For (Over)Protection
Yelena hears Kate’s alarm go off exactly 32 minutes before Kate actually appears in the living room. If there's one thing Yelena has learned about Kate, it's that she's not a morning person. From her own observations, for Kate, getting up is anywhere between a 20 and 60 minute activity. More if Yelena were to include Kate's getting dressed phase of the morning, but she doesn’t. 32 minutes is pretty good, for Kate, it was only 3 dismissed alarms and 2 snoozed twice, and mercifully the archer was staying in her pajamas for a little while longer.
Some days, Kate’s sleep habits make Yelena worried for her safety. If someone tracked her to her apartment and broke in between the hours of 3 and 9am, Yelena is genuinely afraid Kate wouldn't notice. Hell, she's done it herself enough times and not stirred the brunette that she knows it’s doable, even if she's above average skill at getting into Kate's apartment. Still, Yelena is worried, so a few months ago she'd come in from the emergency exit roof access and had motion sensors attached to every possible entrance into Kate's apartment. Then she'd set them to alert her anytime someone enters. Yelena hadn't really put much effort into hiding them, but if Kate had noticed she hadn’t commented.
When Kate finally emerges from her room it’s with messy hair and in matching purple pajamas with small bows and arrows printed all over them. Yelena can’t contain her grin at the sight, they’re the pajamas she had bought Kate last Christmas. She'd never done real gifts before, and after extensive online searching the internet had informed her to get Kate something that she'll use or something that seemed to ‘embody her personality’. Yelena had found most of the specific suggestions, cooking utensils, books, etc to be rather stupid and had turned to Laura for help, but only after swearing her to secrecy on Clint’s life. Considering she'd already spared him once, she wasn't sure how convincing the threat had been but the children were off the table, so Clint would have to do as collateral. Laura had helped find the pajamas, reminding Yelena of how Kate always complained about being cold at night in the drafty apartment. Yelena had taken it upon herself to sew in a flannel lining for extra warmth. Then because she was worried for Kate's safety, she'd sewn some emergency contacts and a safe house address onto a piece of fabric in between the linings of one pocket and an ultralight compact switch blade into the other. Kate hadn't commented on that safety measure either, but she wore the pajamas almost every night and Yelena was pretty sure she'd seen Kate finger the blade through the pocket on numerous occasions.
“Do you want to go get food at that place down the street? I don't want to cook” Kate yawned loudly.
“You don't cook, but yes”
“I do too. I make-” Kate cuts herself off with a yawn and Yelena has to bite her tongue to not immediately yawn too, “mac and cheese,” Kate finishes.
“Why have you never cooked for me?”
“Because you do it so much better” Kate slips into a pair of purple slides by the door and grabs her keys, “coming?”
Yelena balks at Kate, “we cannot go out in pajamas”
“Yelena, we are going to the bagel shop 3 doors down and then bringing it back here. It's fine”
“No, they know us there.” Yelena jumps up, “I'll go and you stay here and make coffee”
“You sure?”
“Yes, yes,” Yelena calls over her shoulder already running into Kate's room for a change of clothes. She comes out a minute later in a pair of Kate’s leggings that scrunch at the ankles and a solid black long sleeve that she had to cuff to keep from falling past her hands. Then Yelena grabs her vest from a hook by the door and Kate’s keys right from her hands before gently pushing Kate towards the kitchen, “coffee”. Kate nods, but she doesn’t move. Her face looks like her brain is going a mile a minute stuck in some sort of self imposed loop and her eyes stay on Yelena blinking quite slowly. “What is it? Do I have something on my face?” Kate shakes her head quickly, looking like a deer in headlights, “no, nothing, you go”. Yelena doesn't know what to make of the moment as she slips out the front door and makes her way to the bagel shop. She circles around the block a few times before going in, to give herself the chance to spot any potential tail. When she finally enters, the man behind the counter greets her cheerfully, “Bella, what'll it be today? Picking up for you and Kate?”
Yelena slips seamlessly into her American accent, “can I get bacon, egg, and cheese on an everything bagel and a sesame with cream cheese for Kate?”
“For sure. Kate said you had a work trip, when’d you get back to town?”
Yelena hums in agreement, “about two weeks ago, just been settling back into the city”.
“Well we missed seeing you in here.”
“Me too, LA bagels are a travesty.” The man behind the counter laughs. Yelena hadn’t actually been in LA, but the bagels were shit in Prague too. She had come into the shop with Kate a year ago and only barely interjected before Kate had introduced her by her real name. Since then Yelena had established herself as a friendly regular alongside Kate, but she did everything to play the part of Bella when she was there. Fancy business woman, college friend and roommate of Kate who occasionally had weeks or months long business trips all over the world. Not so much of a stretch, but it never sat right with Yelena. She simultaneously ached to be known here with Kate for real and felt an urge to flee and never return precisely because they knew her. It's why she let them know Bella, and not Yelena. The two were often quite similar, but Yelena held on to the differences with a vice grip.
When Yelena made it back to Kate's, the smell of freshly brewed espresso greeted her. Kate hadn't made it out of her pajamas, but she was hunched over her laptop at the kitchen table nose only about 5 centimeters from the screen. Yelena grabbed 2 plates, putting each of their breakfast on one, then placed Kate's bagel next to an empty coffee cup. “What're you working on?”
“Just looking into a few people,” Kate answered, eyes remaining glued to the computer screen. Yelena wasn't sure why but Kate's refusal to look up at her made her scowl and reach over to pinch Kate’s arm. “Hey!” Kate exclaims, looking up at Yelena.
Yelena’s scowl melts as she meets Kate’s eyes. She grabs her own mug of coffee from in front of her seat at the kitchen table and takes a long sip, letting her eyes flutter closed and letting out a sigh at the warm drink. Only when she puts her mug down does she open her eyes and look back at Kate, who on her part is mouth agape rubbing her thumb against her upper arm where Yelena had pinched her. Kate swallows hard enough that Yelena sees her throat bob. Willing this weird, charged silence she’s found herself in with Kate away Yelena asks, “looking into alleged bad guys?” Unfortunately, Yelena’s decades of training in controlling her voice abandon her and she ends up sounding significantly quieter and raspier than she would have liked. It does nothing to dissipate the charged atmosphere.
“No,” Kate replies equally quietly.
“Okay, so who?”
Kate pulls her hand away from her arm where she leaves a red splotch on her otherwise pale skin, “just someone I might work with.”
“The woman who was here the other night?” The tension in the room snaps like a branch underfoot.
“Yes-” Kate shifts in her seat and breaks eye contact with Yelena “-did you hear?” Kate’s voice trails off at the end of her incomplete question.
“Yes”
“Oh, um, okay. You didn’t say anything?”
“No,” Yelena wasn’t sure what to say. She thought it was reasonable for Kate to work with a team, but she selfishly and impractically wanted that team to be herself. Kate would not mix well with the Thunderbolts and she was not in a position to leave the team either. Briefly, Yelena had thought to tell Kate to turn it down and continue working alone, but Yelena knew she had no legitimate explanation to give in doing so.
“Okay,” hesitation lacing Kate’s voice, she gulps before continuing, “do you have any thoughts about it?”
“Thoughts about the team?” Yelena holds her breath, heart pounding. She hadn’t expected Kate to care about her opinions on this so used to the archer doing whatever she thinks is the ‘right thing’ and ignoring, in Yelena’s opinion, very good advice.
“Yes”
“I think a team could be good for you,” Yelena starts slowly, “but you must be careful,” Kate rolls her eyes.
“You know me, careful is my middle name.”
Yelena frowns, “it is not.”
“It’s an expression, you know nevermind.”
“You don’t know this woman, don’t trust her blindly because she wears a costume”
“That’s why I am looking her up in the security database and then we’re getting lunch”
“Lunch?”
Kate’s irritation is evident in her voice, “Yes, Yelena, lunch. It’s a meal often around noon, between breakfast and-”Yelena cuts her off seemingly equally irritated by Kate’s teasing. “Have you scouted the location? When is it happening? Do you need backup?”
“No, but I will scout it before I go. This afternoon. And, no, I don’t need backup, Lena”
Yelena softens at the nickname, shoulders relaxing, “Okay, but call if things go bad”. Kate nods and promises to call, but they both know it’s a lie. Maybe if things go really south and she’s mortally wounded, but Yelena thinks even then her pride would let her die on the street. So instead of staying home in the apartment and doing research for her own upcoming job like she tells Kate she’s doing, when Kate leaves to scout the cafe before lunch with Kamala, Yelena follows.
--
Thirty minutes into Kate’s lunch, Yelena has to admit that Kate seems safe and even like she’s having a good time. The two women have been talking and Kamala now laughs as Kate seemingly tells a story using larger than necessary hand gestures. After another fifteen minutes, in which Yelena scours the internet for any information on Kamala aside from what Kate found that morning but finds nothing interesting, Yelena goes back to Kate’s apartment. She lets herself in the front door and makes herself a sandwich with some truly sad looking lettuce and cheese in Kate’s fridge. Then she waits for Kate to get home.
Kate comes flying through the front door, a whirlwind of brown hair and hand gestures as she immediately launches into a story form her lunch that Yelena does not even try to follow. When Kate finishes whatever she’s trying to tell Yelena, the assassin nods and hopes it’s an appropriate enough response.
--
Yelena makes them both a casserole for dinner then slips out of the apartment in her black tactical suit while Kate is by her side in her signature purple hawkeye costume. They walk together about a block before heading in different directions, Yelena to go hand off the drive the pair had acquired and Kate, Yelena assumed, was off to play vigilante. Yelena’s evening is easy, even boring. She will have to remind herself that these white collar crime, business espionage type jobs are not worth it. Barely enough happening for Yelena to even consider herself busy which is the main reason she’d taken the job anyways. Her boredom is why, when Kate calls, she answers. She’s twenty minutes out from meeting whoever hired her and answering any sort of non-mission call could be dangerous, but she does it anyway.
Kate’s voice comes to life over the call, “hey, can you meet us?”
“Us? And no, I am in the middle of something”
“Oh sorry, was just hoping in like thirty minutes, you could meet us in a car?” Kate asks hopefully, “we may be coming out hot and could use the getaway help”
“Coming out hot, getaway help, you sound like a petty criminal”
“I am not. Nevermind, forget I asked”
“Okay,” Yelena hangs up with a huff, checking her watch and scanning her surroundings. 10 minutes until her meeting.
--
Yelena almost steals four different cars on her way back to the apartment in order to go pick up Kate, but she stops herself each time. Kate needed to learn to plan her exits better and she had her own job anyway and could not bend it to Kate’s poor planning. By the time Yelena enters Kate’s apartment through the woman’s own bedroom window, Yelena is cursing Kate in her head and mentally planning a safety speech she’s going to give Kate when the other woman gets back. Kate’s not in the bedroom, but Yelena follows the sound of talking to the living room where Kate and Kamala sit on the couch each icing various body parts and talking like they’ve been there for hours already. The sight sends Yelena’s nicely planned safety speech from her head and replaces it with rage and the desire to scream at the pair. Yelena pulls back on the rage and points at Kamala, “you, out.” A quick glance at Kate from Kamala and a shared look Yelena doesn’t understand has Kamala up off the couch and out of the apartment in less than a minute. Kate stares at Yelena not speaking and she lets the weight of the silence build while she checks her frustration, before speaking in a dangerous, low tone, “you, went out with her. No plan, no care for your safety. I was in the middle of a job, Kate Bishop”
“Yelena, I am fine. I was Safe. I just got caught up in the moment, the excitement with Kamala”
“You don’t know that, Kate,” Yelena’s voice starts to rise, so much for keeping her frustrations out of it, “just because you put her name in the security database doesn’t mean you know her or her intentions. She just showed up in your apartment for God’s sake”
“So did you,” Kate shoots back,
“And I am dangerous, and I could have killed you.”
“You weren’t going to kill me.”
“No, but Kamala might. You don’t know”
“No, enough!” Kate jumps up from the table, “She’s good person”
Yelena scoffs, “that does not mean anything”
“You do not dictate who I work with, Lena!”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“This is my job. Just like you, I do dangerous things for my job.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“I’m not!”
“Tony Stark thought he was an invincible billionaire and got himself killed. You are so similar. T’achalla, Natasha -” the sound catches in her throat, but Kate doesn’t seem to notice.
“I am not Natasha! Is this what all of this is about?” Kate gestures in between them, “you’re trying to keep me from dying like Natasha? I’m not trying to end up dead on Vomir like Nat. I’m just trying to help people. Sure Natasha was doing that too, but Nat-” Yelena doesn’t hear the rest of Kate’s sentence. It’s as though Kate’s rant breaks a dam in Yelena’s mind sending images and memories of Natasha crashing down on her system, drowning her. Natasha pushing her behind her, training a gun on surrounding soldiers. Natasha on TV, standing in front of congress, thousands of miles away from Yelena while she mindlessly kills a diplomat in a hotel room. The memories and feelings flash one after another and Yelena presses the palms of her hands into her eyes, willing them to stop, but it continues. Natasha saying, “it was real to me too”. Natasha saying, “none of it was real”. Cutting through the haze of memories, Kate’s voice is in her ear “breathe, you’re okay. In, 2, 3, 4, out, 2, 3, 4. Good, this will pass” Yelena doesn’t understand why Kate is saying this, but she latches on to Kate’s voice willing it to pull her out of this avalanche of memories.
--
Yelena sits silently on the couch, she hasn’t spoken in over an hour. She’s tracked Kate’s motions, getting up to go to the kitchen, making tea, pushing a mug into Yelena’s hands, draping a blanket over her lap, and finally sitting down on the opposite end of the couch. Yelena stares at the mug in her hands, feeling like the world is spinning around her. She focuses on the feeling of the couch under her legs. She’s at Kate’s, she reminds herself. “Do you need anything?” Yelena shakes her head, she doesn’t want pity. “Can we talk about this?” No, she thinks, she can’t talk about this. She can’t hear her sister’s name without panicking. She cannot talk about her. “You know I lost my dad, you can talk to me”
“It is different”
“I know” Kate admits, “but you can’t keep this inside,” Kate pauses, “She wouldn’t want you too”
Yelena lets out a dry, humorless laugh, “That's the thing about the dead, they can’t want anything. They’re not here.”
Kate nods, undeterred, “I know, but she was your sister, she cared about you. People who care about you don’t want you to carry your grief alone”
“No one cares about me, Natasha, she was all I had. And she’s gone.”
“I care about you. Alexi and Melina care about you. Bucky and Clint care-”
Yelena cuts Kate off, “Stop, just stop”. She can’t listen to this. Hearing the names of people who care for her, hearing Kate talk about Natasha like she knows anything about her. It’s all unfair. Kate isn’t really seeing her, she’s seeing some idiotic, idolized version like she does with Clint. Ronin, Hawkeye, they’re all pseudonyms, but they’re all the same person and Kate only sees the good. Yelena swears under her breath, the signs have been there since the beginning. Kate’s only ever seen the good in people. So what is Kate seeing in her? She’s not a good person. Is she Yelena or the white widow or an assassin or all of them or none of them? It’s not real. Yelena can’t be here because if this isn’t real, if what Kate sees of her isn’t real, she isn’t safe. She’s scrambling to her feet, throwing the blanket to the ground. She pats down her suit, counting every weapon making sure everything is in place before unholstering a gun. The weight of it in her palm feels comforting, a reminder she can protect herself. She looks at Kate’s face, the fear in her eyes, and something twinges deep inside Yelena scrambling to get out but she can’t access it and pushes the unidentified twinge further down inside her. Natasha. Natasha saved the world. And Yelena, she's killed so many. For Dreykov, for Valentina, for the highest bidder. Natasha was a hero and she’s the messed up little sister. Kate just can’t see it. Or she can and is hiding it, waiting for a moment to act out her self-righteous vigilante fantasy on Yelena. Yelena hears her voice as though someone else is speaking, “I have to go, Kate Bishop”
“Yelena -” She’s out the window before Kate can finish the thought.