Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You’re a science teacher. You’re working part-time, though, especially after you had your son. Your husband, he renovates houses.”

Natasha laughs. “That is not my story,” she says, shaking her head and leaning back into the chair.

“What is your story then?” Yelena asks, and Natasha pauses for a moment.

Yelena has spent years under the Red Room’s chemically-induced mind control, and holds some strong resentment for everything and everyone, including Natasha herself, which is understandable. Though she could have left Natasha for dead while Taskmaster chased them, she didn’t. The animosity is still there, though, clear as day, only made more evident by the sharp words they exchanged barely a half hour ago inside the convenience store. Natasha can’t really blame her, because from Yelena’s perspective, she did abandon her - and from Natasha’s freshly updated perspective, she failed her - though she doesn’t plan to unpack any of this anytime soon, preferably not until she’s back home where she can safely hole up in her room and brood, as Laura would say.

The simple fact is that Yelena doesn’t trust her, and Natasha would be a special kind of stupid to trust her at the moment.

“You mean the official one?” she deflects for a moment, watching carefully for Yelena’s reaction. It’s not much more than a twitch of the eyebrows, but it’s clear the blonde is intrigued.

“I could just buy a magazine for that, no?” She challenges, but Natasha stays silent. Yelena sighs in annoyance and picks up her beer again. “If you don’t want to tell me-”

“My husband keeps finding remodeling projects around the house, but I wouldn’t say that’s his job or anything,” she finds herself saying, mouth moving before the thought had even fully formed. Apparently she’s still all kinds of stupid when it comes to Yelena.

Yelena pauses, beer bottle halfway to her mouth, eyes scanning Natasha’s face for any signs of a lie. “You’re not joking, are you?” she asks, setting the bottle down and leaning forward, “You’re actually married?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a long-term assignment? Sleeper agent kind of thing like we had with-”

“No, Yelena,” she cuts her off firmly. “It’s not a job of any kind. I’m actually married. Because I wanted to be.”

The other woman stares for a moment in near disbelief, before scoffing. “Okay. You almost had me there. Your humor, I did not expect it,” she says with a laugh, pointing at her before picking her bottle back up from the table and taking a swig while leaning back on her chair, once again assuming a position of relaxed half-interest.

Natasha’s mouth twists in annoyance. “Believe whatever you want.” What was she thinking, anyway, attempting to reveal her best kept secrets to someone she hasn’t seen in two decades? 

“I never wanted any of that anyways,” Yelena continues as if she hadn’t heard a thing, “a husband, kids... I want a dog though.”

“Where are you gonna go?” she can’t help but ask. Another stupid thought is already forming in her head.

“I don’t know. I don’t really have anywhere to go back to, so I guess anywhere,” she says, looking up at Natasha’s piercing gaze. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

She laughs again. “You’re going to give me some big hero speech, I can feel it.”

“Speeches aren’t really my thing, more like Steve’s. No, it was more of an invitation,” and as she says it, she can already hear Clint’s voice in her head asking what the fuck is she doing. 

“To go to the Red Room and kill Dreykov?” she asks, continuing as Natasha nods, “Even though the Red Room is impossible to find and Dreykov is too slippery to kill? That sounds like a shitload of work.”

“Yup. Could be fun though.”

“Yup.”

⧗ ⧗ ⧗

This is stupid, and dangerous, and although the team isn’t exactly on good terms right now (she hasn’t spoken to half of them in months, since the Accords nonsense), she should definitely call for backup. At the very least she should check in with home. She won’t, because this is her fight (and because the thought of plucking Clint out of retirement for the chance of losing him to the fucking Red Room makes her nauseous), but it’s important to acknowledge her own hard-headedness anyway.

“I wasn’t lying. About being married,” she offers to Yelena as they wait at the spot agreed with Mason. She’s not very sure why, but they’re about to go break their fake-father out of prison in order to chase down the monsters she had thought she’d put to rest years ago, and nothing makes sense anymore, so she might as well.

Yelena doesn’t look up from where she’s sorting through their limited supplies. Mason better come through with the equipment, or they’re royally screwed. “You keep saying that, but I don’t believe it,” she says. “Marriage? That is not for people like us.”

In truth, Natasha can’t bring herself to be annoyed. Yelena’s attitude is a painful reminder of what she was like as a traumatized, recently de-programmed SHIELD asset, mistrusting of everything around her and suspicious of everyone, including the weird man who had refused to complete his mission and take her out. This line of thinking, of things that were and weren’t for her, took years to break, and it still rears its ugly head during times of crisis when she struggles to believe herself deserving of any of the beautiful things she gets to call hers . 

It’s bothersome - it hurts , since she’s on an honesty roll - to see Yelena at the same place Natasha herself was over a decade ago. Stuck in that place, all this time, because Natasha failed to actually bring down the Red Room, failed to keep her promises, failed to even notice her own failure even as it lived and breathed all over the world, right under her nose.

“Like I said, believe whatever you want. But I wasn’t lying,” she says, already walking away as she hears Mason approaching, ignoring the feeling of Yelena’s gaze burning on her back.

⧗ ⧗ ⧗

Alexei is snoring on the plane. Loudly. Like he doesn’t actually believe them capable of throwing him off of Mason’s glorified tin can.

“We really don’t have enough fuel, do we?”

“Nope,” Yelena says, popping the ‘p’ loudly. They sit in silence for another while before she opens her mouth, then closes it, sighs and opens it again. “What is he like?”

At Natasha’s confused look, she continues. “Your… husband. What is he like?”

Oh, so they’re actually doing this. She can tell from Yelena’s tone that she’s not really convinced yet, probably asking in order to test how far she’s going with this.

Natasha thinks for a moment, carefully considers her answer. “He tries really hard to be a good man,” is what she goes with, and she can tell it was the right thing to say, because Yelena looks completely disarmed by such a strange way of describing one’s spouse. 

“He knows what it’s like to have a shitty upbringing, to be in survival mode from an early age. To feel like nothing you ever do will be enough to erase all the hurt that you caused in order to stay alive.” She pauses, watches as Yelena looks straight ahead and shows no reaction other than tightening her grip on the controls. “But he wakes up everyday and tries anyway, to be better, to be the good guy.”

“Sounds nice,” Yelena says tersely.

“He is,” she agrees. “Whether he agrees or not, I know he’s a good man. A great husband and a great father.”

“Father? ”, she snaps, accidentally swerving hard. Natasha grabs at her seat while Alexei cries out as he falls from his seat and hits the floor with a thud, and Yelena curses loudly in Russian, quickly regaining control. “What are you- you can’t have-” she says, eyes flickering to Natasha’s abdomen for a second before snapping back to the skies.

“Not biologically,” is all she says, and whatever retort Yelena had (probably another accusation of lying) dies in her throat as the plane lets out a loud noise that tells them it’ll run out of fuel soon.

“Hold on,” she warns, something indiscernible in her tone, as she concentrates on the rough landing ahead, and Natasha lets the subject die. 

⧗ ⧗ ⧗

Melina is gathering dishes and cutlery from her cupboard in the kitchen while Natasha and Yelena busy themselves by looking around and pretending they can’t hear the pathetic noises coming from the guest bathroom. As Natasha holds back a wince at one of Alexei’s loud grunts, Yelena eyes her in curiosity, seemingly working up to say something. Natasha stares back and raises an eyebrow.

“So...” Yelena starts, looking back to check that Melina isn’t coming back to the table just yet. “Adopted, then?”

Opening and then closing her mouth a couple of times, Natasha thinks, to hell with it. I’ve already said so much. “Our wife carried them,” she says calmly, watching in poorly concealed amusement as Yelena just- chokes. On air.

“Are you just fucking with me? ”, she hisses, glaring murderously at Natasha, who shakes her head.

“Do I look like I joke around?” she asks, but Yelena’s eyes are still wide in disbelief, brows furrowed. When Melina finally comes back and asks what she’s missed, Natasha smoothly redirects the conversation, but Yelena’s face only really changes when shock fades into disgust as Alexei comes out of the bathroom parading his old suit.

⧗ ⧗ ⧗

They sit and stare at the field as the other widows slowly, gingerly, find their footing in a new and free world. Side by side, shoulders only barely touching, they watch two of them helping Antonia dislodge herself from the upper half of her armor, while three others walk around looking for any supplies they can take back to... well, to wherever it is they’re going after this.

Having hugged and cried it out, and generally displayed more emotion in the past few minutes than in all the time since their reunion in Budapest, Natasha and Yelena stay in silence, simply enjoying the fact that it’s over. That this time it’s truly over, that Dreykov and the handlers and the training rooms and the experiments - that it’s all ashes and charred, twisted metal in front of them. Natasha repeats her question from what feels like a lifetime ago, but was only last night.

“Where are you gonna go?”

Yelena takes a long time to respond. So long that Natasha begins to think she hadn’t heard it. “There are hundreds of them out there. Now that the base is gone, the subjugation- I don’t even know-” she shakes her head. “Someone needs to find them. They need help, Natasha.”

“And that's you?” she asks, careful to keep her tone neutral.

“Well, someone needs to do something,” Yelena says, “It’s not like I have somewhere to be.”

A beat passes, then two.

“Melina said she’ll need a couple of weeks to make a new batch of antidotes,” she says. 

When Yelena asks what she is getting at, Natasha sighs then stands up, uselessly brushing some dust off her pants and taking quick stock of her wounds now that the adrenaline has faded. There will definitely be a new set of scars for her partners to ask about, run their hands and lips over, categorizing and learning and always, always thankful for what it means - that she survived, that she came back to them.

Her sister stands up too, still staring at her with harsh questioning eyes.

“Come with me,” she blurts out, “meet my family. You can stay for a couple of days, rest, recover. I’ll get into contact with some friends who can help-”

“I don’t want any help”, Yelena cuts her off, and Natasha’s heart sinks despite herself. “This is a widow’s job. Thanks, I guess,” she says, the words clearly foreign to her, “but I’ll just ask if the others want to help, or I’ll do it alone.”

“Okay,” is Natasha’s only answer, her mind already finding a way to excuse herself, when Yelena speaks again.

“But I’ll go with you,” she says, more quietly this time, eyes flickering to Natasha uncertainly. “I’d like to meet the crazy people that thought it was a good idea to marry a black widow,” she teases weakly, and Natasha’s mouth quirks up in a small smile. “And I want the full story.”

“Okay,” she says again, the neutral tone giving way to something light. Staring back at the field, Natasha feels Yelena bumping her shoulder against hers, and grins.

Chapter Text

While adjusting her few belongings in her duffle bag, Yelena listens as Natasha relays her situation over the phone.

“Seriously? Three days?” she hears a masculine voice, which she assumes belongs to Clint Barton, whining almost comically.

“It’s the best Mason can do. I’ll try to make it faster but, with the way things are...” Natasha trails off. “It’s just best that we stay off the radar. The World Council and the press will be on my ass so I can’t just fly straight home and risk bringing them with me. Roadtrip it is.”

“You do what you have to do,” a feminine voice - Laura, she remembers. “Just be careful and come back safe, okay?”

They say their goodbyes and I love you’s before disconnecting from the call, and it’s still extremely weird to hear such sentimentalities coming from Natasha. She steps forward and throws her bag to the ground, a similar scene to two days ago as they wait once again for Mason.

“This guy is a fluke. Not professional at all. We ask for a jet, he brings a tin can. We ask for a way to New York, the best he can do is Los Angeles. Honestly,” she huffs, and Natasha chuckles.

“We could just fly commercially to Iowa, have our faces plastered on newspapers, paparazzi at the airport asking who you are and how do we know each other-”

“Yes, yes, I get it. Disgraced Avenger brings down secret organization outside of American jurisdiction and without permission from some old men in a council, very important world news,” Yelena says, dragging out her words dramatically.

Natasha shrugs. “Just giving you the option. Anyways, Mason said he can get us to L.A. tonight. We’ll need some sleep after the flight, so we’ll drive out in the morning and if all goes well, we’ll make it home in three days at most, with plenty of rest in between.”

“And I told you there is no need for so much resting!” Yelena says, frowning.

“I’m sorry, did you not get yourself blown out of the sky just yesterday?” she asks, one eyebrow raised, but Yelena just rolls her eyes and walks off, muttering “such a mom” under her breath.

In the end, Mason gets them into a private jet’s empty leg. The pilot doesn’t say a word the entire journey, and it’s dark when they touch down at a small air strip in Pasadena. True to Mason’s word, there’s a car waiting for them with keys on the windshield and a full tank.

“I guess he has his moments,” Yelena concedes.

On the way to the nearest motel, they stop at a convenience store for food and supplies for the next day’s drive. Yelena wanders off immediately upon entering the store, eager to find some new snacks to try while Natasha grabs things they will actually need. She finds herself staring at a colorful array of boxes - Pop-Tarts. She’s heard of those, and actually, she remembers liking them back in Ohio, but she doesn’t recognize any of the packaging and there’s so many options it’s a little overwhelming.

She feels Natasha joining her in the aisle and very loudly not asking what is she doing staring so intently at a bunch of snacks. “I remember I liked those, but I can’t remember which ones.”

Natasha pauses for a moment, biting her lip, before answering. “Frosted grape,” she says, and Yelena turns to her, eyebrows raised in slight surprise. “You liked the frosted grape flavor. They don’t have those anymore, but...” she grabs two boxes - frosted blueberry and frosted watermelon - and offers them to her. “My kids swear by these.”

Yelena pauses, because hearing Natasha casually mention her kids is still supremely weird, and then she is silent for a long moment, staring at the boxes and then back at Natasha. She remembers now, the purple sprinkles on white frosting, the dark and sweet filling, always grabbing more boxes than she was supposed to and begging Melina at the cashier so she’d be allowed to take them. The memory surprises her, but the most surprising thing is that Natasha remembers such an inconsequential detail about her. “And you? No favorites?”

“Oh, I hate these,” she scoffs, “I think they all just taste like pure sugar. Although, they did have this maple bacon limited edition,” she adds, grinning at Yelena’s disgusted face. “Come on, it’s getting late.”

Their room for the night is decent enough - both women have certainly slept in much, much worse conditions - and Yelena only half-heartedly grumbles at Natasha’s insistence to redress their wounds before finally getting some sleep.

In the morning, they re-check their bags, supplies, weapons, and drive off at seven sharp. Yelena tugs at her seatbelt in clear annoyance, but doesn’t complain out loud about using it, and focuses her attention on fiddling with the radio, passing through every possible station in the span of a couple minutes.

At some point she stops, and finds that “EDM” is quite enjoyable. A half hour passes with Yelena aggressively nodding off-beat to a few songs while Natasha keeps a tight grip on the steering wheel - probably not a fan, then - before she gets bored and goes back to jumping between stations. Soon, however, Natasha breaks her silence.

“Leave it,” she says, nodding to the radio, and Yelena leans back, one eyebrow raised.

“You like that?”

Natasha shrugs. “It’s my wife’s favorite band,” she says, her lips curving in a soft smile as the music plays over the crappy speakers of their rental. “Fleetwood Mac. They’re good, I don’t know if you’ll like it though.”

“I don’t know what I like,” Yelena answers, almost automatically, but it is true. The song currently playing sounds good enough, so she leaves it be, and looks back at Natasha. Her gaze is focused on the road, but she looks much more relaxed than Yelena has seen her in the past few days, and every once in a while she mouths the lyrics to the song. 

It’s still astounding, the idea of Natasha having this whole family - both a wife and a husband, and children . A black widow mothers death, but Natasha is a mother to real, living, breathing children. She can barely wrap her head around it. She believes it to be true - it would be too much of an elaborate lie, there have been no slip ups or contradicting information, and she did listen in on Natasha’s phone call with her partners early in the morning. Still.

“Tell me about them,” she finds herself saying, and if Natasha is surprised, she doesn’t show it.

Instead, with an openness that unnerves Yelena, she looks at her and nods, before refocusing her eyes on the road. “What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “Anything. How did you meet?”

⧗ ⧗ ⧗

PRAGUE, 2003

Natalia grimaced. The downpour had her soaked to the bone, long red hair plastered to her face, and she spit out a mixture of blood and rainwater, raising her head again to glare at her assailant.

There was an arrow on her left thigh, courtesy of him, and a gunshot wound on her right shoulder, courtesy of her mark’s fifth bodyguard - she didn’t see him, she was sloppy, and it cost her.

The agent - Barton, she knew, the SHIELD agent who favored bows over guns - had her pinned down, only a few feet away with an arrow aimed at her head. She assessed the situation, and instantly knew her chances were slim - but not zero. Even with her injuries, she could find a way to stall him - wait for an opportunity, a distraction, any window of time which allowed her to either run (unlikely) or attack him and gain the upper hand. She had gotten out of worse spots before.

It was easy to see he did have a gun on him, and knives, but she didn’t know how skilled he was with them. Probably skilled enough. Still, if she could separate him from his bow, she’d have a fighting chance.

However, she did not move a muscle. She did not continue her assessment, nor come up with a solid plan of attack. Instead, she stared at him and waited.

Do it, she thought. Stop me. End this. She didn’t beg, not even in her thoughts, but with her glare she willed him to do something already.

The black widow was tired. The black widow was done. End this, she thought again.

For the past year, she had worn down her psychological conditioning - but not enough to end her services to the Red Room by herself, one way or another. She could endanger herself for the sake of the mission as easily as breathing, and even sacrifice herself for it if the Red Room ordered it, but not out of her own volition. The last time she tried it, her hand shook so much from the effort of trying to pull the trigger, she dropped the gun and ended up with a stray bullet lodged in the ceiling of that shabby shack they called a safehouse.

He moved, and she gave a minute flinch - but the arrow wasn’t fired. His bow was no longer drawn, the arrow was back in his quiver. He stepped forward, and extended a hand.

“You’re tired, aren’t you? You want this to be over?” he asked, hand still outstretched.

I am, she thought. Please, let it be over. End this. But she remained silent, and unmoving.

“I can help you, Natalia,” he said. “SHIELD can be a fresh start for you. Come with me.”

She searched his gaze for any sign of dishonesty, then looked back at the hand in front of her. “Come on,” he said again. “You have nothing to lose.”

If he was playing her, at least it would spite Madame even more - that her death could be so stupid. That all those years of training could be wasted. She took his hand, and the black widow was reborn.

⧗ ⧗ ⧗

Yelena is surprised at Natasha’s willingness to openly share her train of thought while the man, Clint, had been about to take her out, but not at the thoughts themselves. Although Red Room conditioning had taken from all widows the ability to take their own lives, it could not prevent them from wishing to do so, and Yelena herself had become intimately familiar with such wishes at times (in fact, she wonders for a moment if the antidote had freed her of those limitations, but probably not, as this conditioning had come long before chemical subjugation).

“Then... SHIELD recruited you?”

Natasha makes an amused sound. “I wouldn’t call it recruiting. Clint was sent to kill me, but he made a different call.”

Yelena’s eyes widen in disbelief. “So he went against orders? He didn’t complete the mission?”

“That’s debatable too,” she grins. “His actual orders, word for word, were to stop the Black Widow. And, in a way, he did. At least that was his argument while Coulson and Fury tore him a new one for going rogue and bringing in a Russian assassin like a stray cat.”

Yelena picks at a stray piece of fabric in her jacket, thoughts racing. She doesn’t know who Coulson is, but anyone in the spy game has heard of Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD. From Red Room briefings and her own run-ins with SHIELD during assignments over the years, she knows that the agency is pretty hot-and-cold when it comes to their tolerance of enemy operatives, depending on who’s calling the shots at any given time, though she generally sees its agents as the type to shoot first, ask questions later. 

Given this knowledge and the general expectation of how their world works, the concept of Clint being sent to kill Natasha - because regardless of wording, that was obviously his assignment - and choosing not to is almost unfathomable to Yelena. She knows without a shadow of a doubt that she would have been killed for trying to pull such a stunt with her old handlers, and she has always operated under the assumption that this was the same everywhere else. And then arguing with his superiors over it... 

She also can’t help but notice that Natasha sees it all with amusement. Not the meeting itself - no, the look on Natasha’s face as she recounted her first meeting with her husband had been all fond and warm and soft , but somber as well. When she speaks of the aftermath, however, it’s like Clint had merely been caught by his school teachers breaking some silly rule. There’s no... fear, anger or trauma, which brings her to her next question.

“He was punished, though? For going against orders?”

Natasha hums, then nods. Okay, Yelena thinks, at least that was normal. “Aside from getting an earful from Fury, Coulson, even May, for a long while he got stuck with a bunch of milk run assignments and mind-numbing paperwork too. Coulson put him on unofficial probation - if he pulled any other stupid shit before the next evaluations cycle, he’d be cleaning the mess hall until all three of them retired.”

“That’s it?” she says, incredulity seeping into her tone again. The punishment for saving a mark instead of killing them was boring work?

At her tone, Natasha looked back, her confusion giving way to a look that was way too understanding for Yelena’s liking. “SHIELD isn’t the Red Room. Well, it wasn’t-” she sighs frustratedly, and Yelena can guess, based on her quick catch up of world news during the past couple of weeks, that Natasha is still feeling, to this day, the sting of the revelation that HYDRA had taken over SHIELD to such a degree it was easier to burn the agency to the ground and build it back up. “Regardless of all the HYDRA bullshit, okay? SHIELD was... good. I’m not saying it was perfect or anything, but you won’t hear about an agent getting tortured for failing a mission. It just wasn’t like that.”

Yelena, for her part, is tense and exceedingly uncomfortable with the direction this conversation has taken. Knowing the Red Room was fucked up is one thing, having someone say ‘well of course it’s not like that out here, this isn’t that hellscape of a place you come from’ is something else, although perhaps it makes it easier to know that Natasha probably understands the feeling.

She’s thankful when Natasha pulls over to a gas station and gets out - though she can see they’ve barely gone through a quarter of the tank, which makes this a transparent attempt from her sister to give her a few moments alone to process. When Natasha climbs back in and gets them back on the road, Yelena fiddles with the car radio once more, evidently done talking for now.

Chapter Text

They drive for the next couple of hours in silence. Yelena eventually grows tired of music, leaving the radio on low volume and set to a news station, which works for a while, until the hosts begin discussing the rumors surrounding the Avengers’ falling out, prompting Natasha to turn it off entirely. Yelena watches, but says nothing.

Around lunchtime, they stop for a quick bite. Yelena takes in the decor of the place, and although she is no expert, it’s obvious the place is new and made to emulate stereotypical old-school American diners. A petite blonde waitress with a bright smile hands them a huge plastic menu each, and she finds herself once again overwhelmed by the sheer amount of options - dishes, sides, add-ons, specials, and so on.

Natasha doesn’t say anything, thankfully, but politely sends the waitress off claiming she needs to make a phone call before ordering. It’s not a lie - as soon as the girl turns around, Natasha is dialing on her phone.

“Hey”, she says, voice stupidly soft - can’t be business, then - and Yelena continues to scan the items in front of her while still paying attention. If Natasha wished for privacy, she should have taken it outside. “Yeah, so far so good. I’m about to have breakfast for lunch, so I can’t complain.”

Toast, eggs, bacon. All of that sounds good enough, and Yelena is tempted to just order the same thing. The chance of having something completely different than whoever she’s eating with, however, is too good to pass, so she goes back to reading through the menu once again while Natasha continues her conversation.

“Uh-huh. I was texting with Wanda earlier this morning, she seemed a bit off. Maybe Clint could check in, if he isn’t still too busy destroying the playroom floor?” Natasha gives a quick laugh at whatever is said on the other side of the line. “Sure, I guess. Yeah. Love you too.”

She disconnects, then makes a show of casually (and slowly) reading through the menu, even though she already knows what she wants, judging by her words a few moments before. Yelena gives a quiet huff, equal parts thankful and annoyed at how careful Natasha is being with her. She doesn’t like the feeling of being treated with kid gloves, but she can rationally admit that maybe she needs it, just a little.

“Who is Wanda?” Yelena asks, abandoning any pretense that she wasn’t paying attention to her sister’s phone call.

Natasha looks up from her menu and raises an eyebrow in slight amusement before answering. “A teammate. You might know her as Scarlet Witch.” Yelena nods, since she does remember reading something about a girl with freaky magic powers, some red energy telekinesis kind of thing. Hard to forget, even in a team with a Norse god and a giant green monster. “Ready to order?”

Not really, but it’s been long enough that it would be embarrassing to say no, so she nods again. After Natasha beckons the waitress to their table and orders her breakfast-for-lunch, Yelena runs her gaze through the menu again and points to the first thing that jumps out at her - meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy. She doesn’t think she’s ever had meatloaf or gravy before, but the waitress comments that it’s a favorite among the regulars, so it can’t be too bad. Certainly nothing can be as bad as the bland sludge she spent her whole life eating, anyway.

In the end, it’s not anything mind blowing, but she wasn’t expecting that either. She could probably do without the gravy thing next time, though. Natasha devours her toast, eggs and bacon at lightspeed before Yelena is even halfway through the meatloaf, and then orders a slice of key lime pie, which she offers to share, but Yelena declines - she can barely finish her dish, the portions are so huge.

They’re walking slowly back to their rental when Yelena offers (demands, really) to drive for a bit - and it’s probably a testament to how stuffed and sluggish Natasha feels after their lunch, that she agrees without much complaint.

This time, the silence doesn’t last long before Yelena is once again curious to hear more about Natasha’s family. She keeps her eyes steady on the road as she asks. “So what happened next? SHIELD just... took you in?"

“No, it wasn’t that easy,” Natasha replies, briefly glancing at Yelena before turning back to the view outside her window. “SHIELD had no reason to trust me.”

“You didn’t trust them either,” Yelena guesses, and Natasha shakes her head.

“At first I was just waiting for them to put a bullet in my skull - mine and Clint’s, for failing his mission - and when that didn’t happen, I spent a lot of time trying to understand what was their angle. They wanted information, of course, so I gave them everything I could on the Red Room, the KGB, missions I was a part of - what I could remember, anyways. There were a lot of blank spots in my memory back then. When I ran out of things to say, I thought they’d finally kill me, but then they started talking about deprogramming, training, that sort of thing.”

“Sounds like you did not have much of a choice.”

Natasha snorts. “I was lucky enough to be alive and not buried in a tiny cell somewhere off the books. I didn’t realize either, at the time, how much shit Fury got from the WSC over it, but for some reason he decided to take a chance on me. He and Coulson always had a thing for taking in strays - that’s how Clint ended up at SHIELD too - but I was a special case.”

⧗ ⧗ ⧗

WASHINGTON DC, 2003

The days after her entrance into SHIELD's custody were so similar they bled into each other.

She woke up in her cell - a tiny square with a metal bed frame bolted to the ground, a bare mattress, a desk supporting several water bottles. The bottles were made of very thin, crumply plastic, and had their hard caps replaced by plastic wrap covers. There were no sheets or blankets on the bed, and no pillow. There was no chair for the desk, not that she would have any use for it, as there wasn't any sort of stationary. All there was, in fact, was a clear effort to prevent any items she could possibly use to escape - from SHIELD, or from life itself.

Without a clock and without windows, she couldn't know for certain what time it was - but she knew she slept for around five to six hours each night, and that it was usually an hour after she woke that a SHIELD agent would come to collect her and take her to the interrogation room.

It was always the same route through two corridors reaching the same room. Though there was risk in letting her become familiar with these two corridors, it was also safer to show her as little of the place as possible. If she tried to escape, the familiarity would run out very quickly.

The room was always empty. The agent would have her sit down, then cuff her to the desk, and she would sit in silence for a good half hour. She could guess what happened during that time - they were probably watching from the two way mirror, figuring out what kind of mood she'd woken up in, devising a strategy for the day's interrogation. It was, honestly, a waste of time. She was already willing to give out information - for the past few days, she had answered every question thrown at her - but she couldn't blame them for the caution.

A week in, she still hadn't caught a glimpse of the agent who brought her in - Barton - since the very first couple of hours after arriving at the base. She wondered if he was still being punished for his failure, or worse, if they had killed him after all. It wouldn't surprise nor shock her. Her time was probably near too - as soon as the questions dried up and her intel was no longer valuable, they would kill her regardless of Barton’s promises of a second chance, but she’d known it was a long shot anyway.

On the eighth day of interrogation, she was finally shocked when Barton strolled into the room after Fury and Coulson. No broken bones or bruises that she could see - aside from faded ones she knew she was responsible for. He wasn't even limping. She allowed herself one moment of surprise before steadying her thoughts. Of course. There were many ways to punish someone without leaving marks to be seen by others, and this, she knew very well.

Barton gave her a jovial wave, then settled on a chair at the corner of the room. She raised an eyebrow, and waited for whatever trick SHIELD had planned for the day. Only, there was no trick. Fury and Coulson continued with their questions as usual.

They asked about several missions - some were hers, some were her fellow widows' handiwork. They asked about the hospital fire. She kept her eyes trained on them as she answered. She wondered if Barton regretted not putting an arrow between her eyes yet.

When the questions dried up, Fury nodded at Coulson and then inclined his head at Barton, beckoning him over. Interesting, she thought, his punishment for saving me will be to kill me. He didn’t look too preoccupied, but she didn’t expect him to - it was all just part of the job.

He didn’t draw a gun, knife or one of his arrows, however, and instead dragged his metal chair over to sit at the table beside the other two men.

“I believe we’re finished with our intel gathering for now, which means we’re discussing next steps,” Fury said, and she remained quiet. Why was he still talking to her as if she wasn’t about to get crossed off? “Docs say about two weeks of deprogramming will probably do the trick. After that you’ll be getting standard field training and a shiny new dorm, with a pillow and everything. Barton here will be your partner, since he’s the crazy motherfucker that decided to vouch for you, so if you fuck up, that’s his responsibility.”

Deprogramming? Field training? Surely they didn’t mean…

“So you want me to work for you?”

The three men made faces of varying levels of surprise. “Isn’t that the whole point of this?” Coulson asked.

She shrugged. “I didn’t think you were serious. Figured I was dead the moment you ran out of questions.”

Barton ran a hand through his hair in clear distress. “And you still… Jesus Christ.”

Fury looked between them for a moment before tapping Coulson on the shoulder and starting towards the door. “You kids play nice. We’ll be back in a half hour for paperwork and to give you your schedule.”

In a dizzying turn of events, Fury and Coulson left the room, taking the guards with them and leaving her alone with Barton. 

Partners, she thought, watching him rest his elbows on the table and lean in, relaxed, like a kid about to gossip, like the ones she knew in Ohio a lifetime ago. She wasn’t fooled. They didn’t kill her, but made her his “partner”, which meant her life was in his hands. Which meant he could do whatever he wanted to her. 

“So, Nat - can I call you Nat? Hey, what name are we putting down for paperwork? Cause no offense, but some of your aliases are mouthfuls,” he said all in one breath before digging around in his pocket and taking out a colorful packet. “You like skittles?”

⧗ ⧗ ⧗

Yelena’s grip tightens on the steering wheel, and she blurts out before she can filter her words, “is that how it started?” At Natasha’s confused glance, she continues, her expression darkening. “You and him. He was... your handler? Yes? Is that...” she trails off, knowing she doesn’t need to complete the thought.

It’s silent for a few seconds before Natasha tells her firmly to pull over. She starts to protest, but Natasha repeats herself. “Pull over, Yelena,” she says, louder this time, and Yelena nearly flinches.

Natasha sounds pissed off, and Yelena guesses she struck a nerve. Of course, men are the same everywhere, she was naive to think Natasha’s husband would be any different regardless of the little happy family story she was trying to paint. She stops the car on the side of the road, killing the engine, and waits for the ensuing fight.

“Look at me. Yelena, look at me.”

She turns her head slowly, looking at Natasha as requested, and sees a myriad of emotions on her face - rage, for one. She thinks it’s unfair that Natasha is mad at her for asking a perfectly normal question - especially because it seems she was right after all.

“I told you before that I got married because I wanted to. I need you to understand, Yelena, that everything - every part of my relationship with Clint and Laura - it was always because I wanted to .” She starts off strong and firm, but her voice catches at the end.

Yelena isn’t fooled. “Of course. Like I wanted extra bandages, or I wanted to get off light after a fucked up mission - and the guards and my handlers wanted something in return.” Natasha opens her mouth to say something, but Yelena barrels on. “Like I wanted to not fail a mission, so I had to let-”

“No, Yelena,” her sister interrupts, with inexplicable wetness in her eyes that makes Yelena pause, because Natasha looks one step away from crying. “Please don’t- When I say I wanted to, it means that I wanted him. I wanted her. For myself. Not- not in exchange for favors or because I had to make up for something. Okay?”

Natasha sounds very convinced of it, and Yelena is halfway reassured - but it still sounds too good to be true. However, she gives a little nod and her sister continues. “For starters, Clint had no authority over me. We were always partners, he was never my handler - that was Coulson. And sure, any place in the world will have an asshole making comments, but no one at SHIELD - not Fury, Coulson, Hill, or anyone else - ever took advantage of their rank over me in that way.”

She drops her gaze, looking elsewhere but her sister’s face, starts to speak then stops a few times. Eventually, she asks in a small voice. “Never?”

“Never,” Natasha reassures her. “I expected it at first. Every debrief and unscheduled meeting, every time someone asked me to come to their office, I kept expecting - but it never happened.” For a moment, she seems to debate whether to continue, then pushes on. “First time I was in the field with Clint, just the two of us, I messed up during extraction and nearly got shot, but he had my back. When we got to the safe house, I... tried to thank him, the only way I knew how.”

The darkness which had almost faded from Yelena’s expression comes back in full force. “You wanted to and he wanted to, yes?” To her shock, Natasha shakes her head.

“He pushed me off and yelled at me. Said I should know by then that he wasn’t the kind of asshole who would demand something like that from me. I’d never seen him so angry before.”

The pair stays silent for several minutes as the cars rush past them on the road. It’s mid-afternoon, but the sky has turned dark and cloudy since their lunch stop, and Yelena watches as light rain begins to fall, then becomes heavier as the minutes pass. Her angry retorts have died in her throat after Natasha’s words, which paint an entirely different picture to the one her mind conjured up just moments ago.

‘A good man’ is how Natasha had described her husband the first time Yelena asked. The bar is so low for a former widow, it’s practically on the ground, but it stands to reason that a good man would have the bare minimum of human decency - although Yelena has not had much contact with that concept throughout her life, she isn’t stupid, and she knows there is such a thing out there in the world.

Despite that knowledge, it’s still surprising - jarring, really - to sit there and listen to Natasha recount all the ways she was treated with basic decency and respect by the man she claims to love, and even by their coworkers and superiors. As if such things - love, respect, decency - could possibly exist in the life of a black widow. But that is the point, really, because Natasha is “the” Black Widow, but her life as a black widow ended several years ago. In her own words, she was reborn - she built an entirely new life in an entirely new world. One where kindness and all sorts of sentimentalities are real and attainable. And Yelena, since receiving the antidote, since blowing up Dreykov to hell and crashing the Red Room down into a burning pile of rubble, was also reborn. She also gets to live in that brand new world now, gets to choose, to want, to not want. To say no, and have it mean no.

The tears come suddenly, the sobs shaking her entire body, and it’s so fucking embarrassing, but once she starts, she can’t stop. She feels Natasha hesitantly lay a hand on her shoulder and then lift it to brush some of Yelena’s hair back. Somehow, she finds herself leaning across her seat as her sister tugs her gently down to her shoulder, her other arm coming around to take off her seatbelt and then hold her.

For a long time, they stay like this, Natasha holding her while she cries, whispering things she can’t even register over her own sobbing and the rain outside, and Yelena thinks this is what it feels like to let go of the old world.

Chapter Text

Once both Yelena and Natasha have recomposed themselves and returned to their normal state of not talking about things, the drive goes smoothly, and silently, for a few hours. They go through most of their gas station snacks, stopping only once to stretch their legs and for Natasha to take back the driver’s seat.

It’s completely dark when they finally, blessedly, drive into Albuquerque, where Natasha has arranged for a room at a Motel 6 just on the entrance of the city. She had planned for them to get here a couple of hours earlier, but it is what it is. Too tired to even think about dinner, the sisters just barely toss their suitcases into the room before crashing into their beds. Natasha belatedly remembers they should redress their wounds, but Yelena is already out like a light, so she just shoots Laura and Clint a text and goes to sleep.

She wakes up to the sound of retching, and immediately rises to find Yelena hunched over in their tiny bathroom.

“That goddamn-” Yelena growls then spits something out before continuing “meatloaf thing, I swear that’s what it was.”

“You need some medicine?” she asks, already knowing it’ll be refused, and it is. “All right, I’ll pick up something light for breakfast, why don’t you take a shower or something, you’ll feel better,” she says, trying hard to keep any motherly intonations out of her words, as she knows Yelena won’t appreciate it. In her current state, Yelena just nods and heads for her bag.

Natasha manages to find some plain bagels with light cream cheese and some hot tea, bringing it to the room along with some medicine for an upset stomach that she just plans on tossing into Yelena’s luggage when she’s not looking, hoping her sister might be too proud to accept it from her but not too proud to take it for herself. She finds Yelena already dressed and sitting by her bed, hair wet and in the process of changing the bandage on her shoulder

They eat their food, and Natasha tries to argue for them to rest a little more before going on, but Yelena is already too restless. Finally, she relents, saying it’s still early enough that they’ll make it to Amarillo for lunch, as planned, and arrive in Oklahoma City for the night with plenty of time to spare.

“Why can’t we just go straight on? Isn’t it just fifteen, sixteen hours left?” Yelena grumbles, but Natasha is still sore from their little adventure and vehemently refuses to drive for fifteen hours straight, and she’s sure as hell not letting Yelena, who’s more injured than she is, do the driving, lest they end up in Kansas instead.

A few minutes past the old Route 66 underpass, Yelena quietly asks for another story. Natasha barely keeps the grin off her face as she begins talking, already knowing exactly what story she wants to tell right now. 

⧗ ⧗ ⧗

WASHINGTON DC, 2003

Fully deprogrammed, the SHIELD doctors said. Natasha did not quite believe them - and she knew Nick Fury was hesitant at least. But after two and a half weeks of deprogramming sessions, and with a clean bill of physical and mental health, or as clean as she was ever going to get, Natasha was given a new dorm and a schedule for standard field training, as promised.

She had a pillow, blankets, SHIELD-issued clothes, a desk with a chair and even a few blank notebooks to use as she pleased. Another three weeks into this new reality, they were still unopened. She had nothing to write down. 

As for other people’s writings... no access to the intranet or the world wide web just yet.

Natasha was not a part of group classes, being instead tutored in private for her mandatory theoretical lessons. Really, most of the material covering field tactics, weapons, equipment, tech and languages were a bore - nothing she hadn’t had drilled into her head back in the Red Room. However, when it came to rules of engagement and the ethical framework within which SHIELD expected all of its agents to operate, things got tricky. Ideas such as using non-lethal force on civilians and watching your team’s backs during ops, as well as general behavioral guidelines in and out of the field, elicited thoughts ranging from “that’s not very practical” to “that’s simply too good to be true”.

Closing in on two months with her life in SHIELD’s hands, Natasha was, so far, confused. As of yet, she had not been called for private lessons or briefings with any superiors. She knew what would likely be expected of her when she did, but she was confused as to why it had not happened yet. Perhaps they were scared she would slit their throats if they tried it.

Her “partner”, Barton, had also kept his hands to himself until now. He had followed her into her new dorm after her first day of tutoring, and when the metal door closed behind him, she knew what would happen. Or, she thought she knew. Contrary to her expectations, he had parked himself on her desk and asked what she’d thought about the intro to SHIELD hierarchy and chain of command.

“It’s a fucking pain, right? I swear you’ll need three superiors to sign off on it before you can wipe your own ass one of these days.”

Astonished at the direction things had taken, she had only nodded and hummed while he talked a mile a minute. Finally, as his conversation topics wound down and he pushed himself off her desk, she tensed minutely. Now, then?

But he had simply bid her goodnight. The next evening he was back, with more incessant chatter, and nothing else.

She was growing used to it now. It would be a terrible shame when the other shoe dropped, but it would also not surprise her.

On this day, Barton had found her at lunch time, right after the last of her theoretical tutoring sessions, and insisted on dragging her to the cafeteria “to celebrate joining the green idiots at the gym tomorrow”. She had yet to come here at this time, with people around, preferring to visit when it was empty to grab some food and take back to her dorm.

“Taco Tuesday! Grab you some?” Clint asked, and she nodded, unsure if she’d ever had a taco before.

He joined the long line near the salad bar, leaving her alone at a tiny table to the side. It was quiet enough in this corner, and with her back to the wall, she could engage in a favored pastime of people watching. Most other agents avoided eye contact and skittered past the table as if fearing she would leap over it and strangle them. She probably could, but she wouldn’t.

Her quiet time was interrupted when someone cleared their throat just to her side and a feminine voice asked “is this seat taken?”

She whipped around, only to see a beautiful brunette woman in SHIELD casuals. Her features were sharp, yet delicate, and her bangs moved lightly as she leaned her head to the side, one eyebrow raised and a soft grin on her face.

Natasha belatedly realized she’d been silent too long, uttering a quick “no”. The woman’s grin grew into a smile as she sat down on the rickety metal chair right beside Natasha, to her astonishment.

“Hey, you two meet already?” said Clint, balancing a tray with enough tacos for a battalion. “Hi, Laur,” he said, putting down the food on the table and sitting opposite of the two women.

“Hi,” the woman replied, already reaching for one of the tacos.

“Natasha, this is my friend Laura. They might’ve mentioned Mockingbird during your languages refresher - well, that’s her.”

Finally, Natasha could do something other than stare at the two of them. She turned to the woman - Laura - and asked, “русский?” [Russian?]

“Ровно столько, чтобы не погибнуть” [Just enough to not die], she replied.

She felt what could be a grin pulling at the corner of her mouth. On the other side of the table and already on the third taco, Clint pouted like a kid.

“I don’t speak Russian, could we keep it cool at this table?”

“Не будь плаксой” [Don’t be a crybaby], Natasha replied, resulting in a frown from him while Laura laughed out loud beside her. Some heads around the cafeteria turned towards them, but the three paid it no mind.

“Great, it’s two against one now,” he huffed, but there was something different about his face as he watched Laura laughing. Natasha could see it now, a diminutive softening of his eyes, his mouth forming a smile almost involuntarily as he saw the other woman’s joy. Huh.

He turned to Natasha then, and didn’t bother to change or hide the expression on his face. It was subtle, but he knew she would be able to detect it, and apparently he didn’t mind it. She realized then that in this crowded cafeteria, Barton was letting her in on a secret.

Inexplicably, she knew she would keep it.

⧗ ⧗ ⧗

“So your wife is an agent too?” Yelena, who had been quiet until then, finally pipes up.

“She was, back then. Languages were her forte but she wasn’t just a translator - don’t discount her on the field. She’s tough,” Natasha replies, a proud tone coloring her voice. “She retired when she was pregnant with our oldest. It was a bit of everything happening at once - she found out about her pregnancy right after a mission went to shit. She lost three team members, the stomach for field work, and almost lost a leg too.”

Yelena simply hums, lost in thought. She would like to hear the rest of that story some time, but for now, her mind is stuck on the concept of retiring.

Widows do not retire - rather, when a widow was “retired”, she was dead. She supposes Madame had technically retired from field work in order to bring up the next generations of widows, but no one could truly retire from the Red Room.

In real, normal life, people think of retirement as something to get to as the years go by. As you grow old. Yelena used to wish for death sporadically, a constant plea in her head to die young, to die today, especially during the worst missions when her mind was still present, before the fog of chemical subjugation and memory wipes.

She lives in a brand new world now, though. One where death is not the only alternative path to constant suffering. What a privilege it would be, to grow old in this free world.

Looking at Natasha, who despite the burdens both shared with Yelena and also her own, seems so light and free when she talks of her family, she wonders. What crazy, unexpected things might the new world have in store for her? Could she find something to make her feel as her sister does?

She leans back on her car seat and wonders, and dreams.