bloody like a body that has died and it's myself (tangled in my own intestines)

Yelena had not realized just how mundane and normal her life as Ellen had been until she was on the run again. She almost kept slipping into the same soft southern twang she had gotten used to while being Ellen, forcing herself to switch to a different accent until she was safely tucked far away in Budapest. 

It hadn’t been until she stood in the middle of her empty safe house, the adrenaline of the quick journey fading, that she truly felt the weight of her decision. The pins on her lapel felt heavy but Yelena couldn’t find it in herself to take them off. They were badges of honor, gifts given to her out of pride, and Yelena needed them. She had to shed every piece of her that could connect her to Ellen but she just couldn’t leave two things behind. 

Her pins from Emily and the notebook of songs from Andie. 

The solitude and silence in her safe house were suffocating. Yelena hadn’t realized that she had practically moved in with Emily first in her dorm and then in her apartment. It was just easier to be with another person, someone to keep her out of her head. There was no longer a warmth pressed into her at night or the soft tapping of fingers that Emily often did whenever she got anxious or frustrated. 

With Emily gone, Yelena’s grasp on her sobriety wavered and the urge returned more than ever. She couldn’t just call Emily up or slip into her dorm room anymore. Yelena tried to go back to what she used to do by picking up women to sleep with but the guilt that gripped her the first time she tried was so heavy that she had to bail before any clothes were actually removed. 

Yelena wasn’t really sure what she would have called her relationship with Emily. The only thing she knew was that she loved her. Perhaps if Yelena hadn’t been afraid of laying down roots or scared of rejection then she would have asked instead of wondering if being Emily’s girlfriend could have gone beyond a ruse used to ward away any unwanted advances. 

Without Ellen’s reputation, Yelena had no odd jobs to fall back onto. There were no unloading crates at a cafe, dog-sitting for the elderly woman down the hall from her safe house, or carrying groceries for the single mother the floor above her who had a sick child too young to take out. There were no neighbors that would knock on her door to offer her dinner because they made too much and “a young girl away from home for the first time could use a good home-cooked meal”. The wariness over potentially poisoned food always gave way to hunger on drunken nights and Yelena would return empty dishes back to her neighbors, her stomach filled with something other than greasy take-out. 

She didn’t have those connections anymore. She had to fall back into what was familiar and took less than legal jobs. She was a little rusty but it was like second nature. The only thing was that she suddenly found that the collateral damage she never minded before was suddenly important in a way she couldn’t fathom. Those caught in the crossfire had never been more than people in her way but they were suddenly humans with faces and names. Yelena couldn’t help but think that they were someone’s Emily. 

With that, her nightmares returned in full force. Yelena hadn’t even realized they had been satiated by sleeping with Emily, the warmth of another person she trusted soothing the waging war in her mind. Her nightmares were mainly of Emily or sometimes Andie. They would call her Ellen, call her a lie, tell her that they hated her, that she was fake. 

Her nightmares involving Emily would often include the woman telling her that she was wrong about broken people and that Yelena was too far gone and unfixable. She would say there was no redeeming her. She would tell Yelena that all she was destined to do was hurt people and then leave. 

There came a point where everything was too much and Yelena was left staring at a bottle of vodka gripped in her hand in the middle of the night, sleep deprivation clutching her in its grip and leaving holes in her memory of when she had bought it, the sharp scent of the open bottle burning her nostrils. 

The bottle was full. She held the cap tightly in one hand, looking down at the clear liquid with the overwhelming urge to drink until she could just sleep. 

She could practically feel Emily draping over her, wrapping her up in her arms like a blanket as she whispered to her that she knew she could do it. 

Yelena shattered the bottle against the wall without a drop having touched her tongue, spending the rest of the night with her jacket wrapped around her, gripping the lapel with her pins tightly. 

The time came around when Emily would have given her another pin for her sobriety. Yelena wanted the reminder that she was still going but it felt wrong to get one for herself. 

Yelena then found a pin in a shop of a martini glass and it made Yelena remember Emily and how they met. Perhaps there was some sort of irony in an alcoholic buying a pin of a martini glass to celebrate sobriety but Yelena attached it to the lapel and took comfort in its weight. 

Yelena bought a tube of peppermint chapstick and would apply it to her lips just to smell the lingering scent afterward. She could pretend that it was Emily. 

Yelena broke her streak for the first time after a rough job. The blood staining her hands just wouldn’t go away, staining like ink no matter how hard she scrubbed. 

Her choice of poison had been beer because it was the first and easiest to obtain when she went looking. She drank until she blacked out, coming to laying on the floor of her safe house surrounded by empty cans. She was disoriented enough that she didn’t make it to the bathroom before emptying her stomach and she was left feeling like nothing but a waste of garbage as she groaned on the wood floor. She reached for her phone like second nature with a number in mind only to remember that she could no longer call Emily to make her a normal human being again. 

The guilt over breaking her sobriety turned to anger and Yelena realized that she had used Emily as a crutch and didn’t know what to do without her. She knew that her relationship with Emily wasn’t the healthiest but Emily kept insisting that she never minded it, even when Yelena told her she was going to use her up. Emily would tell Yelena that she was using her too but Yelena never thought that wanting to be held and praised was a big deal. 

Yelena eventually managed to clean herself up, ran her fingers over the pins on her lapel, and opened the notebook that Andie had bought her. 

She wrote a song about a parasite leeching off of a butterfly. She ended up ripping that one to pieces before writing about a vicious dog and a rabbit that had shown it nothing but love. 

She named it Li’s Lullaby. 

Using Emily’s name was just too dangerous. 

Yelena started to turn to her notebook whenever she felt the urge to drink. Writing out everything on her mind made it easier to think. 

She filled the first notebook and bought a second. 

Andie would have laughed at the notebook and the way the English quote printed on the cover was misspelled from a translation error. 

Yelena missed them. She hoped that their career was still doing well. 

Of all the things Yelena had expected, her sister showing up on her doorstep was not one of them. 

The worst part was Yelena couldn’t tell if she was a friend or foe. Yelena could take no chances and the fight that ensued was violent and harsh. 

They ended at a stalemate and the last thing Yelena was expecting was for Natasha to have the bundle of vials she sent ages ago or the question on what they were for. 

“You brought them here?” Yelena demanded. She was glad that she hadn’t stuck down any roots again or tried to settle into another life as she shrugged on her jacket and threw her notebooks into her bag along with the vials shortly before her sister inadvertently led the Red Room to her doorstep. 

The fight that ensued after that had Yelena cursing under her breath as civilians were put in harms way with the chase on bikes and cars. Yelena couldn’t catch her breath until she was squished in a vent in a subway system, Natasha breathing harshly next to her. She had a tear in the arm of her jacket from where a bullet had knicked her. Yelena would learn to sew to repair it. The jacket was special. It had her pins. Emily wore it when it got cold. It was familiar. 

Any hope that Natasha wanted to rekindle their old relationship was dashed as she kept reminding Yelena that they weren’t actually sisters. 

Yelena rubbed her fingers over the pins on her lapel and squashed down the urge to drink to numb, instead wondering if Emily would have sewn the rip in her jacket. 

Ellen Lambert was the type of person that people didn’t get angry with. She was just a small girl from the south leaving home for the first time. She was a sweetie, always ready to lend a helping hand, and quickly learned how to party. 

Ellen Lambert never had to deal with her fake family rejecting their ties with her and insisting that the love between them had never been real. Being Ellen Lambert was easier but Ellen Lambert died the day that she told Emily she loved her. 

So Yelena buried the hurt in the back of her mind to deal with later and instead followed her sister as they get supplies and settle down at a table outside near a small store later that day. Yelena had to remove her jacket to take care of the gash on her arm, staring down at the little bottle of vodka she had gotten before forcing herself to pour it on the gash, pouring whatever was left onto the ground below her. 

Natasha reappeared from where she had been inside and Yelena startled slightly when a beer was set in front of her before Natasha took a seat. Yelena forced her eyes away from the drink and instead went on to explain to Natasha what the antidotes were for. 

Yelena clutched her jacket tightly in her lap when Natasha suddenly moved closer to her. For someone who kept insisting that they had no ties, Natasha was very careful when bandaging Yelena’s arm. 

“I think you used too much vodka,” Natasha chuckles as she wiped the excess liquid from the wound. Yelena said nothing, running her thumb along the pins of her lapel on the jacket in her lap. 

Yelena talked the whole time Natasha carefully bandaged her up just to give her something else to focus on. When Natasha moved back around to the other side of the table after she finished, she took a swig of her beer. 

Yelena glanced down at hers before looking away. 

“I know it’s cheap,” Natasha hummed, a smirk playing on her lips. “I’ll buy you something better later.” 

“No… it’s…” Yelena could see Natasha raise an eyebrow. “I don’t… drink.” 

Turning it down was hard, especially when it was right there in front of her, but Yelena couldn’t be compromised. Surprise flickered over Natasha’s face, a frown replacing the smirk briefly. 

“Oh.” Natasha tugged the beer away. “I thought-- really?” 

Yelena slowly nodded. “Yeah.” She rubbed the frappuccino pin between her fingers before she shrugged her jacket back on, taking comfort in the weight of the pins against her chest. 

Natasha shrugged slightly. Yelena wasn’t sure if she was relieved that Natasha dropped the subject or if some part of her wanted Natasha to push and ask. 

“Did you ever go looking for your parents?” Yelena changed the top when she spotted a father with his son. 

“My mother threw me away in the street like garbage,” Natasha told her. “What about you?” 

“The Red Room destroyed my birth certificate so I reinvented it.” Yelena had worn many faces and had many names. She couldn’t be certain if Yelena Belova was right but she felt it fit nearly as much as Ellen did. Ellen had been Yelena for a long time after she got out of the Red Room. “I was born in the south. Left home for the first time as an adult and moved out west to get a taste of the party scene for the first time. What about you? What’s your story?” 

Natasha leaned back in her seat with a small shrug. “I’ve never really let myself be alone long enough to think about it.” 

Yelena pressed her lips together leaning forward to prop her head up on her hand and watch her sister. Yelena wondered if Natasha had her own Emily somewhere, if she struggled to set down roots at one time or if she drank herself into oblivion. 

Natasha broke the quiet first, observing Yelena in return. “Where are you gonna go?” 

Yelena’s fingers found their way to the pins on her jacket once more. “Washington.” 

“Washington?” Natasha echoed, raising a brow with intrigue. “Why Washington?” 

“I have a wrong I have to right there.” Yelena wasn’t sure if she could ever make things right with Emily but she hoped to at least be able to tell her just how much she helped. 

“Yeah?” Natasha’s face softened and Yelena could almost pretend that they were little kids again, talking about their futures like Yelena had no idea what would happen to her in a few years. 

“Yeah…” 

“So, uh, what’s the deal with the jacket?” Natasha asked as they drove a car late at night to meet with Natasha’s contact. “I think you have too many pins.”

“The jacket is mine,” Yelena said defensively, unconsciously running her fingers along the pins. “The pins were a gift.” 

“A gift?” Natasha echoed in surprise, glancing over at her briefly. “From who?” 

Yelena pressed her lips together. Natasha kept insisting they weren’t sisters but Yelena wanted to share Emily, she wanted someone to know how much Emily meant to her, how much she had helped. 

“A friend…” Yelena mumbled, tracing along the guitar pin. “Maybe more.” 

“A boyfriend?” Natasha teased and something sour twisted Yelena’s stomach up. 

“Girlfriend…” she corrected quietly. “I am a lesbian.” She remembered when she didn’t even know what the term meant. 

“And your girlfriend only knows how to buy pins?” Natasha accepted the change as if Yelena hadn’t told her that she was gay. Yelena wasn’t sure what she had been expecting but Natasha embracing the change wasn’t it. 

“I struggled when I got out of the Red Room,” Yelena confessed and Natasha quieted down, the smile falling from her face. “I think I hit rock bottom. I couldn’t function. I met her. I saved her from getting roofied at a bar and then I went back to her place and I fucked her.” Perhaps she was using too much detail. Yelena wasn’t quite sure where the line was. “And then I did it again. And somewhere along the way, she wasn’t just someone to fuck. She bought me pins because I had issues. She was helping me. The pins are badges of pride. To remind me that I made it.”

“Is she the wrong you have to right?” Natasha asked quietly. “In Washington?” 

Yelena bowed her head. “I had to leave because the Red Room found me. I love her, Natasha. I still do.” 

Natasha was quiet for a few moments, waiting until they hit a red light to reach her hand out and grasp Yelena’s. “If she makes you happy then I think you should go for it.”

“Yeah?” Yelena wondered if in another life she would have been asking her big sister for relationship advice about her first love. 

“You deserve to be happy, Yelena,” Natasha said sincerely. 

For someone who insisted they weren’t sisters, Natasha seemed to care a lot about her. 

When Andie first taught Yelena how to write songs, they told her that they would write to help them sort through a bad mood. 

After freeing Alexei from prison and listening to his misogynistic and narcissistic comments, Yelena was very much in a bad mood. 

Figuring out that the woman she once called Mom was alive put her in an even worse mood. She felt out of control, the cravings so bad that she would do anything for a drink. 

“The English on your notebook is misspelled,” Natasha commented as Yelena furiously scratched out line after line, curled up in the co-pilot seat. 

“I know.” Yelena doesn’t focus on Alexei rambling about the “good ol’ days” and instead wished that Andie was there to talk her through the melody and encourage her anger. 

“You have to feel it to actually let it out,” Andie would tell her. “If you don’t let yourself feel then you can’t expect yourself to feel better.”

Yelena writes and writes. 

Bloody like a body that has died and it’s myself, tangled in my own intestines

She doesn’t feel better. 

The minute she sat down at the table on the farm where Melina dwelled and a shot glass of vodka was placed within her reach, all self-control went out the window and Yelena downed it like water. She felt Natasha looking at her in confusion but Yelena could not handle anything. She wanted to go home, she wanted Emily to wrap around her and tell her that things were going to be okay. She wanted to hide away in floral sheets and peppermint. 

She was pretty sure that Andie wasn’t talking about crying and yelling when they told her to let herself feel. She yelled at Alexei, piled anger on Melina, and she gave Natasha the broken bits of her heart before she snagged the bottle of alcohol and stormed off to the nearest room, a bedroom, and slammed the doors behind her. 

Alone with her thoughts and hurt, the pins on her lapel suddenly felt heavy. Yelena cried, heavy and hard, but there was no Emily to wrap around her and promise things were going to be okay. 

When Alexei came in with a story about himself that made no sense and then tried to sing American Pie, all Yelena could think about was Andie and her guitar. 

The song she took weeks to learn suddenly felt bitter. 

When Yelena woke up from sedation strapped down to a gurney with doctors ready to cut into her head, stripped of her beloved jacket, she briefly thought of the fact that she would never get to tell Emily the truth about anything. 

Yelena wondered if Emily missed her. She wondered if Emily got angry or already moved on. She wondered if Emily found comfort in another woman, someone who would look after her just as Yelena did. 

She wondered if Andie wrote songs about her. She wondered if Andie ever looked at their asexual flag and thought of Yelena and her inappropriate questions that they never handled with anything but patience. 

As a marker dragged across her forehead, Yelena could only think how Ellen Lambert would have died and Yelena Belova would have died with her. 

When Yelena looked for the antidotes to free the other Widows, she came across the jacket they took from her. She didn’t think twice about pulling it on and tucking the pins away in her pocket for safety. 

She felt naked when she went to run her fingers along her lapel only to find the holes in the fabric where they once sat. 

The Red Room had been the subject of Yelena’s nightmares, always haunting her and making her fear the happiness that came into her life. 

When Yelena killed Dreykov by jamming her staff into the engine of the plane he was attempting to take to escape, she was ready to die. 

It was said that your life flashes before your eyes right before you die. All Yelena could think about was Emily, how so very soft and sweet and gentle she was. Yelena thought of the kisses and greetings of “hey handsome” and how Emily never feared her, even when Yelena would get violent in her sleep. Yelena thought of the missed opportunities to say “I love you” or moments when she could have asked for more. 

When Yelena didn’t die, she was left with a feeling that she couldn’t quite identify.  Perhaps it was a relief that she hadn’t or maybe it was just the adrenaline running through her veins. 

“I’m sorry for not coming back to you,” Natasha told her with tears in her eyes and Yelena knew at that moment that her sister really had been there all along but was just as afraid as Yelena to make ties 

Yelena hugged her sister close, hating when the moment was interrupted by the authorities trying to hunt her sister down. 

“Go, I’ll be alright,” Natasha tried to convince them to leave her. 

On a whim, Yelena fished the martini glass pin from her jacket pocket and pressed it into Natasha’s palm much as Emily had done the day Yelena tried to give them back. “When you can, come see me in Washington?” Yelena asked with hope. 

Natasha smiled at her, gripping the pin like it was something precious. “I can’t wait to see the girl who captured my baby sister’s heart.” 

Yelena grinned at her.

Despite others wanting her to stay, Yelena eventually left the farm where the Widows gathered, telling them that she had things she needed to do. 

Some were angry at her for leaving. Yelena thought of her nightmares and how Emily would scream and beg her not to go, that all she was destined to do was hurt people and leave. 

“Don’t we matter?” They demand. 

“Don’t I matter?” Yelena retorted. 

They let her go quietly.

Ellen Lambert was a coward in many ways. Perhaps that was why Yelena went to see Andie first. 

They had their first big show at a bar downtown and Yelena showed up, ordered a soda, and waited in the crowd as Andie sang an original song. It was one Andie had written while with her, bouncing ideas off of her as they chatter about nonsense. 

Yelena approached them as they packed up their guitar. 

“Hey. Your set was pretty good,” Yelena commented, the familiar southern accent coming back like second nature. 

Andie jumped, spinning around and dropping their guitar when they saw her. “Ellen!” 

Yelena had expected anger or hatred, not Andie hugging her so hard that she thought they were going to break her ribs. 

“I thought you died!” Andie explained, their voice thick with emotion as they held her tight. 

“I’m sorry…” Yelena reached up to hug them back. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” 

Andie buried their face into her jacket and Yelena rested her chin on their curly blue hair. 

“Your song was good,” Yelena commented. 

“I would hope so,” Andie’s voice was muffled as they spoke into her jacket. “Because you helped me write it. I would hope my friend wouldn’t let me write a shit song.” 

Tears filled Yelena’s eyes as well and she hugged Andie tighter. 

Yelena used to think that the scariest thing she had ever done was wake up from being chemically subjugated or being trafficked as a child. 

Standing on the doorstep to Emily’s apartment debating whether to knock or not might just beat those. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her lungs struggling to work as she had her hand raised to knock but hesitated. 

What if it all went wrong? What if Emily hated her? What if Emily told her that she was just broken and useless and--

The door opened and Yelena came face to face with Emily, the latter staring at her with wide eyes. 

“Uh…” Yelena suddenly forgot the speech she practiced. “Hi…” 

“Ellen?” Emily dropped the energy drink she was holding. “You-- what--” Emily reached out and Yelena flinched harshly, expecting a slap for the way she treated her. 

Instead, Emily, good, sweet Emily, cradled her face and brushed her fingers over the steri-strips holding together gashes and bruises. “Who did this, Ellen?” 

“I’m sorry,” Yelena’s face crumpled because Emily’s tone was so gentle and soft and after the past few weeks, Yelena really needed gentle. “I didn’t want to leave.” 

“Oh, my handsome girl,” Emily crooned softly, nothing but concern in her tone. “What happened?” 

Yelena shattered into a million little pieces.

Yelena felt empty as she confessed everything to Emily in the kitchen of her apartment. She told Emily of Ohio, of the Red Room, of Black Widows and little girls and the hell that she came out of. 

Emily sat there at the table, watching her with a blank look on her face, never giving away her thoughts until Yelena finished. 

“Did you mean it?” Emily asked, ignoring everything that Yelena had just spilled to her. “The night you left. What you told me. Did you mean it?” 

Yelena pressed her lips together, her fingers moving to run over the pins on her lapel. “I did.” 

“You left me, Ellen,” Emily said before shaking her head. “Or should I call you Yelena?” 

Yelena ducked her head down in shame. “I don’t know…” she admitted. Yelena dug her fingers into her thigh to try and stop herself from breaking again. “Please don’t be quiet. If you’re angry with me then please yell. Or something. I don’t like quiet.” 

Emily knew that. Emily knew that Yelena had a hard time deciphering what she was thinking at times, not good at understanding what was wrong or what was wanted from her unless explicitly stated.

“I was angry at you. You left me with nothing. I thought that we were finally going to start something, to turn the next page in our lives. You gave me the best night of my life and then I woke up and every trace of you was gone. I couldn’t get a hold of you. I thought you died. But it wouldn’t make sense for you to take your jacket with you when you left if you were going to die.” Emily was glaring down at the table when Yelena finally peeked. “I was angry with you but I think I’m just sad now. You lied to me. You left me. You know how I feel about people leaving.” 

Yelena thought of Emily sobbing on the floor, clutching a sheet to her naked body with a bruise forming on her face from where Yelena had hit her. “I don’t know what to say except I’m sorry. But that’s not enough.” 

“It’s not,” Emily agreed and Yelena’s stomach twisted even more. “I loved you, Ellen. I still do. Or maybe I just love Ellen. How much of Ellen are you?” 

“I don’t know.” Yelena wished she knew. “Not much at first. But then lines began to blur and… I dunno… I think I am Ellen.” 

“Does Ellen love me or does Yelena?” Emily asked, her voice quiet as she picked at the sleeve of her shirt. 

“I do,” Yelena’s voice wavered as she tried not to cry. “I don’t know how to convince you. But I did. I still do. You have no idea what you mean to me.” 

“If I meant so much to you then how could you just walk away?” Emily demanded, tears finally rolling down her cheeks. “You couldn’t even say goodbye!” 

“I know!” Yelena raised her voice back, sobs caught in her throat. “But I would rather you hate me for the rest of my life than let you get hurt in something you had no business being caught up in!” Yelena took a few ragged breaths, having stunned Emily into silence. “You are too good and sweet to me, Emily. I have given you many choices to walk away, I have told you that I am no good. I loved you and it hurt me to leave but I knew that you would be safe and that was what I wanted…” Yelena deflated back into her chair, the anger and fight gone. “I have done nothing but make sure you were safe and happy because it made me happy. You make me happy.”

Silence stretched across the kitchen before Emily stood up and made her way around the table to Yelena. Yelena braced herself for retaliation, knowing deep down in her that Emily wasn’t a violent person but unable to help herself. 

“You ripped your jacket,” Emily commented quietly, running her finger along the tear where the bullet had caught Yelena. “You love your jacket.”

Yelena wasn’t sure how to respond, quietly praying that Emily doesn’t take her pins back as she gripped the lapels of her jacket. 

Instead, Emily slid into Yelena’s lap, straddling her as she looked Yelena in the eyes. “I have never felt anything but safe with you. You have always put me first and looked out for me from the very moment we met. I think of you and I think of strawberry daiquiris and that chalky pill in the bottom of my martini glass. But you hurt me, Ellen… Yelena.”

“I know.” Yelena doesn’t know what she was supposed to do. Emily’s words spoke of broken trust but the woman pressed their foreheads together, leaning tiredly into Yelena. 

“I missed you.” Emily’s fingers left her lapels and instead wrapped around Yelena tightly, clinging to her fiercely. “Please don’t leave me again.” 

“Never.” Yelena planned on keeping that promise. 

Reappearing was tricky because the whole town knew her as Ellen Lambert. She slowly transitioned to the nickname Lena, as close as she could get to her actual name, a chance to just be herself. Andie doesn’t stumble over her changed name once, understanding the need for a new name. They ask her no questions. 

The name "Yelena" was reserved for Emily much as the name Ellen had been. It was only for her to whisper like a secret between them, filling Yelena’s chest with pools of warmth. Things were rocky between them but Emily told her she wanted to make things work. 

When Yelena thought it was appropriate, she resisted the urge to squash down what she wanted and asked Emily to be her girlfriend. 

Emily said yes. 

Yelena’s jacket became so heavy with pins that it was hard to wear. 

Emily bought a board to display them on and Yelena hung it above the bed for her to see every night she went to bed and every morning when she woke up. 

Watching the board lose empty space was filling up the empty hole inside of Yelena that the alcohol once did. 

Yelena realized how incredibly domestic her life was on an ordinary Tuesday. She had officially moved in with Emily and was working on writing her own songs after she started to join Andie in playing gigs at bars. 

Yelena had thought nothing of the knock on the door, assuming it was the neighbor next door asking them if they wanted some lasagna because they ‘made too much’. Yelena found it hard to believe that they always made six servings too much of lasagna but she never pointed it out because the cooking was good. Emily went to go answer it.

Her girlfriend reappeared, stopping Yelena’s strumming on her guitar as she kissed the top of her head and told her, “Someone’s at the door for you, handsome.” 

Cold fear ran through Yelena for a few moments as she set her guitar aside and went to see who was at the door, noting the nearest weapon she had hidden away.

“Was that your girlfriend?” Natasha Romanoff stood in the doorway of her apartment in all her glory. “She’s a cutie.” 

Yelena grinned, surging forward to hug her sister who was sporting the martini glass pin on her jacket. “You’re really here.” 

“You’re really making a name for yourself here. Lena Lamber, singer-songwriter extraordinaire,” Natasha teased as she hugged Yelena back just as tightly, her voice softening. “Look at you. You look so…” Natasha paused for a moment, holding Yelena out by her shoulders to get a better look at her. “Happy.”

“I am happy,” Yelena replied, sensing Emily sneak up behind her. “This is my girlfriend, Emily. Emily, this is my sister, Natasha.” 

Yelena’s two families meet and for the first time in what felt like ages, there was no niggling feeling to drink.