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Walking down the streets of Northern Brooklyn into BedStuy, Natasha couldn’t help but feel like a ginormous Bubble Tea, for several reasons.
For once, she was happy to see that life had picked up its usual speed by now – she had seen differently in the agony-like five years between the two Blips, even fell for it herself.
Then, there was this new sense of life thriving inside of her, ever since Steve brought her back from Vormir, with both her body and mind broken, almost beyond repair. But medical wonders provided by the Starks and determination from herself not to let that second chance go to waste turned the tables for her (the steady support she got from pretty much everyone also helped quite a lot).
And last but not least, she not only had found her little sister Yelena again (for the second time in their lives), she also had, more or less, gained another sister as well – long story short, Kate was perfect for her little sister.
By now, she had arrived at the apartment building Kate and Yelena were currently living in – and she had to smile again (which she did apparently a lot these days – much to Tony’s (exaggerated) annoyance when they shared a room at the rebuilt Avengers HQ medical wing).
The reason for it was sat on the steps to the house, a large cup of coffee in his hands, Lucky vying for his attention from his post between the man’s legs. And of course, Clint didn’t deny the dog all the love he had to give.
“Is something broken in your apartment?” Natasha asked while sitting down next to Clint.
“What? Why? Oh, you mean, because I’m sitting here?” Natasha nodded. “Naw, it’s the girls. They’re using my apartment for training, so Lucky and I gave them room.”
“You know we have lots of room in our brand-new HQ upstate?”
“Yup, I do, but I prefer the surroundings here. No offense to Tony, but while all the space up there is definitely great, it’s kind of detached to its surroundings. And right now, I need a bustling city around me.”
Again, Natasha only nodded. It still was a shock to her system when Clint told her that he and Laura have divorced. Sure, they still were friends and even had outings together, mostly for the sake of the kids, but it wasn’t the same. Not to Clint, and not to Natasha.
She was just about to say something when the door in their back opened, and when they turned around, both Kate and Yelena were sticking their heads out.
“Oops,” Kate began, ignoring the elbow jab she got from Yelena for that, “have you been waiting a long time, Natasha?”
“No,” Nat placated her, “just got here merely five minutes ago. Besides, I was also looking forward to catch up with Clint, and you both need every second of training you can get into your day.”
At that, both girls let out a groan, which in turn made both Clint and Natasha chuckle while they got to their feet.
“So,” Clint asked while passing the threshold, “how much damage must I steel myself for?”
“None,” Yelena replied, visibly proud. “Sure, we had some close calls, especially Kate,” now it was Yelena’s turn to ignore Kate, who yelled “hey” from right behind them, “but except for one empty flower pot, everything’s in the same place you remember.”
“Alright,” Clint continued once they were at their floor, “Kate and I will work on fine-tuning her arrow-making techniques. Just holler if you need something.”
With that, the two Hawkeyes, along with Lucky, were across the hallway and closing the door behind them.
“Come in,” Yelena told Natasha, and if she wasn’t completely wrong, her little sister seemed somewhat nervous – not something one might associate first with a trained Black Widow, but then again, they both were miles, if not lifetimes, away from those doctrines. “You want something? I found a samowar the other day in a garage sale.”
“I’ll take a cup then,” Natasha replied, still smiling at how domestic and grown-up Yelena seemed these days.
“Be right back, just make yourself at home,” Yelena told her with a nod in the direction of the living room while heading into what Natasha assumed was their kitchen.
Taking a look around, she could see both their influences on the interieur – old movie posters that Kate apparently had brought over from her aunt’s apartment; a wild mix of classic literature and pulp novels that all but screamed Yelena; lots of small purple objects.
Long story short, it was a home in every definition.
And Natasha was happy for and proud of Yelena for it, as well as for having someone to share it with.
“Here you go, sister.”
Yelena’s voice broke the slight fog around Natasha, and while accepting the cup, she finally sat down on the shorter side of the purple couch.
“You sounded strange on the phone,” Natasha told Yelena after a sip of tea, “what’s the matter?”
“You remember how they treated any of us when they found the girl in question did something they didn’t want them to?”
Natasha only nodded, she still had the occasional nightmare about the years stolen from her in the Red Room.
“Well,” Yelena continued, “I can proudly say that I beat them, somehow.”
“How? What?”
“I just did it,” Yelena replied with a shrug, a gesture that was so familiar to Natasha. “And then I also managed to smuggle it out of the complex without them noticing.”
“What was it?”
“This,” Yelena replied, pulling a rectangle box from behind a cushion. “It was my way of handling you being gone from my life.”
With that, she handed the box to Natasha – who let out a chuckle.
“What’s so funny?”
“Just the fact that when I agreed to come over, I also planned on giving you something similar. One might think we are actual blood sisters after all.”
Like Yelena moments earlier, Natasha pulled a box from her shopper bag and handed it over to Yelena.
“And before you ask – it was my way of dealing with the guilt of leaving you behind.”
“It’s okay, Nat. I know you didn’t do it on purpose, and you tried to find me in the years after. We both made it out of it, more or less in one piece, and we can have sappy meetings over tea now without having to look out for any dangers from our past.” She looked down at the box in her lap, then over to Nat. “Wanna open them together?”
“Sure,” Natasha replied with a nod, and in the next moment, both opened the box – followed by a hearty laugh when they saw the contents.
“You also wrote letters?” Yelena exclaimed, still chuckling.
“In my first days at SHIELD, I was more or less confined to my room, and the only distractions were the books they allowed me to read. I probably made my way through half of their library until they let me on missions. One of these books was from a psychologist or psychiatrist, I can’t remember now, but one chapter was about dealing with guilt, and he suggested to write letters to that person one feels guilty to. So I did. If Coulson or Fury ever wondered why I was going through several notepads a week, they never brought it up. At first, I hid them, like they ‘taught’ us in the Red Room, but after my first few missions, I let Clint into my secret.”
“I told Kate about them when I realized we were actually moving together, just so you know. I’m done with keeping secrets left, right and center all the time.”
“So am I,” Natasha added. “Pick one.”
“Only if you do too.” Yelena turned to another box on the windowsill behind her. “Cookies?”
Natasha accepted one with a smile before turning to the contents of the box. There was quite a stash of letters in there, and once more, her heart gave a painful squeeze.
But there was no time to dwell on what-ifs and missed opportunities. As Yelena had pointed out, they both came out on the other side (most literally), were alive and kicking, and had a support system that didn’t fail them.
Plucking one from the middle, she leant back into the cushions and began to read.
“Dear Natasha,
where are you? They won’t answer any of my questions – and I have a lot of them – but I heard Madame B the other day talking to someone. And she told them that you had betrayed them all, that you now were the ‘enemy’. You wouldn’t do that, would you? You wouldn’t betray the only family you have? Speaking of family, I saw Alexej the other day. He acted like he didn’t knew me, but I could see it in his eyes. He was shocked to see me. I don’t know if it was because I was here of all places (as if he didn’t know that, after he delivered us into their waiting arms), or that I still was alive. Anyway, I don’t care about it. Just like they want us to be. And they find new ways every now and then to get us there. Dreykov has brought a lot of scientists the other day, probably to devise new forms of torture for those of us who doesn’t comply.
I began to take dance lessons, by the way. Madame B says you also had them, and that you were the most graceful ballet dancer she ever has seen. Sadly, she doesn’t seem to feel about my dancing skills that way. Besides, she thinks I’m already too old to learn it, anyway. But what am I supposed to do with the rest of my time once the lessons are over? Our bedrooms are still way too cold for my liking, and I guess that will never change at all. I think it’s part of our ‘training’, to make us tougher or whatever. If I don’t hear anyone’s teeth chattering all night long from now on, it won’t be too soon.
Can’t you come and get me? I wouldn’t make any trouble, I promise. But I’m not sure I’m made to be a Black Widow, at least not compared to you. No matter what I do, or how I apply their corrections, they still find ways to ‘improve’ my performances. And they don’t miss a chance to remind me that I once was the ‘little sister’ to the great Natasha Romanov, and that you would be so disappointed if you could see me struggle through training. Which I wouldn’t believe at all. You might play along, but you would find a way to console me afterwards. That’s what a big sister is supposed to do, right?
Alright, I hear the guards coming closer. I should at least give a proper impression of being fast asleep. For some reason, these guards are the weakest link in their chain of command. Strange, but I’m not inclined to give it any thought now.
From Russia with Love,
Yelena.”
Natasha barely had read the last line when she let her head fall back on the headrest. And for a hot moment, she felt like drowning. What horrors had she inflicted on Yelena, just because she took the chance Clint gave her by not killing her? How could she ever redeem herself from something that made every kill she made over the years pale in comparison?
A sniff coming from Yelena pulled Natasha back to the surface, so to speak, and only then did she notice that she had tears streaming down her face as well.
“Yelena?”
To their surprise, Kate was standing in the doorway, her eyes going back and fro between Yelena and Natasha.
“Kate?”
Natasha wasn’t quite sure why the young woman was here in the first place.
“I… I heard Yel screaming, so I of course came running. What have you done?”
“Stop,” Yelena cut in, taking some deep breaths to calm herself done. “Kate, honey, Natasha hasn’t done anything at all. Well, at least not now. You remember when I told you about the box of letters I managed to save from the Red Room by smuggling them out when I went on missions?”
Kate nodded, despite her eyes being still trained on Natasha, as if she needed to be ready to protect Yelena at the drop of a proverbial hat.
“So, it turned out,” Yelena continued, still wiping her face, “that over the years since she defected, my dear sister has also written a lot of letters to me. We both began to read a random one, and apparently, we both picked one that was a tearjerker.”
“Oh!” Kate exclaimed, her cheeks turning red. “I… I’m sorry, Natasha, for jumping to a conclusion that couldn’t be farther away from the truth. I should know better!”
“Calm down, Kate,” Natasha told her, reaching over the table to grab one of her hands. “You have done nothing wrong. On the contrary, it’s nice and heartwarming to see that my little sister has someone who has her back unconditionally. Do me a favor and never change that, okay?”
“You have my word, Natasha,” Kate replied with a sincere nod. “Do… do you mind if I read the one Yel was reading?”
“Not at all. As Yel said earlier, we all have dealt with secrets and learnt to keep them for the better part of our lives, for so long that we are tired of having any with the people we deeply care about. So go on, read it. Just be prepared for the effects on you.”
With that, Kate slid down to the floor to sit between Yelena’s legs and began to read.
“Dear Yelena,
part of me starts to think that I made a huge mistake by fleeing the Red Room. I’ve been at SHIELD headquarters for the better part of the last two months (aside from another building where they ran some medical tests on me, and yet another where they ‘interrogated’ me – don’t worry, I gave them what they wanted voluntarily), and still, I’m confined to a room not much bigger than the nurse’s office at the Red Room.
I’ve been talking to a whole slew of people, from psychiatrists to agents and everything in between, but so far, they haven’t seem to come to a conclusion what to do with me in the future. One thing is sure – I’m not going back to the Red Room, even if that means I won’t see you again at all. I remember them telling us a ‘cautionary tale’ when we were about your age, but the less you know about it, the better. Growing up in the Red Room is enough to cause endless nightmares, I don’t need to add to them.
But, not all things look as drab as they seem. The agent that made me sway (not what you think), he’s looking out for me, even though they seem to punish him for bringing me in alive. He’s barely in for a few hours before he’s sent on yet another mission. I’m worried they run him in the ground, but I’m at no liberty to say anything. I don’t want to risk anything that might help me getting on missions and finding a way to free you from their clutches, and if it’s the last thing I ever do in my life.
Anyway, back to the agent. His name is Clint, and you’ll never guess what his weapon of choice is? A bow and arrow. I know, it’s quite funny to hear that, but let me tell you, I’ve only seen his bow once, and it’s not your garden variety of a bow. It’s high tech, and he also has special arrows that he uses on his missions. I bet one of them still has my name on it, but I’m grateful that he never used it.
His handler is also a very nice man. When you see him, you might think he’s a banker, or an accountant, or something like that. But no, he’s one of the leading agents of SHIELD.
Well, it’s getting late, and while I don’t think they would punish me for writing a letter, I don’t want to risk anything. Like I already said, I want to go on missions, so I can find a way to get you back to where you really belong, at my side.
Until then, with love,
Natasha.”
Before Natasha knew what was happening, she had her arms full of Kate, who hugged her with all her might. And that was quite a lot.
“Alright, Kate, what brought that on?”
“Your letter, of course! If I wouldn’t know better, one might think that you both were pining after each other. Well, it’s probably possible to be sisters and still do that.”
With that, Kate was gone again and sitting down next to Yelena, plucking both boxes into her own lap.
“And don’t even think about reading another, okay? That goes for both of you. I can’t deal with both of you being reduced to tears for the whole day. Besides, Clint is ordering pizza, you are invited, Natasha, so don’t even try to protest,” at that, Natasha just held up her hands in surrender, “and if you want to get a slice, we all better hurry, before the boys eat it all up.”
“The boys?” Natasha echoed.
“Yeah, Clint and Lucky. Would you believe that this dog can eat half a pizza and still be healthy?”
“Not really, but let’s just say, stranger things have happened.”
“Yup,” Yelena added while slinging an arm over Natasha’s shoulder, “and I’m grateful for them.”
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The End
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