toni had come back down with a big, cream colored sherpa blanket. Yelena switched the other blanket James was holding out for it. In his sleep, he didn't seem to notice the blanket in his hand had changed, but he did seem to snuggle into it more, almost burrowing his face into the fabric.
Toni ate her bowl of chilli, then disconnected the tubing from James’ IV for the night, before her and Ava went to bed themselves.
Which left Yelena alone to think.
She sat next to James on the bed, back against the headboard, watching the rise and fall of his chest. She got concerned whenever his breath hitched, worried that maybe he was going into a seizure, or he was going to wake up and vomit again, but instead his breathing just goes back to normal.
James…she can't imagine James would want her to be this close, right? He wouldn't want her to sit on the bed next to him while he sleeps…or could he? At this point, she's not sure of anything.
James eyelids flutter. His blue eyes seem to bore into her soul as he opens them.
“Yelena.” He says, a breathy whisper, and Yelena thinks he'll tell her to back off, get off the bed, but he doesn't. He doesn't say anything else at all, actually.
“James.” She replies, once it's clear he's not going to say something else. “Do you…do you want me to get off the bed?”
“Mm. No. Stay. Like...like having you here. Like having you right here.” He takes a deep breath. “I can feel you, when you're right here. Reminds me…that I'm not doing this alone.”
Yelena remembers he had told her that he'd tried to detox from the drugs when he first came back to The States, and she assumes he did that alone. But, she also remembers when he was hallucinating, calling out names Yelena can only assume were Winter Soldier handlers, begging for the punishment to stop.
Did they punish him by denying him the drugs they had got him addicted to in the first place? Made him ride out the withdrawal, the pain, the torment, alone, as punishment?
“Toni…Toni thinks you are touch starved.” Yelena says, trying to even slightly change the subject so she doesn't end up triggering him into memories of his torture. She's not going to ask if HYDRA used withdrawal as punishment, but from what she's observed and what James has divulged, she thinks her conclusion is likely correct.
James, for some reason, laughs. “Yeah. I get that a lot.” He shifts slightly, moving his head further up on the pillow. “I get…needy. When I don't feel good. I have a cat, at home. She's helpful. Very fluffy. And when Sam's home…he's a good cuddler, too.”
His eyes widen for a moment, as he realizes what he's saying. “Sorry. I'm rambling. Just…just the fever. Making me say things I wouldn't normally.”
“It is okay, James.” Yelena assures. “Tell me anything. I will listen.”
“Hm.” A ghost of a smile appears on his face. “I think. I think that's enough sharing for now.”
His eyes fall closed again.
“Sleep, please, Yelena.” He says. “You…you can sleep. Next to me. On the bed. If you…if you want.”
The bed is a king, it wouldn't be a problem for them both to sleep on it. There's two pillows, more than enough room for them to sleep without touching each other.
“Do you? Want me to?” She asks. He said that it's nice when Yelena is next to him, when he can feel her, and know he's not alone.
“Yeah. But I understand. If you don't want to.”
“I will.” She decides. If it'll help James, of course she will. She just didn't think he'd want her being that close. “Hey, it will be like a sleepover.”
James actually smiles, then. “Yeah. A sleepover.”
Yelena gets up to grab the blanket from her makeshift bed on the floor, then climbs back into bed.
“Goodnight, James.”
“Goodnight, Yelena.”
Neither of them woke up until the sunlight was streaking in through the window.
~~~~~~~~~
“You're exhausted.” James says in the morning as Yelena checks the wounds on his bicep.
“No. I slept very well last night.” She counters. Some of the scratches are completely healed, others are almost there. A few of the deeper ones will still need a bit of time, but they're looking much better.
“I don't mean sleep-wise.” He winces a bit as Yelena applies more cream to the remaining wounds. “You're exhausted. From taking care of me.”
Extremely selfishly, Yelena wished he wasn't as lucid as he was right now. Maybe then, he wouldn't be able to call her out like he just had.
She begins applying a clean bandage to his arm. “I am fine, James. I told you I would take care of you. I am taking care of you.”
“You still deserve a break.”
“And leave you alone?”
James shakes his head. “Not alone. With one of the others.”
Yelena still isn't fond of the idea, so she tells James the same thing she told Ava, when she had offered to take care of James for a bit. “I will think about it.”
~~~~~~~~~
“C'mon, Yel.” Ava urged, for the millionth time. “Just an hour or two. That's all.”
Ava had been hounding her ever since she left James’ room to get another cold compress for his head. His fever was spiking again.
“I am handling it perfectly fine.” Yelena says as she wrings out the washcloth.
And she is. She doesn't need a break from James. She can care for him, no problem.
“You haven't left him for an hour in three days. Go and do some self-care things. Wash yourself, change your clothes, brush your hair, that kinda thing. I've got him.” Ava doesn't stop, even as Yelena leaves the bathroom and heads back towards James’ room. She just follows her in, still talking about all the things Yelena can do in just an hour if she just lets her watch James.
“I've been telling her.” James says as Yelena puts the cold washcloth on his forehead. “She's too stubborn.”
“Now I have both of you ganging up on me.” Yelena sighs.
“You need a break.” James demands. “I'm good. I'm feeling okay.”
“Besides the raging fever.” Yelena scoffs.
“That's what the cold washcloth is for.”
Yelena looks at Ava. Then back at James.
She knows when she's not going to win a fight.
“Fine.” She concedes. “An hour, tops.”
Ava throws her hands into the air as if she'd just won the lottery.
Ten minutes later, Yelena has the door cracked open slightly, looking through the small gap between the door and the doorframe, sneaking a look into James’ room. Ava is sitting up in bed next to James, a book in her hand. The Elegant Universe, the cover says. She's reading aloud to James, he's still awake but his eyes are closed. He seems to be enjoying being read to. His muscles are relaxed into the bed, the sherpa blanket against his cheek as always. He looks to be at ease.
Regretfully, Yelena shuts the door the rest of the way. It's difficult to tear herself away, knowing the state James is in, how he’s suffering. Sure, he’s in stable condition, he’s lucid, aware, not in excruciating pain, but it’s not like he’s completely well. He’s still too weak to get out of bed, he can’t eat or drink without throwing up, and seizures and dehydration are still a major risk.
But James had told her to (well, more accurately, made her) take a break. So she will. She told herself at the beginning of this she’d respect James’ wishes as best she could, give him as much autonomy as possible.
She goes upstairs. Toni, John, and Alexei are in the common area, so at least she’ll be alone up there.
She goes into the bathroom. Shuts the door behind her.
She will admit, looking in the mirror, that she does look exhausted. There’s bags under her eyes, her hair is a mess, and her cheek is completely bruised, splotches of black and blue covering the right side of her face. It’s a little sore, but nothing too bad. It just looks terrible.
This isn’t rock bottom. Yelena has been at rock bottom more times than she can count. Drunk and dazed with three bottles at her side as she leans herself up against the wall, unable to stand. In Ana’s house, fresh off losing five years of her life, begging for help to find Natasha even as Ana told her that Natasha is gone. Trying to exist after a bad nightmare, reliving all the horrors of her life, realizing there’s never been a monster under her bed, terrorizing her, keeping her awake, it’s just been her all along.
This isn’t rock bottom…but it’s still pretty bad.
How did she think she could do this? Be a part of a team? Be the second in command of a team?
She is destined to be alone, because at least when she’s alone and she fails, she only hurts herself.
She fails as part of a team, she fails all of them.
James is dying. Antonia only has a short while left on her batteries. Ava will be in copious amounts of pain soon if she doesn’t get her infusions. John is missing precious time with his child. Alexei…well, she’s not completely sure, but he must be suffering or missing out on something.
James is the leader. But he is down and out now, so that falls on Yelena, and she has failed. She failed the mission, she failed at getting them out of here, she failed at keeping them all safe.
She failed at everything, because the mission was for her.
She had lied to them all. Said there were files about some Widows she had not yet been able to locate and free yet in the base. Truth be told, maybe there was.
But that's not why she wanted to storm the base. The real reason is because she found out that the base was used by the Red Room, only for a few years, but it was used during the year when Yelena was born. She had searched so many bases, looked for so long. Every new base she finds, there is a possibility that base has a file on her, a file that has the name of her biological mother, a file that had the reason she gave Yelena up.
And why does she even care? What will knowing her biological mother's name even do? What will knowing why she was given up do? The fact of the matter is that her biological mother left her. She left her, probably because she didn't care about her. She left her, gave her over to be tortured, to be trained to be a killer.
Her real mother is Melina. Melina made mistakes, more than Yelena can count, but when the time came, she stepped up, and has stepped up ever since, helping Yelena free Widows, helping her feel like she was cared for.
Melina was her real mother. Why would she need to know who her biological mother was?
She put them all in this situation, for nothing. For something stupid that they didn't even find because the base was empty anyway.
If James dies, if Toni dies, if Ava dies, the blood is on her hands. And all their pain, that's on her too.
Maybe…maybe this is rock bottom, actually.
She leans up against the wall, sinks down until she’s sitting on the floor, puts her head in her hands, and cries.
~~~~~~~~~
She’s not sure how long she spent on the bathroom floor crying. She had told Ava she’d only have to watch James for an hour, but it’s probably been at least 45 minutes, and she hasn’t even done anything but sobbed until there weren’t any tears left.
Her cheeks are stained with tear tracks. She tries to wipe the wetness from her face, but wiping her bruised cheek just causes pain.
She tries to at least get something productive done. She washes herself with a washcloth, brushes her hair, changes into new clothes.
She hopes Fanny is doing okay. She’d left her with Kate. She thinks that Fanny might like Kate more than her at this point, with how much Yelena leaves her.
Or maybe it’s because Kate feeds her table scraps constantly.
Kate’s place is almost a farm at this point. Lucky lives with her, and she “fosters” any hamsters or guinea pigs Yelena brings her from labs. And Fanny is there more often than not. All she needs is a cat and maybe a goat. Then it’ll be a real farm.
Thinking about normal things, like Fanny and Lucky and Kate, does admittedly help her feel a bit better.
Maybe Ava and James were right. Maybe she did need a little bit of time to herself.
But she’s ready again. It’s not obvious that she’d been crying anymore, the tear streaks gone and her eyes no longer red and puffy, so at least she won’t have to explain that.
As she walks down the hall, heading towards the stairs, she hears shuffling in one of the rooms. The office, they had called it, although really it was more like a library, with full bookshelves lining most of the wall.
She pokes her head in.
Ava is sitting on the floor, a pile of books next to her, ruffling through the bookshelves.
“Ava?” She calls. Her blood runs cold with fear. Why is Ava up here, looking for books, most of which are in Estonian or Russian? Did something happen to James? Is she looking at medical books for what to do in a specific emergency situation?
“Oh, Yelena, hi.” Ava turns around, grabbing the pile of books and standing up. “I was just looking for more books to read to Bucky. He liked the physics one I was reading, but he said he likes engineering more, so I was looking for something to do with that.”
“Um.” Yelena blinks. “So…James is alone?”
Ava brushes off the dust on her pants from kneeling on the floor. “No, of course not. Alexei’s with him.”
Oh.
Oh no.
Yelena runs down the hall, going down the stairs so fast she’s amazed she doesn’t trip.
“Yelena! What’s wrong?” Ava is behind her, calling after her.
“What is wrong is that my dad is Captain America obsessed. He is probably tormenting James with war stories that are only about 50% true.”
She makes it to James’ room, out of breath, and swings the door open.
Sure enough, Alexei is there, sitting on the floor next to James, rambling on about something.
“Dad.” She says, panting. “I am here.”
Alexei lights up. “Ah, Yelena, perfect timing! I was just telling James here-”
“Yes, I am sure you were.” Yelena interrupts. She's sure he was telling James all kinds of things. “Um, dad, could you get another cold washcloth?”
“Of course!” He replies enthusiastically. Ava is just now catching up to Yelena, also out of breath, her hands still full of books.
As soon as Alexei’s gone, Yelena sighs.
“I am so sorry, James. He is just…he really, really likes telling everybody about his perceived glory days.” She shakes her head, laying the back of her hand against James’ forehead. Still quite hot.
“No, no.” James sounds a little winded himself, even though Yelena is certain he hasn’t been doing any running. “He was telling me about you and Natasha. When you were kids.”
Yelena’s blood runs cold again, but for an entirely different reason this time.
Her and Natasha…when they were kids.
When she didn’t know it wasn’t real, but Natasha did.
When Yelena thought she was normal. Just a normal girl, with a normal sister, normal parents, living a normal life.
Yelena was still pretty young, then. Most of her memories from then were fuzzy, whether that was because she was too young to remember them or because the chemical brainwashing messed them up, she’s not sure.
So she doesn’t know what Alexei could be telling James. Probably something embarrassing.
“Oh.” Yelena busies herself by undoing the bandage on his bicep again. Really, it shouldn’t need to be changed yet, she had just taken care of it this morning, but it gives her something to do that looks like she’s being productive. Maybe then James won’t talk any further about her childhood.
“I like fireflies too.” James commented, a faint smile on his lips.
Well, no such luck about James not talking about it, but at least it was a good memory.
Well, mostly. The forest stars were there on the night Yelena had the only life she’d ever known ripped away.
“I called them forest stars.” She says, nostalgia clear in her tone. Under the bandage, everything looked to still be healing perfectly. “Or lamp bugs.”
“They were always lightning bugs, to me.” There’s a glimmer in his eyes, he seems to be reminiscing too. “You know, I was born in Indiana.”
“I was born in the Soviet Union, when it still was, it was only a few months after I was born that it started to fall.” Even though it doesn’t necessarily need it, she applies more cream on the scratches anyway, while she has the area accessible. “But I was raised in Ohio.”
“I guess I was technically raised in Brooklyn. But I remember some of being in Indiana.” He laughs a little bit. “Much quieter than Brooklyn, I remember that much.”
His expression suddenly goes sad. “I don’t remember much. In general.”
“It is okay, James.” She wraps a new bandage around his arm. “You do not have to explain.”
She rolls his sleeve back down, over the bandage. Pats him on the shoulder, trying to be reassuring. She’s trying to be strong, to not cry, to not show how defeated and scared she feels at the situation. She doesn’t want to appear scared. She doesn’t want the others to worry.
Ava, who has been quiet since arriving, starts setting the books down on the dresser. She seemed to have been pondering something, and Yelena finds out exactly what that is when she sighs and says, exasperated, “I don’t know why I didn’t just phase to catch up to you.”
“I do that too.” James confesses. “I forget about the metal arm. Won’t be able to open a jar, get frustrated, then I remember the metal one.”
“I am back with washcloth!” Alexei returns, voice reverberating off the walls. Sometimes, Yelena wished he knew what an inside voice was.
Yelena takes the cool, damp washcloth, folds it up, and places it on James’ forehead. He sighs when she does.
“You feel hot?” Yelena asks. He’s still sweating, hasn’t really stopped since the withdrawal started.
“Uh. A little. I think.”
“There’s a thermometer in the kit.” Ava chimes in. The first aid kit hadn’t left the bedside table since Ava had brought it down. For good reason, really, it was helpful to have all the supplies close.
Yelena lifts up a package of gauze and finds it. It’s digital, but in Fahrenheit. Yelena prefers Celsius, but it'll do.
She holds it up in front of James’ face. “Under the tongue.” She instructs, bringing it to his mouth, and he obeys.
It beeps after a few seconds. Yelena pulls it out.
“101.3.” She reports.
“Not incredibly high.” Ava says. “But we should watch it. Carefully.”
Yelena pinched the skin on his hand. He didn’t even flinch.
The skin went back to normal after about 4 seconds, this time. Better than it was, but still not great. He’s still dehydrated.
“Ava, could you make more saline?”
Ava nods and goes to leave.
When Yelena turns back to James, his eyes are shut and his chest is rising and falling rhythmically.
“Dad.” Yelena nearly whispers, looking down at James. “What have I done?”
“Uh.” Yelena can practically hear the way Alexei's head is tilted, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. She can make out exactly what he looks like right now, even with her back turned. “You are taking care of sick Winter Soldier?”
“That is not-” Yelena tries to protest, say that's not what she meant, tell Alexei the truth about why they're here, why they went on that mission in the first place, but James interrupts.
He interrupts by punching himself in the head.
His eyes are still closed, he's still asleep, laying down, every part of his body still except the arm. Yelena can hear every thud as his fist collides with his own forehead.
“James!” She yells, hoping that maybe, that alone will be enough to snap him out of whatever dream or nightmare or delusion or hallucination or any of the other things that might cause this, but it's no use. He's deep in.
“Off.” James mumbles out, voice thick, trying to cut through his sleep. “Off.”
Alexei stares, eyes wide. “What is he…”
“Nightmare. Or hallucination. I do not know.” Yelena doesn't want to reach out, touch him, restrain him, the last time she tried that is the reason her cheek is black and blue.
Alexei doesn't have that hindsight, though. Instead, he pushes Yelena to the side and grabs James’ wrist. He's able to hold James’ arm still, keeping it just at his temple, but isn't able to pull it all the way back, even with two hands. Yelena can see the muscles in Alexei's arm strain, his face focused, and yet he can just barely hold James’ fist back from his head.
Yelena isn't sure whether Alexei lost some strength or James gained some, but James’ fist goes forward once again and knocks his forehead. It's not as strong of a punch as before, but still not something he should be doing, and Yelena knows Alexei can't hold him back forever.
Alexei can't hold him back alone…but maybe with the strength of another supersoldier, they could.
“John!” She screams, a shrill tone like a fire alarm. “John!”
There's footsteps, running down the hall, then John is flinging the door open. Yelena thinks some of the wood around the hinges started to splinter from the sheer force of it.
He looks around. Must see the first aid kit, the IV supplies on the dresser, the overall state of James, and, most importantly, Alexei trying to hold his arm back. “The fuck.”
“Hold James’ arm back.” Yelena commands, and, even confused as he is, John doesn't deny a direct order. He goes right up next to Alexei, grabs James’ forearm with both his hands, and puts so much strength into pulling it back that he grunts, low and almost painful.
Alexei finds another burst of energy, puts all his strength into it, and James’ arm hits the pillow beside his head.
“Uhh.” James makes a noise, like he's out of fight, and then the arm goes lax.
“Phew!” Alexei breaks his grip and wipes sweat from his brow. “Our work is done.”
John rolls his eyes. “You couldn't even do anything until I got here. Guess we know my serum was stronger than yours.”
“What!” If there was a table in front of Alexei, he would have angrily pounded on it and broken a few dishes. “That is not fair. I was fighting long before you got here! If it was fair fight, my serum wins.”
“Alright.” John dusts off his shirt, all for show, because there wasn't even any dust on it. “Arm wrestling. In the kitchen. Right now.”
“Oh, you are so on-”
“No, nobody is on!” Yelena is sick of shouting. It's making her throat hurt. “We do not need any broken arms. We are already in a predicament.”
Alexei and John both huff.
Yelena pinches the bridge of her nose. “Ugh, too much testosterone.” The serum must amplify that. Every supersoldier she's met either is far too hyper or has anger issues, and every supersoldier she's met wants to fight, like, all the time. Yelena gets it, sometimes you need to blow off steam, but she's not sure if Alexei has ever been calm in his entire existence.
Sometime during the chaos, Ava and Toni had run in. So now, here they were, all six of them, crammed into James’ room, as the man himself sleeps, seemingly unaware of what just went down.
“So…” John looks around. “Do I get an explanation?”
“James is in withdrawal.” Yelena says. There's no use hiding it, now that John has seen everything. “He was put on drugs while in HYDRA, he cannot go off them, but he ran out, and now the withdrawal might kill him.” It feels more like a spiel, now, with the amount of times she's heard James explain it or explained it herself.
John looks over at James. All six feet of him, dead weight in the bed, sweat soaked hair and clothes, IV snug in the crease of his arm. The rightmost side of his forehead is now a very angry red, a sharp contrast to the pale white of his skin. Yelena can see a welt beginning to form.
For what it's worth, he does look better than he did yesterday, but that's a low bar to cross.
“He's not as weak as he was yesterday.” Yelena shrugs, cutting through the silence, feeling like if somebody didn't break it now it would stretch on forever. She thinks they were all expecting John to say something, at least scold them for keeping it a secret from him, but instead he's just staring at James’ sleeping form, a mix of confusion and what Yelena can only assume is horror on his face.
“Yeah. Yesterday he punches you and it's just a bruise, today he needs two supersoldiers to hold him back.” Ava is keeping her distance, loitering in the door frame with Antonia behind her. James is peacefully asleep, no longer in the throes of a nightmare or delusion that's causing him to act out, but John and Alexei are still rather hyped up. Yelena doesn't blame her for not wanting to get in the middle of them.
John's head whips around, gaze immediately going to Yelena's bruised cheek. “He punched you?”
“Aha! I knew it was not lamp!” Alexei exclaims, throwing his hands up in celebration.
“He did not mean to.” Yelena defends, ignoring Alexei. “He was hallucinating, scratching himself, I tried to stop him and he swung.” She swallows thickly. “He felt…he felt terrible.” She recalls the look on his face, the absolute terror in his eyes. It almost makes her feel sick, especially when she remembers how he'd then told her to kill him, with his own gun no less.
John is silent.
Alexei's looking around the room, puzzled. “...there is not even lamp in here. Just candle.”
Yelena rubs at her temple and sighs.
“I'm going to go…check on the saline.” Ava excuses herself, grabbing Toni's arm and pulling her away with her.
Once they're gone, John finally opens his mouth. “If he hurt you, maybe you shouldn't-”
“Shut up.” Yelena snapped, perhaps unfairly, but like hell she's going to let anybody tell her she shouldn't be around James right now. If anything, she's the only one of them who should be around James right now. She's his sister.
John huffed. “Fine.” He scoffed, before storming out of the room, his footsteps heavy and audible long after he's all the way down the hall.
Well. Yelena had really hoped telling John would have gone better. She's not sure how she envisioned it going, but it definitely wasn't that.
Alexei does not leave. They just stand there, still and silent, looking down at James.
There are very often times that Alexei does not know when to shut up, when somebody just needs quiet. But when Yelena is upset, truly, deeply upset, he knows what to do.
“A long, long time ago…”
When Yelena is upset, he doesn't speak.
He sings.
Eventually, when the first chorus hits, Yelena joins in.
~~~~~~~~~
She holds an ice pack to the welt on James’ forehead as Ava and Toni set up the infusion.
“Has he woken up yet?” Ava asks, and Yelena shakes her head. Ava is concerned about the possibility of a concussion from how hard he was hitting himself, but they can't even run any basic tests until he's awake. And really, there's no way to definitely know, he wouldn't remember the incident anyway because he was asleep, and any confusion, dizziness, or dilatation of pupils could just be from the withdrawal.
“We should. Wake him up.” Toni says as she finishes connecting the tubing to the cannula. “Just to check.”
Yelena sighs. She knows Toni's right, but she really, really doesn't want to wake James up. It's not only the possibility of him lashing out from it, although Yelena is worried about that too, but Yelena hopes that perhaps his sleep is an escape from the pain. He must be painfully hungry by now, even though he's unable to eat, and Yelena can't imagine the fever and constant sweating is comfortable at all. James hasn't told her about any symptoms he's having that aren't outwardly visible, so Yelena's not completely sure what he's feeling.
“James.” She tries. Both Toni and Ava back away from the bed.
No response.
“James.” She tries again, lightly shaking his shoulder this time. careful to avoid the bandages on his bicep.
His breath hitches.
Yelena backs away, arms up in a mock surrender, as he stirs awake.
“Hm.” His eyes open. He stares up at the ceiling. “Becca?”
Yelena takes a deep breath, approaching again. He doesn't seem to be violent, just confused.
“Sorry, James. It is just me. Yelena.”
“Oh.” He blinks, coming back to himself.
“You hit yourself in your sleep.” Yelena tells him, grabbing his hand, squeezing it. “Ava and Toni want to check, make sure there's no concussion.”
“Um.” He swallows, looks up at Yelena. “Can I ask a question?”
“Of course.”
“I…all that stuff, with HYDRA. Winter Soldier stuff. That all…happened, right?”
Oh.
Regrettably, Yelena nods. It feels like telling somebody that their entire family is dead. In a way, it kind of is. “Yes, James. I am sorry.”
“Don't…don't be. Just checkin’.”
His eyes slip closed again, like he's falling under.
“James. Can Toni and Ava check you out?” She doesn't want to go through having to wake him up and informing him that the things he's seeing as he's sleeping aren't dreams, but memories for a second time.
He opens his eyes again. “Oh. Yeah.”
Yelena steps aside. Ava grabs a flashlight from the first aid kit while Toni looks.
“Dilated.” Toni reports. Then, Ava takes the flashlight and shines it in James’ eyes. He flinches, but stays still, keeping his eyes open. “Slow response to light.”
Yelena isn't surprised about the dilatation, that very well could just be from withdrawal, but the slow light response is a little worrying. That could also be from the withdrawal, or it could be something else.
“All done, James.” Toni pats him on the shoulder as Ava puts the flashlight away. James gladly takes that as permission to close his eyes and drift off again.
Ava bites the inside of her cheek. Toni looks at Yelena tilts her head in the direction of the door.
Great. Another conversation they didn't want to have around James. This can't be good.
She looks back at James. He seems to be asleep. Hopefully, it would be okay if she stepped out for a few moments.
She follows Toni and Ava into the hallway, right next to the door to James’ room. Even with the door shut, Yelena thinks she’ll be able to hear if anything happens- vomiting, a seizure, another hallucination causing him to hit himself…although she really, really hopes none of that happens in the five minutes, max, that she’s away.
“Watch him. Carefully.” Toni warns, talking like she can see the future and knows something bad is coming.
Yelena just shrugs. “I was already doing that.”
“The slow response.” Ava has her finger on her chin, as if in contemplation. “That’s bad. And…he doesn’t remember…”
“He remembers.” Yelena insists. Because he does, he’s just getting a little mixed up. “He is just…he is just confused. Not sure what is a dream and what is a memory.”
Toni scrunches her face up. She does that, when there is tension. “Did he say? What drug he was on?”
“Uh, he said it was a cocktail. Antipsychotics was one, I think.”
“Slow response could just be…from the withdrawal.” Toni admits. “Antipsychotics…they can do that. But Still. Watch him.”
Yelena agreed, because, well, she was doing that anyway. She was hyper-senstive right now, to every noise, every twitch, every breath that is even slightly outside of the normal pattern.
Ava and Toni left. Lunch, or something. Alexei had gone to make it.
She let out a breath as she re-entered James’ room and shut the door behind her. She leaned back, the hard wood of the door, against her back. She feels heavy, like she’s holding all the secrets yet has no knowledge at all.
“Rough talk?” James asks, and Yelena almost jumps out of her skin. She didn’t realize he was even awake.
Yelena got her bearings, shaking off the momentary shock, and waved him off. “They are just concerned. They are worried, that your pupils did not constrict as quick as they should.”
James gives another one of his humorless laughs. “Ah, that’s normal.” He shrugs, as best he can while still laying down. “Can I tell you a secret?”
Yelena gets into bed, sitting beside James. “Only if I can as well.”
“Of course.” He swallows nervously. “I…I have a brain injury.”
Yelena tries to hide how her eyebrows raise momentarily in shock. “Oh.”
“Traumatic brain injury, they call it. Told me it was probably from all the electroshock. So my memories now, they come and go regularly. Sometimes I remember, sometimes I don’t. My emotions are all fucked. I'm impulsive, I get mood swings, I get too angry, I get too upset, I get too excited, my emotional reactions aren’t considered appropriate…it’s just a whole clusterfuck.” He sighs. “I don’t…I don’t like to tell people. I feel like…when I do…they treat me differently.”
Yelena gets some of that herself. She has a breakdown in front of somebody, and suddenly all there is is pity. She doesn’t want that, the pity. She’s not weak. She just…has some problems. How could she not, after everything she’s been through?
“My old friend, he knew me from before. He said, y’know, that there were hints of the old me. But then there a lot that's different, too. Shuri told me, with brain injuries, sometimes your personality changes. I think mine did. I think that’s why my old friend left. I just wasn't the person he remembered anymore.”
“I am sorry-”
“You’ve gotta stop apologizing, Yelena. You’ve done nothing wrong. This is just me talking.” He snorts, like he’s thinking of something funny. “I usually do this, these long-winded rants, I usually tell them to my cat.”
Yelena folds her hands in her lap. “Have you…have you found people who don’t treat you differently? Don’t treat you like you’re weak?”
“Oh, yeah. I mean, it can be difficult. Took me a long, long time to find those kinda people.” He smiles faintly. “But I think it was worth it.”
Yelena…well, she’s not completely sure, if she’ll ever find that. She has not told anybody, not even Alexei, the extent of her problems, the extent of the hole in her heart that nothing seems to fill, the crushing weight of guilt. The numbness. She is certainly better than she used to be, but it’s still there, and she doesn’t know if it’ll ever go away. And that scares her, that maybe she’ll live in this shell forever, never truly feeling again, always feeling like a fraction of a person.
After silence stretched too long, just enough for it to be awkward, James spoke again. “I'm…I'm sorry. About calling you Becca.”
“It is no problem.”
“Have you…have you ever been to Coney Island?”
“Um.” Yelena thinks. She doesn't recall any location called that, from any of her missions or otherwise. She hasn't been to many islands. Missions are harder when there's not an option to escape via land. “I do not believe so.”
“I…I would love to take you. If…if I get through this.” James almost seems nervous, as if Yelena is going to reject him. “I took all my sisters. The sign…it was the only thing I've never forgotten.” There's that sad smile, back again. James does smile quite a bit, but they almost always have that hint of sadness behind them.
“Well, if you went with all your sisters, how could I say no?” Yelena says, even if just to placate. Of course, she'd go with James, if they got out of here alive, but she doesn't want to make plans prematurely.
“Hm.” Exhaustion seems to have hit James, hard and fast. All the talking, the thinking, he was low on energy and that took away all of it. “I’m gonna…sleep?” He poses it as a question, as if he’s asking permission.
Yelena did want to check his temperature again, and she also wanted to confess to him why they were stuck here in the first place, but she can’t deny him sleep.
“Yes, James. Of course.”
Nearly the second she gives him the go ahead, he’s asleep.
~~~~~~~~~
There’s knocking at the door.
It’s late, darkness coming in through the window, the fireplace in the room providing the only light. Toni had come in a few hours earlier, disconnecting the tubing and offering Yelena food, which she declined. James had woken up momentarily then, but he was quite out of it. He was only awake for long enough for Yelena to check his temperature. 101.6 degrees fahrenheit. It was getting higher, but it was getting there slowly. Yelena hoped it would just plateau soon.
The knocking was hard, forceful, too much strength behind it. That meant it had to be a supersoldier (that, and the fact that Toni didn’t even knock anymore and Ava didn’t either, she either just opened the door without warning or phased in) and one of the three supersoldiers in the house was asleep next to her, so that narrowed it down to John or Alexei.
She hopes it’s not John. She still hasn’t fessed up to James that he knew now, and she wasn’t sure what to say to him, after their little blow-up earlier.
Whoever it was knocked again.
“Yelena! I have surprise!”
Ah. Just Alexei. She could handle that.
“Come in. But be quiet.” Yelena whispers. Alexei has super-hearing, he would probably be able to hear her even through the door. She looks over at James, expecting him to wake up from Alexei’s words, since it seemed like he was incapable of using an inside voice, but she finds him with his eyes still closed, lips pursed, breathing rhythmically and slightly slowly. Somehow, he managed to sleep through it.
Alexei opened the door, carefully, as quietly as humanly possible for him. He sauntered in, clearly proud of himself for some reason Yelena could not decipher. He was carrying two bowls, although Yelena couldn’t see what was in them.
“Thank you, but I am not hungry.” Yelena rejected upon seeing the bowls. She was too concerned about everything to eat, the pit in her stomach too heavy for her to have any desire for food.
“You will be.” Alexei was being quiet when he spoke, so at least he listened to her on that.
“Is that a threat?” Yelena asks, wary but also smirking. Alexei sits down on the floor, cross-legged, beside the bedside table, and it is then Yelena catches a glimpse of the inside of the bowl, the unmistakable vivid orange.
She climbs off the bed, carefully, trying not to make the mattress dip too much and wake James up. He seems to be in a deep sleep, though. At this point, Yelena’s not sure what it would take to wake him up, if he slept through Alexei yelling through the door.
“You…where did you find mac ‘n’ cheese?” Yelena points a finger at him accusingly. Somehow, she’s expecting this to be a trick. She has no idea what kind of trick, or how Alexei would even be able to pull it off, but she suspicious.
“Pantry! Behind old soup!” He’s still whispering, but using the same tone he does when yelling, that joyous, happy tone, like there are no horrors in the world and everything is sunshine and rainbows. “Only one box. This is all. Just for you and me.”
“Well.” Yelena sits down across from him, crossing her legs as well and taking a bowl. “What did I do to deserve this?”
Alexei gets that look in his eye, that glimmer. That look when he looks at her like he’s her whole world. There are only three people Yelena has seen him look at like this- her, Melina, and Natasha.
“You are…you are you.” He says, so matter-of-a-factly, so adoring. “You are wonderful, wonderful you.”
“You do not have to butter me up.” She shakes her head, taking her first bite. It is not the best, of course, they don't have milk or butter so Alexei probably just made it with water, but after a week plus of canned food and meals revolving around Spam, it takes like heaven.
“Yelena.” He reaches out, takes Yelena's hand in his. She puts down the fork so they can hold both hands. “You...you are so amazing. So strong. So worthy.”
She can feel the tears beginning to form in the corner of her eyes. “But I am not.” A teardrop falls down her cheek, her bruised one, warm and wet. “I am the reason we are all here. Why we are stuck. Why James is dying, why Toni and Ava are in danger. All because…all because I thought maybe, I could find something on my biological mom at that base.”
Alexei looks at her. In the darkness, she can't read his expression well enough to decipher it. She hopes…she hopes it's not one of pain. Not one of betrayal. Not one of thinking he's not enough. “Oh, Yelena-”
“No.” She tries to pull away, but he grabs tight to her hands, pulls her closer. “I…I am evil. I should not even care. It is…I have you, and mom. And you are my parents, my real parents, I promise I see you that way. I just…I do not know why I care. Why I want to know her name. Why I want to know why she left me. And it is wrong of me to care.” The tears are flowing freely now. “I…I put us all in danger. Because I could not…I could not just appreciate what I have.”
She turns her head away. She can't look at him now, the confession out of her mouth, into the open. She does not want to see his disappointment, his sadness, at what must feel like the biggest betrayal.
“Yelena.” She hears him say, but she can't look. “My darling Yelena.” His thumbs rub over her hands. “I am so lucky to have you. You are the kindest person in this whole world.”
She does look at him, then. If it was possible for him to look at her even more adoringly, even more like she's the greatest person in the universe, he's doing it now. He's looking at her like she hung the stars, like she wakes up every morning to bring the sun up and does the same to the moon at night.
“What?” She asks, voice breaking.
“I would never think less of you for wanting to find more out about your biological mother.” He says, so sure, so certain. “That you thought you had to confess that…that you would consider my feelings so deeply, even after all the mistakes I can never make up for…you are truly the kindest ever. I am the most lucky man in the world that I have the privilege of being your father.” He squeezes her hands. In the dark, Yelena sees the shine of something, a tear, cascading down his cheek and off his chin. “I know I say, there is nothing better than being a hero. But being a hero, being the Red Guardian, being a Thunderbolt…none of it compares to being your dad. I was so foolish not to see that when you were younger, I was stupid to leave you. There is absolutely nothing I could ever do, in my whole life, that would be more important, more rewarding, than having you as a daughter.”
Yelena sniffles. She can barely see now, her eyesight blurry from crying, but this…this is a happy cry. This is a cry of relief, a cry of freedom. Telling Alexei, and just having him tell her how much he loves her…it feels like the biggest weight in the world has been lifted off her shoulders.
“I hope mom understands.” He lets her pull one of her hands away to wipe some of the tears from her eyes. “Understands….I am not trying to replace her.”
“I know she will.” Alexei says confidentially. “Your mom and I…we know we have made mistakes. Big, huge ones. Inexcusable ones. We did not get to really be parents, and that is all our own fault. But we want to do our best now, help you anyway we can. We just want you to be happy, Yelena.”
Yelena breathes deeply. Her chest is tight from crying.
“Do you remember-” Alexei starts. He loves talking. Sometimes it annoys Yelena, how she can never seem to get a word in, but right now it's welcome. She doesn't want to talk. She just wants to be comforted. If that made her weak, so be it. “-when you were little. Me and your mother, we tried to do the regular parent thing, and move you from toddler bed to child bed.” He laughs, quietly. They're cognizant of the fact James is sleeping, trying to be as quiet as possible, even as they're having such an emotional conversation. “You hated the child bed. All you wanted was to sleep in same bed, with me and your mother.”
Yelena wipes a few tears out of her eyes. “I remember. You sang to me.”
“Cossack Lullaby. Very famous. Very appropriate.” He picks up the other bowl for the first time, putting it in his own lap. “We sang to you, about how your father was great warrior, and one day you would be too.” He shakes his head. “I thought I was right. I was, in one way. You, you have become great warrior. But me…I was not.”
“Dad-”
“Yelena. Just let me apologize. For leaving you.”
“You already have.”
“I need to do it again.” The bowl is in his lap, but he’s made no move to pick up the fork or eat any of it. Yelena hasn’t taken more than just one bite, either. There’s a pit in her stomach, and she assumes it’s the same for Alexei. She always gets this feeling when talking about what happened back then. It’s just…the upsetness of remembering. Remembering her being so young, not knowing what was happening. She doesn’t think she’s known peace since that day. Since Melina was rushing her out of the house. She didn’t even have time to put her shoes on.
“I am sorry, Yelena.” He says. “I should have protected you. Not handed you over. Me and your mom, we should have taken you and Natasha and ran. But I was a coward, a coward loyal to the wrong people.”
She reaches out and grabs his other hand again.
It is not okay, necessarily. What happened to her, and the role he played in it, will never be okay. But she understands, from his perspective, he had never been exposed to anything except loyalty to everything the Red Room said. But she sees there is true remorse in him, true love for her, for Natasha, for Melina. There has always been that love for her, even when she was younger. He thought he was doing what was best for her, because he didn’t know anything else. He sees, now, how wrong that was.
“I love you.” He says, looking at her again like she’s the most precious thing.
“I love you too, dad.”
~~~~~~~~~
They do eat, eventually, but they stay there, hands intertwined, just looking at each other, for a while. The food was cold by the time they got to it, but it was still good. Mac ‘n’ cheese has been Yelena’s favorite since she can remember. Of all the things that changed in her life, that never did.
Yelena gets a few hours of sleep before she’s woken up by a slight shift in the mattress.
She bolts upright, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“James?” Her vision clears up, adjusting to the light that’s now pouring in from the window.
“Ah. Sorry.” He’s still laying in bed. He’s awake, but barely, voice hoarse and small in a way it isn’t when he’s fully there. “Just…um…there’s no blood on the ceiling, right?”
Yelena looks up. No blood. Just the boring cream-colored ceiling.
“No.” Yelena confirms. “No blood.”
He hums. “‘Kay. You…go back to sleep.”
Yelena’s already getting out of bed, though. She needs to at least check his temperature while he’s awake. “Let me get your temperature, first, okay?”
James is quiet while Yelena is getting the thermometer out, but when she turns back to him, his brow is furrowed, looking at the blanket in his hand in confusion.
“This…this is a different blanket.” It’s half said as a statement, half a question. He doesn't seem completely certain.
“Yes, it is. Open.” She puts the thermometer under his tongue. “Toni thought that one would be more comfortable.” The thermometer beeps. “101.9.’ It keeps climbing. It’s very, very close to becoming a high grade fever. That wouldn’t be much of a worry if they had any fever reducers, but they don’t have any pills that would work on James, with his enhanced metabolism, and even if they did, he wouldn’t be able to keep it down long enough for it to do any good.
Something akin to clarity flashes in James’ eyes. “You were gonna tell me something. I fell asleep.”
“Yes.” Yelena kneels at the side of the bed as she unwraps the bandage around his upper arm again. “I was.”
“You can-” He winces as Yelena touches where the wounds were. Still sore, then, but as far as she can see, they’re healed up, with the exception of the one furthest down on his arm, which still has a small mark left behind and a little bit of redness around it. “-you can tell me now.”
Yelena doesn’t think she wants to. She had hoped maybe he would completely forget, and maybe she’d never have to tell him they’re only trapped here because of her. But, well, she knows secrets aren’t good. It would weigh on her forever if she didn’t tell him.
So she bites the bullet. “It…the mission, it was my idea.” She distracts herself from the lump in her throat and the overwhelming feeling of guilt by putting cream and a band-aid on the last remaining scratch. “I thought, there was a possibility, I could find something about my biological mother in there. But there was nothing, and I rushed into it, thinking we would be out before the blizzard hit. I was wrong.” The band-aid is on, and now she’s not sure what to do with her hands, the nerves making her twitch. “We are stuck, you are in pain, because of me.”
A few beats of silence pass, and then James laughs. He laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. Yelena thinks he must be delirious, going crazy from the withdrawal. Why else would he be laughing?
“James?” She tries to snap him out of it.
“Sorry.” He says through laughs. “I’m..I’m fine. I just…I can’t believe you feel guilty about that.”
“How could I not?” Yelena’s not sure she’s ever been this confused. Of course she feels guilty. This was all her fault.
“Yelena, we’re a team, right? Every mission has a purpose. Sometimes, that purpose is personal. But we go in there as a team, a team that supports each other, and we do our best.” At some point, she’s not sure when, Yelena had ended up with James’ hand in hers. “This wasn’t your fault. When we win, we win as a team. When we fail…we do that together too.”
There’s another tear forming in her eye. She’s been crying too much for her liking in the past twenty-four hours.
She doesn’t want to end up full-on sobbing like she did last night, to the point where her eyes were puffy and her vision went blurry, so instead of confronting the situation, she hides her emotions with a joke. “I did not know you were the speech type.”
He scoffs lightheartedly. “Are you kidding? I was in Congress.”
“You got kicked out of Congress.” Yelena amends.
“I was still in it.” His voice is getting small again. His cognition had picked up long enough for the conversation, but it seems like he only gets the smallest bit of energy at the moment, and it runs out fast. “Had…had speech writers and shit.”
She runs a hand over his forehead, brushing the stray hairs that had gotten slicked to his skin with sweat, careful not to touch where the welt is standing angry and red against the left side. His head is hot from the fever. His skin is more flushed than she’s ever seen it.
Yelena takes a general stock. 101.9 degree fever, skin flushed and hot to the touch, he hasn’t been able to eat and keep anything down in four days. He is hallucinating, as evidenced by him asking if there was blood on the ceiling, he has extremely low energy and small moments of awareness and clarity. There was a small bruise in the crease of his elbow from the IV, the band-aid on his bicep, the bump on his head. He can’t get up and out of bed. He hasn’t puked or had a seizure in a while, so little victories, at least.
She watches as his eyes fall shut again.“You are going to be okay, James.” She tells him, even though she doesn’t really believe it herself.
~~~~~~~~~
“He is sweating more.” Toni observes as she hooks up more saline.
“Fever went up.” Yelena is leaning against the farthest wall from James’ bed with her arms crossed. “If it goes up any more…it will be a severe fever. I do not know what we will do then. We do not have any real way to bring it down.”
Toni pulls the medical gloves off as she finishes up. “Cool compress. Forehead. Under arms. Under neck. Wrist.” She lists them off as if reading straight from a medical book. “With no fever reducers…that is our best bet.” She looks over at Yelena. “You too. Warm compress on cheek.”
Yelena waves her off. “It is fine.” The bruise is still sore, but only if she touches it. She doesn’t like the purple and blue of the bruise, though. She’ll be happier when it gets to the yellow and green stage. Green is much more her color.
A knock on the door sounds throughout the room. It is a supersoldier knock, Yelena can tell that much.
“Yelena, you in there? It's John.”
She sighs.
Well, she needs to talk to him at some point.
She looks at Toni, silently asking if she'd stay with James while Yelena talks to him. Toni nods, going back to his bedside. She has been entirely unperturbed by the entire situation. Yelena wonders if it's simply a complete desensitization on Toni's part…she hasn't shared much of what she went through in the Red Room to Yelena, but from what she has told her, they treated her as if she was fully unaware and unfeeling…which meant all medical procedures happened with no sedation, no anesthesia. The Red Room didn't even seem to have any, even with how many surgeries they performed.
John knocks again.
“I am coming, chill.” Yelena calls out.
She will admit she opens the door too harshly. She didn't even really mean to, and it wasn't directed towards John, either. She's just stressed, is all.
She shuts the door as carefully as she can to make up for it.
John doesn't look good. Which she knows is rich coming from her, with her bruised cheek and her hair likely a mess. She bets there's still bags under her eyes. She's rather glad the only place this house has mirrors is in the bathroom.
But John…the dark circles under his eyes are the least of it. His face is puffy, eyes dull. His lips look like he'd bitten all of the skin off. As it is now, he's chewing on his already decimated lip, his teeth worrying themselves over it. Yelena almost thinks he has also fallen ill.
But then does that nervous tic, his head jerking to the side so hard it looks like it hurts. The muscles in his neck tense up from the involuntary movement. That's how Yelena knows that he's not sick, he's just nervous. Very, very nervous. She's seen him do this before, but only in high stress situations. She wonders if he slept at all last night- had this all been keeping him up? Was it the spat with her or James’ situation that was causing this? Maybe it's both.
He swallows thickly. “I'm sorry. For yesterday.”
In her mind, Yelena feels a slight bit of relief that she wasn't the only one that was left upset over what happened yesterday. She didn't mean to snap, and she's sure John didn't mean to, either. Tensions were just high. Now that they both had time to cool off, to think it over, they can move past it.
“I am sorry too.” She replies. “I was on edge. I should not have said that to you.”
John shuffles his feet. When he's nervous, he's always twitching, needing to be on the move. It's wrong, but it brings Yelena solace that he is so nervous about apologizing. It shows to her that he's really sorry, not just paying her lip service and apologizing for the sake of keeping the peace. “I mean, I need to be told to shut up sometimes.”
That gets a little huffed laugh from Yelena. “I think we all need to be told that at times.”
John nods his head, but he still seems distant, like there’s still something on his mind.
Yelena really, really hopes that something isn’t that he will also die if they’re stuck here much longer. Losing half their team is a horrible tragedy and abysmal, but losing even more than that in just one mission feels offensive and crosses into being a personal attack from the universe.
“I’m sorry for just leaving, like that. I just…I get angry, and when I do, it’s best if I just take some time alone.” He admits. “I used to just…stay and argue and that never ended well.”
“I understand.” The Red Room trained emotions out of her, forcing her to shove all of that down and do the mission. But the longer she’s been freed, been allowed to have emotions, the harder she finds it is for her to control them, to make her expression one of stone and give the impression that nothing bothers her. She does get angry, but the emotion she finds the hardest to control is her guilt.
He shuffles awkwardly again. “Have I mentioned I have a kid?”
“A couple times.” It does surprise Yelena how little John talks about his personal life. She knows little to nothing about his life outside of his superheroing.
“Yeah. I, um, I co-parent. With my ex-wife.” He says, a little ashamedly. “I love her, but she got sick of the arguments. How I got angry over the littlest things. And I’m not sure I blame her. I wouldn’t want to be around me either. I’m a washed up soldier. Hell, we’ve stuck here, and I can’t do shit about it.”
“John.” She starts, lips pursed. This is the most open and honest he’d ever been, and she realizes, now, that perhaps there's quite a lot he’s been hiding, quite a lot he’s been going through, and the tough-guy schtick he puts up is a farce. “You know…there is more in life you can provide to people beyond physical actions.”
“Didn’t know you were a therapist.” He scoffs, then immediately regrets it. “I’m sorry, that was rude-”
“No, no, it is fine. You are right. I am not. In fact I am the last person to be giving you advice. Just…” She glances back at the door. She’s been away from James for a while, she needs to go back and check on him. “...just think about it, alright?”
She turns to open the door, and one glance inside makes her feel like her heart has stopped.
Antonia is kneeling beside the bed, while James is turned on his side, shaking violently.
“James!” She exclaims as she runs into the room, and her panic causes John to enter as well, concerned. Yelena has blocked out everybody else, though, focusing only on James, only on him seizing so hard Yelena fears he’ll fall off the bed.
She watches, terrified. She’s seen so many seizures, but this is by far the most violent. She wants nothing more than to reach out, to hold James, to stop him, but she knows she can’t, it’ll only make things worse. That’s the thing Yelena hates most about seizures, the fact that there is absolutely nothing she can do. She can’t confort, can’t do anything to make it stop, can’t touch.
“He is okay.” Toni’s voice cuts through the panicked fog in her mind.
She doesn’t believe it. Not with how James’ convulsions are so bad they’re shaking the bed.
Yelena kneels down next to Toni, her arms outstretched, ready to catch him if he falls. Luckily, though, it seems as if the spasms are forcing his body back further into the bed instead of over the edge.
She realizes, then, she doesn’t know how long this has been going on. She was out of the room for no less than five minutes, but if it started as soon as she left, it could be going into dangerous territory.
“John.” She calls out, she can’t see him but she knows he’s still in the room, can feel his presence. “Stopwatch. On the dresser-”
“No need.” Toni interrupts. “1 minute, 46 seconds.”
Okay. That’s fine, that’s not too bad.
After a few more moments, he stills, going from violently shaking to looking completely serene in the span of a second.
“2 minutes, 3 seconds.” Toni says in a final tone, ending her count.
Yelena’s relief quickly turns back to panic when blood seeps out of the corner of his mouth.
“Shit.” Yelena blinks, thinking maybe she’s the one hallucinating now, that she’ll open her eyes again and the blood will be gone, but she doesn’t get that lucky. “Shit, shit-”
Toni jumps into action, again not looking to be phased at all. She puts her fingers into his mouth, pulls on his tongue. The source of the blood is clear, then. A small cut on the center of his tongue.
“Gauze.” Toni demands, and Yelena finds it in the first aid kit and hands it over. Toni’s hand is covered in blood when she reaches out to grab it from Yelena and hold it on James’ tongue.
He stirs, opens his eyes groggily, and then begins shaking again. But this wasn’t a seizure, it wasn’t the same kind of shakes, and his eyes are unfocused but aware. This shaking wasn’t caused by a seizure, rather it was caused by panic.
“James.” Yelena calls, grabbing his hand, squeezing it. “It is okay, you bit your tongue during a seizure, Antonia is here, she is helping.”
At the mention of Toni’s name, realization flashes in his eyes, and he begins to calm down. The shaking ceases, and he takes a deep breath through his nose.
Toni pulls the gauze away, just the smallest bit. She nods approvingly. The gauze is soaked with blood, but his tongue was quickly clotting, the flow slowing substantially from before. “Less than 2 centimeters.” She reports, getting a clear look at the cut without a shit ton of blood in the way. “Not in the muscle. Should not need stitches.”
Yelena hands her another piece of gauze to put back over it. Toni throws the bloodied one in the bucket. At this point, it had become a catch-all for anything contaminated with blood or vomit.
Toni lets go of his tongue, letting the gauze rest. “Try not to talk.” She tells James.
Yelena hadn’t even noticed that John had left, but suddenly he’s right next to them, handing a wet towel to Toni, who takes it to get the worst of the blood off of her hands.
Now that the bleeding is under control and she was able to check the wound and see it’s not severe, Toni moves onto the next order of business. “Cup of water. To rinse his mouth out.”
“I’ve got it.” John says, but Yelena is already out the door.
“Hey.” He runs up beside her as she walks briskly down the hallway to the kitchen. “Let me help.”
“It is getting a cup of water. I think that is a one-person task.” Yelena doesn’t even spare a glance behind her. The important thing right now is helping James. If John needs to talk more, they can do it later.
“How many times has he had a seizure?” He springs on her instead of leaving.
“Here, or during his entire life?”
Even though she can’t see him, she knows his head is tilted in confusion just by the tone of his voice. “You know how many seizures he's had in his entire life?”
“Well, not exactly, but I can tell you it is at least more than three, since he has had three here.” She makes it to the kitchen. Miraculously, both it and the common area are empty, although it does make her wonder where Alexei and Ava are.
But she doesn't have time to think about that right now. Right now, she has a clear task, a clear mission, on what she can do to help James. It's a small mission, but its a mission all the same, and she will not fail this one too.
“What’s with the blanket?” John asks, grabbing the jug of water on the counter as Yelena opens a cabinet to grab a cup.
It takes Yelena a moment to realize John wants to know why James is holding a blanket, which seems a little strange to her to even ask. He’s sick, the blanket is a basic confort, especially considering he’s wearing some of the most uncomfortably tight clothes on the planet since he didn’t pack anything else. Isn’t it obvious that it’s there for comfort?
“It is just a blanket.” She shrugs, not sure what else to say.
She holds the cup steady while John pours water into it. He fills it nearly up to the top, which is rather unnecessary considering it’s not like James is going to drink it. It’s just to rinse his mouth out.
It crosses Yelena's mind, then, that John doesn’t really even know the half of what James has been going through. He probably has no idea that he hasn’t eaten in days, has thrown up everything that could possibly be left in his stomach.
She lets it go, though. No use lecturing him on every terrible symptom James has.
She walks much more slowly, more carefully, down the hall back to James’ room so she doesn’t spill any of the water. The last thing they need is for somebody to slip and fall.
When they reenter the room, Toni is discarding another piece of gauze. This one has much less blood on it than the previous one, but the cut is still not completely clotted yet. James is still laying on his side, exhaustion evident in his eyes, like he just wants to go back to sleep, and Yelena can't blame him for that.
Yelena places the cup down on the bedside table and helps James sit up. Toni grabs the bucket, placing it under his chin.
“Swish the water around. Then spit.” Toni instructs. Yelena holds the cup up to his lips, helping him drink it slowly. The cup is only about half empty by the time James pushes it away. He rinses it around in his mouth for a few seconds, before spitting it up into the bucket. The water comes out tinged with a little blood, but not too bad.
He leans against the headboard, closing his eyes.
“No sleeping, It is not done bleeding.” Toni pats him on the shoulder, and he opens his eyes again with a groan.
As much as it pains Yelena to cause James any more pain, Toni is right. He can’t fall asleep until the cut is completely done bleeding, or else they run the risk of him choking on his own blood, which sounds like one of the worst ways to die, in Yelena’s opinion.
“Maybe I can get Ava to read to you?” Yelena offers, trying to think of anything that would help keep James awake and aware without being torture.
James hums, which is enough of an agreement for Toni to get up. “I will go get her.”
John is loitering in the doorway again like a ghost, like there’s an invisible forcefield preventing him from entering. Toni’s shoulder brushes up against him as she leaves.
Yelena lets out a deep sigh, and turns her attention back to James. “How are you feeling?”
“Hm. Headache.” He says, even though Toni told him not to talk.
“Be careful with talking.” Yelena warns, and James huffs a weak laugh.
“A lil’ cut is nothin’. I didn’ bite it off this time.”
The this time hangs in the air like a confession, and suddenly Yelena feels like the room has been drained of all of its oxygen.
She coughs, trying to hide her shock, the way she feels this wave of horror whenever James says something so terrifying so very casually. Which is weird, because Yelena talks the same casual way about her own torture. Maybe it’s the fact that the things that happened to her…a part of her feels like she deserves it, like it's a preemptive punishment for all the things she did later, while she feels, no, she knows James didn’t deserve any of what happened to him. He doesn’t deserve what’s happening to him now. He can say it’s not her fault that they’re stuck here, but that doesn’t mean she believes him, doesn’t mean she doesn’t still blame herself.
James doesn’t seem to notice how much it affected her. His eyes have become glazed over, unfocused, but he’s still awake, just…somewhere else. Yelena hopes whenever he is, it’s somewhere good.
Yelena nearly jumps out of her skin when she hears a book snap closed right next to her.
“Ava.” She breathes out, hand on her heart, getting her bearings. One thing about Ava, she moves near silently. She’s a perfect spy for a number of reasons, but that is one of the most important.
“Sorry.” Ava apologizes. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Ah.” Yelena waves her off, rising from the ground. She’s not sure when she ended up kneeling on the floor next to James’ bed. “It is…no problem. My mind is elsewhere.” She gestures vaguely around her head.
“I passed John in the hallway.” She says, flipping through the pages of the book, looking for something specific. “He said to meet him in the attic. He wants to talk to you.”
Yelena nods. Ava takes up her spot, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to James’ bed, finally finding whatever she was looking for.
“Okay, Bucky. Okay with getting back into The Perfectionists?” Ava asks. James hums.
“Chapter five; the irresistible lure of the highway…” Yelena begins to leave, listening to Ava read, her voice steady, soothing, until it’s too far away.
~~~~~~~~~
The climb up to the attic feels like hell on her legs. She’s been so stationary these past few days, spending most of her time sitting in James’ room, she’s become deconditioned to the point the steep ladder is enough to get her panting. She’ll need to do some serious workouts once they’re out of here.
Once she gets up there, still catching her breath, she immediately notices two holes in the floor, both right next to each other.
“John?” She calls, echoing against the unfinished walls, panning her gaze across the entire attic until she sees him, rummaging through a navy blue trunk.
“Ava said you wanted to see me?” She comments as she approaches him, looking back over to the holes on the other side of the attic. “Is it about the structural integrity of the house being compromised?”
“It’s fine.” John says, as if it’s no problem at all. Now that Yelena looks at them again, the holes look just about the size of a fist. Seems like somebody had been using the attic as their punching bag…and she was willing to bet it was John, considering she’s pretty sure the holes are right above John’s room.
Yelena is about to ask once again why he called her up here, but right before she does, John pulls something out of the trunk and holds it up.
It’s a large navy blue pajama top, short sleeved in a button-down style. It looks like satin.
“Think this’ll fit Bucky?” He questions.
Yelena ponders. With John holding it up, it looks like it would be just a tiny bit large on him. Him and James are basically the same size, so if it looks like it’d fit John,,,
“Yes.” She decides. “I think so.”
He motions to the trunk. “Whole thing is full of clothes. Figured this would be better for him than a t-shirt.” He goes back to the trunk, quickly finding a matching pair of pants.
Yelena agrees with that. They seem clean, no stain or rips she can see. In fact, they look almost brand new, like they had been left by somebody with no intentions of ever wearing them, instead just shoving them into a trunk in the attic. Perhaps, Yelena thinks, they belonged to whoever owned this house before it was a safehouse, if there had even ever been a time when it wasn’t a safehouse.
“I have some painkillers too.” John offers as he hands the pajamas over to Yelena.
“That is very nice, but they will not work on him.” Yelena runs her fingers over the pajamas. Definitely satin.
“They work on me.” John counters.
She sighs. “He cannot keep anything down…it would be a waste.” Yelena carefully folds the pajamas up, placing them in a bundle under her arm. “And I do not think you listened to me earlier.”
John looks at her, an offended look in his eyes. “I did.”
She shakes her head. “No. You are once again placing your value in your physical actions. Trying to do or offer something physical to make things better.” She looks down at the pajamas. “Like these.”
John stares, puzzled. “What…what else is there?”
Out of all of them, Yelena thought John had the most normal childhood. She thought he would have the emotional maturity to realize not everything is about actions. Clearly, she was wrong.
“Maybe just…talking? Comforting?” Yelena suggests. “You think James hates you, but have you even tried to talk to him about it?”
That seems to have short-circuited his brain. His eyes are blank, and he’s staring up at the ceiling like he’s going to get answers from there. Yelena can tell she’s not going to get any further, at least not right now.
“Think about it.” She says before leaving him there, perplexed, as if his entire belief system had just been proven wrong.
~~~~~~~~~
When she returns to James’ room, Ava is just beginning chapter seven.
James is still awake, although he looks like he’s been deprived of sleep for days, not the thirty minutes it’s been in reality.
When Ava notices Yelena is back, she closes the book. No bookmark, no ear-marking, just closing it- perhaps Ava can remember what chapter they’re on just by memory alone. Yelena wouldn’t be surprised at all.
“Hey, James.” She greets, going back over to the bed. “John found some pajamas, if you’d like them?”
That gets his attention, his eyes becoming clearer and wider as he looks at the bundle under Yelena’s arm.
She holds them out to him. “Here. They’re satin.”
Just one touch of them and he seems to melt into the softness. Yelena can’t blame him. They are very soft, softer than the sweatshirt and sweatpant Yelena herself is wearing, and definitely softer than the tight, scratchy t-shirt he’s wearing now.
Ava puts the book back on the stack on top of the dresser. “I’ll go get Toni. For more saline.”
“Close the door, please.” Yelena asks, and Ava obliges.
“Is it okay if I dress you?” Yelena doesn’t want to be weird, although she doesn’t think James could dress himself right now with how weak he is, but still, she wants to ask.
He nods, and Yelena climbs into the bed, carefully beginning to remove his shirt. The IV isn’t hooked up right now, but she’s careful around the crease of his elbow, making sure she doesn’t snag it.
“I feel bad.” He mumbles as Yelena pulls his shirt over his head.
“Yes, you are sick.” Yelena pays little mind to his words as she helps him get his arm into the shirt, again careful around the IV.
“No, I mean…I feel bad. About freaking out on Toni.”
Yelena shakes her head. “Toni understands. She has been there.”
“I thought she was one of my old handlers.” He confesses, and Yelena pauses buttoning the shirt.
“I almost bit her fingers.” He rasps, when Yelena doesn’t respond immediately. “I…I thought I was back, in the chair. This…this one handler, he got burned pretty bad, on the mission where I finally escaped. I felt her fingers in my mouth, the burn scars on them, and I thought it was him, trying to force the bite guard into my mouth before the chair.”
Ah. That…that makes more sense. A near panic attack from thinking your abuser is there…that is more than understandable. Yelena has been on missions with Toni where they both had a problem when there were older men who resembled Dreykov.
“I don’t…I swear, I don’t see him in Toni.” He defends as Yelena resumes buttoning.
“I know.” Yelena tries to soothe. She can tell he’s spiraling. “It is okay, James. It happens. I do not think Toni would be offended if she knew.”
He swallows hard, tears burning in the corner of his eyes. “I almost hurt her.”
“But you did not.” She counters, trying to go for a gentle tone in her voice but fearing it came out harsh instead. “You did not hurt her, and that is what matters.”
“I’m not safe to be around.” He insists, a tear falling from his eye and down his cheek.
“No, James. None of that.” Yelena knows where this is going, and she’s not going to like it. He is going to ask her to kill him again, putting on the idea that he’s not safe, that he’ll hurt them. Besides the hit to Yelena’s cheek, which was really her fault in the first place for touching him during a violent hallucination, all he’s done so far is hurt himself, and Yelena will not hurt him even more.
But James doesn’t argue like she expects him to. Instead, he stops talking. Just lets Yelena get the pajamas bottoms on, staying silent the whole time, dejection in his expression. On the plus side, the pajamas do fit rather perfectly.
Yelena sighs. She will not kill him. That is completely off the table. But maybe…maybe there’s something else she can do.
Soon, Toni returns. She checks the cut, says it’s stopped bleeding. She hooks up more saline as James falls asleep, now that the cut is healed and he has permission to.
Yelena asks Toni if she’d watch him for a little bit while she goes to do something, and Toni agrees, although she scoffs when Yelena tells her to yell for her if he wakes up or has another seizure. Toni is insistent she can handle it fine, and Yelena believes her, but she doesn’t want to be away from James when there’s an emergency. It’s the least she can do, really.
When she heads out into the common area, she sees that the other three are all hanging out in the living room. John is once again cleaning his gun, Ava is reading, and Alexei has his head up against the couch cushion, asleep and snoring rather loudly.
Yelena claps her hands together, and John and Avan turn to look at her. Alexei wakes up with a start, blinking his eyes open.
“I was not sleeping.” He asserts, even though he was obviously sleeping. “Just resting my eyes.”
“Yeah, sure.” Ava says sarcastically.
“By chance…” Yelena starts, eager to just get this other with. “Does anybody have a sedative? Or a tranquiliser?”
“Uh.” John looks around. “There’s bear mace in the cabinet.”
Yelena wrinkles her nose. She’s not going to kill James, and she’s not going to blind him either.
“What about your…” Ava taps her wrist. “Your weapon, things?”
“The widow bites?” Yelena winces. “No, that will not work.” The bites electrocute. They are not usually lethal, unless she shocks somebody for an extended period or turns them up to max strength, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Even when set on the lowest setting for only a second, they still give quite a shock. She is not electrocuting James, not only because of how it could cause a seizure and she doesn’t need to up those odds at all, but with the trauma he had, having his memories shocked out of him for decades…she’s not going to do that.
“Who are we sedating?” John is suddenly suspicious of why the question is even being asked.
“James.” Yelena says simply. No use covering it up. “He…he is concerned about hurting us. I was thinking perhaps there was something we could subdue him with, if he does get violent but…”
“Why not the bites?” Alexei chimes in. “Bites shock. He goes down. Done.”
Yelena sighs. The shock would probably snap him out of whatever he’s seeing that would make him attack in the first place, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. “I am not electrocuting him. Not after what he has been through.”
“Well, next best thing is bear mace.” John shrugs.
“Great, very helpful, thanks.” Yelena comments in a sardonic tone, again coming out meaner than she means it to.
As she turns around to leave, though, John gets up and follows her down the hall.
“I was thinking. About what you said.” He says as he catches up to her. “Can I talk to him?”
Yelena spares a glance back at him, raising an eyebrow. “You want to talk to James after you just suggested I bear mace him?”
“I didn’t suggest it seriously!” He retorts.
Yelena rolls her eyes as she turns her head back forward. “I mean, you can talk to him, but he is probably asleep.”
She can hear John swallow nervously. “That, um. That might be better, actually. Less pressure.”
“Let me get this straight.” Once they reach the door to James’ room, Yelena turns around fully to face John. “You want to talk to him when he will not hear you or reply?”
“Um.” He shuffles his feet, his head twitching involuntarily again. “Yes.”
Yelena stares at him for a few seconds, before just deciding to let it go. “Sure. You can talk to him. Just let me check on him first.”
John nods, still visibly nervous, staying outside the room when Yelena opens the door and enters.
“Still sleeping. No seizures.” Toni states immediately as Yelena steps inside the room.
“Thank you.” James looks about the same as he had when Yelena left, laying down, asleep, head on the pillow, blanket in his hand, saline pumping through the IV. Nothing changed with his status, which, at this point, is a good thing, considering every new update just seems to be him getting worse.
Toni bids her goodbye, again bumping shoulders with John. The doorframe simply isn’t big enough for two of them to occupy at once.
Yelena motions for John to come in. It takes him a few minutes, but eventually, he crosses the threshold, moving through the room like he’s walking on eggshells.
“I will give you some space. But I will be right outside the door, yell if he starts seizing or anything bad happens.” Yelena goes for a commanding tone, but again it just sounds like she’s being rude. WIth how on edge she is, it’s like everything is coming out as an insult.
“Uh.” John pauses. “Maybe just, hang out by the doorframe…still watching him. I don’t know if I’d be able to spot a seizure well enough.”
Yelena would rather this be a private thing, maybe then John would feel more comfortable being completely sincere, but she won’t argue with him.
She goes to lean up against the doorframe, watching as John shifts awkwardly, standing at James’ bedside, seemingly unsure of where to even begin.
“Um. Hi, Bucky.” He starts with. “I don’t know if you can hear me, it’s, uh, it’s John. Walker.”
Yelena tries really, really hard not to smirk. He is absolutely terrible at talking, at emotions. If it wasn’t exhausting, it would be endearing.
“I know you don’t like me. I don’t really like myself either. But I…” He shuffles his feet yet again. “...I really hope that you’re gonna be okay. I…I really don’t know where I’d be, without you. I would probably still be working for Valentina.” Yelena can’t help but wince at the name. “And, I mean, that sucked. So. I’m glad I’m not doing that any more.”
“I can’t really blame you. For not liking me. I didn’t really treat you the greatest. I’m sorry for that. I didn’t treat you the greatest because…I don’t know. I keep trying to be something I’m not, I think, and I just end up being an asshole more often than not.” He gives a nervous laugh. “I’ve done a lot of bad things. You were there for my worst one. I just…I don’t know. I wanted to say that I’m sorry. And thank you. And…I really hope you pull through.” He sighs. “Okay. Um. Bye.”
John gasps suddenly, and Yelena’s heart starts pounding, thinking the worst, thinking that he’s begun seizing, or maybe he threw up, or maybe-
But then she looks, and she sees.
James had reached out and grabbed John’s hand. Squeezed it.
“Thank…you.” James says weakly, before dropping John’s hand. His eyelids flutter like he’s once again going back under into sleep.
John looks over at Yelena, with something in his expression Yelena had never seen from him before.
Relief.
~~~~~~~~~
It's getting late by the time James wakes again.
“Yelena.” He breathes heavily, and in an instant Yelena's head is out of the weird fantasy book she found in the library and fully focused on James.
“I am here.” She assures, turning over in bed.
His eyes are blown wide, fearful, in pain.
“Hurts.” He practically moans. His lips are chapped, cracked, dry from dehydration.
“What hurts?” Maybe, if she knew, there was something she could do to help. Unlikely, but she at least wants to try.
“My…my muscles.” He grits out. He tries to keep his mouth closed as much as possible, as if he'll scream if he doesn't.
Muscle spasms, she supposes.
“Where is it worst?”
“Legs.” He's biting his bottom lip now, trying to silence his groans and noises of pain.
The only thing Yelena knows for muscle pain like this is hot or cold therapy. She doesn't want to make him any warmer if she can help it, he's still burning up from the fever, but she can try cold therapy. They ran out of the instant ice packs in the first aid kit, but she can still take some washcloths and wet them with cold water to do something.
She shuffles her body towards the end of the bed, climbing out from the end instead of trying to step over James. “I will be one minute.” She promises, and he nods, trying to put on a brave face even as his neck muscles are tensed up uncomfortably from pain.
She rushes down the hall towards the bathroom. One of the buckets has mostly melted, some small chunks of snow and ice floating on the top, and it's sufficiently cold when Yelena dips her fingers in. She grabs two washcloths, dips them in, and wrings them out. They're not freezing, which is good, but still quite cold. They should do the trick.
James’ face is red when she returns, tears in the corners of his eyes. She had seen him throw up, seize, bleed, but this is the first time she's seen him in such terrible physical pain that even he isn't able to mask his expression.
She rolls up his pant legs, up to his thighs, and places the washcloths on his knees. He lets out a gasp, the chill surprising, but adjusts quickly. His lip is bleeding from how hard he was biting it, dark crimson dripping, but the washcloths seemed to have done something, as he releases his teeth from his bottom lip and the tension in his face and neck eases up.
“Helping?” She asks, brushing his hair back from his forehead. It's much warmer than it was before. She really needs to take his temperature.
He breathes out, his chest still rising and falling more rapidly than it should, it has been since the withdrawal started, but it seems like he's getting back to the baseline, back to the rate his breathing has been for the past few days. “It's doing something.” He concedes.
“Wish we had some numbing cream.” She comments, looking back through the first aid kit. She didn't remember seeing any in there in her many checks before, but she just wants to make sure. “Would help the pain without being so cold.”
He shakes his head. “This…this is good. It's working.”
“Here.” She pulls more gauze out of the first aid. “Let me get your lip.”
“It's stopped.” He brushes her off, but Yelena puts the gauze over it to clean it up anyway. “Didn' get it too bad.”
Yelena remembers the cut on his tongue, the way he acted so nonchalant when saying he had bit it off before. A little blood on his lip was nothing, to him, but that doesnt mean Yelena is just going to let him lay there with blood all over his lip and chin.
As she blots it clean, seeing that it had, in fact, stopped bleeding, her mind wanders back to Ava's suggestion. She doesn't want to use the bites on James, but she had said she would give him as much autonomy as she could as he was through this…she wants to at least tell him that it could be something she could use if needed.
“James. About…you asking me to...” Yelena's hands are shaking as she mimics with her hand putting a gun to her head. “I may have a solution.”
His eyes look up at her, full of hope, and Yelena's stomach twists itself into knots. He's looking at her like she just told him she knows the cure to every ailment in the world, not that she had an alternative of subduing him instead of shooting him in the head.
He's so…fearful. Genuinely terrified of hurting them. She knows it's not totally irrational, he had hit her, although she still places all the fault on herself for that, but she had thought…
She had thought he was better. Mentally. He brought them all together, helped pull Yelena from the darkness. He wanted her to recover like he had, but…he's not totally there, either. Of course she knew that, after seventy years of torture who could be completely mentally stable, and these are extenuating circumstances, but still…
If he still has this horrible, deep seated fear, after all the recovery he's been through, all the time trying to put all of them on the same path of healing…if he still doesn't fully trust himself, could Yelena ever recover? Could she ever forgive herself, ever feel like she's more than just a killer?
She shakes that off, trying to focus back on the topic at hand. “My…the widow bites. I can place them on the lowest setting, use them for just a second, and it should be enough to snap you out of it-”
“Yes.” He breathes, so unbelievably relived. It scares Yelena, how willing he is to subject himself to the pain if it means it could maybe save somebody else. She doesn't know if it's selflessness, recklessness, or simply guilt. Maybe it's all three. No matter what it is, she's pretty sure it's at least a small bit self-destructive.
“James. Even on the lowest setting, the bites will still electrocute you. It can cause an electrical disturbance in your brain, cause a seizure, especially with your history-”
“I don't care.” He says, so sure. “If it'll keep me from hurting any of you…I don’t care.”
Yelena doesn't want to say she'll do it. She was really, really hoping he would shut the idea down entirely. She should've known he was too self-sacrificial for that.
Regardless of how she feels, though…she said she would give him autonomy, and this is the lesser of two evils. It's not killing him…or at least it shouldn't.
This is a terrible idea.
But she can't turn James down. Especially not when he's looking at her like she's found the meaning of life.
“Okay.” She agrees, even as the words feel wrong coming out of her mouth, make her feel sick. “Okay.”
He thanks her, and then goes back to sleep.
~~~~~~~~~
For the next hour, she feels like guilt is swallowing her whole.
Not only has she just agreed she'd use the bites on James, but she still hadn't confessed to Toni, Ava, and John about the mission being for her own selfish reasons. The pit in her stomach doesn't go away, and she feels as if she's going to burst into tears at any moment.
It consumes her to a point that she needs some kind of relief, some kind of reprieve, and she thinks maybe if she tells the others the truth, she’ll be able to breathe without this crushing sense of guilt.
So, when Alexei comes to check on her, ask if she wants anything to eat, she asks him if he’ll watch James for a little bit.
So, with James under the watch of Alexei, she heads out to the common era. Luckily, all three of them are still awake and there. That’ll make this easier, just telling them all at once.
“Hi.” She tries to hide her nervousness, but she thinks her shaking voice gives it away immediately. “I, uh, need to tell you all something.”
Ava’s eyes go wide. “Is he…” She trails off, not wanting to say it.
Yelena’s sure it’s visible the way the gears are turning in her head, trying to figure out what Ava meant, before she realizes.
“Oh, oh no, James is…he is okay. He is still alive.” For how much longer, Yelena doesn’t know, but for now, he’s okay. “It is…something else.”
All the eyes are on here. It even feels like Toni’s blind eye is staring into her soul.
“This whole mission was my fault.” The words tumble out of her. She’s unable to keep it in any longer. “I thought I could find something about my biological mother in the base, and I rushed into it without thinking, and now we are trapped and James is going to die and I don’t know how I will live with myself-”
“Hey, woah, slow down.” John puts his hands out as if telling her to stop. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Yelena doesn’t even realize she’s crying until the tears are running down her face in earnest.
“Yeah, Yel. It’s okay.” Ava agrees, patting the seat on the couch next to her. She’s sitting in the middle, next to Toni, while John is on the adjacent chair.
She sniffles, wiping tears away from her eyes that are just quickly replaced with more. “I…I did do something wrong.” She argues, even as she moves towards the couch and sits down next to Ava.
“No, you did not.” Toni looks at her, her expression softening in a way Yelena had never seen before.
“We didn’t rush into it. We did what we always did. The base just got cleared before we got there. And there’s no way you could’ve known the blizzard was going to come a few days early.” Ava puts her arm around her shoulder, pulling Yelena closer to her. “It’s okay, Yel. Everything is okay.”
“You…you are not mad?” She says through her tears.
A chorus of nos erupts.
“Get her some fruit.” Ava says to John.
“I do not want fruit.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s the closest thing we have to sweets, and I think you need some right now.” Ava rubs her shoulder.
So that’s how they ended up with Yelena’s head on Ava’s shoulder, eating canned pineapple as her sobs began to die down.
“This is nice.” She admits after the second piece. Ava was right. The fruit is making her feel a bit better.
“Better than Spam.” Toni scoffs.
“I wish we had some hot sauce.” Yelena comments.
John’s eyebrow quirks up. “For the pineapple?”
Yelena sticks her bottom lip out in contemplation. “Maybe. But just in general. I wish we had hot sauce. I miss it.”
“I grew up in Argentina, and we used to have this brand of dulce de leche.” Ava stares out into the room, looking nostalgic. “I miss it so much.”
Yelena turns her head to look at Antonia. “Toni? What about you? Favorite food?”
Toni sighs. “Do not make fun. But…” She shakes her head. “Your mom used to make…the best korzinki.” She sighs in bliss. “I have not had it…in many years.”
Yelena knows Toni’s story. Melina got snapped, Toni didn’t, and Val ended up taking her, blackmailing her into doing her bidding. Toni spent nine years like that.
“Next time I see her, I will ask for the recipe.” Yelena promises, before turning to face John. “And you?”
“Apple pie.” John holds his hands up in surrender, as if expecting to get teased.
And he does. “Ah, look at you, good American boy.” Yelena laughs. A real, genuine laugh.
And then she feels guilty for it, because here she is laughing, hanging out, eating pineapple while James is down the hall dying.
“Yel?” Ava looks at her, seeing her expression go from joy to stoicism. “You okay?”
Yelena is saved by the bell from answering, from lying that she’s totally fine, by Alexei entering the space.
“Sorry to interrupt.” He says, even though Yelena knows he’s never sorry to interrupt. “James said the IV is bad.”
Ava nods “He probably needs a new one. It’s been long enough.”
Yelena sits herself back up, getting off of Ava so she can get up. Toni goes too, and soon they’re both gone down the hall.
John goes to get up too, probably to go to bed, it’s getting pretty late, but Alexei stops him.
“Johnathan. Sit down. I need to talk to you about being good husband.” Alexei sits down on the edge of the chair.
“You have no qualifications to be doing that.” Yelena stares down into the pineapple can.
Alexei ignores her. “I hear you are having marital problems.”
John stares at her, mouth agape.
“You told him?”
Alexei wags his finger. “I heard it! You talk very loudly!”
“That is real rich coming from you.” She says around a bite of pineapple.
Alexei looks over at her, exasperated, “I am trying to have guy conversation. No girls!”
Yelena just rolls her eyes.
“Now, Johnathan.” Alexei claps his hand over one of John’s shoulders, and John just looks at him with a mixture of confusion and fear in his eyes. “You must listen to your lady. If she wants to name pig after you, you let her name pig after you. Really, that shows love, if she wants to name pig after you.”
John rubs at his forehead. “I have…no idea what that means.”
Yelena smirks. John probably thinks it’s supposed to be a metaphor. In reality, Alexei means it very, very literally.
“It means that your lady is queen. You must treat her as such.” Alexei puts his finger on John’s chest, roughly tapping it, as if trying to get the words into it, to get him to understand. “If you love your lady, you must show that! Take it from me, I have been married for over forty years-”
“That is not true.” Yelena interrupts. A few years in Ohio, a bunch of years without contact because he was in prison, and the five years since they came back together (not counting the snap) did not add up to forty years.
“I told you I am having guy talk!” He turns back to her, pointing his finger at her this time. “No interrupting!”
Yelena groans incredulously. She’s on her last piece of pineapple now, so it’s not even like she can distract herself with food for much longer.
“Where was I? Oh, yes. You must listen to your lady. If she says something, you listen, even if you do not agree. Then, you very calmly tell her, “I understand. For me…” and then you tell your side of the story. Calm, the whole time. No yelling!”
Yelena throws her hands up in vexation. “When have you ever done that?” Alexei yells everything. He yells at least ten times more than he talks in a normal volume.
“No more interrupting guy talk!” Alexei once again points his finger at her. “I will ground you!”
“To where? James’ room? Oh, yeah, what a punishment, grounding me to the room I have been in for days anyway.” Yelena says sarcastically, rolling her eyes again.
Alexei huffs, having no retort because he knows she’s right, and gets back to whatever weird lecture he’s giving to John.
“Johnathan, if you really love your lady, really want her back, you must say sorry, and you must mean it, and you must change, for the better.”
Okay, Yelena will admit that’s actually good advice.
John nods slowly, still startled by the whole talk but seemingly at least understanding where Alexei was coming from. “...thanks.”
Alexei stands up tall, puffing his chest out, proud of his achievement. “Well, my work here is done. I am going to sleep.”
He saunters down the hall, as if he’d just gotten a Nobel Prize, leaving John wide eyed and still a little confused.
“...he’s married?” John asks Yelena as she drinks the pineapple juice at the bottom of the can.
She shrugs. “Legally? No. Emotionally? They have been…something. For a long time.” She’s not sure if that something is really husband and wife…perhaps it’s a bond so odd, so confusing to everybody on the outside that it qualifies as something all its own. Something only Melina and Alexei have.
“But it is good advice.” Yelena concedes as she rises from the couch. “The apologizing and the changing part, not the naming after a pig part.” Although, in a very, very weird way, in that unique way only their relationship could be, Melina naming the pig after him, even after he’d been away for so many years, was a little cute. It meant she still thought about him.
She goes back to check on James, leaving John to think.
Namely, debating what the pig thing meant. Yelena could tell him it was literal, but she thinks it’s more fun to watch him mull over it.
~~~~~~~~~
Toni and Ava had given James a new IV, as the other one had come out. She takes his temperature again, coming out to 102.4 fahrenheit. It’s still getting worse, which is a very bad sign.
Yelena isn’t able to sleep, she just ends up tossing and turning. The weight of the situation is dawning on here. The blizzard is not slowing, the snow continues to pile up, the windchill keeps getting worse, and the temperature keeps dropping.
Toni only has one more day left on her batteries.
She will die in the morning after the next.
And there is nothing Yelena can do about it at all.
She sighs, getting out of bed, going over to the dresser. She looks through all the books stacked there, trying to find something to distract her. She flips through a couple of them, none really grabbing her.
She hears the sound of an impact, a fist colliding with something, and her breath hitches.
She turns around, looking to James, and sees him punching his head again.
“James.” She calls, running back over to his bedside, dropping the book she had been looking through on the ground.
He keeps punching himself.
“James!”
Still nothing.
She didn’t want to use the bites, so she hadn’t even brought them into the room.
But she doesn’t have much of a choice now.
She runs down the hallway, all the way to the entryway, where she had left her suit and weapons after it became clear they’d be stuck here for a long while. She grabbed the bites, lowering the setting as far as it would go, before rushing back to James.
He’s still hitting himself, maybe even harder now.
All Yelena can do is what she said she would, even if she hates it.
She activates the bites, aiming them at James’ leg, and fires.
She stops firing after only a second, watching as the stream of electricity comes out of the bites and goes towards James.
When it hits him, he yelps, and then stops moving all together.
Yelena worries she killed him, but his chest is still rising and falling, up and down, up and down. He’s not shaking, or seizing, or anything. He’s just…asleep. Still. Silent.
She drops the bites on the floor, going back over to him. She grabs his hand, feels his pulse.
The welt on his forehead is angry again, red and swollen.
But he’s alive. Asleep, but alive.
She really hopes he’s not dreaming, that he wasn’t aware of what happened at all, won’t remember it in the morning.
Won’t remember that she hurt him.
She squeezes his hand, bows her head, and cries until she feels like her eyes are going to fall out.
~~~~~~~~~
There’s a soft knock on the door as the sun begins to rise.
“Hello?” Yelena calls out in question.
“Hi, it’s Ava.”
“Come in.”
Oddly, Ava doesn’t phase in. Rather, she opens the door, steps inside, and closes it.
“You are up bright and early.” Yelena comments as she sits up in bed, smoothing down the flyaways in her hair.
Ava doesn’t respond.
It’s then that Yelena sees.
Ava’s hands are glitching, coming in and out of view rapidly. The rest of her body is shaking.
“Ava.” Yelena swallows. “Are you okay?”
“Um.” She shrugs, but Yelena can see the worry, the fear in her eyes. “I’m okay.”
Yelena is sure that is a lie.
“Did you take his temperature last night?” Ava asks, moving towards the bed.
“Ava, you do not have to-” Yelena tries, wanting her to just rest if she’s getting too low on energy, not try to power through the pain. Yelena is not totally sure how Ava’s illness works, but rest should help, right?
“I’m fine.” Ava insists, snapping a little bit.
Yelena doesn’t blame her. What Ava is going through is something Yelena never has and probably never will go through, but it certainly doesn’t look pleasant. She is more than allowed to be upset or angry, especially at Yelena.
“I’m sorry.” Ava sighs, noticing how Yelena’s expression had changed and how she had spoken. “Temperature?” She asks again, like she just wants a distraction and caring for James helps her feel like she’s doing something useful.
“102.4."
Ava’s looks at her with alarm, and then begins shaking James, trying to get him to wake up.
“What? What is wrong?” Yelena grows concerned at Ava’s reaction. Ava is much more knowledgeable in the medical field than her, if she thinks that temperature is really bad, Yelena is inclined to believe her.
“It’s rising too fast. If it gets to 103, we need to try and cool him down, or risk damage if it gets any higher.”
James groans, eyelids shuttering as he’s shaken awake.
“Bucky. I need your temperature.” Ava gets the thermometer out, but she struggles to hold it. Yelena steps in, getting out of bed and taking the thermometer from her. James already had his mouth open, so Yelena just sticks it under his tongue.
Yelena gulps as she pulls it out and looks at the tiny screen. “103.7.”
Ava’s eyes widened in panic. “I’ll get Toni.”
Yelena can feel her heartbeat in her ears. How did it raise more than a degree overnight? How did she not notice that he was getting hotter, that he was getting worse? She was awake the whole night, never getting a wink of sleep, and all she had done was electrocute him…had that just made it worse? Was that why it had gotten so bad?
She stood there, feeling stuck, as if she’s glued to the floor, as Ava came back with Toni.
“Cool compresses.” Toni orders, pointing at both Yelena and Ava. “I need four.”
But Yelena still can’t move. She just…can’t. Her body isn’t cooperating, all she can do is stare at James and let fear and panic and guilt consume her whole.
But Ava notices. Ava notices that she’s trapped in her mind, and pulls her back.
By grabbing her hands and physically pulling her down the hall to the bathroom.
Yelena kind of blanks out then, going on autopilot, wetting two washcloths with cold water. Next thing Yelena remembers, she’s standing by James’ bed, and he has a washcloth on his forehead, under his neck, under his arm, and on his wrist.
“DId he hit his head?” Toni asks. The bump on his head is large enough that even through the washcloth, it’s noticeable that there’s something wrong.
Yelena sighs. “Yes. Last night. I had to use the bites.” She shook her head. “I looked, where it hit him. No burn or mark or anything.”
Yelena tapped her fingers nervously against her thigh, looking over at James. He looked so peacefully, too peaceful for the amount of pain he must be in.
“What now?” She questioned.
Toni shrugs. “All we can do is wait.”
~~~~~~~~~
When the compresses are no longer cold, they shake him awake again and take his temperature.
Ava bites her lip as she looks down at the thermometer. “It’s the same.”
“What?” Yelena exclaims, much louder than she should’ve, but this was their last resort. There’s nothing else they can do to try and bring the fever down. If it’s not working…
Ava places the thermometer down slowly, but the sound it makes when it clunks against the wood still feels like screeching in Yelena’s ears.
This is too much. There’s nothing they can do, all their options have run out.
Ava gathers the washcloths. “I’ll..get them cool again?” She offers, and Toni just nods, although she looks defeated as well.
“All of this was for nothing.” Yelena finds herself saying. “There is nothing I can do. James does not have long, and neither do you.”
Toni shakes her head. “Do not worry about me.”
Yelena scoffs. “You are going to die and I am just supposed to not worry.”
“Yes.” Toni says matter-of-a-factly. “If I do go…please, do not blame yourself. Same with James. I promise you…it is not your fault.”
Yelena wants to believe it, but she can’t.
Ava comes back with fresh washcloths. Yelena takes one from her, laying it on James’ forehead, trying not to look at the huge welt there. It’ll only make her feel more guilty.
When Yelena goes back to grab another compress, though, Ava falters. She seems to trip in place, her entire body going in and out of sight, glitching rapidly.
Toni catches her right before she faints.
“I have got her.” Toni assures. “I need to get her…laying down.”
“Go.” Yelena practically commands, shooing them away. Toni picks Ava up, cradling her head and the underside of her knees in her arms, holding her head close to chest.
Yelena picks up the remaining washcloths, which had fallen on the floor when Ava fell, and puts them on James. His skin is absolutely burning when Yelena’s fingers brush against it.
She gets this uneasy feeling that this is it.
This is the end.
~~~~~~~~~
She shakes him awake an hour later to check his temperature.
She feels like the air has been knocked out of her lungs when she read it.
104.7.
How did it go up? How did it go up more a whole degree an hour?
How can any of this be happening?
James had survived being captured during the war, survived falling off the train, survived seventy years of torture, but this is what gets him? A stupid withdrawal? All because of a failed mission and a once-in-a-decade blizzard?
This is…this is crazy. This is insane. After everything, he’s going to go out like this. Lying sickly in a bed in an old safehouse while the fever shuts his body down.
“Yelena?” His voice is so quiet, so weak. It barely even sounds like him.
“I am here.” She assures, grabbing his hand, holding it tight.
“I…I don't have long.” He says definitely.
The tears come to Yelena's eyes at an alarming rate, nearly swallowing her whole. “I know.” She manages to get out, her voice cracking as her vision is drowned in tears.
“It's alright.” He tries, but his voice cracks too. “I'm old. Had a good life.” He squeezes her hand. “Lost a lot of people.”
He stares at the ceiling, as if he can see right through it, see right through the sky. “Hey.” He attempts a hopeful tone, even as he gasps as tears spill over his own eyes. “I'll get to see Natasha. Tell her how wonderful you are.”
Yelena can't even imagine what her face looks like right now, scrunched up as she sobs, shaking through waves and waves of tears.
“Tell Sam I love him.”
“Of course.” Yelena promises. After telling Captain America that his partner is dead and it's all her fault, at least she can make sure he knows how much he meant to James.
“And tell him to tell Shuri, and Sarah and the boys. That I love them and I'll miss them very much.”
“I will.”
He turns back to look at her, eyes glossy from his own tears. “You're the greatest sister I could ever ask for.”
“You're the best brother.” She means to say, but it comes out near unintelligible due to her sobs.
They stay like that for a bit, hands clasped, crying.
“I…I'm going to sleep.” He says after at least fifteen minutes, maybe even more. Everything was melting together, Yelena's mind fogged with grief. “I don't think I'll go right away. But I probably won't wake up.”
“It is okay.” She tells him, even though it absolutely does not feel okay, it feels completely fucking not okay, but she can't tell James that. She can't make him worry. She wants him to be able to go as peacefully as possible.
He closes his eyes.
Yelena can't believe that was the last time she'll ever see them open.
~~~~~~~~~
When she finally detaches herself from him, stops her crying enough, she checks on him again. Still breathing, still has a pulse, but she's not sure for how much longer.
She figures she should let the others know. So they can say goodbye.
Leaving him is hard. She feels like there's an invisible force pulling her to him, and even step away feels like torture, but eventually she makes it all the way to the common area, where everybody is.
John is pacing. Ava is laying down, her head on Toni's lap. Alexei is sitting crossed legged on the floor, looking at Ava, looking as she glitches uncontrollably, sympathy in his eyes.
“Hi.” She says, her voice sounding like it's coming from underwater. From her voice and her puffy face, she's sure it's more than evident she's been crying. “He..he does not have long. It is time to say goodbye.”
“No.” John practically screams. “No, no, I'm leaving, I'm going out, I'll find us some help, I can't just sit here-”
“I will go with you.” Alexei says confidently, as if they can do it, as if they can cover 200 miles in a few hours, nevertheless cover 200 miles in a few hours during a massive snowstorm in below freezing temperatures.
“No.” Yelena shakes her head. “It is too cold, with the windchill you'll be dead in ten minutes and we're 200 miles away from anything. It doesn't help anything if you two die too.”
“Well what am I supposed to do!” He throws his hands up in the air. “Just watch Toni die? Just watch Bucky die? Watch Ava die?” He gestures rapidly towards each person as he talks about them.
“There is nothing we can do.” Yelena has succumbed to it. She has been defeated, beaten down. “We just have to say goodbye.”
Toni and Ava don't fight it. Toni helps Ava rise from the couch, get her arm around Toni's shoulder, and helps her walk down the hall, towards James’ room.
John punches the living room wall. Takes a deep breath. And then follows them. Alexei is behind them, and then Yelena goes.
They stand, all crowded in the room. Yelena kneels by the bed, grabs his hand again. There's still a pulse, but it's getting weaker.
Toni and Ava come up first, both patting his shoulder.
“Thank you for everything.” Ava says, tears streaking down her face even as she phases in and out.
Toni reaches out, adjusts the collar on his pajama shirt so that it's laying perfectly. “Gotta make sure…you look good.” She's going for humor, but it comes out strained, as if she's about to cry, too. “Thank you, James.”
When they step back, John steps up.
“Bye, Bucky.” He simply says. He's holding back tears. “Thank you.”
When he leaves James’ bedside, he covers his face with his hands. Yelena suspects he lost the battle against crying.
Alexei is next. He pats him on the shoulder too, perhaps too harshly, but it's such a uniquely Alexei thing to do, being too rough with his friendly greetings during a vigil.
“You were a great hero.” He tells James. “Thank you.”
Yelena can't say anything more. She's crying too hard. She feels like she's floating out of her body, that this must not be happening, that it must be a dream.
She can feel his pulse weakening.
The ground shakes. For a minute, Yelena thinks she must've imagined it, her brain making things up to try and cope.
But then she hears John and Alexei asking what that was, and she realizes it was real.
And then there's a loud boom.
Yelena snaps her head up, face drenched in tears, but suddenly she feels an odd sense of hope that she should not be feeling right now.
Unless…
She gets up, almost tripping over her own feet, running down the hall just in time to see the front door be flown open, the snow flurries coating the entryway through the now opened door, the cold entering the house, so freezing Yelena thinks she can feel it in her bones.
She thinks she must be dreaming when a very recognizable man (even though she had never met him before, but, to be fair, with how much James talks about him, it feels like she knows him) bursts through the door. His suit is covered in snow, but he retracts his helmet, and there's no mistaking it.
Captain America.
“Where is he?” Sam says in a commanding, booming voice, laced with panic and fear. Another man comes in behind him, retracting his helmet as well and then shutting the door behind him. The entryway is a lost cause, snow covering every inch it could reach, but she doesn't care one bit.
The others had run out of James' room after her, and now they're all standing around, looking in awe, in amazement that they had been rescued…rescued, perhaps, just in time to save James.
“This way.” She motions down the hall, running back, Sam right behind her.
Her breath catches in her throat when they reach his room, and she doesn't see his chest moving. Sam doesn't stop, though, instead releasing some kind of robotic drone from the back of his suit, where the wings are retracted down, and opening a compartment in the back of the drone, pulling out four syringes.
James’ chest rises.
It falls.
He's still alive.
Maybe…maybe rescue arrived in time.
Yelena can only hope.
Sam uncaps one of the syringes, pulls James’ pant leg up, and sticks it in the meat of his thigh. He depresses the plunger, a determined look in his eyes, before he moves onto the next syringe and injects it as well.
“He have any seizures?” Sam asks, while Yelena's attention is taken by the drone-thing just floating above James, as if it's monitoring him.
“Yes.” Her gaze is still fixed on the drone, but she watches out of the corner of her eye as Sam uncaps the third syringe. “Three.”
Sam hums in acknowledgement as he injects the third one, sticking each needle in a little further down than the last one “Vomiting?”
“Lots.” The sigh Yelena gives is a mix of exasperation and relief. There had been so much vomiting, but if James ends up making it, all of it would be more than worth it.
He uncaps and injects the final syringe. It occurs to Yelena, then, that she should probably ask what they are.
“What was…” She trailed off, raising an eyebrow as the drone beeped.
“Good job, Redwing, Just keep monitoring.” He says, seemingly to the drone. Even though Yelena did not finish her question, Sam knew what she was asking anyway.
“First syringe was his medication, then a painkiller, then an anticonvulsant, and finally an anti-nausea.” Sam rubbed his hands against each other, as if he was wiping something off of them. Maybe he was trying to shake off the chill from being outside.
“Do you think he will be okay?” Yelena's still lingering in the doorway, having stopped abruptly when she thought they were too late.
“I hope so.” Sam sighs. Yelena hadn't noticed until now, but he seemed so, so relieved to be here, to see James, see him alive. “If anything else goes wrong, my wingman, Joaquín Torres, brought a big first aid kit with a bunch of different medicines. And, of course, the batteries and quantum energy infusion.”
Oh, shit. Yelena had been so focused on getting James help, not wanting to waste a single second, that she hadn't even asked about Antonia or Ava. She'll need to apologize later for just rushing off to James. He wasn't the only one in danger, after all, but perhaps the most critical at that moment. She hopes that Toni and Ava are getting the treatment they need now.
“Is there a rescue plan?” She asked next, because as happy as she is that they have more medical help and nobody should die now, she also would really, really like to get out of here. Now that she didn't have the constant worry of trying to keep James alive, cabin fever would probably set in quickly.
She's starting to understand more why John punched those holes in the attic and wall. Maybe he's going stir crazy, on top of everything else.
Sam nods. “Once Torres gets everything situated, he's gonna fly back- there's a small air base about 225 miles away.”
Aha. 225 miles. Her guesstimate of at least 200 miles had been pretty close.
“From the weather reports, the storm should break for a little bit tomorrow afternoon. Now that we know exactly where you guys are, we can send a snowcat for rescue.” Sam explains. “I'll stay here.” He grabs James hand, looking down at him fondly. “With him. And if there's another emergency, I can be another pair of hands.” It's then that Sam seems to notice what's missing from James. “Where's his arm?”
“Oh, under the bed.” Yelena points to it. She can see a small bit of the gray, glimmering metal from under the oversized bedspread that hung off the bed and obstructed most of the view of under the bed. “He asked me to put it out of reach. He…he did not want to hurt anybody, with it.”
Sam looks over at her, pursing his lips. “Your cheek okay?”
Yelena hadn’t said where she had gotten it, of course, but based on the fact that Sam asked her about it right after she mentioned that James was fearful of hurting them told her that he knew where the bruise came from.
“Oh, yes. No big deal.” She waves it off. “He was very weak when it happened.”
Sam smiles, gap-toothed and shining like the sun. “Yeah. He hits you full force, you're losing a few teeth.”
Yelena can see why James is so fond of Sam. Those small jokes, that soft smile, the easy way he says things. Everything James needs, the teasing combined with that inherent kindness, his easy going demeanor. Yelena had only seen him in combat, his moves fluid and rough, always looking like they hurt. She knew James talked about him with that loving tone, but she thought maybe he was just biased and gushing about him.
But no, that was him. Soft, kind, but with a bit of an edge that told you not to mess with him or underestimate him.
“His head.” Sam ruffles his fingers through James' sweat soaked locks.
“Yeah…” She says a little solemnly. The bump is still very large, the inflammation barely going down from when he re-injured it last night. It will probably hurt for a while. “He hit himself. I assume it was because of hallucinations, or delusions, or something.”
“Mhm.” Sam doesn't seem surprised at all about that. Maybe James accidentally injuring himself wasn't as uncommon as she liked to believe.
Sam leaned down, carefully, and placed a gentle, chaste kiss on the welt. Kissing it better.
It's in that moment that the wingman, Torres, shows up behind Yelena. He watches, a little awkwardly, as Sam shows his affection to James.
“Uh, Cap…” He interrupts, and Sam turns around to look at him, even as it seems like all he wants to do is dote on James. “Starr and Antonia are all set. I was planning on heading back.”
Sam gives him a nod of approval. “Be careful, alright? It's nasty out there.” His tone turns serious, looking at Torres like it was a reminder he needed.
“No dying, copy that.” Torres did a little salute before heading back down the hallway.
Sam turns back towards James once Torres is gone, taking his hand in his again.
“Um…” She bites the inside of her cheek, unsure if she should even ask what she wants to ask. She doesn't want to ask too many questions, doesn't want to seem like an interrogation. She just has a lot of questions. “...how did you find us? He said you were away on a mission?”
“Ah, Buck left one of my friends in charge of feeding his cat. She noticed he was gone for a lot longer than he should've been, was able to reach me on my emergency number. It was a stakeout mission with the military. I don't think they were too happy that me and Torres left, but…” He shrugs. “I was worried about him. Rightfully so, it seems. He had told me you guys were headed to Estonia, so I had Torres cross-reference known HYDRA safehouses there with any kind of event that might delay you, he found this one right in a middle of a blizzard. We figured that must be right.”
She nods, impressed. “Very savvy.”
“Don't tell Torres that. He'll get a big head.” Sam commented playfully.
Standing here, watching Sam stare adoringly at James's sleeping form, rubbing circles into his hand, Yelena suddenly feels like she's intruding on a private moment.
“I…I will go check on the others.” She decides, a bit of a question in her tone, silently asking of it was okay, if she could leave James now and not fear looking over a6 him every few seconds, expecting to see him sweating or seizing or watch his face turn that pale greenish color only seen before somebody throws up.
“Yeah, of course.” Sam turns around to face her as he addresses her, but he keeps his hand in James’. Wanting, or maybe needing to feel him, to feel that he was still there. “I've got him now.”
It was said like a promise, and Yelena knows he means it, but it's still difficult to tear herself away from James. All she's seen him do the past couple of days is take several turns for the worst, so the idea the next time she sees him, maybe he'll be better instead of getting worse…the concept seems almost foreign.
“Yelena.” Sam calling her name snapped her out of her thoughts. “Thank you.”
She huffs out a humorless laugh. “It is my fault we were in this situation in the first place. If anything I should be apologizing.”
Sam purses his lips, looking at her intently. “That's not true. You kept him alive. You kept him safe.” His eyes feel like they're boring into her soul, taking out every insecurity and fear so he knows just what to say to silence them. “Give yourself some credit, okay?”
Yelena nods. “Okay.” She agrees. She's still not really giving herself any credit, but maybe, she can work on the guilt that's still gnawing in her chest, and then maybe one day she'll be able to see what Sam sees in her, what James sees in her, what Alexei sees in her. A good person that brings people up, instead of a monster that consumes everything in its path.
She takes several deep breaths as she walks down the hallway towards the common area, trying to steady herself before she ends up bursting into tears again.
When she enters the common area, she's happy to see that Ava is already glitching less. She's curled up on the couch, legs to her chest, a book in her hands that she's able to hold without dropping. Her body is still phasing in and out a bit, but she's not shaking anymore, and her expression is one of focus as she reads instead of one of pain. There's an IV in her arm, attached to a large bag of white, glowing matter.
Toni looks relaxed too, leaning back against the couch cushions, hands folded on her chest. Alexei and John are picking up the pieces of drywall off the floor from when John punched the wall.
The sense of urgency, of fear, that had clung in the air since they got stuck is no longer there. It feels like the air has cleared, like they can all truly breathe again.
“Hey, Yel.” Ava looks over her book and greets her with a small smile. Her voice still sounds a little weak, but she's definitely getting better. “How's Bucky?”
“He will hopefully be okay.” She reports, practically collapsing down on the couch in between Ava and Toni. “The Captain says we will get rescued tomorrow, when there is a break in the blizzard.”
“That is good.” Toni agrees, sounding both relieved and grateful.
As Yelena sits down on the cushions, feels some of the weight that had been on her shoulders since they got stuck get lifted, and it's then that she realizes how tired she is. It's an exhaustion that goes bone-deep, mental as well as physical.
“It is alright.” Toni says, noticing the change in Yelena's demeanor, how she can barely keep her eyes open. “You can relax now.”
Yelena's eyes slip closed, and she finally lets herself truly rest.
~~~~~~~~~
When she finally wakes up, morning sunlight is streaming in through the curtains.
She blinks as she comes to, a little groggily. It takes her a minute to realize that she’s no longer on the couch, but instead in her and Alexei’s room, in the bed she hadn’t used in a whole week. She would wonder who brought her there, but with the way she’s tucked tightly under three blankets, she knows. When she was little, and Alexei would come home early enough from his work, he’d tuck her in with as many blankets as he could. Snug as a bug in a rug, he would say, and then mutter some comment about how bugs should not be in rugs, before placing a kiss on her forehead and saying goodnight. Those were always the best sleeps she had.
She stretches out her arms, regretfully undoing Alexei’s handiwork of the blanket cocoon. She had fallen asleep yesterday afternoon, and now it was morning. She needed to get herself up, go make sure everybody is okay, especially after she slept for 16 or so hours.
After a few minutes of leisurely waking up, stretching out her muscles and slowly bringing herself out of bed and onto her feet, she heads down the stairs. She can hear something sizzling in the kitchen, and she really hopes it's not Spam. She doesn't know how much more Spam she can eat.
To her surprise, when she enters the kitchen, Spam is not what's cooking. Instead, it looks like…pancakes?
“Ah, my dear Yelena!” Alexei turned away from the stove, coming towards her with his arms out. He wraps up her in a big bear hug, and Yelena melts into it.
“How was your sleep?” He asks as he pulls himself away from the hug, needing to flip the pancakes.
“Snug as a bug in a rug.” She says with a smile, which he returns.
“Since when did we have pancake batter?” She questions. John is sitting at the table, a couple pancakes already on his plate.
“Torres brought it.” John replies around a mouthful of pancake.
The life saving treatments, a fully stocked first aid kit, and pancake batter…the Captain had truly thought of everything.
“Has anybody heard anything about James?” She looks around. Toni and Ava are in the living room, on the couch. Ava was still reading, but the infusion was over, and she was no longer glitching at all. Toni was also reading, although her book was in Russian.
“Yeah, Sam told us like an hour ago that he's stable, but still hasn’t woken up.” John held up his plate in Alexei's direction. “More pancakes!”
“Pancakes are going as fast as they can!” Alexei insisted. Feeding supersoldiers was not an easily achieved task, even though they're down one from normal since James hadn't been eating.
But stable is good. If he's stable, then he's still alive, and he's not getting worse. Of course, Yelena will feel better when he wakes up, but she’s perfectly fine with the report that he's stable.
“Do not worry about James. He has the Captain.” Alexei comes over to the table, sliding one plate with two more pancakes down the table for John, and placing the other at the seat closest to where Yelena was currently standing. He pulled the chair out, outreaching his hand in an invitation. “Come, Yelena. Sit. Have nice breakfast.”
And, well, who was she to deny such a kind offer?
~~~~~~~~~
After she had a sufficient amount of pancakes and thanked Alexei, she headed over to James’ room. It felt strange to knock, to ask for permission to enter after nearly a week of being the one caring for him.
“Come in.” That was Sam's voice.
She entered, opening the door slowly.
James’ eyes were shut, but his breathing had evened out, no longer dangerously slow or rapid. The drone was still hovering over him. Sam was sitting up in bed next to him, reading what looked like a mission report, a bunch of papers bound together in a small booklet. At some point, he had changed out of the suit and into a comfy looking grey sweatshirt with U.S. Pararescue written in block letters across the chest, and sweatpants in the same shade of grey as the shirt.
“Hi.” Yelena greeted, a little awkwardly, not sure if this was considered interrupting. “How is he?”
“Doing better.” Sam put the booklet down to give his full attention to Yelena. “Temperature is going down, heart rate and breathing is steady.”
“That is good.” She nodded. “Um, Alexei made pancakes, if you are hungry? I can watch him for a moment?” She offered.
Sam looked conflicted, eyes turned down to look at James. Yelena understands, not wanting to leave him, wanting to be there in case something goes wrong.
Yelena waits patiently for him to decide. They’re in no rush, not anymore, now that nobody is in immediate risk of death. All there is to do now is wait until Torres returns to rescue them.
He sighs. “Yeah. Okay.” He rises from the bed. “I’ll just be a minute.”
“Take your time.” Yelena tells him as he leaves.
Yelena hadn’t realized how sickly James had truly looked until now, when she’s seeing him start to recover. His skin is getting its color back, he’s not drenched in sweat anymore, and his eyes aren’t clenched shut in his sleep, but rather peacefully closed, devoid of pain, of fear. While Yelena was sleeping, the IV must’ve been removed, leaving only a small bruise in its wake. The knot on his head is still pretty prominent, but it’s not as inflamed as it was yesterday.
His eyelids flutter, and at first, Yelena thinks he’s just deep in a dream.
But then his body stirs, and he groans awake, eyes opening the tiniest bit.
“Fuck.” He says, and his voice is already much stronger than it had been. “The fuckin’ robot bird is still haunting me in death.” His gaze is fixed upwards, staring at the drone, a grimace on his face.
“James.” She broaches, tone soft, not completely sure how aware he’d be and not wanting to scare him, not shouting in glee like she wanted to at seeing his eyes open again.
He blinks, confusion flashing on his features. He turns his head, slowly, looking over at her.
“Yelena?” He asks, amazement in his voice. “I…”
“You made it, James.” She tells him, getting a little choked up. “You are alive.”
“Ah, figures.” Yelena hadn’t even noticed that Sam had returned until he’s passing by her, placing a plate of pancakes and a cup of a slightly purple-ish liquid on the bedside table. “I leave for a few minutes and you wake up.”
At the sight of Sam, James gives a rare, genuine smile. His faint smiles to hide pain or nervous smiles are common, but those real smiles of glee, when his face seems to light up and all of his teeth become visible, those are few and far between.
“Sammy.” He says softly, as if he’d just seen the most incredible thing in the whole world. “You’re here.”
“Yeah, real good thing you asked Leila to watch Alpine, ‘cause she noticed you were missing and called me.”
James lollied his head back onto the pillow. “I’ll send a note or s’m’thing.”
“C’mon, sit up.” Sam placed his hand under James’ neck, trying to help him up. “You need to drink something. I got an electrolyte drink, the powder was grape flavored.”
“Ugh.” He legitimately pouts, sticking his bottom lip out as he leans back against the headboard. “I hate grapes.”
“I don’t understand how you love one purple fruit and hate the other. Now c’mon, drink.” Sam holds the cup to his lips, and despite his protests about the flavor, James drinks it down greedily. He hadn’t been able to eat or drink in nearly a week, but hopefully, now with the anti-nausea medicine Sam had brought, he’d be able to keep this down.
“Why are we still here.” He complains once he’s finished drinking, bringing his arm up to his chin to wipe away some stray droplets.
“We’re still here because it’s snowing hard out there and I am not picking you up and flying you over 200 miles in the freezing cold. I have an insulated and heated suit and helmet, you do not.” Sam reaches out and pulls the sleeve of James’ shirt down, it getting bunched up to his shoulder from how he had sulked back against the headboard. “Nice pajamas, by the way.” He commented with a smirk.
James shot him a death glare, although there’s love hidden in it. “I’m sick, leave me alone.”
“I called Shuri.” Sam says, as if he just dropped some massive news, and Bucky curls his lip up. “When we get out of here, you’re heading to Wakanda for a bit, make sure you didn’t mess up your body too bad.”
“I’m gonna get lectured.” Bucky groans.
“What, about only packing the bare minimum of your medication and not bringing any backup supplies, causing you to only very narrowly avoid death? Yeah, probably.” Sam sighs.
Yelena can tell this is a conversation she has no part in, nor does she really want to, so she decides to bid ado. “I will let you know when rescue comes.” She says as she turns on her heels to leave.
“Thanks, Yelena.” Sam calls, and then goes back to his banter with James. The previous conversation continues, with Sam talking about how much Shuri will berate him for being a reckless idiot, and James quips back by telling Sam that it's incredibly ironic to be called reckless by one of the most reckless people he's ever met.
Yelena smiles as she heads back to the common area.
They're perfect for each other.
~~~~~~~~~
Around noon, all of them, minus James and Sam, are hanging out in the common area, waiting for a sign that Torres has returned.
They get it when John suddenly snaps his head up from his game of solitaire, and a moment later Alexei does the same, looking up from his third game of solo Jenga that day.
“What?” Ava questions, worried. Yelena can't hear anything, but she's been around Alexei and James long enough to know super-soldiers will always hear things before she can.
“Heavy duty vehicle approaching.” John reports in a tone akin to the voice he uses on missions when reporting on things through the comms line.
“I heard it first.” Alexei scoffs, and John gives him a side eye.
“No, I definitely heard it first.”
Yelena rolls her eyes. “I know you two are competitive about who has the better serum and all, but it really does not matter.”
Really, Yelena is certain John heard it first, his outward reaction was first, at least, but she's not going to vocalize that and pick a side in this odd serum superiority rivalry.
“Speak for yourself.” Alexei shrugs. Yelena sees John looking over at Alexei's Jenga tower as if thinking of throwing something at it to make it fall again. Alexei argues with words, John just destroys a tiny toy building. In the end, nobody wins, but Yelena will admit it can be entertaining at times.
A mechanical whirring sound in the distance reaches Yelena's ears, and that has to be it, has to be their rescue. No other vehicles had dared transverse through the mountain they were on since they arrived, it would be an awful coincidence if one just happened to pass by while they were waiting for rescue. Of course, Yelena is aware of the cosmic irony that seems to follow her around, but this would be a new low for that.
“I will go get Sam and James.” Yelena declares, clapping her hands together. “We are finally getting out of this place.”
~~~~~~~~~
A few minutes later, Yelena is helping James get down the hall. Sam has James’ backpack slung over his left shoulder. He's carrying a silver briefcase in his left hand as well, which Yelena assumes is storing his suit and wings. When Yelena came to get them, she had watched the drone slotted itself into the back of the briefcase flawlessly, blending in to the point she couldn't even notice it was there. They had also helped James reattach the arm before helping him up, his left arm slung over Sam's shoulder and his right over Yelena's. He tried to walk, but he was still too weak from the illness, malnutrition, and lack of movement for a week to do it without support, so they were helping him up. He moved his legs as if he was walking, trying to help, but really, it was just Sam and Yelena dragging him.
Alexei has Yelena's own backpack over his shoulder, and his duffel in his hand. John has his duffel, and Toni and Ava have their backpacks. All packed up, ready to leave this place behind them.
It could not come soon enough.
The blizzard is light at the moment, only bringing a light snowfall. When the snowcat rolls up to the front of the house, John gladly opens the door and steps out into the cold.
“Hey, guys.” Torres greets, getting out of the passenger's seat of the front of the vehicle. “This is Marko.” He points at the driver, a larger, bearded man, looking toughened by years of fighting yet still his eyes are kind. Marko waves. “He's gonna be getting us back.”
“Hey, Marko!” Sam calls. “How long you been sitting in the cockpit with my friend Torres?”
Marko shrugs. “Six, seven hours.” He says in a thick accent, not unlike Alexei’s
“Can the back fit eight people?” He asks next.
“It can fit twelve.” Marko replies, a sense of pride in his voice.
“Good. Alright, Torres, open up the back. You're riding there with us, give Marko a little break from having his ear talked off.” Sam commands.
Torres looks at him, offended, but having no defense, leading Yelena to believe he had, in fact, talked Marko’s ear off for the whole seven hour drive.
They walk around the back of the snowcat, Torres opening the big doors that lead to an area not unlike a transport truck, steel visible on the inside, benches covering the longest walls.
Sure, it's not a luxury vehicle or anything, but Yelena will take it a million times over.
They all load in, Yelena and Sam having to haul James up the small steps into it. Sam settles down on the area of the bench closest to the door, and James hugs onto him like a koala bear when Yelena shrugs his arm off of her shoulder. Yelena takes their bags from Sam, placing them down on the bench next to James. They have more than enough seating, especially with the way James is half in Sam's lap, so it's alright for some bags to take up a bench space.
John sits on the same bench, but all the way on the end, closest to the cockpit. He puts his duffel by his feet, immediately pulling out a notebook and a pen. She's not sure what he's writing, but this will be a long ride, so whatever will pass the time.
Toni sits on the other bench, adjacent to John. Ava sits right next to her, getting a book out of her bag and opening it up. Toni leans her head on Ava's shoulder, looking at the book as well.
Finally, Alexei sits down, right in the middle of the floor. Torres pulls the door closed as Yelena sits across from Sam and James, leaning her head against the wall. She feels as if she might be able to finally decompress, finally relax, now that they're on their way back to civilization.
“Who wants to play cards!” Alexei asks, getting a box of playing cards out of his own bag, shuffling them absentmindedly.
Yelena shrugs. Well, she doesn't really have anything else to be doing on a seven hour ride in the back of a snowcat, so, why not.
“Sure.” She says, sitting down on the floor across from Alexei.
“Yeah, I'll play.” Torres responds, and Yelena looks over at him warily. She doesn't think he knows what playing cards with Alexei entails.
But she doesn't warn him. She kind of wants to see how a game between her dad and The Falcon will go. She'll just be here to remediate, in case Alexei goes too far. He's been known to do that.
“Perfect!” Alexei exclaims as Torres sits down between the two of them. “You know how to play durak?”
“I have no idea what that is.” Torres admits.
Oh, truly fantastic. Alexei gets to teach another person durak. That was his favorite thing to do when her and Natasha were young, sit them down and teach them all the rules to different Russian card games, but durak was always his favorite.
Alexei begins searching through the deck, taking out all the cards numbered two through five. “I will teach you!” He says, far too excitedly and far too loudly for the small area they’re in. “So, no two, three, four, or five. You have six, seven, eight, nine, ten, then joker, queen, king, ace. Ace is the highest, then king is higher than queen, and so on…”
Yeah, this’ll pass the time just fine.
~~~~~~~~~
By the time they’re pulling into the base, seven hours later, Ava and Toni have finished the book they were on and are almost done with the second one. Ava is flipping through the pages, asking Toni if she’s done reading each one before moving on to the next. Usually, Toni needs some extra time. It’s understandable, English is not only not her first language but she’s blind in one eye, but Ava doesn’t mind waiting for her to finish before they continue on.
Torres had caught on to durak much quicker than Yelena had thought. He’d only lost ten out of the twenty games they played, and the first few games are always duds while a new player figures it out anyway.
James is still curled up with Sam, arms around his neck, head against his chest, sleeping soundly. Sam has been watching them play durak the entire time, not getting any other activity out, just staying there, arms hugging James close, occasionally running his fingers through his hair. Sam smirks whenever Torres has a good play and laughs quietly everytime he wins.
Whatever John had been writing, it took him about five hours to get it all down and nearly twenty pages, front and back. She cannot imagine how much his hands must be cramping, writing that all down, but he was determined, even if he ended up scribbling things out often. Once he was done, he put the notebook back in his bed, and watched the game as well, although Yelena can tell his mind is really elsewhere.
When the snowcat comes to a stop, the doors open, two men in uniforms holding the doors open as they begin to gather their things and exit.
“I lost the least amount of games.” Alexei reminds, but really, for a man who’s been playing for nearly sixty years, Yelena’s not sure a record of losing four games to Torres’ ten and Yelena’s six is that fantastic, but she’ll never tell him that. She’ll let him be the undisputed champion, at least this time. “I win.”
“Yeah, yeah, great job.” Yelena comments. She goes over to try and help Sam get James out of the vehicle, but James wakes up when Sam gets up.
“Wh’t?” He slurs out, blinking his eyes, trying to get himself out of the haze of sleep.
“We’re at the base, Buck.” Sam tells him. “Gotta get out.”
“Oh.” James begins to detach himself from Sam, but without Sam’s support, he just ends up falling back weakly against the bench. “I can walk.”
“Like hell you can.” Sam scoffs, grabbing his arms to pull him back into a horizontal position. “C’mon, me and Yelena will help.”
They end up getting James out the same way they got him in, one arm around each of their shoulders, carefully stepping down the small steps out of the snowcat. By the time they’re out, the rest of the team was already in the hangar of the base.
A woman wearing a mostly red armored suit rushes up to them, another woman in a much more casual ensemble that looks like some kind of doctors’ scrubs behind her, wheeling a gurney with her.
“James.” The woman in the red suit comes up to them, leading them over to the other lady and the gurney. “Come on, James.” She says, and Yelena and Sam carefully place him down on the gurney.
“I…I can walk.” He says again, and the woman in the red suit shakes her head.
“You most certainly cannot.” She insists.
“Yelena, this is Ayo of the Dora Milaje of Wakanda.” Sam introduces.
“Oh, yes, of course.” Yelena reaches her hand out to shake, and then immediately feels awkward about it. She doesn’t know if they even shake hands in Wakanda, she’s never been. Obviously. “Yelena Belova. White Widow.”
Ayo looks at her hand, amused, but she still shakes it. “Yes, I know of you. Natasha Romanoff’s sister.” Ayo nods, and her gaze is absent of the sympathetic look Yelena usually gets when somebody she meets for the first time realizes who her sister is. “Thank you for caring for James.”
“Thank you for all you have done for him.” Yelena only realizes that she has not released Ayo’s grip, and they’re still shaking hands. A little horrified, she pulls her hand away as if she had been burned, then registers how that could come off as rude. She is just…very not good at social interaction with people she doesn’t know. She’s not great with it with people she knows, either, but it’s much more noticeable when it’s a stranger. “I am so sorry-”
She swears she sees Ayo’s stoic face crack a smile, but she’s back to having an unreadable expression in the blink of an eye. “No problem, Miss Belova.”
“I’m tired.” James suddenly pipes up, having finally succumbed to Sam’s urging for him to lay down on the gurney.
Sam places a hand on his shoulder. “I know, Buck.” He turns to look at Ayo and the woman in scrubs. “Do I have to leave him?”
Ayo shakes her head. “You are welcome in Wakanda with James, Captain Wilson. For however long he needs to stay.”
“Yelena!” She hears Alexei call behind her. She had heard him and John arguing, but it had become background when she had the much more pressing matter of getting James to the gurney and then meeting Ayo,
Yelena sighs, not even turning around to look at him, not wanting to entertain the fight. “What?”
“Can me and Johnathan arm wrestle now that we are out of the safehouse?”
Yelena rubs at her temple. “Wait until we get home and near a hospital.” The last thing she needs is for them to get this close to getting home and then Alexei, or John, or both, end up with broken arms.
She hears a chorus of groans behind her.
“Wait…wait until I get back.” James holds his hand up. “I wanna see it.”
Belligerently, Alexei and John agree. They can’t turn down James, not after what happened this past week.
“James.” Ayo cuts in, a serious tone in her voice. “We must get going.”
“Wait.” James again holds up his hand, although this time it falls weakly to his side after a few seconds. “I want to say thank you. To everybody.”
They all turn to look at Ayo, who sighs. “Okay.”
The rest of the team comes over to the gurney, sort of crowding him, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“Ava, Antonia…thank you. You two are so brilliant. Just keep going, even when it gets hard. It’s hard, but it’s worth it.” He breathes deeply, almost as if in pain. Yelena wonders if his painkiller dose was wearing off. He got another one right before they left the safehouse, but after the seven hour ride, its effects were likely fading. “And I’m sorry for throwing up and bleeding on both of you.”
“It is alright.” Toni says with no malice.
Ava follows it up with, “I’m glad you’re going to be okay."
“Me too.” His forehead creases, eyebrows pinching together as he speaks next. He’s definitely in pain, but he’s also determined to thank them all for everything, so he carries on. “Alexei…I need more stories of Yelena as a kid, when you get a chance.”
An overjoyed smile takes over Alexei’s face. “Gladly.”
“John.” He addresses, and John’s head jerks, as if anxious for what he’ll say. “We’re cool. And thanks for the pajamas.”
John lets out a little sigh of relief. “No problem.”
“Yelena.” He turns to look at her, his gratefulness evident in his face. “I can never thank you enough for everything.”
“It is okay, James.” She looks down at him, seeing the welt on his forehead. “I hope I did not hurt you too bad.”
He smiles nervously, eyes fixed on her cheek. “Right back ‘atcha.”
“We must go.” Ayo cuts in, now that all his thanks are completed.
“See you soon.” Yelena waves, as the woman in scrubs begins wheeling him away to a waiting ship. Sam is walking right alongside the gurney, holding James’ hand.
Yelena watches them until the door to the ship closes, and she can no longer see him.
“Alright.” Torres says, voice louder than usual, trying to get their attention. “I’m in charge of making sure you all get home safely….so, um, where are we going?”
“New York is fine.” Yelena answers, following Torres as he begins walking across the hangar to another ship in the hangar.
“Actually.” Alexei interjects. “Can me and Yelena go to Turkey?”
Yelena looks over at him, confused.
“It is where my wife lives.” He fills in.
Oh.
“Sure." Torres agrees.
Yelena breaths deeply as they make the rest of their way through the hangar. Alexei throws his arm around her, pulling her in for a side hug as they walk, as if trying to tell her everything will be okay.
Yelena’s not so sure confessing to her mom that she wants to find information on her biological mom is going to be okay, but she’ll pretend she does, if just for the sake of her sanity.
~~~~~~~~~
“Melina!” Alexei yells as he barges in the door of the small cabin deep in the countryside. There’s a substantial farm out in front, multiple pens of pigs and some goats roaming in the yard. “Me and Yelena are here!”
Footsteps heading down the stairs ring in Yelena’s ears like gunfire.
Her blood runs cold when she sees her.
Melina. Her mother. Her mother, who she has not seen in months, who she didn’t even know that she lived in Turkey now. Her mother, who she should be overjoyed to see, but instead she just feels like her heart is dropping out of her chest.
“Yelena.” Melina nearly runs the rest of the way down the stairs, crossing the dining room. “I have missed you.”
Instead of giving a nice greeting, instead of saying hi mom, nice to see you, lovely weather we are having, she just bursts into tears.
“Oh, oh, my dear.” Melina grabs her by her shoulders, pulls her into a hug. “Do not cry. I know, the hero life is hard.”
“It is not that.” She gets out between choked sobs. “I nearly killed my friends. I put them all in danger. And…and I betrayed you.”
“Yelena, honey, you could never-”
“I went to look for more information on my biological mother.” She can feel the fabric of Melina’s shirt getting damp from her tears. “I did not- I did not find anything, but I went looking, and I should not have, I should not have when I already have you, and I have not even visited you in a so long-”
“Sh, sh, it is okay.” Melina cradles her head in her hands, holding her close, but that just makes Yelena want to cry more, because how is she being so kind about this, being so forgiving?
“It is not!” She’s sobbing now, tears flowing and flowing with no sign of stopping. “I just want you.”
“You have me, dear, And you always will, Even if you find out something about your mother, I will not go anywhere, okay?” Melina releases her for a minute, pushing her away so that she’s an arm’s length. She keeps her hands on Yelena’s shoulders, grounding her.
Melina looks her straight in the eyes with the same adorning look Alexei does, care and compassion and like there is nothing Yelena could ever do to even make her the smallest bit upset. “I will not leave you again. Never again.”
Yelena hiccups, bringing a hand up to her own face to wipe away her tears.
“I do not know anything about your biological mother. But I will help you look for information about her.” She squeezes her shoulders. The touch keeps Yelena from drifting, from shrinking into her own head and getting that foggy feeling where she loses control, loses time.
“I can see you two have had a rough time.” She turns to look at Alexei. “I will make you a nice dinner, and you can both go wash up, okay?”
Yelena sniffles, nodding. A hot shower and a nice, non-Alexei cooked dinner sounds like perfection right now.
“Okay, dear, go upstairs, I have many nice soaps and things, and when you get back, you can have a nice warm meal.” Melina pats her on the shoulder, breaking the touch. Yelena takes a deep breath, in and out, in and out, trying to keep her mind here as she comes down from her sobbing. “Alexei, you can go and use the bathroom down the hall.”
“What, I do not get nice bathroom?” He questions, but he already knows the answer.
“Between you and Yelena, no, you do not.” Melina teases with a roll of her eyes as she heads into the kitchen and washes her hands, shaking them off into the air rather than on a towel. “Now go, wash up.”
Yelena wipes more tears away, trying to clear her vision enough so she can go up the stairs without tripping.
When she finally feels stable again, like she’s not going to float away, and her tears have mostly come to a halt, she remembers what Toni had said that night in the safehouse.
“Hey mom?” She begins. “Can I ask you a favor?”
Melina doesn’t even look up from chopping carrots. “Of course, dear.”
“Can I have your korzinki recipe?”
~~~~~~~~~
Two weeks later, Yelena rings the doorbell of Alexei’s house with a tupperware container full of pastries, her fingers sore and stiff from kneading the dough.
“Yelena! You made it!” Alexei greets as he opens the door wide. Yelena steps in, seeing that Ava, Toni, and John had already arrived.
“Sorry I am almost late.” She apologizes, shrugging her jacket off. “My oven was not cooperating.”
Yelena catches Toni’s gaze, fixated on the container in her hands. “Is that…”
“Um, well, it is supposed to be korzinki.” Yelena finds her face getting a little red in embarrassment, opening up the lid of the container and showing the tarts to everybody. The topping is lopsided on all of them, the crust a little too brown on the edges, a few of the shells cracked. “I am not very good at baking.”
But Toni is looking at them like they’re the most wonderful thing she has ever seen.
“They are beautiful.” Toni tells her.
Yelena shrugs, not sure she agrees. They feel like a sign of her failure, that she can’t even bake a simple tart. “Um, they are all a little cracked.”
“Most beautiful things are.” Toni drops the line casually, but it takes Yelena aback a bit. She wasn’t expecting that kind of introspection at this moment, however true it may be.
The doorbell rings again.
“I will get it!” Alexei declares even as his hand is already turning the handle.
“Ah, James, welcome!”
Yelena sets the container of korinki on the counter, turning to look towards the door. She hasn’t seen James since the hangar, none of them had.
He stands in the doorway, hair in a loose bun. His forehead is completely clear of the bump, and there’s life fully in his eyes again. Not to mention, he’s standing up without any support. That alone is miles better than he was before.
Sam is also there, standing next to him.
“Sorry, I’m not interrupting your team night or anything, I just wanted to make sure he got here safely.” Sam explains.
“What he means to say is-” James quickly jumps in, as if a little embarrassed, like Sam had been doting on him excessively since the rescue and if they knew that, it would break his whole rough and tumble shtick, even though with the team, that was broken a long time ago. “-he’s going out for drinks with Torres anyway and this was on the way.”
Yelena believes the first part. The second part…not so much.
Not that Yelena blames Sam. She’d probably do the same thing if she was in Sam’s position, wanting to make sure James got to where he was going safely after he had been moments from death just two weeks ago.
Sam kisses James on the cheek as they say goodbye. James turns beet red at being kissed in front of everybody, and based on the sly smirk on Sam’s face as he leaves, that was his intention.
Predictably, Alexei practically swarms James to talk to him once Sam has left. Since they formed the team Yelena asked him to please not make any scenes in front of Captain America, and, to his credit, he hasn’t been as bad as he could have been, but that means that he makes a scene immediately after Sam leaves. Her dad is always so loud, and even across the room, at the end of the kitchen, 16 or so feet away from the doorway where Alexei has cornered James, Yelena can hear him loud and clear, pestering James with some old war story about the time he got poisoned.
Yelena would go and save James, but he looks much better, and Yelena has had to deal with Alexei's stories for the whole two weeks they've been back, while James has been blissfully free of them, so instead she watched James carefully for any signs of genuine distress, and goes to the counter with all the drinks to get a cup of soda, where John finds her.
“Just wanted to let you know.” There’s a light smile on John's face and the smallest hint of sheepishness. “I talked to Olivia, and…I think it went really well.”
“I am glad.” She replies, returning his smile. “Did you take my advice?”
“Um, yeah.” He takes the liter bottle of soda from Yelena once she’s done filling her cup. “I talked to her. Told her how I knew I had…issues. With my emotions. But that I’m trying to work on it.” John pours the rest of the bottle into his own cup. “I, uh, actually started journaling.” He says a little sheepishly.
“Oh?” Yelena prods. That wasn’t included in the advice she or Alexei had given, but it was a good idea.
“Yeah. I knew Bucky did it, and I thought maybe it would help me, too.” He shrugs. “That’s what I was writing while we were heading back to the base.”
Ah. That explains that, then.
“Yelena.” James comes up to her, then, apparently having freed himself from Alexei, so she bids a temporary farewell to John, who says he needs to go prepare for the arm wrestling match anyway, but promises to talk to her more later.
“James.” She leans against the counter, soda in hand. “How are you?”
“A lot better.” He says, and Yelena can tell he means it. It’s clear from his outward appearance how much better he’s doing now.
"How's your cheek?" He gestures towards his own face as he speaks.
"Oh, just fine." After two weeks, only the faintest bit of green remains on her skin, and it's barely even sore anymore. If she pressed on it, it would feel a little tender, but it doesn't hurt.
And now that it's in that stage of healing, the purple and blue giving way to a yellowish green, it goes much better with her teal eyeliner and the green of her suit.
"That's good." He nods, although it's clear from the look in his eyes that he still feels guilty, and he quickly changes the subject.
"I just got back from Wakanda a few nights ago. Shuri wanted to be careful, checking everything out, but it gave me the time to visit the village I used to live in, see all the goats.” He shakes his head. “More accurately, get headbutted by the goats.”
Yelena’s not sure what to say to that, so she doesn't say anything. She just enjoys being there, next to James, in his presence, knowing that everything is alright.
“I have a present for you.” James says after a few minutes of comfortable silence between them.
She raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Yeah, uh, here-” He fumbles around in his pocket, before pulling out a small, black ring, glimmering under the lights of the kitchen.
Yelena is about to say thank you, it is very pretty, but then James clicks a button on the band, and the circular shape in the center of the ring protrudes out into a sharp blade.
Yelena’s mouth opens in surprise.
“It’s from Shuri.” He explains. “A gift, for being the reason I didn’t die in that safehouse.”
She’s left breathless. Something so simple, yet so beautiful, and so…perfect for her. The perfect stealth weapon.
She smiles a little sadly, remembering the way Natasha always had similar gadgets, little weapons disguised as something else. Makes for easier spying…plus, they look nice. A weaponized accessory will be a nice addition to her arsenal.
Still…it’s too kind of a gift. Especially considering she’s never even met Shuri.
And she doesn’t need a gift for caring for James. Having him here was a gift enough.
“I cannot accept this.” She says, even though it does pain her to say no to something so nice and functional.
“Sorry, Shuri doesn’t take that as an answer. She made it for you, it’s yours now. No debate.”
Well…Yelena can’t argue with that.
She holds her hand out, and James slips the ring onto her finger, a perfect fit. Immediately, she tests it out, and nearly stabs through James’ hand in the process.
“Sorry, sorry.” She quickly apologizes. “I need to get used to it.”
“Oh, you will.” James says with a wide smile.
“Come on guys, they're gonna start soon!” Ava calls out, and when Yelena looks over to the living room, she sees that John and Alexei are sitting at opposite ends of the coffee table, flexing their arms, getting ready.
She retracts the spike on the ring. “Shall we?”
James holds his arm out, inviting her to go. “You first.”
“Such a gentleman.” She teases as they head over to the living room, looking over the back of the couch. Ava's got popcorn, so Yelena reaches over and takes a handful from the bowl. Ava playfully tries to swat her hand away.
As she looked around at all of them, all of them having been through so much, struggled with their emotions, struggled with feeling like they were broken.
Maybe they were.
And maybe that was okay.
Because Toni was right. The most beautiful things are broken. Their beauty is in their flaws, in their scars, showing all they had survived, all they had overcome.
They were beautiful because of their faults, not in spite of them.
It took Yelena a long time to learn that.
But now that she has, she feels more free than she has in her entire life.