The handcuffs are icy cold against her wrists.
The unfamiliar sensation is the first thing she notices, and she comes to with a start.
There’s noise, so much noise, and movement all around her, and —
Where is she?
Through dazed eyes she struggles to take in her surroundings; soldiers, everywhere , shouting, a bus driving past with a photo of the Black Widow proudly displayed, and a sign that says Heathrow. Heathrow , what the—
«On your feet, maggot!»
She’s kicked, quite literally, out of her reverie, by the sharp command and a boot.
She jerks up, shocked by the display of disrespect, and turns to the speaker of the voice, the fact that she seemed to have awoken on what was clearly not her bed, somewhere that was clearly not her house, temporarily forgotten. She may not know where she is, and for the time being all she seems to have are the clothes on her person and, of course, her ranking as a Major , thank you very much.
«That is no way to address an officer, Sergeant,» she says, the confidence and authority rolling of her tongue easily.
«It’s how I address a slack jawed recruit, maggot,» he shouts and shoves a bundle of clothes at her.
Dumbfounded, Yelena opens her mouth to speak again, but another interrupts her.
«Hold up there, Sergeant», a voice says, «Can I help you, ma’am?»
The newcomer is a dark skinned, tall man, with a quite incriminating character trait; a big eye patch covers his right eye, and if she squints she can make out the faint lines of scarred tissue.
The tag on his uniform says Fury.
«Where the hell am I, sir?» Yelena asks, barely able to keep the annoyance out of her voice.
Neither one comments on the slight tremble in her tone.
«Forward Operating Base Heathrow. You just came in with the fresh recruits.»
«Do I strike you as a fresh recruit?»
He looks her up and down.
«No, ma'am, you do not.»
«My name is Yelena Belova,» Yelena starts, too riled up to take any offense by Fury's observation. She doesn't look like a recruit because she isn't. «I’m an american officer, and there has been a mistake. If you take me to a phone, I’d like to explain that to my commanding officer in Washington.»
«Oh, there has been no mistake,» Fury says.
He pulls a paper out of his left pocket.
As he reads, dread pools into Yelena’s stomach.
«It says here that you’re a deserter. Says here you were caught impersonating an officer. Says here you’d likely try to make an outside call, compromising the security of this entire operation.»
He looks at her, as if daring her to dispute him.
The word deserter rings through her head. Her, a deserter?
The events of yesterday flashes in her mind.
Waking up in a helicopter; she was on her way to London to meet with General Pierce.
Like fragments she remembers what she was asked, to go cover the assault on the french front. General Pierce commanding her to cover the events on the front. That was not what she signed up for, she was a reporter, a spokesperson, not a goddamn fighter. She’s not ridiculous. She’d die within a minute.
Deserter. No, it’s just that she doesn’t want to die, nobody really wants to die, do they? That’s not a crime, it couldn’t be.
She did run, but...
«I—»
«Anything to get out of combat duty tomorrow. But that’s not going to happen. Ever.»
«You see, Private,» Fury continues, voice full of disdain. «Rumor is a terrible thing. Come nightfall, the soldiers here will know that you are a coward and a liar, putting your life above theirs.»
He motions at her to walk with him, and she does, almost mechanically, doing her best not to fall over from the shock of it all.
«Good news there’s still hope for you. Hope in the form of glorious combat. Battle is the great redeemer. The fiery crucible in which only true heroes are forged.»
Yelena tries not to look at the people they pass, but she feels the burn of several stares in her neck.
«The one place where all men truly share the same rank...regardless of what kind of parasitic scum they were going in.»
He stops and turns on his heel to stare her down.
«Welcome to your squad, Private. You will be combat ready by 0600 in the morning.»
He keeps talking, but it’s almost as if it’s underwater, the sound muffled, and Yelena spirals and spirals.
«Tomorrow you will be baptized. Be born again!»
If she only knew just how right he was.
Her assigned squad, Squad A, knows she’s a deserter.
They know, because Fury makes sure to tell them repeatedly before he leaves.
Along with the fear, there’s a feeling of shame simmering underneath it, a feeling she really does not want to think about.
«Those sure not look like officer cufflings,» someone says.
Yelena wants to laugh. And cry.
She throws the clothes on her new bed instead, staying silent.
«Ah, forgive me, it’s been a while since I’ve talked to a lady of your position, o’ fair officer ,» he drawls. The voice belongs to a man in the corner, who’s fiddling with a bunch of cards.
«Ignore him,» another cuts in. «I’m Steve, Steve Rogers,» a tall, very well built man says and steps towards her.
Despite being in the worst situation of her life, she could still appreciate the last remnants of beauty she’d ever see. Steve Rogers was incredibly handsome, there was no denying that.
In fact, a quick sweep of the room made her feel like she was back in high school, sitting by herself at lunch, looking at all the attractive and successful people having the time of their lives.
Not that anyone here were having the time of their lives. But.
«You should put those cards away, Stark,» a voice booms from the corner. It belonged to yet another blonde, this one with biceps the size of her head. His tag says Thor and he looked like he could squash Yelena under his shoe.
She would listen to him in a heartbeat, but the man with the cards, Stark, seems undeterred. Dramatically he makes a big show out of not so subtly hiding the cards underneath his pillow.
Thor rolls his eyes.
«You know what Sergeant Fury thinks of gambling, Tony,» the only other woman in the room speaks up.
She quickly looks over at Yelena and nods, «I’m Wanda», before turning back to Stark again.
«He dislikes it because it entertains the notion our fate is in hands other than our own, yada yada . You all know the rest.»
And they do. The words ring out in unison.
«Through readiness and discipline, we are masters of our own fate.»
Silence descends over the group.
Yelena tries to find her voice, but fails. No one is paying attention to her anyway. And she doesn’t know what she’d say if they did.
For a second, it’s as if everyone remembers exactly where they’ll be going in the morning.
«Sounds like a bunch of bullcrap if you ask me,» Stark then says, breaking the silence.
«Nobody asked you.»
«You know what, Barnes, one of these days I swear I’m going to slap that grin off your fa—»
«PT IN 2 MINUTES» booms over the P.A., cutting them off.
It’s a cruel reminder that they had places to be and things to do.
Places to go, places to die.
In the silence of the night, on her bunk bed, Yelena cries.
If anyone else hears, they stay silent.
The worst part is not being here, not being in a military camp, surrounded by strangers who have all reasons to hate her.
No, it’s the fact that they’re right.
She does value her own life, and before actually being the one doing the fighting, she didn’t spare many thoughs to the countless lost lives. It was all about recruiting, getting as many people as possible to serve. To die. Numbers on a screen until they were people in front of her eyes.
She is a coward. She’d rather run than fight. She hates herself because she knows that if she can run, turn away without a thought, she would.
Crying for herself makes her hate herself even more. It’s a vicious and cruel circle with no end.
She doesn’t know what to do, where to go, what to do, what to do, what to do.
Morning comes too soon.
They’re awoken with the sun, and a part of her is glad she got to see the final sunrise. It’s highly unlikely she’ll ever see another.
Yelena is scared. So so scared.
Maybe if she’d been anything like The Black Widow, the hero of the battle of Budapest, she’d be able to get into her suit without shivering all over. Maybe she’d be able to kill hundreds of mimics on her first day, a stupid, final trick she’d pull out of her ass somehow.
But she’s not.
She’s a goddamn coward, she does not know how to fight.
And she was going to die.
She barely pays attention to anything, the numbers and icons flashing on her display makes no sense to her, and it’s only the fact that she’d most likely blow herself up that keeps her from bolting right then and there.
And of course there’s the heavy mech-suit that a soldier, tag says Wilson, is currently strapping her to.
«I’ve never been in one of these before,» Yelena says and she hates herself for sounding so goddamn pathetic.
«I’ve never been with two girls at the same time before,» Wilson replies. «But you can bet when that day comes I’ll make it work.»
Yelena kind of wants to puke, but at the same time not.
He turns to leave with a smirk, and Yelena wants to say something, anything, but she can’t bring herself to.
She doesn’t know what to say, just like she doesn’t know how to fight.
Remember, there is no courage without fear.
That’s what Major Fury says.
Yelena is still waiting to feel anything akin to courage.
She doesn’t.
Their world would fall apart in one minute, but it’s still enough time for Stark to squeeze in another joke on her expense.
«Hoy, there’s something wrong with your suit!»
«W-what?»
«There’s a dead person in it!»
It’s a joke, it’s just a joke, but it’s not just a joke because it might be true in not too long, and Yelena does not want to think about that but she can’t not —
«Watch your back out there,» Steve says.
«And preferably the rest of your body too,» Wanda adds from her right.
Easy for you all to say , Yelena thinks. You know what you’re doing. And how does she even get the safety off?
She’s about to ask when the space behind Fury explodes.
It’s just a split second, and then everything shatters; soldiers drop, everyone’s screaming, someone, Wilson?, slams into the rail and his suit goes up in flames, bursting into a fireball, burning in the air and onto her retinas.
Wanda drops, followed by Barnes and Steve.
«Drop or die!» Fury screams at her, and he disappears too, and then everyone’s gone.
With a yelp she hits the lever, and she drops like a stone, flying out of the ship, arms flailing.
The descent isn’t graceful; her knees gives in at impact and she falls face first into the dirt, her visor falling off instantly.
She scrambles to her feet, her movements metallic and awkward - the mech suit is a bad fit, she’s too short for it to work properly, or it’s badly fitted, and she does not know how to fire or use any of her weapons.
Adrenaline is pumping through her veins, along with the fear, and Yelena thinks that the courage Fury was going on about was very welcomed right about now.
She doesn’t know where her squad is or what the hell she’s supposed to be doing.
And then suddenly she spots Thor, who’s waving enthustiastically at her from across the field.
«Can’t believe you did it!»
She takes a step in his direction, but freezes in her tracks.
Cause just then he’s crushed under a drop ship which appears from nothing, and Yelena shrieks and ducks to the side, barely able to escape.
The dust settles, but nothing can stop the racing of her heart.
Thor was just there, alive, a second ago, and now he’s under it and very dead.
That’s how fast it can go.
She tries to get up, but freezes as a figure emerges from the dust.
She can’t see clearly - something wet and sticky is covering the side of her face, when was she hit? Is she bleeding? Oh Gods!, but she can make out that the figure is moving, cutting through mimics with the grace of a dancer and the strength of a hundred men.
Then the figure is right in front of her, picking up a fallen sword, and Yelena realizes that she’s staring straight at Natasha Romanoff.
The Natasha Romanoff, who single handedly killed dozens of mimicks in her first battle. The Black Widow. The Angel of Budapest, The Avenger, or any of the dozen names that the media had given her and Yelena had used hundreds of times to promote the cause.
As much as Yelena would’ve given to not be in her current position, she’d almost give the same amount to have a camera with her so she could’ve snapped a shot. Natasha is bleeding too, but unlike Yelena, who probably looks like the dirt underneath someone’s shoe, maybe Thor's, Natasha looks battle weary, tired, but strong and fierce and incredible.
She looks down at Yelena, opens her mouth as if to say something and—
The ship explodes, and Natasha Romanoff’s body flies towards her and lands next to Yelena in a broken heap, the stench of burned flesh finding its way into her nostrils.
«Wh—»
It takes a second for her brain to process what just happened and what she’s looking at.
«W-what the fuck?»
And she scrambles on and on and on, away from the body, because The Black Widow is dead, again, the fuck?, and they’re all going to die because this is a massacre and the mimicks are coming and Yelena is just so useless.
Through the dust she hears Major Fury shout commands, and suddenly he is on her, and the rest of the squad too, and she gets swept along with them like a wave.
Thor is gone, but Steve is still there, and Bucky and Wanda and Stark too, and despite being an arrogant bastard, the latter seems to thrive in his metal suit, almost wearing it as a second skin.
«Stark, help me!» Yelena screams, «How do I take off my safety?»
«Wanda, give me a sitrep!» Fury shouts over her.
«Stark!»
«They’re not supposed to know we were coming, what the hell?» Bucky is shaking his head in disbelief. «We walked into a slaughterhouse!»
«Get in line, damnit!»
«Five hundred meters and coming in fast!» Wanda’s voice cuts through the air.
«Look alive if you wanna stay that way,» Stark tells her in lieu of an answer. It’s supposed to be a joke, but Yelena knows that he’s scared shitless too, just like she is.
«Few more seconds!» Fury shouts.
Yelena’s still looking at Stark when she spots movement in the dirt in her side vision, and suddenly a mimic rises from the ground, it’s tentacles dashing around wildly and then Stark goes flying.
She falls backwards clumpsily on her ass, and it’s that move, aka just pure luck, that saves her from being impaled.
Bucky screams and there’s blood and metal and flying limbs, and Yelena presses the display in desperation, just trying to get her weapon to fire.
Suddenly Steve is there, holding back the mimic, and it gives Yelena a second, which is enough for her to fucking finally get rid of the safety. With a scream she fires, rounds and rounds towards the mimic, which twists and turns and dies, but not before Steve disappears over the hill in a devastating mix of blood and gore and tentacle. She thinks she spots Bucky’s form reaching for him, and Wanda is nowhere to be seen.
The mimic lies pathetically on the ground, looking like nothing more than fried, limp parody of a burnt spaghetti in death.
Yelena laughs through bloodied teeth, a hysterical sound. She’s definitely going crazy.
The laughter quickly fades to a gurgle in her throat. Cause a shadow is looming over her, and there’s a huge, gigantic mimic digging itself up from the ground not five feet away from her.
Digging up and through the ground like it’s literally making its way from hell.
It’s blue and unlike anything Yelena’s ever seen, and in it’s own morbid way it’s beautiful. Beautiful in another world where it wasn’t looking straight at her, tentacles pulsing, ready to devour her.
There’s a bomb next to her in the dirt, Steve or someone, someone dead, must’ve dropped it, and it’s just within her reach, and there’s no time to think, just do, just react.
She reaches for it as the mimic roars and jumps towards her.
She activates it and there’s light, and a shriek, and a scream, and then mimic is on her, melting away the skin of her body, of her face, of her entire being.
It burns and burns and burns.
She wishes she had some epic final words, one last thing to say before it was over.
She couldn’t have said anything, even if she wanted to, cause in the end there is no time for anything, just pain as her skin burns away, her blood and the mimic’s merging together.
And Yelena screams as she dies.
This time, Yelena’s first conscious thought is not the handcuffs, but the fact that her face is not on fire.
She awakes with a shriek, coming out of whatever messed up dream she just had, hands flying to her face just to make sure , cause the dream she had was more like a nightmare.
And it had felt so real.
But no - and also yes - her face is still there, not burned, not melted, and she’s not dead like she was in her dream, and she’s not in—- wait, where was she?
Her face is fine, but there’s that cold sensation around her wrists again, and she gapes like an idiot, struggling to come to terms with the fact that a) her hands are not covered in blood, but b) very much held together by metal cuffs.
Not officer cufflings, those.
What?
«On your feet, maggot!»
She falls, quite pathetically, off the edge of whatever it is that she was lying on.
«I said on your feet!»
She tries to get up, and it’s easier, not anything like scrambling to rise in muddied dirt, surrounded by bodies and blood and fire.
How does she know what that’s like?
Why does everything seem so familiar, in the worst way?
There’s that Heathrow sign again. And the bus with the Black Widow. And..
«Sergeant Fury?»
«Yes, that’s me,» Fury says, and he’s there, tall, imposing, stone faced and with that eye patch, just like he was.. last time? In her dream?
How is this happening?
«Says here you’re a deserter,» Fury starts, and she realizes she must’ve asked it out loud. «Says here you were caught impersonating an officer. Says here you’d likely try to make an outside call, compromising the security of this entire operation.»
«I—»
It’s like a record player, rewinding and replaying, and the familiarity comes in fragments, but it’s the same, everything is the same, and it’s just impossible.
Yet it is happening.
It’s the same all over again - there’s hope for you yet, glorious combat, where heroes are forged - and soon they’re in the barracks again, and there’s Steve and Bucky and Thor and Wanda and Stark, all there and all alive.
Once, Yelena had read that the faces you see in your dreams are only of people you’ve already met. This is the first time seeing Squad A, but she knows all their faces, and worst of it, all their names.
It shouldn’t be possible. But it is.
It’s the same again; Stark making jokes, Thor rolling his eyes, Wanda introducing herself but Yelena already knows all of this, knows what’s going to happen because —
It’s happened before, she’s seen it.
The day passes on autopilot, in a trance, and before she knows it’s morning, and Wilson is strapping her in again.
She tries to locate the safety button first thing, because it seems like the most logical thing to do, cause not knowing that and going into battle would be the end of her. She didn’t do that in her dream. That was stupid of her.
She presses the wrong button. Again? A part of her suit falls to the ground with a clatter.
«Hoy, what are you doing?» Wilson asks. «Have you never been in a suit before?»
Yelena hesitates.
«I don’t think so..?»
He stares at her for a second, eyebrows raised.
How can you not be sure of that? they seem to say.
Something beeps to her left and he turns to leave, and she’s glad the question remains unspoken.
Cause she has no idea how to answer.
She’s bracing for an explosion - not because she’s a hundred percent sure that she can somehow see the future, but because there’s a part of her that wants to believe that she’s not insane and that she has to trust her mind at least to a certain extent, because otherwise what the hell is she supposed to do?
When it hits, and Fury is yelling for everyone to drop or die, drop, drop , Yelena freezes, because it happened, just as it happened in her dream, and that can’t be a coincidence.
Wilson crashes into the wall, and Yelena forces herself to move, hitting the drop lever and then she goes flying.
The impact is hard, not at all graceful, but this time, the visor stays on. Last time it must’ve cut her, cause she’s not bleeding now, there’s no sticky wetness on the side of her face.
Everything, up to this point, had been just like what she’d seen, and a feeling of horror settles in her stomach.
Wilson! She could’ve saved him! Could she have? She should’ve told him, or anyone, what was going to happen! In a way, it’s her fault that he’s dead, because she knew but didn’t do anything.
But then, what about—
«Can’t believe you did it!»
She forgot about Thor, and it’s a second too late, and she screams at him to watch out just as the ship hits, crushing him under heavy metal and steel.
And there it is again, the Black Widow’s ship, and Natasha’s silhouette is fighting, and it’s just as mesmerizing as the first time.
But there’s no time to think because Natasha will be dead in just a minute, so Yelena does the first thing that comes to mind. With a yell, she takes off and rams into the other woman, and they go flying through the air, landing with an audible thud.
Something hits the back of Yelena’s suit, and it hurts, but she can’t tell if it was just the impact with the earth or something else.
«Am I hit?» Yelena cries. «Am I?»
Natasha Romanoff looks at her then and Yelena feels her hands on her back, prodding. She looks dirtied and bloody, and very unimpressed by Yelena’s interference.
«Yes, there’s a hole in your back,» she says. «Right… here,» at the here, she rips out Yelena’s batteries and her suit gives a final moan before dying.
«Wait, what? Did you just take my batteries?»
The Black Widow says nothing before turning her back and walking away.
«Hey! What are you— oh God!»
There’s a mimic in the dirt, right there , and Yelena can’t get up, can’t move and it comes for her, tentacles spinning wildly.
Everything goes dark, and she screams.
This time, as she wakes, her hands are in front of her, as if they’re up in a desperate attempt to block the inevitable impact of the mimic.
She stares at them dumbfounded, at the handcuffs holding her wrists together; her hands , so impossibly clean, which they definitely hadn’t been just moments before.
There’s no dirt, no mud and no blood. No death. Not yet anyway. She has to warm them! Embracing the crazy be damned!
«Sergeant Fury! Sergeant Fury!»
She’s up and running before Fury even manages to get out of the car, and she know she’s babbling, knows it’s confusing, and it is because it is, but Yelena swears that she’s not going crazy, because there’s absolutely no way she can know what she does without it having happened before.
Scratch that. That does sound absolutely crazy and she’s definitely seeing things.
But real things. That hasn’t happened yet. But will happen. Real. Not crazy. She’s not going crazy. Not really, one hundred percent batshit crazy. Somewhere in the middle.
She tells Fury that he has a paper in his pocket, his left, and he does.
She couldn’t have known that. Shouldn’t have. But she had lived this before so now she knows it.
She leads the way to Squad A on her own accord, and says all their names before no one gets a word in.
So no, she can’t be one hundred percent crazy.
The things she has seen must’ve happened, but then someone, somehow, for some reason, brought her back to the same point over and over again.
Cause there’s absolutely no way she’d know any of the things she knows unless that wasn’t the case.
It’s so much to wrap her head around, too much, and again, she knows she’s sounding like a wildwoman, but she can’t be, not completely, because she’s been right so far and that means that they were all going to die in tomorrow’s battle! Slaughtered within minutes!
«You have to listen to me,» Yelena pants, standing in front of Fury and the rest of the squad, all of which have said nothing during her entire triade.
Fury lifts his eyebrow, unimpressed, and a part of Yelena snaps, because how could he possibly not believe, not just a tiny bit, that this is highly unnatural, that Yelena knows things she really shouldn’t have.
She looks at him, and dread settles in his stomach; she knows he’s decided. She’s lost her mind.
After all, she knows what the letter says. That she’s a coward. And would do anything to get out of combat duty.
If it wasn’t goddamn fucking true, Yelena would’ve struggled to believe it herself. It did sound like a final ditch attempt to escape, a quite pathetic one at that too.
So she can’t stop it.
They suit up, and they go, and the ship is going to explode—!
It does.
Everyone drops.
And everyone falls.
Maybe she’s cursed.
Maybe it’s karma for recruiting thousands of soldiers to battle and not sparing them a second thought.
Maybe she’s destined to live every one of their lives, and die like them.
Maybe.
She doesn’t know what it is. What the meaning is. What she is supposed to be doing.
She doesn’t know what anything is anymore.
Yelena sees it all;
There’s Tony trying to keep his hands from shaking, the dark look in his eyes when he thinks no one’s looking, how he covers it up with a smile and a bad joke,
There’s Steve and Bucky sharing looks, a glance there, a smirk there, a touch there,
There’s Wanda clutching a picture to her chest, silently crying in the night - it’s of my brother, she tells her in one loop - and maybe she’d have done that the first time too, but that time Yelena didn’t notice what she does now, didn’t think far past her own misery,
Yelena sees it all; their deaths, over and over and over.
She sees everything and knows everything.
Except how to save them.
When she was younger Yelena had dreamed of going to France.
She’d dreamed of streets that smelled like freshly baked baguettes, and flowers, and the ambiance of people chatting at roadside cafes.
Yelena of the present would very much like to be anywhere but France.
The Yelena of now would very much like to go back to sleep and dream of a place where she drowned in the sound of laughter, not the sound of screams and explosions and death.
But she wakes. And lives.
And dies.
And it never ends.
In the beginning she tries to keep count.
How many times she’s lived, how many times she’s died.
Now she’s given up.
It all blends into each other anyway, and even though they’re all separate, the lines between them just blurs.
Was there ever a time where she didn’t know how to reload her guns? Was there a time where the mech suit was weighing her down, instead of letting her fly?
It’s all the same. Blurred, aimless and unfocused.
Which is why it’s all the more of a shock, a huge, gigantic change, when Natasha Romanoff looks at her, finally really looks at her, and says:
«Find me when you wake up.»
Find me when you wake up.
Natasha’s words are the last one she hears when she dies, and the first ones she thinks of when she wakes.
Yelena’s eyes fly open, and she stares right at the bus with the poster of The Black Widow, of Natasha, and as the shock wears off, she thinks,
Yes, yes! This is something!
And then,
Find her? How the hell am I supposed to find her?
It’s easier said than done, but she makes it happen.
Fueled by a new desire, a new purpose, something, she listens intentionally for the whispers of where the Black Widow is stationed.
She’s, after all, a legend; the Avenger of the battle of Budapest, where she had, on her first day no less, fought with such skill and saved so many soldiers and killed so many mimics.
A voice in her head tells her that that should be something worth noting, but in that moment she’s too focused at the task at hand.
Because the whispers come, as do the shouts, cause the Black Widow is admired for her accomplishments.
So it doesn’t take too long to figure out where she is, but it takes a bit longer to get herself there.
Her only chance to sneak away is during P.E. The plan is easy, and also ridiculous and stupid, so it takes quite a few tries to do it. Insult Fury, get a dirty look from Tony, and taking the fifty pushups. And then rolling underneath a moving car.
God dammnit.
After plenty of tries, taking the pushups becomes so much easier that she does have to try to hide how effortless it is, to not drag unwanted attention. She’s a journalist, not a fighter, and she couldn’t even do a single hang up before this day. Living the same day over and over certainly changes things.
She flips from her push up, into a roll, and under the wheels of the passing truck. She grits her teeth, hoping that her hair won’t catch in anything, the phantom pain of an earlier failure still fresh in her mind.
Being run over absolutely sucks.
But it works, finally, and she tries not to yell of happiness and compromise her mission.
Then she’s up and powerwalking towards the Black Widow’s station, acting like she knows where she’s going and absolutely knows what she’s doing. Which she most definitely isn’t , but no one has to know that.
She gets a few looks, but she shrugs them off.
Only act like you know everything, she whispers to herself.
The sound of machines are all around her; she’s in the training facility, and there’s a huge open space to her side, fit for fighting against dummy mimics.
She sees some suspended in the air, and the machines are fast and wicked, much like their real life counterparts.
In the middle of the room is a figure, down in something of a yogapose, and by the stares and whispers all around her she knows that she’s looking at the Black Widow herself.
She resists the urge to simply yell at her, and instead takes a step out in the room, crossing the safety line. An alarm beeps, and Yelena lets out a small wince, but pushes through regardless. She’s so close to Natasha and to answers so she can’t find it in her to care for a little bit of trespassing.
Hearing the sound of her approach, Natasha jumps to her feet, tanktop sticking to her skin.
Her braid whips behind her as she snaps.
«What do you want?»
«I—» Yelena hesitates for a brief second, Natasha’s hostile tone catching her off guard. How does she explain anything?
The gravity of the situation, the utmost importance of making Natasha understand, hits her then, and it’s like the air is knocked out of her from the force of it, rendering her temporarily speechless; afraid to say the wrong thing, and even more afraid of saying nothing at all.
«Have I got something on my face?»
No, no, you don’t, Yelena wants to say, not yet anyway, not until tomorrow when it’s covered with blood.
«Who said you could talk to me?»
That’s easier.
«You did!» Yelena says, finally finding her voice. «Tomorrow! Tomorrow at the beach!»
Natasha stops at that, suddenly standing up straighter. A stray hair falls into her face but she ignores it.
«I did?» Her voice is all business, but Yelena detects the slight tremble in it. Does she believe her? Could she? How? Why?
«Yes. You told me to find you when I woke up,» Yelena says, insists.
« Tomorrow at the beach?»
«Yes,» Yelena says again, because she doesn’t really know what to do anymore if Natasha doesn’t believe her either, if no one does, and she’s cursed to live this hellish existence forever.
«Tomorrow at the beach...» Natasha whispers, more for herself than for Yelena, as if struggling to make sense of it.
Yelena doesn’t blame her, she barely believes it herself.
«Tomorrow...» and then something seems to click, and Natasha looks up at her, and just like she did at the beach, really looks at her.
It strikes Yelena then that the pictures doesn’t do the Black Widow any justice whatsoever. It’s not that they don’t cover her badassness or valor, they do, truly, but now, staring into her eyes, Yelena sees what she hadn’t before; her green eyes, fierce and powerful, were in a way familiar. Those eyes had seen things. Impossible things.
Like hers.
«You—?» Yelena starts, but before she can even attempt to make any assumptions or let her mind go there , Natasha’s hand fly out and grabs her by the wrist.
«Come with me,» she commands, and then she’s off. She’s slightly taller than Yelena, so she almost trips over her feet. In an earlier life, an earlier day, she would’ve. Natasha lets go of her hand when she’s sure she’s following.
Natasha Romanoff walks like she owns the room, with a purpose, and Yelena doesn’t take the time to process exactly where they’re going because the last thing she wants at the moment is to fall behind.
«You don’t talk to anyone about this but me,» Natasha says and glances at Yelena over her shoulder.
Yelena barely resists the urge to answer something the along the lines of ‘yes, m’am’, cause she’s about 99 percent sure Natasha wouldn’t appreciate that very much. Barely.
She leads them to a door, swings it open and slips inside, and Yelena has no choice but to follow. She feels more than she sees the presence of another as the door slams shut, and she twirls, taking in the newcomer.
He doesn’t address her immediately though, his stare going straight to Natasha. He’s taller than her, but it’s not entirely obvious with how he seems to be leaning slightly forward, back hunched as he plays with his fingers.
«What are you doing here? You gotta give me some warning,» he starts, but cuts off as he seemingly notices her for the first time.
«Who’s this?»
«She’s me,» Natasha replies swiftly. «Before Budapest.»
His eyes fly open. Something green seems to flicker in his eyes.
«What? You mean, she’s—you’re— how many fingers am I holding up behind my back?»
He’s babbling back and forth, and it takes a second for Yelena’s mind to catch up the fact that he’s addressing her.
«How am I supposed to know that?»
«So this is the first time we’re having this conversation.»
He turns to Natasha, seemingly ignoring her yet again.
«Has she had any visions yet?»
«Visions of what?»
«There’s still time.»
«Time for what?»
«Yes.» Natasha nods. «We should try this on her,» she says, holding up a device of some sort.
«What is that?»
«It doesn’t work.»
«Wait, listen, I’m sorry,» Yelena cuts them both off. «Who is this?» She looks at Natasha, then at the man. «Who are you?»
«I’m Dr. Banner. Particle physics. Advanced microbiology,» he says, quite offhandedly, like he’s entirely unconcerned by talking about someone when they’re standing right in front of them.
«Bruce is also the only other person who will believe what’s happening to you,» Natasha adds. «No one understands mimic biology better than him. He’s a top analyst at Whitehall.»
«Well, I was , until I met Natasha,» Bruce says. «Now I’m just a ‘mechanic with psychiatric delusions’.»
Natasha rolls her eyes at him. Affectionately? Yelena didn’t think that was possible, but Natasha does it somehow. Whatever the two of them had been through together, Yelena could tell that they cared a great deal for each other, even if one seemed too stoic to care or was very socially awkward, respectively.
«Bruce, show her.»
«Oh, yes, look over here, miss—?» - «Yelena» Yelena supplies - «Yelena, right, so first of all, you’re not fighting an army,» Bruce begins.
With a press on a keypad the table in front of them lights up, and in the middle of it a hologram of... something… appears.
«You have to think of everything as a single organism. The mimics, these common drones, are like its claws.»
A view of the mimics she’s seen so many times pops to life in front of her.
«This,» Bruce says, pointing past it and to the giant blob in the middle, «is the brain. The Omega.»
«The mimic you killed, the first time you woke up, did it look anything like this?» Natasha asks her, and nods towards the mimic.
«No,» Yelena says. «It was bigger, blue-ish.»
Horrifying. Beautiful.
«Like this?» Bruce presses a button and the creature of her nightmares is there, on the screen, floating in front of her, looking harmless in its hologram form.
«Yeah. That’s it.» Yelena whispers. It’s kind of unfair, really. How something so beautiful can be so deadly. But perhaps that’s the point, the ultimate lure. To give the victim one last thing to see before they die. She wants to send a sidewards glance at Natasha at the thought.
«And when you died, you got covered in its blood?» Natasha asks.
«Among other things.»
Natasha snorts and gives an affirmative shrug, in a been-there-done-that type of way.
«Yeah, it was pretty gross.» Yelena scrunches her nose at the thought.
Bruce looks disgusted but sort of amazed at the same time.
«The thing is, the Omega has the ability to control time. Whenever an Alpha is killed, an automatic response is triggered—» Bruce snaps his fingers, «and the Omega starts the day over again. But this time it can remember what happens. Just like you do now.»
«And there’s the other thing,» Natasha says, pointing at the Omega and then the Alpha and then directly at Yelena. «When you killed the Alpha and you got alpha-goo all over you, you inadvertently entered its nervous system.»
«So..» Yelena says, trying to wrap her mind around it. A brain. A time controlling entity. «..I have seized the Omega’s ability to reset the day?»
«You have. Just like how I did in Budapest.»
It makes sense.
It’s incredible how a time resetting alien-being makes sense to her, and to have any sort of explanation, regardless of how crazy it sounded, makes her feel infinitely better.
And Natasha.. she had it too. Had had it. Back in Budapest. If there’s anything that makes her believe everything it’s that. Natasha Romanoff was, after all, famous for killing hundreds of mimics in her first battle, for changing the tide of the war in their favor. The Avenger, the Black Widow, the Angel of Budapest; she had gained many names.
No one should have been able to be that good in their first battle.
When Yelena looks at Natasha now it all clicks.
It wasn’t her first battle, not by a long shot.
Yelena wonders if Natasha was ever like her. Absolutely clueless and useless. The thought of a past Natasha like that when she now carried herself like a warrior made Yelena pause.
Wait— how many times? How did it end?
«So there’s a cure? You had the power, but not anymore?»
«Here’s rule number one; in order to reset the day you have to make sure you die. If you don’t, you wake up like me, injured, but alive, in a field hospital with three pints of someone else’s blood. And you’re out.»
«That’s it? A blood transfusion? So any of you could get me out of this?» Something akin to hope flutters in her stomach.
«Listen to me, when your blood is free of alien influence you’re out. And so are we.» There’s an edge to Natasha’s voice.
«I—what?»
«You’re the only one who can change the outcome. These Alphas, they don’t come and go as they please. They are extremely rare.»
Bruce pipes up «..6.18 million, by my guess. They’re so powerful and thus so valuable to the Omega that it resets the time every time one of them dies. Unless someone,” he looks at her “miraculously steals the power. If so, from what we’ve gathered, they cease to exist. When Natasha killed hers she never saw it again, and we assume it’s gone forever, even in future lives, the only remains of it being the power which Natasha, and now you, have.»
«The chance of another coming along, someone killing it while being covered in its blood, and then being stuck in a loop, and finding us and then finding the Omega is abysmal. »
It does sound extremely improbable. As the flutter dies, a small part of her wants to argue that it did happen not once but twice, but Yelena knows it would be futile and stupid.
The odds of it happening again were extremely low and they all knew it.
«Last time we were allowed to win. This thing wants us to believe we can win.» Natasha raspy voice cuts through Yelena’s inner turmoil. «Operation Downfall isn’t our downfall. It’s the enemy’s. This is our final shot. You need to use the power until you get a vision of the Omega. And I need to destroy it.»
A heavy silence descends after her words. No one comments on her blatant lack of plural in her last sentence. To be honest, Yelena’s not entirely motivated to jump headfirst into a battle with the Omega anyway. For a second Natasha’s eyes seem like they’re far away, and Bruce sends her a sympathetic look. And his posture hardens.
«Right now you are our final shot. Up till now, the enemy has had the power to reset and to know what is going to happen. Now we have it. Or you do. And as far as we know, there is no way to change that unless we kill the Omega.»
And save the world.
«And if you lose the power, we give the only advantage we will have back to them.»
«And we all die,» Natasha says, finally. «And it will be the end. Permanently.»
The silence lasts longer this time. Bruce is fidgeting and staring at the projection of the Omega, and Natasha is staring at her.
Yelena weighs her options.
And she can’t believe she’s really weighing them at all. There’s two, but really truly only one.
It’s like the first day in the bunker, when she cried herself to sleep and cried some more because she was such a coward because she cried because she wanted to live.
Now she was asked to die, over and over, until she got a vision of the Omega. If she didn’t, the enemy would win. And everyone would die.
If she tried to give her power away and it worked , but the world still ended anyway and she knew it would happen, she definitely wouldn’t be able to live with herself.
It was a cruel irony to it all.
And she was done crying about it. The girl who cried herself to sleep on the first day was dead. Many times over.
«What do you want me to do?»
The plan is simple: die until she gets the visions, locate the Omega, get there without dying and kill it to save the world.
Simple in theory.
Natasha vows to train her, and Yelena does her best to learn.
It’s hard work, so much hard work, and Natasha points out faults everywhere; her posture, her technique, reaction time, reloading, everything. But under Natasha’s guidance she excels, sucking up her pointers like a sponge. Yelena can’t quite explain it, but she wants to prove herself to Natasha, hell, even be better than her somehow. She feels the long buried competitiveness in her bones return.
The onslaught of mimics is relentless, and Yelena can’t quite decide if she prefers dying in the training facility or in the field. At least now she doesn’t have to watch her squad die over and over again. Wanda’s sobs or Steve’s cry for Bucky. The sound of Thor’s bones breaking under tons of steel.
She wakes up and her body is healed, but there’s still the phantom pain and it’s weird having pushed yourself to the breaking point, to death , and just seconds later it’s supposedly all good again.
Her body is healed, but her mind is splitting apart a little.
And Yelena’s pretty sure the most painful thing is to face down the barrel of Natasha’s gun - remember , make sure you die - and seeing nothing but cold resolve in her eyes. It’s everything, a nod of approval, but it can happen once, and then in another there’s nothing.
She’s not sure how many times Natasha has taken it upon herself to end her and reset the day, but every time is the first time for her and another for Yelena.
She wonders how she’d react herself, what she would do and what she would have thought if she was anyone but herself in this scenario.
She tries to imagine what she would’ve thought if someone she had never met had approached her and then proceeded to know everything about her life.
She would probably have been thoroughly confused and very wary, and a bit scared too.
Natasha seems colder, and perhaps in a way it makes it all easier, because if she wasn’t it would all hurt even more. Like she knows.
And Yelena wonders, when she dies, if the entire day is just whiskered out of existence or if, by dying, there’s created hundreds of different alternate timelines. She hopes it’s the former, cause she really can’t dwell on the last part. Dozens of timelines where Natasha, for no apparent reason, pretty much executes a defenseless and injured private. And that she’s charged for murder, and that in every timeline she’s forced to wait for the Omega’s army to kill the entire world, all the while knowing she failed.
So yeah, Yelena has to believe that everything simply ends and then starts again, because anything but that would be horrible. It could take hundreds of tries, thousands, millions, but if she got it right in just one it wouldn’t matter.
And maybe that’s why Natasha doesn’t seem to care about Yelena in the slightest.
Because until they get the Omega’s location, everything that happens is going to be reset so it doesn’t matter what they say or what they do.
It doesn’t matter that Yelena is unable to stop herself from reaching out to tuck that one stray hair off Natasha’s face.
Or that Yelena cracks a joke and Natasha does her best to not laugh at it, but sometimes she does and Yelena’s heart flutters.
Or that one nod of approval.
Or that Natasha tells her things in one life, and in the next she doesn’t know that Yelena knows. It feels invasive to know personal things about someone and looking at them, knowing that they don’t know that you know so much more about them that they have told you. Even if they did tell you, once. Natasha betrays later versions of herself, and the idea of that is weird.
Not that Natasha offers a lot, save for harsh guidance and a bullet, but after a certain amount of tries Yelena is bound to notice things.
There’s a lot of things that won’t matter, ultimately, in the end.
But Yelena can’t really stop herself from feeling that it does, can’t stop herself from carrying with her, because even if Natasha forgets everything Yelena is unable to.
She doesn’t want to forget what Natasha’s face looks like - “do I have something on my face? ” - because it doesn’t matter what life it is; Natasha looks fierce, and brave and beautiful and it would be a shame if there’s no one to appreciate it.
But Yelena can. And she does.
Natasha shoots her, but this time, instead of instantly waking up, gasping like a fish out of water, the entire world explodes into fragments.
Into bits and pieces of light and shadows, and Yelena struggles to keep up with the onslaught of pictures.
Snow. Mountains. A river and a dam. It must be there!
“I’ve had the visions,” Yelena tells them, back in the lab. “I’ve seen the Omega.”
Bruce looks relieved and excited, and she knows Natasha feels the same, even if she tries to hide it.
Yelena explains what she saw, down to every single detail she can remember.
“There can’t be too many places that fit that description. I’ll see what I can do,” Bruce says, already tapping ferociously on his keyboard.
“Training is over. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Natasha’s voice is already far away, and Yelena turns to her, as always shocked at the speed and stealth of which the other woman is able to move.
“Wait, we don’t even know where we’re going!”
“We will soon enough.” She turns to leave, hand resting on the door. “In the meantime you need to figure out how to get us off that beach.”
Earlier, Yelena wasn’t sure if she prefered to be shot by Natasha or die on the beach, but now she’s positive that she definitely prefers the former.
Dying on the beach is horrible for an abundance of reasons; the loop lasts longer, so she has to interact with squad A, learning more about them every time, only to hurt more when she fails them.
And it’s worse cause they’re closer to the Endgame now; Bruce has finally found the location of the Omega, so every loop she lives might well be the last, and every death she sees may be the final one.
And the beach, this goddamn forsaken beach, was no place for good people to die, buried in bloodied dirt.
And for every life lost she wants to start over, but knows she can’t, because there’s no way everyone could possibly make it out of this alive. She pushes Thor out of the way every time, but leaves him after that, and she doesn’t know if he’ll live. She flies past Wanda and drowns the oncoming mimic in a rain of bullets, and she hears Stark’s shout of surprise.
She can’t change everything, but she can try to give them just a little more time.
But when Natasha dies, a warrior’s death every time, but a death all the same, Yelena feels like giving up too.
It’s just so fucking hard, going on about it, on and on and on, trying to predict the mimic’s movements, and knowing everything but still too little. One misstep and Natasha’s dead, and Yelena has to live the future to know it, so when they pass the point where she got in her previous life, she’s unable to save Natasha or herself when she’s caught by surprise.
Next time they know, but it’s a game of two steps forward one step back where two steps forward means seeing Natasha die over and over again.
She tries to not care cause she knows Natasha doesn’t want her to give up --
you can do this. You can. You keep coming back here every day and I’ll train you. --
but she does care, and for so long she has come back --
you already have . --
and maybe now, every time Natasha dies and Yelena lowers her weapons, she cares so much that she’d rather be murdered by a mimic than bleed to death from the pain of it.
She’s been compromised. One hundred percent, fully and utterly compromised.
So much so that when they get of the beach, fight their way to an abandoned car and drives it until it stops at an abandoned farmhouse, she lays it all out.
“This must be the final time,” Yelena starts and Natasha narrow’s her eyes at her. “There’s no use lying to you. Trust me, I’ve tried.” Yelena wills herself not to cry, does her best not to, but she feels the treacherous water starting to fill her eyes.
She’s sad, but also so angry. At herself. At her own lack of ability. And at Natasha, for being so practical and cold, and resetting the day and just dying every fucking time and expecting Yelena to be okay with that--
“This is as far as you go. No matter what I do, this is as far as you ever make it.”
“How many times?” Natasha’s voice is sharp, cutting to the chase. It’s like a knife to Yelena’s heart. No point trying to lie then, just as she expected. “How many times have we been here?”
Yelena can’t answer the question. She’s lost count. The silence confirms it.
Abruptly, Natasha jumps to her feet and pushes Yelena aside, making her way out of the house and towards the helicopter in the garden.
Yeah. There’s a helicopter in the garden. The first time Yelena thought it was funny that someone would have that for whatever reason. It stopped being funny after that, when all she kept seeing was Natasha crashing it, being crushed or burned to death.
“The only thing we haven’t tried is a version where you walk away, just go back to the farmhouse. There’s food, you wait there until I get back. You’ll be safe,” Yelena pleads.
Natasha pointedly ignores it and gets into the helicopter.
“I’m a soldier. I volunteered. I am not walking away.”
“Listen, goddamnit, just listen to me, Nat!”
The nickname rolls easily off her tongue, and it feels foreign but so right all the same. Natasha whips around at the sound of it, green eyes wide and staring.
“You don’t get to call me that.”
Only Clint ever does, goes unspoken, but this Natasha doesn’t know that Yelena knows all about him. And she doesn’t want to bring it up, doesn’t want to just seem to know everything, but she does.
“Clint is not here anymore,” Yelena replies. It’s a low blow and she knows it.
The glare Natasha levels at her is deadly, and her entire body has gone still. A viper, poised to strike. She opens her mouth to retort, but Yelena doesn’t give her the chance to.
“You’ve commanded me around time and time again, but not it’s your turn to listen to me !” Yelena explodes. “I know about Clint. I know how much he meant to you, and I know that he died in Budapest and that you couldn’t save him because you lost the power.”
Natasha pales, clearly remembering Clint and everything that happened. But not remembering that she told Yelena all about it. Yelena kind of wants to hit something, it’s all just so painful and frustrating .
“I know that he’s the reason why you act like you do towards me. I know you cared about him and that it’s killing you. You of all people should know exactly how it feels to watch someone you care about dying over and over again.»
You of all people should know exactly how I feel.
Natasha’s voice is raspy and raw.
“Why do you care about me? Why do you care what happens to me?”
“I wish I didn’t know you, but I do. I know you now and it’s too late. I do.” A tear escapes, and Yelena wipes it away angrily. “And I want to say that I’m sorry for knowing about Clint when you clearly never told me, but the worst part is that you did. The worst part is that every time you meet me for the first time, I have already met you. Hundreds of times. Who knows how many? I was never any good at maths. Maybe I should try improve now, it’s not like I don’t have the time.” She laughs, but it’s bitter and humourless. “I know you, and I know that if you get on that helicopter the mimic that’s buried not too far away from here will rise and attack when you---”
The engine starts with a roar, and with a scream of frustration Yelena jumps aside, narrowingly avoiding the choppers.
She told Natasha that she knows her, and a part of her is entirely unsurprised over the fact that she’s not backing down. Natasha couldn’t be swayed in a day. She’s all too stubborn to give in. It didn’t help that Yelena lived the day over and over when Natasha didn’t.
But it hurts anyway, just like it did all the previous times.
Words couldn’t stop her. Actions couldn’t stop her - she’d tried that too, to actually fight her, and it had been bloody and horrible and wrong. Natasha was still a better fighter than her, but it had been close, so close, and suddenly they had been too, too close, lying on top of each other there in the dirt, breathing heavily.
The mimic screeches as it lands on the glass, and Natasha fires at it and bullets and glass and blood explodes everywhere. The helicopter and goes flying along with it, and it crashes into the barn in a mad spin.
Yelena grabs the shotgun and finishes off the mimic.
She finds Natasha’s broken body further ahead, behind the wreckage, and Yelena is taken back to the very first time, to when the ship exploded and she lay very much like that. So much had happened since then, so much and nothing at all.
The tears spill over and streams down her cheeks, and she does nothing to hide them or wipe them away.
Natasha once told her that love was for children, and even if it feels like a lifetime ago for Yelena, she knows that Natasha must still think that. Yelena wishes she didn’t, wishes that Natasha could live so Yelena could show her that it wasn’t true. To show her that it wasn’t unbelievable that someone cared.
Natasha, so stubborn and such a goddamn idiot. So brave. And so pretty. Yelena hated her. But Yelena cared. Yelena, be damned, loved her.
«I hate you.» Yelena says.
She takes Natasha’s bloodied hand and kisses it, wipes away the hair that has come loose over her face, and she swears she sees Natasha’s lips curl into a weak smile before her breath stills.
In that moment she knows that Natasha knows.
And Yelena meant what she had said. This had to be the final time.
After that she tries to go on alone.
It’s probably not the right way, but this way, if she’s fast enough, she can kill the Omega and end the war.
She doesn’t want to think about what it means if she’s not present at the beach.
The first time Natasha died, it was because she was distracted by Yelena, she tells herself. This time there are no distractions and she’ll be just fine. She’ll live and she’ll lend a hand to Squad A and Steve, Bucky, Wanda and Tony will live too.
And Yelena is going to kill the Omega and that’ll be it.
There’s going to be deaths, permanent ones, but dammit, what is she to do? She couldn’t possibly save everyone, that was never how it was meant to be. The old Yelena would never be so casual about death. But the old Yelena is gone.
Sweat streams down her face and she wipes it away with her free hand. The helicopter is wobbling, but it hasn’t gone down yet, and Yelena grits her teeth and wills it to take her to the dam.
It didn’t take long for Bruce to locate it, he’s a genius. But it was hard, even for a genius like Bruce or a strong fighter as Natasha, to figure out how to get there safely.
Now Yelena is finally almost there, and as the helicopter comes to a standstill she cries a little tear of relief.
Alright, next up, she thinks. Find the Omega and blast it back to hell. She loads up her weapons and exits with determined steps. The shaking she attributes to the cold.
The dam is eerily silent and seemingly abandoned. But she knows it isn’t. And so, the sound of dripping water and the occasional howl of the wind kind of makes Yelena want to shit herself.
She walks until suddenly the hallway in front of her seems familiar, and she follows it inwards, glancing at the shadows, muscles tensed.
And suddenly she’s there and looks at the hole where the Omega should be. Where it should be. And where it very much isn’t.
«Why are you like this, you piece of shit!» Yelena shouts into the void, annoyed and heartbroken and utterly confused. And angry.
Why, why.
The Omega isn’t there, but suddenly a mimic drops down in front of her in its stead with a bang, and Yelena takes a step backwards, crouching low to regain her balance.
She braces for the mimic’s attack, but it seems occupied, seems like it’s staring at something behind her.
The hairs on her neck rise, and she turns slowly.
It feels like forever ago since she saw a monster like that, but despite how many times she died, Yelena could never forget the face of an Alpha.
She fires straight at it, bullets ricocheting of the walls and the Alpha screams and it’s deafening.
It’s dark, and Yelena realizes a moment too late how slippery the floor is.
Her left leg slips on the wet metal, and she goes stumbling over to the side. The Alpha’s claws come flying towards her and this is it--
It isn’t.
She feels a searing pain across her torso and goes flying through the air, landing hard on the ground with an audible thud. Her first thought is ow, fuck, followed swiftly by a I’m alive?
She heaves in a bucketful of air, expecting the Alpha or the mimic to jump her to finish her off, but nothing happens. The mimic is unmoving and the Alpha is making its way towards her, but it seems to focus on the liquid that’s pooling underneath her that in the darkness could be mistaken as water, but she knows is her blood.
Her blood.
It couldn’t be?
Her eyes widen in horror as the pieces come together in her mind, and she knows that she really, really needs to die in like right this instant.
She goes for the gun just as the Alpha comes for her, and aims for the head.
She sends the Alpha a bloodied smile just before the bullet tears into her skull.
“The Omega isn’t there,” Yelena says, absently scratching the side of her head.
Where she had shot herself.
“What do you mean, it isn’t there ?” Bruce asks incredulously.
“My guess is that it never was.” Natasha, who had been silently observing their interaction, while clearly processing every detail in her head, speaks up. “They knew we were coming. They ambushed us. The visions were a trap.”
“It could have killed me,” Yelena says. She makes a slashing motion over her chest. “But it didn’t. It was after my blood.”
Bruce pales a little. “So.. they know who you are. They want their power back.”
“And they’re going to get it one way or another, unless we find the Omega.”
“There..” Yelena starts. “There isn’t any other way, we’re finished!”
Natasha shoots her a flat stare. “No, we’re not finished.” She points to Bruce’s device on the table, the one that was mentioned so long ago that Yelena had forgotten all about it.
“It’s a prototype transponder,” Bruce groans, “It doesn’t work. I can’t get it to work!”
“You built a prototype at Whitehall.”
“Yes! And I got fired for it, thank you very much.”
While they talk, Yelena makes her way over and picks up the device, studying it in the low light. She resists the urge to toss it back and forth in her hands. “What is this thing anyway?”
“It’s a transponder. You stick it into the Alpha, and it taps into the wavelength connecting it to the Omega. That’s the idea anyway.” Bruce extends his arms as if he’s a showman presenting his circus. Or lack of it. “But I can’t get it to work, not with the equipment I have on hand.”
“How do we get you what you need?” Natasha asks.
“Well, that’s the thing,” Bruce says sheepishly. “I mean, when I was at Whitehall I built one, I was even ready to test it, but when I told my superiors about it I lost my job.”
“They thought he was crazy,” Natasha adds, for Yelena’s benefit.
“Wait, so all we need to do is go to Whitehall?”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Bruce asks, exasperated. “The transponder requires a live Alpha to make it work.”
Natasha meets Yelena’s eyes, and even if their dialogue remains unspoken, Yelena knows what she’s thinking.
Breaking into a military facility? Even though Yelena is bone tired and all she wants to do is lie down, the thought seems more appealing than rolling around in the dirt some more. And now that the Omega is after her..
She nods and that settles it.
And Natasha points at Yelena.
“We got the next best thing.”
While breaking into Whitehall is considerately less of a mess - no mimic action required, it is still difficult and it takes quite a few tries, many of which end with Natasha shooting General Pierce out of frustration.
(Natasha claims that a bullet in his face isn’t as ugly as the condescending smirk he keeps sending them. Yelena is inclined to agree.)
Turns out, it isn’t easy to convince a military general that she’s been living in a loop for who knows how long and that she has died countless times to know what she knows.
Not easy at all.
“I’ve asked not to be disturbed,” General Pierce says as they enter his office for what feels like the millionth time. His back is to them, and Yelena turns to Natasha, mouthing the next part with him with a grimace. “This had better be critical.” Natasha snorts.
“Fate of mankind critical enough?”
That always gets his attention.
He turns, taking in the sight of them, at Natasha, who has a gun aimed at him, and at Yelena who stands shoulder to shoulder with her.
“I don’t believe what I’m seeing.”
Yelena picks at her nails for a second, acting aloof and uncaring. “I’ve had more than my share of that.”
“Sit down, General, and stay away from your desk.” Natasha’s voice is calm, yet commanding and full of authority. How does she do that? Yelena has to ask her about it later.
The General listens and sits down. It creaks a bit as he does.
“I have to hand it you, Major. When you left this office earlier I never imagined you’d be back, let alone with my most decorated soldier.”
Me neither. But alas, here we are.
“I am here to tell you a story, General,” Yelena starts, adopting a serious tone to her voice, not unlike the one Natasha uses to get everyone’s attention. (Natasha could speak in any voice and she’d have captured Yelena’s, but that’s besides the point) “At first it’s going to sound ridiculous, but the longer I talk the more rational it’s going to appear.”
And she tells him everything. As quickly and efficiently as she can, cutting out the small details but leaving a clear big picture.
Pierce eyes are narrowed, but he seems to be listening.
It supports their story when the phone rings and Yelena tells him who’s calling before he picks up, or that she knows his dinner is cancelled before the secretary enters to tell him.
“General, this isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation. Cause that’s…because you’re…you’re stubborn. You won’t believe me when I tell you that Dr. Banner was right, that the enemy can manipulate time. The invasion will fail, no matter how many bodies you throw at it, and the only way to win this war is by finding this power source within the cord and killing it. And the only means of finding it is in that safe right there.”
Yelena points to the safe behind them, and Pierce’s eyes track the movement. He seems thoughtful.
“Let’s say for the moment that I can’t rationally explain your impressive parlor tricks.”
He gets up and makes his way over to the safe, and Yelena can’t help feeling hopeful. Pierce opens it up and takes out the device. They’re so close, and Yelena shoots Natasha a stare as if to stop her - she knows Natasha would advise her to just whoop his ass and grab it and make a run for it. They need the military on their side, and they’re close now, the closest they’ve ever been. No more tricks, they’ve lived enough loops for her to predict the previous conversation, but now she has no control.
“Dr. Banner told me that this device requires a live mimic to work. What use is it to you?”
“That’s my concern.” Be confident, be confident. Pretend to know everything.
“On the contrary,” General Pierce says. “According to you this concerns the whole world.”
“What would you do if you believed everything I just told you?”
“I would locate this..”
“Omega,” Natasha supplies.
“This Omega. And bomb it out of existence.”
And he hands her the device.
Yelena tries to not let the happiness and shock show on her face, they’d done it! , but instead forces it all down, keeps her mask up and takes it.
He nods at them, and motions for them to leave.
And they do.
The second they exit the office Yelena wants to shout in joy, but stops dead at the look on Natasha’s face.
“What is it?”
Instead of responding, she grabs Yelena’s arm and starts walking, briskly, the opposite way.
“The garage is this way.”
“The garage, why are we going to the garage? Wait, Natasha - ooww, what is it?”
Natasha doesn’t answer but keeps on right ahead, as if she’s running from pursuers, and Yelena wants to tell her that she’s being too paranoid.
That’s until she hears them.
There’s shouting from the office, and footsteps, and people running.
Natasha curses and takes off into a sprint, and Yelena yelps and follows her, holding on to the device with a death grip. She also holds on to Natasha with her other hand slightly longer than necessary, but Natasha doesn’t complain.
It gives them time that they went the opposite way of what was expected - instead of going back to where they came from, through the main doors, they’re going further in, and down, instead.
They break into the parking lot and Natasha beelines for the nearest car, smashing open the window, and she’s in and hotwiring it before Yelena even has the time to blink.
“But he gave it to us!” She hates that she sounds like an indignant child, but the mission was going so well, and she had done everything right so many times. She’s trying to save the fucking world and humanity, dammit, but it’s not easy when humanity is trying to fight back. Against her , who’s trying to save everyone.
“Alexander Pierce is a man who cares more about himself than anything,” Natasha says. “He does not want to risk being a fool, backing and supporting people who sound like lunatics.” She opens the other door and Yelena gets in, getting some cuts on her fingers from the broken glass that she doesn’t feel. “Or women, probably.”
“He gave it to us to make us leave, but he’s going to take it back and pretend like he never did?” Yelena finishes the train of thought, and Natasha nods.
Yelena couldn’t help but being continuously impressed at Natasha’s ability to understand people and read between the lines. With her being so ahead of the curve they had made their way here, and now they had the device. The device! She palms it, inspecting it as Natasha begins to drive. It looks awfully similar to the one in Bruce’s lab, except this one had a few more fancy looking buttons Yelena didn’t dare guess was for, and a needle of sorts sticking out underneath it.
The needle goes wherever you want, as long as it is in your blood, Bruce’s voice says in her head.
She levels it over her thigh and hesitates just a second. The needle is big and Yelena has never liked needles much. A second is too much for Natasha, who seemingly carelessly takes a hand of the wheel and uses it to jam it down into Yelena’s flesh.
“Out of everything we’ve seen, this is what gets you?” Natasha quips as Yelena howls,
and she wants to respond with something, anything, but her mouth has turned to jelly, and the world seems to slow down.
“Yelena? Yelena?”
Natasha’s voice sounds distorted and muted, like she’s somewhere far far away.
And the world shifts and she’s watching herself from a bird’s view, and she’s flying, soaring above the clouds.
“What is happening? Talk to me.”
“I..I feel it,” Yelena gasps. “It’s taking me there?”
“What do you see?” Natasha demands, her voice dancing and echoing around in the void, making Yelena’s head spin.
Ahead of her there’s a familiar class pyramid, and she’s flying towards it, into it.
“It’s.. it’s the Louvre!”
She doesn’t stop, she keeps moving, further forward, further down. There’s water and dirt and grime and darkness.
“I’m inside now. It’s flooded. I’m going down a garage, a garage underneath the museum.”
A shudder goes through her, the type one would get in the presence of something massive, something otherworldly.
“The Omega, do you see it?”
She does. There it is.
Despite looking at it through a vision, through the haze and muted colors, Yelena is a hundred, no, a thousand percent sure that she’s looking at the Omega.
“Yes! It’s in Paris!”
The triumph is short lived as she comes out of her vision with a literal crash as the car makes a huge jolt, and Yelena uses both hands to steady herself, desperately trying to orient herself. The bloodied needle retracts, and the device drops to the floor, and she does her best to look everywhere but at that because needles. Thankfully, or not, she’s plenty distracted by outside events to spare it a single glance.
Someone is shooting at them - Natasha swerves as she’s trying to avoid it, driving nowhere and everywhere at once.
“Do you have a plan or shall I just stay, duck and cover?” Yelena shouts at her.
“My plan was to drive us away!” Natasha retaliates.
Glass shatters behind them, and the bullets come flying. One finally lodges itself in her thigh, almost as if the needle had painted a red target dot on it.
“Ah, fuck!” Yelena screams. “Your plan sucks!”
Natasha turns to her, just a split second, and suddenly there’s no more time for discussing plans or possible exits, because a man in a mech suit is in the middle of the road in front of them.
His enhanced arms come down and he hits the car, straight on, and they crash into him like he’s a wall, and the last thing Yelena sees before everything goes dark is Natasha’s slumped form behind the wheel and her own bloodied hands reaching for her.
When she jolts awake this time, her head hurts and the world is white.
She blinks, dazed, and it takes a minute for her to realize through the throbbing of her head that she’s alive.
As in not dead and alive again, but alive.
The white are walls, and the sound of beeping is not in her head but in the monitor next to her bed. A hospital bed.
And in her arm is an IV and she follows it with her eyes, slowly, almost hoping if she goes slowly enough the outcome will be different. It’s connected to a blood bag and the red drops are going to the tube and into her veins and, no no no no no --
Once she would’ve given everything to be free of the power, but now, strapped to a hospital gurney, with the location of the only thing they needed to destroy to prevent the destruction of the world fresh in her mind, and with the status of the only person who believed her and understands what she’s going through currently unknown, everything is turned on its head.
If she died now she would die for real, and if Natasha was dead she was also dead for real, but if she didn’t get out of here and stop the Omega, everyone was dead.
Death, a thing Yelena had looked at so casually for too long, was now again the only certainty in life.
A nurse enters and looks at her before checking a chart, and Yelena explodes with questions.
“What have you done? What have you done? ”
“You’ll be fine,” the nurse explains like she’s talking to a child. “You just needed blood.”
“You don’t know what you’ve just done.” Her tone is dead serious and icy cold, and as the nurse scrambles away from her with a muttered “I’m not allowed to talk to you”, she knows Natasha would’ve been proud.
“I was with someone. Natasha Romanoff. Is she alive?”
The nurse doesn’t meet her eyes and goes to leave.
“Please tell me.” Her voice cracks, revealing her true state of mind and false bravado, and the nurse pauses.
“I’m sorry,” she says, sounding genuinely apologetic.
Sorry for what? That you can’t tell me or that Natasha’s gone? She yells her questions at the retreating nurse as the door slams shut, but no one answers but echoes.
Frustrated she bangs her head into the gurney repeatedly, and pulls at the ropes holding her in place. She has to get out! With a heave of effort she’s almost loose, but the makeshift bed, unable to support the continuous weight shift from side to side, flips. The only thing that saves her from creating an imprint of her face on the floor are the side handles of the bed.
Blonde locks fall into her face and she can’t wipe them away cause her hands are stuck. Is it better to die in government hands or being tickled to death by stray hair?
Before she can make up her mind about that, her attention is pulled to the door which opens and closes in rapid succession.
Silent footsteps make their way over, and the movements are lithe and graceful, and Yelena lets out the breath she didn’t realize she was holding.
There’s only one person who can move like that, and Yelena can’t believe she can recognize Natasha so easily, by looking only at her feet. Or she can believe it. She could recognize her everywhere by now. She’s been observing. A lot. Not in a creepy way. She hopes.
The feet stop in front of her bed and for a few painstakingly long seconds they remain so.
“Well, are you going to come out from under there?”
Natasha has been not-dead for an entirety of ten seconds, and she’s already acting all smug about it.
Finally she bends down and Yelena can see her face, and she’s so relieved and also a bit angry at Natasha for scaring her so and making her feel all sorts of things she’s never felt before.
“I thought you were dead,” Yelena says, not even trying to hide how relieved she actually is.
“Nope, not yet,” Natasha replies, popping the p. “Also, I was out of those things in a minute flat, Belova. What’s wrong with you?”
“Wh-what, just help me you piece of shit.”
Natasha sends her one of those rare smiles Yelena has died many times over to see, and the butterflies in her stomach is only caused by the fact that the bed is flipped, not because of anything else, no no.
“I’m sorry.” Natasha says, and suddenly she pulls up a knife, aiming to stab her and restart the loop.
“NO, wait, wait, wait, I’m out! I’m out! They gave me blood!” Yelena shouts, trying to wriggle free. Natasha’s arm is frozen mid air, and her braid whips back and forth as she’s looking at the half empty blood bag and back at Yelena and the bandage in her arm.
“I lost the power. I feel it. I can’t reset the day anymore.”
Natasha pockets the knife and goes to undo Yelena’s bonds instead, and she starts talking, starts to formulate a plan.
“We’re at Heathrow. I heard the soldiers. Pierce must’ve sent us back here to have us tried as deserters or killed tomorrow in battle. Both, probably. Either way, we’re far away from anyone who could ever listen, aka him, and he has discredited us so that anyone who has influence enough to do something won’t.”
“And now we have to kill the Omega before the invasion starts.”
“We need a drop ship to get to Paris in time.”
“More soldiers too.”
“No one’s crazy enough to follow us to Paris.”
“I think I know someone who might be.”
And they sneak their way out of the hospital; walking like they’re supposed to be there in the places where they might be seen, but otherwise sticking to the shadows.
In the darkness and pouring rain and the looming anticipation for tomorrow’s invasion, no one spares them a glance.
Yelena’s feet leads her towards her squad’s barrack, and Natasha slips back into the shadows when Yelena motions for her to.
This is the direction she’s been coming from every time after leaving training with Natasha, and she knows that Wanda and Bucky will come looking for her right about.. now.
“Yelena! Where the hell have you been? We’ve looked everywhere for you!” Wanda shouts.
“Fury almost strung us up by our…” Bucky shoots a glance at Wanda, in a should I be saying this in front of a lady type of way, “um, almost strung us up for losing track of you!”
Yelena puts her hands up in a non comfromental manner. She can not risk to fail now, not at this point. “I know, I know. Just listen, cause you are going to want to hear this story. It’s going to sound ridiculous at first, but the longer I talk the more rational it’s going to appear.”
Bucky finishes speaking, and the silence that descends in the squad A barrack is palpable.
As usual, Tony is the one to break it.
“Hold on, so you,” he points to Bucky, “are telling me that she ” and at Yelena “told you that she has been living the same day over and over and that now she needs us to join this quest to destroy this boss so that we save the entire world?”
“..yes.”
“And you believe her?”
“She knows so much about everyone here, like everything.” Bucky exchanges a quick look with Steve. “Your mother’s name. That we grew up in New York together. And we met this woman like less than a day ago.”
“Everything, huh?” Tony still looks sceptical. “Everyone knows you two are Brooklyn kids, Steve won’t shut up about it.”
“She knows about my brother,” Wanda speaks up.
“You have a brother?”
“Exactly. Also, had . This is him, here.” She goes into the pocket of her jacket and pulls out a picture Yelena has seen her clutch to her heart so many times in the night. “I never told anyone here, because I didn’t want anyone to look at me like I was missing a part of me. I wanted people to see me as me, as a whole, not someone broken. I am not the girl without her twin, I am Wanda.”
She holds up the photograph so everyone can see.
“Every night before a battle I look at it to remember him, and to remind me that I fight in his memory, to make him proud, to save people so that no one else has to feel like me ever again.”
“His name was Pietro,” Yelena says, and Wanda’s eyes water at the mention of her late brother’s name. “And she hasn’t told me this yet, not in this life at least. And she wouldn’t have shown me the photo until you were all asleep and snoring,” she glares at Thor, “which would be in a few hours.”
“Alright, this is impressive and all, but how can we be sure that officer cufflinks here is just making all this up and that the two of you are playing along?” Stark says.
“Yeah?” Bucky says. “She says your full name is Anthony Edward Stark.”
“Could be Googled, that.”
“She also says that you’re afraid of how well the mech suit fits you, like it’s a part of you.”
Stark grits his teeth.
“She says that when we were all dying around you, you confess to her that you fear you’re never good enough to save anyone, and that everyone always dies. You’re afraid because everytime you pick up the suit, someone dies.”
“If the suit fits so well, like a second skin, why am I still unable to save people with it? If I’m useless with it, who am I without? If I’m useless without it, who am I with it?” Yelena says, quoting Tony of a previous life. “If you’re nothing without this suit,”
“.. you shouldn’t have it.” Stark whispers.
All the air seems to have left his body, and he slumps, sitting down on his bed.
She’s got him.
And Bucky believes her, and by extension Steve, cause they trust each other’s judgement more than they trust anything else.
Wanda was a bit like Stark in that regard, not trusting easily. But she knew she had her too, because of Pietro, the brother she hadn’t told anyone about.
«Yelena says the enemy knows us too. They’re waiting at us on the beach tomorrow and we all die. The entire invasion is a slaughter,» Wanda explains.
«But we can change it?» Steve speaks up for the first time. «I mean, there has to be something we can do, there has to be a way for us to win.»
«There is a chance, a slim one,» Yelena says. One in like fourteen million give or take, but this she doesn’t say. «But it means coming with me right now.»
«Pardon me, I do not really know what you expect us to think of this. We only just met you.» Thor says. «Why should we follow you into battle?»
«I don’t expect you to follow me.»
And Natasha steps out of the shadows, making her presence known.
Everyone gasps.
Natasha has a flair for the dramatics if she wants to, and it this moment it was perfect. Hook, line and sinker. On second thought, maybe Yelena should’ve just led with her introduction.
«I expect you to follow her.»
Wilson has an incredible talent for anything that flies, and he’s fully able to pilot the empty aircraft they find on his own.
«I used to be a pilot,» he says.
«I know,» Yelena replies with a smirk.
She makes her way to the back to strap herself in, and catches the tail end of the current discussion.
«Wait, so if she’s the Angel of Budapest, or the Avenger or whatever it is she’s called, and right now we’re her squad, does that make us like the Avengers?»
«Or the Angel Squad.»
«I love that name! Except it sucks. Can we be the Avengers, please?»
The discussion breaks out again, but they eventually settle on calling the squad the Avengers.
Thor made an argument for calling it «Revengers» which he claims is pretty much the same thing, which led to a long winded discussion of the difference between avenge and revenge , which ultimately led to Yelena asking why exactly they were discussing this, because even if the words could be pretty much interchangeable, their squad starts with an A, not and R, so whatever their name would be it had to start with an A.
Thor had just sent her a big smile in return, raising his hand as if he was toasting. «Skål for the Avengers!»
And to Yelena it felt right. To be an Avenger.
In this time, the world might not yet be burned, but she had seen it happen before, and now she was here to stop it once and for all.
In this time, she’s in an aircraft, heading straight for the Omega, with a group of people she’s grown to care for.
In this time, Natasha’s present next to her, her warmth radiating through her where they’re shoulder to shoulder.
In this time, right now, she allows herself to feel happy, even if it’s just for now, even if it’s just for a little bit.
The aircraft is fast, and with Wilson’s piloting somehow even faster, and they approach Louvre before Yelena had anticipated.
Natasha has already loaded her own suit and looks at Yelena. «When we’re on the ground there’s not going to be a lot of time before they know we’re here. We’re going to need eyes up here.»
«I’m going in,» Yelena shoots back. No way she was being left behind.
«You better,» Natasha smirks.
«Thirty seconds till contact!» Wilson shouts from the front, but he’s barely able to finish before an explosion rocks the aircraft.
«What the—»
Yelena isn’t strapped in yet and she goes flying, landing hard on her side.
«Yelena!»
She braces her fall with a roll and gets to her feet quickly, trying to make sense of the situation.
«They know we’re here! Drop, drop!»
Steve leads the way along with Thor, and Bucky and the rest follow suit.
Yelena turns to Natasha with wide eyes, the only one left.
«Drop!»
For once, Natasha seems hesitant and unsure. «But you’re not hooked in!»
«Finish this, whatever it takes!» Yelena screams at her, and before Natasha can object Yelena hits the release handle.
Just in time, for another explosion hits the ship just as Natasha’s form disappears into the dark, and it goes careening to the side, nosediving towards the water below.
Yelena’s stomach does a huge swoop, and she desperately tries to hold on as the ship crashes into the icy cold river.
It’s cold, and she’s sinking and she’s drowning. But the only thing she feels is the cold, and that’s a good thing, cause it means that against all odds she was able to escape any debris or stray pieces of metal. Somehow she was uninjured, and the thought is like fuel to the fire as she kicks for the surface.
She breaks it with a gasp, sucking in bucket loads of air.
Out of all the ways she had died drowning hadn’t been one of them, and it was the one way she wasn’t particularly keen to try.
Her hair has come loose, sticking to her face and body and everywhere, which is very inconvenient . Luckily, since the first time her hair had been caught underneath the military car when she tried to perform her great escape, she had made it an habit to keep extra hair ties around her wrists just in case.
Present Yelena thanks past Yelena for her foresight. This could be a masterclass in learning from your mistakes, Yelena muses as the ties her hair back up and observes her surroundings.
It’s silent, which means that there’s no fighting, which means that the Avengers are staying low and haven’t been located by the mimics yet. Or it means that they’re all dead. She refuses to acknowledge the latter.
Yelena grits her teeth and trudges on, eyes darting back and forth in the shadows, looking for familiar movements.
There, to her left, there’s someone or something. A figure, big and bulky, and not exactly very stealthy.
Which means it’s either Thor or Steve.
She lets out a breath of relief as the shadow spins around; in the low light she can tell that it’s Thor and he looks relieved to see her too.
«Yelena! Thank goodness.»
He motions at her to follow him, «the rest is over this way,» he says, and she watches his back as they go.
The area is flooded, and the water reaches up to their ankles, limiting their movements and forcing them to go slow.
But eventually they break into a clearing of sorts, where cars and pieces of planes and other things almost creates a natural meeting place, and Yelena’s eyes instantly seek out Natasha’s.
She’s there and their eyes meet, mutual relief going between them.
“What took you so long?” Natasha says and Yelena smiles back at her. The smile quickly fades into a frown as she takes a quick look around her, at the remaining members of the Avengers.
A quick headcount reveals that they are missing Wilson, and with dread Yelena realizes that he didn’t make it out of the plane. She feels Thor next to her, his head bowed, and sees Wanda standing next to Natasha. Stark is there, soaked, but otherwise unharmed, and her gaze finally lands on Steve, who’s supporting Bucky.
Bucky, who’s bleeding heavily from his left arm, and Yelena sees a gigantic red gash staring on the top of his shoulder and down, almost as if something had tried to rip it off. The red contrasts heavily with his pale skin, and in the low light he almost looks like a ghost.
“Wilson is out,” Stark murmurs. “We’re low on ammo, Steve has like one claymine. Barnes has only got half a magazine left and he can hardly move.” He points a finger at Yelena. “I thought you could see the future.”
“I haven’t lived this day,” Yelena replies with a heavy heart. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I wish I had all the answers, but I don’t. All I know is that this is the only way.”
“It doesn’t matter, what matters is we finish this.” Natasha snaps, “We either die tonight taking our final shot, or we, and the rest of humanity, dies tomorrow knowing we never tried.”
“For as long as I can remember, I just wanted to do what’s right.” Steve says suddenly. He’s covered in the blood of his best friend, but the look he sends her is sincere and earnest. “Bucky believes you. I believe you. The price of freedom is high, but it is one I’m willing to pay. And if I’m the only one, then so be it. But I’m willing to bet I’m not.”
“Great speech, Capsicle,” Tony says, “But you seem to forget that literally everyone who’s here right now are here because they believe this space and time theory thing at least to a certain degree, so don’t pretend like you’re the best of us, huh,” he sweeps his eyes over the group. “So, yeah... you’re not. The only one, that is.” Tony sends Steve a tense smile, and he nods back.
“Whatever it takes.”
Everyone seems to stand up even straighter, everyone with the same conclusion; this is the endgame. If they die, they die, but it’s for the world, for life . Yelena wonders when exactly she became like this, so willing to fight, to take such risks.
“There must be a thousand mimics between us and that pyramid, so what are we going to do?” Wanda finally asks.
“We could get through them in that,” Thor says, pointing to the side at an airship not far away. “I scouted it earlier, it looks to be in decent shape.”
“That ship will never fly,” Wanda says, “Did you even look at it?”
“It doesn’t need to fly,” Stark shoots in. “It just needs to get across us across there with speed. If the engines are still running, we could steer with the power levers.”
He’s already up and running towards it, and Natasha follows him swiftly. Thor hands Yelena a weapon and guides her towards the plane, ushering Wanda in front of them, but it’s pretty pointless, because despite her size, Wanda is fast.
“Steve said he would clear a path!” Thor tells her. Yelena turns her head, and there’s Steve, pushing cars and trucks out of the way. She trusts them to make their way to the plane. They run up the ramp, and Natasha and Stark are already by the controls.
“Try it again now,” Natasha says and Starks presses a button. “Electrical power on,” he says, and they continue back and forth, trying to get the ship online.
Yelena feels useless, knowing nothing much about piloting. She runs over to the window instead, and sees that Steve is finished. But he’s not running towards them, he’s making his way over to Bucky, who’s halfway slumped over a car.
She tries to wave at them, motioning for them to run back to the ship.
Her eyes widen in horror, cause there, in the distance, she sees the unmistakable form of mimics, hundreds of them, coming straight at them. Her waving intensifies.
“Steve! Bucky! Come on, we got to go!”
“The ship is ready,” Stark shouts, “Where are they?”
But Steve is not leaving Bucky, because of course he isn’t, and they’re turning, not towards the ship, but towards the oncoming wave of mimics.
Yelena realizes that they’re not going to attempt to run, they’re taking a final stand, and Thor stills next to her, in a sign of respect for their decision perhaps, not throwing away his life when Steve and Bucky remains to spare them for a moment longer.
“They’re not coming,” Wanda says.
“No,” Yelena nods solemnly. “They’re not.”
And Bucky starts to fire, round after round at the mimics, and Steve remains strong by his side.
Together, till the end of the line.
The plane’s engines start with a roar, and the last thing Yelena sees of Steve and Bucky before they disappear in an explosion caused by the claymine strapped to Steve, is the two of them, smiling at each other.
It hurts to see them go, but she knows she can’t dwell on it, not right now. All she can do is spend the time well, the time that Steve and Bucky paid for with their lives.
The explosion, Steve’s last hurrah, has given them some, but the mimics are coming in wave after wave. They’re deterred, but only slightly, and Yelena is filled with with hot rage.
Good men had to die for only just a few precious seconds, it was unfair, so so unfair.
“We’ve got incoming!” Thor shouts, and aims his weapon toward a mimic that has seemed to apparate almost out of nowhere.
His rounds hit home, and the mimic shrieks as it dies. Unfortunately it’s just replaced by yet another, and just like that they keep coming and coming.
Yelena’s not sure how many bullets she’s fired, or how many mimics that she’s killed, it’s impossible to be sure; the rain is heavy and in the storm and flashes of lightning it’s impossible to even see anything.
The entire world seems to be shaking as the ship crashes into abandoned cars and rocks and all sort of things, all the while being bombarded by mimics from all sides.
And suddenly a tentacle crashes through the wall right next to her head, spinning wildly, and Yelena sidesteps the initial assault. But it’s fast, too fast, and the tentacle is coming for her yet again.
She goes for her gun, knowing it might be futile, but suddenly something slams into her, pushing her aside.
It’s someone , Yelena realizes, and the someone is Wanda, who’s staring at her with wide eyes. And there, right through her chest, is a mimic tentacle, and that’s it.
“You didn’t see that coming?” Wanda gasps, blood running from her mouth and from the gigantic hole in her chest.
“You--why?” Yelena manages to cry out.
But Wanda is given no time to answer, not any time to do anything but send her a small smile, which, despite everything, seems like a smile of satisfaction, like she finally did something right.
The mimic throws away Wanda’s body, disposing of it like she was nothing but a rag doll, and she goes flying through the air.
And she’s gone.
And Thor isn’t anywhere to be seen either, gone too.
And there’s nothing Yelena can do, nothing but get up, grab a weapon, hold on and kill the fucking Omega.
They’re almost at the Louvre, she sees the familiar shape of it now through the curtains of rain, and the ship jerks forward towards it, like a moth to flame.
“Push it! Push it!” Stark shouts, “Don’t you dare let go--”
It’s the final thing he says as the window next to him explodes inwards, and a mimic throws him out of it. He too disappears into the darkness, and Yelena hates herself for thinking that at least Natasha’s still alive, at least there’s still someone left to finish the mission.
She knows they would hate her if she sat herself down to cry now. The only thing that would matter would be to finish this, the only acceptable way to honor their memories.
Natasha follows Tony’s last instruction and pushes the lever, pushes it until her knuckles go white, and the ship crashes through glass and metal and everything, crashes straight into the Louvre.
They enter the Omega’s den in a rain of glass and actual water, and the broken ship comes to a standstill. Her visit to one of the biggest museums in the world was as far away from what Yelena had imagined it would be like.
Her ears are ringing, but she struggles to her feet regardless, she has to. Natasha is already outside, salvaging weapons, and Yelena slides down to meet her.
“Where to?” Natasha asks, her voice filled with determination.
Yelena looks around and tries to find a familiar direction, where she had gone in her vision. Finally a familiar arrangement of rocks trigger her memory, and she knows it’s right.
“This way,” Yelena says, pointing towards where a part of the floor seemed to miss completely, partly hidden underneath a collection of fallen wall and concrete.
“Down?”
“Down.”
And down they go.
Way down we go , Natasha hums out loud as they climb downwards, and Yelena almost wants to laugh. She doesn’t because she would probably step on a loose rock if she didn’t pay one hundred percent attention.
They’re almost at the bottom when there’s a roar from above them, and Natasha, who’s above her, curses.
“It’s an Alpha!”
And she drops, and Yelena, who’s about half a metre from the ground, takes the full force of her body as Natasha lands right on top of her.
The air is forced out of her lungs with an ouf , and Natasha is making a sound from the back of her throat somewhere, and this is wrong and so right, and really not the time --
And as her vision clears she sees Natasha’s eyes, so close, and she sends Yelena a smirk.
“Well, this is awkward.”
Natasha lets a charged second pass, and then she jumps up, and Yelena snaps out of her reverie as they both remember exactly where they are and what they’re supposed to do.
They seem to be in a garage or something, the room is massive, perhaps the remnants of an old exhibition hall, it’s impossible to tell.
“The Omega, it’s over there, in the water,” Yelena points to the left, to the end of the huge hall.
Above them, the Alpha continues roaring.
“The Alpha is going to find us any minute now, we need to move,” Yelena says, turning to move but stops at the look on Natasha’s face.
“Nat..?”
“I’m going to draw that thing away, and you kill the Omega.”
“No, you won’t make it ten feet before that thing kills you!”
“Listen to me. Listen to me,” Natasha steps forward and holds up a grenade belt for her to take. “Neither one of us is getting out of here.”
Yelena takes it reluctantly, fighting the tears stinging in her eyes. She knows that Natasha is right, goddamn her, she always is. And a part of her is glad, because she doesn’t know how she’d feel if she lost Natasha but lived herself.
“Thank you for getting me this far. I wish I had the chance to know you better.” And before Yelena knows what’s going on, Natasha presses her lips to hers.
It’s quick, but soft, comforting in a way that words could never be. Bittersweet.
Perfect.
Before she knows, before she wants it to, the moment is over, and Natasha pushes her away.
There’s no time to think about it, no time to figure out what the right thing to say is. The roaring from the Alpha gets louder and closer, and it must have detected them now, dust and rocks falling from where they climbed down.
One final look passes between them.
This is it.
And Yelena flips on her heel, running straight for the water, for the Omega, and she hears more than she sees the Alpha explode through the entrance.
She hears Natasha’s footsteps as she runs the opposite way, taking the Alpha with her, and she can’t stop herself, she looks, and what she sees is the Alpha jumping her and a bloodied mess of tentacles and blood and limbs.
Killing an Alpha would only reset the day, so they can’t do anything to it, just run.
Natasha does until she can’t anymore, until she’s ripped apart, until it kills her.
All to give Yelena a chance.
Whatever it takes.
And Yelena takes it, sprinting towards the Omega, sidestepping and jumping over various obstacles in her wake.
The Alpha roars again and Yelena feels the hairs in the back of her neck rise. It’s done with Natasha, and Natasha is gone, just like everyone else, and it’s all up to Yelena to finish this now.
What remains is just the most important sprint of her life, and she runs like the devil is on her heels, which it very well just might be.
She’s by the water now and there it is, she sees the Omega deep below where it pulsates and lights up everything surrounding it.
There’s no time for hesitation, no time to think, just go straight ahead. One deep breath in the step and then she dives, kicking downwards towards it.
She kicks and kicks like everything in the entire world depends on it, and for once she wishes all the pressure on her shoulders for saving everyone could take a physical form so it could drag her down faster, literally.
She’s fast, but the Alpha is faster and then there’s a sharp pain in her chest as the Alpha finally catches up to her, impaling her with its tentacle.
Bubbles bursts out of her mouth as she screams, and the movement from when it retracts the tentacle forces her body to turn in the water so that she faces it.
But she’s done it, she’s dropped the grenade belt and it sinks, down and down and down.
She waves at the Alpha, and she can’t read foreign alien faces, but it seems to appear surprised, horrified maybe, as its eyes zoom onto the grenade pins which floats from Yelena’s fingers.
Hell hath no fury like a woman ready to lose everything, even herself.
We did it, she thinks, while the figures of the squad, and of Bruce and Natasha, dance before her eyes.
I’ll see you soon.
She gives it the finger as the world explodes.
There’s something on her head, covering her eyes.
It is the first thing she notices, and she comes to with a start.
There’s noise, so much noise all around her, and —
Where is she?
Through dazed eyes she struggles to take in her surroundings; she’s lying on the side, a jacket and a blanket over her, and one look out of the window she’s currently propped up against makes it clear. She’s in a helicopter , what the—
«We’re about to land now, m’am,» the pilot says, and Yelena is rendered speechless.
The previous events play through her mind, fragments of a fight, of mimics, of an Alpha, of the Omega, and of an explosion and of darkness.
She’s alive! She jerks fully awake, and with the motion what was on her head falls off and drops into her lap.
Her eyes widen. It’s her officer’s hat! She’s wearing her uniform too!
What is happening?
The helicopter is about to land and Yelena soaks in the environment like a sponge to water, taking in every detail and mapping it in her mind, every single detail processing like Natasha had taught her to.
She’s wearing her officer's uniform. She’s in a helicopter. Just like she was the morning of, the morning of the day she woke up at Heathrow, this is where she had been.
The meeting with the General that had led to her being shipped off to fight.
But what happened to the Omega? To the war?
In a daze Yelena exits the helicopter to the greeting of a soldier who salutes her with a huge grin on her face.
“Welcome to London, Major!” she - Hill says her nametag - says, “I’m Corporal Hill, your liaison to General Pierce’s office! Very good to have you! Have you heard the great news?”
“..The great news?”
«Well, I suppose you haven’t, we heard it just minutes ago!»
Hill turns to the side, tilting her head towards the adjacent building where Yelena spots a gigantic poster of Natasha.
Her eyes widen at the text above her and its implications.
Cause there, spelled out in huge, red, bold letters with spraypaint above Natasha’s head, it says ‘To Victory ’.
To victory?
“Not even ten minutes ago we detected a surge of energy from Paris. We don’t know exactly what this signifies, but the result seems to be a total collapse in the enemy’s capacity to fight. Tomorrow we advance on the western front.” Hill sends her another smile. “I believe the General will fill you in on all the details, everything’s a bit different now. He wants you there to cover the victory.”
She motions for Yelena to follow, and she does, in a trance, much akin to how she felt the very first time she woke up. Just this time it wasn't to a nightmare, but to a dream.
And the General fills her in.
As much as he’s able to, turns out he’s just as confused as the rest of the world.
But Yelena knows the truth. Or she thinks.
As she’s flown to Heathrow she pieces it all together, trying to make it make any sort of sense, to try to understand what happened.
She killed the Omega.
The Omega’s blood must’ve seeped into hers, giving her the power to reset yet again, just before she died. And she reset, and the Omega remains dead, just like the Alpha she killed that started this entire thing.
But unlike the Alpha, the Omega's death would mean the death of all the other mimics since it was the brain of the mimic collective. And as she reset the day there must’ve been some sort of time paradox, that the imploding Omega’s death traveled back too, just like her, effectively wiping them all out one day before it actually happened.
The General was confused as he tried to explain, and frankly, so was Yelena.
As much as she replays it in her mind, it makes sense for a second, and then the absurdity of it all hits her and she’s at a loss yet again.
So she doesn’t tell the General anything because it would change nothing. And Yelena knows there’s only one person who would believe her.
And she has to find her.
Yelena woke up in the helicopter because it was 24 hours prior to the fight in Paris, and now she returns to Heathrow, not as a deserter turned clueless private, but as an Officer, as herself.
But now, as she observes Squad A jogging past her, she’s not sure who she even is anymore.
She looks at Steve, who keeps a ruthless pace, at Bucky and Sam who tries to keep up, Stark shouting profanities, Thor running easily, almost as if he’s flying above the ground, and at Wanda, who rolls her eyes at their antics, but smiles, as she’s found her way among them, her fellow soldiers, her brothers.
And it’s with a pang and a heavy heart she realizes what’s wrong. She’s a stranger.
It’s the price she paid for all of this, to save the world. No one knows her, knows what she went through.
Maybe a part of her is jealous, perhaps, that her actions will never be known, that she’s simply not Yelena the Officer anymore, but that she’s a veteran of war, one who gave up her life hundreds of times over. And know one would know.
But one look at Squad A, the Avengers, at everyone who laid down their lives for the cause, just like her, only on her word, on an insane idea that there were timeloops and Omegas, who now are back and whole and alive , makes it worth it.
The only thing she regrets is that she can’t go over to them and tell them how brave they all were, what they did and their role in all of this.
Cause Yelena is back at square one. A stranger.
But she’s alive.
And as she makes her way back to the training arena, tracing the familiar way back, looking for all the world as if she’s walked the path a thousand times - which she very well might have done - she thinks that going back to the start was how it was supposed to be, the only way.
Humanity prevailed, everyone was alive, and the only thing lost was part of Yelena’s sanity.
She could live with that, she decides, as she rounds the corner and finally sees Natasha, who’s down in a push-up pose, but springs up at the sight of her.
Oh, she’s an officer now.
Natasha eyes her for a second.
«What do you want?»
That’s more like it.
Natasha, beautiful and strong and powerful Natasha is alive and well, and one day Yelena will tell her all about the Alpha and of the Omega, of their fights together and of the truth, and burdens will be shared and healing will happen, and for all the lifetimes Yelena’s lived, it was all for the chance of having one perfect one.
But for now, in face of Natasha’s questioning stare, like she’s seeing right through her, the authority of the Officer’s uniform be damned, so unapologetically whole and herself , Yelena does the only thing she’s able to.
She smiles.