Chapter Text
He had been watching her for a few days now. Quick glances. Brief stares. Too subtle for anyone without training to pick up on. Too straightforward for someone like her not to.
She had been putting it off though. Not that anyone who knew her would be surprised by that. Yelena Belova was many things. Assassin. Woman. Cold-blooded killer. Stubborn as fuck. And busy. Oh, so busy. So busy that ignoring the looks was too easy when it came to prioritising her long list of shit that had to be done.
Valentina was good at her job, for all that she was a raging bitch that Yelena would love to put a bullet into. When it came to getting them recognition and a stable building to live in, she worked fast. Efficient. Still, Yelena as the unofficial co-leader (with the lot of them because no one could quite admit who held the most power, nor did they feel the need to fight over it) was allowed to be involved in many processes involving their living situation. And their newfound fame.
Such as spending a good weekend burying all known information of them off the Internet.
Walker was the hardest. As was Bucky. Not that either of them seemed to want it scrubbed. Ava was pretty easy as not much popped up anyway. Only the files Natalia had uncovered during the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Alexei was infamous in Russia but most of the American media could be swayed to only see him as a new figure, first to be seen on American soil, and not an old one. Especially not one tied with so much death. Her own past was easily wiped. As for Bob. Well. She gave him full control over what he wanted the world to see. It was the least she could do. Thankfully Valentina had already had the whole Sentry-Void issue disappear from her systems so to the world, at least for now, he was just Bob. Friend of the new Avengers.
But when the work was done and the Tower was functioning and they were unfortunately, uncomfortably, in each other’s pockets, the stares became too much.
He knew what he was doing.
Any criminal with a grain of self-respect hating being stared at. It made her hackles rise. Made her aware that someone knew something, and it really didn’t matter what because that something could be disastrous. Being stared at meant that someone could tell something was off and that was dangerous. No criminal likes that danger too close to home. No assassin can handle it without a little bit of bloodthirstiness creeping up and demanding reparations.
After suffering with it for a month, Yelena decides to drop all prior training and confront the problem head on.
Which then makes her realise just who she’s dealing with.
“Kate Bishop.” She groans into her phone, feet dangling over the side of the building, hair swishing around her cheeks in the breeze. All she gets is a laugh for her trouble. “It’s not funny!”
“It is funny.” Kate giggles back. “Isn’t this what you’re trained for? Hunting down people?”
“He’s not a person, Kate!” She snaps. “He’s the fucking Winter Soldier. If he doesn’t want to be caught, he won’t be!”
Kate laughs again. “Yelena. C’mon. It can’t be that hard.”
“Like you could do any better,” she mutters, ignoring that it’s close to a whine. “I’m close to just shooting him when I see him next, so I have the advantage.”
Kate snorts. “Have you considered putting him in an impossible situation? It’s what I do with Clint when he’s being stupid. I tell him that Lucky’s been sad lately, so he buys a pizza and then he has to finish it: boom! He eats!”
Yelena pauses. Kate might be onto something here. Now she only needs something that will have Bucky linger long enough—
“Kate Bishop.” She breathes, enlightened. “You’re a genius.”
“Oh, well,” Kate starts to mumble, flustered. “I mean, I am but—"
Yelena hangs up and immediately races back inside. The warmth of the building compared to the freezing air outside snaps into her and she shivers as she hurtles into the elevator and presses for the main floor. Plan made, set in motion. All the way down, she hums to herself. Fingers tap on her thighs, eyes closed, breathing deeply. Centring herself. This is a mission that could be certain death after all. A pissed off Winter Soldier is a formidable foe.
When the doors open, she is not Yelena.
She is Black Widow.
Her features stretch as she dons the necessary mask and wiggles her phone around carelessly. All part of the plan. All an act that’s close enough to the truth, it blurs the lines between fiction and reality. It’s half the trick: believe enough of the shit said and everyone else will too.
Sauntering into the training room, making note of Walker sparing with Barnes, the background noise of fists hitting flesh, she calls, all high-pitched and annoying like the little sister she is, “Bucky! I can’t believe you’ve done this!”
Walker and Barnes stop, turning to her. Both are sweaty, breathing heavily, both have bruises marring their exposed flesh. Walker, however, is bleeding, too. A split lip, a laceration across his eyebrow. All minor wounds.
“What?” Walker speaks, taking the interruption as a means to grab his water bottle and chug. “What’d you mean?”
She only has eyes for Barnes though. She pouts at him, mockingly. Then looks at her phone and makes the show of scrolling. Eyes widening with every flick of her finger.
The screen is blank.
“Congressman Barnes tells all about Captain America, formerly the Falcon—"
“Oh shit.” Walker mutters, eyes wide, stepping back from Bucky, as if expecting the bomb to go off.
Barnes, face stony, immediately strides over and she shoves her phone into her pocket, dancing out of his way, laughing, and dashing down the corridor. Barnes stalks after her.
“Yelena.” He snaps. “Show me the phone.”
“So naughty, Congressman!” She crows, hearing his footsteps speeding after her. Anything less close to home and he would’ve used his logic and grabbed his own phone. Or remembered that when it comes to things that concern the team, Valentina would’ve been the first one on damage control.
She waits in the adjacent room, still covered in plastic and material as the repairs continue. Another training room being installed but not yet finished. A room with only one door but floor to ceiling windows showing New York.
A spider in her web.
Barnes enters and she moves: all controlled grace and wire-thin strength.
He blocks the kick to his ribs but can’t catch her as she side-steps and lunges for the door, slamming it closed and placing her back to it, facing him. She’s panting a little, all adrenaline and no actual strain. He’s staring at her, calculated now. Brown eyes fixed and focused.
She may be a spider but he’s a sniper.
And that laser-focused, sharp gaze is now pinning her where she stands. Probably imaging her head between the crosshairs.
“Sam never said anything, did he?” He settles on. Quick. Efficient. Every bit the Soldier he was made to be.
“No.” She agrees, easily.
His eyes narrow, metal-arm whirring as he clenches his fist. All wild animal back into a corner, prepared to gnaw his own leg off if it means survival.
“Yelena.” He says, calm. Even. Betraying nothing. Cold as winter. “Open the door.”
“Not until you talk to me.”
His fists uncurl but he straightens. She follows his lead, unafraid of the intimidation tactic. She has fought bigger men than him, fought them and won. Taking him down would be a struggle but he has no weapons on his person bar the arm and she has her Widow Bites and her knives. With enough careful dodging, she could take him.
He tries again, softening his shoulders, quirking his lips. All prey now, no predator, no sniper in sight. “Yelena—"
“Nope.” She says and then switches to Russian. “Being watched is annoying so tell me what you need to so we can move on.”
“It’s nothing.” He responds, in Russian. Doesn’t meet her eyes. Doesn’t flinch at using the tongue that isn’t his. “It’s me being…”
“Was it in the Void?” She asks, genuinely curious, already knowing where this is going. “Is that when you got the memory back? Or did you always have it?”
He blinks at her, thrown. A smirk finds her lips and she rests against the door, no longer prepared for a fight.
“What?” She says with a little laugh. “Are you that surprised?”
Bucky blinks and then finally meets her eyes. “I didn’t think— They let you remember me?”
Yelena shrugs. She’s also unsure about that. The only possible reason being, “It was training. Good training. The likelihood of seeing you again was low. By the time you were back with the Americans, I had graduated. They had no need to remove the memory when I was permanently tied to them.”
Bucky nods at that. It makes the most sense. If there’s another reason, there’s no possible way for them to ever know it. Yelena tucks the possibility away in the box in her mind, left there to be untouched forever.
Compartmentalisation. What a glorious thing.
Bucky takes a second to scan her before sighing, accepting what she wants, and turns to sit on a long metal support beam. Yelena follows but settles close to the door. He’s stronger than her but she’s faster. So long as she’s directly in his path, he’s less likely to run.
“You know me.” He pauses, shakes his head. Hands clasped in his lap tightly so much his flesh hand turns white. “You knew me,” he says, more confidently.
“Yes.” She replies. Remembers his metal arm and the snow beneath her boots and the way his blue eyes watched their forms as they danced. A lone sentinel, both protector and executioner when the orders were given. “You trained me.”
“The others?” He asks, brows furrowed.
She tilts her head, thinking back. “Will you remember if I say their names? Sveta still lives. As does Ana. Katerina died. As did Nadia and Sasha. Irina—" She chokes. Swallows. Tenses her entire body before relaxing. “Irina died. Tatiana… I don’t know about her. The others…” She frowns, rubs her temples. “The others I think are gone. Probably.”
He ducks his head. “Tania?”
She’s cold when she says, “I don’t know a Tania.”
Bucky swallows. “I see.” He says and they both remain quiet. Yelena is not strong enough to ask. She does not want to know.
(Part of her wonders how many names were lost. How many children buried in the snow under unmarked graves. How many girls came and went in the beds she once rested in. How many girls died under her hands; memories removed, and blood washed away to never stain her again.)
(Another part of her, small and fragile and weeping with tears of ice, knows that information might break her.)
(Another part of her thinks of Antonia, burnt to a crisp because of Valentina’s meddling. Thinks of how Natalia broke when she saw her. Thinks of the suffering Dreykov put his own daughter through and remembers—)
She shakes her head, digging her fingernails into her palm until blood begins to well in the cuts produced. Those sniper’s eyes are back to watching her, but he says nothing. There is nothing for him to say. No comfort to offer. They are both weapons, built for their purpose, sent off when their Handlers’ deemed them fit and ready to go.
“You’ve been avoiding me because of what you saw.” She finally says, swallowing the memories and stuffing them deep. They are not needed. She cannot let them affect her.
Bucky nods. “You don’t care?” He adds at her sharp look, “You don’t care what I did to you?”
She snorts, runs a hand through her hair. “We both weren’t there because we wanted to be, Soldat.” He winces and she raises her eyebrows. He sighs, conceding to her point but clearly not backing down.
“I trained you to be a killer.” Bucky hisses, eyes pained. “You were, what, seven?”
“Would it make you feel better to know you were the nicest trainer we had?” She asks, amused but not joking, and he winces, drops his gaze. She exhales. “That’s a no then.”
“You were children,” he whispers.
Yelena looks up at the ceiling. “No.” She replies. “We were never children. The second we stepped foot in that facility, we were tools. Clay to be moulded. Weapons to be used.”
“Yelena—"
“Bucky.” She interrupts, facing him. His face is washed of colour and in that moment, his anguished face reminds her of Bob. It hurts her. Makes her heart ache. “By the time we had you, we had already killed someone. All of us. You did not… not ruin us or whatever the hell you’re thinking of.”
“I broke your arm.” He whispers, gaze distance as he’s awash with his own memories. “Snapped Tania’s collarbone. I- I strangled Katerina. I remember her face— her face was— and I kept—"
Yelena shivers, mind flashing to what he’s talking about. Reaches across and grabs his flesh arm and digs her nails in. The feeling of them both shaking would be comical in any other instance.
“Before…” She stops. Takes a second. Slips off Yelena and dons Black Widow. “In Natalia’s time, it was twenty-eight to one. For us, because of her defection, we needed more Widows. But they couldn’t—” She swallows, lets herself fall blank. “Before Graduation, there is one final test. Do you know what it is?”
He tilts his head, pulled back from the edge. “No. I was— I never knew who Graduated and who didn’t.”
She hums. Cold. Empty. Nothing. “They needed Widows, but they needed functional tools more than they needed numbers.”
It was Summer. Sun glinting off snow. Ice in her lungs and fingers numb from the cold. They were not permitted gloves. Widows did not require anything to be the best. She could vaguely see ten of them. Maybe there were more, maybe less. Either way she couldn’t pinpoint just how many girls stood in the line with her, but she remembered Irina clearly.
Dark brown hair, straight down her back. Piercing green eyes. Perfect posture and a Cupid’s bow lips. A slight dotting of freckles over the bridge of her nose when she had been in the sun too long. When they were still young recruits, there was the rumour that Katerina and her were sisters because they looked identical. Only Katerina had these dark blue eyes that seemed to pierce you where you stood. Irina’s eyes were so much warmer. Less like ice and more like a forest’s.
“Do you remember Sveta and Nadia?” She asks and Bucky nods. His gaze is calculating, posture tense. He knows something is wrong here, but he can’t quite grasp it yet.
“They worked well together.” He tells her. “Sveta was better at hand-to-hand, but Nadia was a perfect shot.” He pauses, frowns. “I remember— they had me tutor Nadia. She was a quick study.” Then he smirks. “Am I misremembering or did Sveta—"
“Kick your ass and nearly win because you sent Nadia into a wall? Yes. That did happen.” She can’t help but smile. Team missions were common when they were children and when the Winter Soldier fought Nadia and Sveta, only to knock Nadia unconscious, Sveta had nearly snapped the man’s neck right there and then in the training grounds.
The silence that followed when he threw her from his shoulders and pulled a gun was deafening. Sveta, only fourteen, had fought so aggressively, she had triggered the Soldier’s baseline command to survive at any cost. Even if that meant overriding his commands to not kill them unless explicitly ordered to.
It was the first time any of them had triggered such a response.
All because a girl lay unconscious behind her. Fourteen and fearful and furious.
It was not the first time they had found out that the Soldier was human, but Sveta did help remind them that he wasn’t untouchable, wasn’t immortal.
“What happened to them? You said…”
Yelena hums. “The final test.”
Snow and sunlight. Sveta and Nadia’s names being called. Guards positioned around the grounds, more of them than they’d seen since they were ten and a girl had tried to run. Yelena does not remember who, does not remember what happened to her.
“In front of us, they were given one objective.” She detaches herself from the memory. Grounds herself by gripping the metal beneath her. “Whoever kills the other becomes the Black Widow.”
Bucky inhales sharply. “What if…”
“If neither fought, they would both be shot.”
Bucky nods. It makes sense really. Then he says, “You said earlier that Sveta is still alive.”
Yelena nods. Looks at him and waits until he meets her eyes. “When I was sixteen, I watched as my sisters killed each other in the name of survival.” She sits straighter, tries not to cry as she adds, “I was pit against Irina.”
Bucky stares now, mouth agape slightly because…
Because Irina was always the best in their class. The fastest, the strongest, the bravest. The girl with the cute smile and nimble fingers. Yelena learnt fast, adapted even quicker, but Irina was naturally talented.
“We were… she was—" Yelena can’t find the words but Bucky’s eyes flood with understanding, with pain. They were too close, too attached, is what Madame had told her after. Friendship like that was a threat to the organisation. Nothing could be more important than the mission, than the Red Room. “She died,” Yelena whispers, finally, looking away. “She— I was able to catch her. They made me— I killed her.” She swallows, chokes down the hatred and utter devastation in her gut when she says, “So don’t say you made me a monster. Ever since I was picked to go to America with Natalia, I was tainted. You simply… made me better at what I was already good at.”
For a long moment, the silence is strained between them. Too many words and not enough oxygen to say them.
The Winter Soldier and a Black Widow.
“God, we’re fucked up.” Bucky finally says and Yelena snorts.
“Yes, yes we are.” She turns and punches him in the shoulder. “Stop staring and ignoring me. It’s annoying.”
He rolls his eyes, stands up. The moment is gone. The tension dissipated. What needs to be said has been, and so the mission objective is complete. Both of them will store this conversation away, never to be touched or looked at too closely ever again. “Can I go now or are you going to fight me again?”
She flips him off with her middle finger and he sighs, all deep and old, before stalking off. She watches him leave and then turns back, exhaling. Face to the windows, skyline in full view. Breathtaking.
Closing her eyes, she shoves Irina and her sisters back into the compartmentalising box it needs to go back to. No more memories about the snow, about the blood on her hands. Void did enough damage in her mind, she doesn’t need the Winter Soldier fucking more up. Not when she has to be like marble, when she has to hold this team together until they can stand on their own.
When her breathing steadies, she opens her eyes. Eyes on the skyline once more. Her heart mourns but she does not let herself grieve. Irina is dead. She was weak. In her final moments, she chose Yelena. Irina is dead and Yelena is not. That is all there is to it. Nothing more. There can be nothing more for the sake of her sanity.
The door opens and her head snaps around only to find Bob standing there, sweater paws and surprised eyes. “Oh, sorry,” he murmurs, ducking his head. “Bucky said— never mind. Sorry. I’ll—"
“What is it, Bob?” She asks and he shrugs.
“I’m making pancakes and wanted— but if you’re busy—"
“If Ava has eaten all of the blueberries, I’ll stab her.” Yelena says, standing. She is strong, she is stable, and she is not Irina. She is not Natalia. She is still alive and that has to mean something.
Because if it doesn’t—
“I don’t think you can,” Bob says with a chuckle and Yelena follows the script. She gasps and nudges him, gently. Bob deserves gentle. He is much like a younger Yelena, fresh from America and learning her place in the world, scarred from her past but trying to live through it. He is not like Yelena now. Nor is he like Bucky. Or Walker or Ava. Jaded. Scars turned into weapons to cut anyone who gets close. Vicious and bloodthirsty and so, so angry it burns. That’s all Void and Sentry.
Bob needs what they never got.
And she is more than happy to provide.
“You take that back!” She says as they walk to the elevator, letting the ghosts of her past fade away. “I can stab her.” He gives her a side glance and she sighs. “Eventually.”
He laughs and Yelena lets herself feel a little lighter.