one | yelena's pov
Her flight to her newest mission seemed to stretch for days, although it was only seven hours. Val had managed to get her a private jet, but between the recent blood loss (which resulted in a hospital trip after a bad infection; she had forgotten to disinfect the wound, rather going straight to stitching herself up), the passing of her sister's first birthday in the grave, the coming of her least favourite holiday, Christmas, and the migraines she had begun to suffer from, she was not doing well. The turbulence kept her awake- not that she had gotten any sleep lately, anyway- and she kept shoving bile back down her throat. She had stupidly forgotten to buy another pack of gum so she was chewing her last piece, willing the buzzing in her ears to go away. She always hated planes, especially after that one day when she was six, but she couldn't exactly drive from London to Queens. There was a voice in the back of her head that kept freaking her out, listing all the things that could possibly go wrong. What if the plane crashes? What if you’re caught by the police? Maybe the Red Room wasn’t actually taken down and Val is just trying to get you back there-
Yelena slammed her head against the window, the sudden pain distracting her from the intruding thoughts. She busied herself with trying to count how many lights she could see, but soon deemed it impossible- with every light she counted, there were six more she missed. Luckily, she could see the ‘abandoned’ factory’s roof begin to open up, revealing the landing pad underneath, and she breathed a sigh of relief. It was about time.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
Walking through the busy streets of Queens, she gritted her teeth and pushed through the crowds. There were too many people, too many sounds, too many stares- she was used to the quiet streets and back alleys, but Val had been insistent on using the main roads as that’s where the mission was put into place. Rather than dressed in her normal comfortable, stretchy material that’s good for fighting, she was stuck with a thick fur coat, expensive and lavish jewelry and layers of clothes made of fine materia, mainly silk and cotton. Val had said it would hopefully attract people who may want to rob a poor, ‘defenseless’ woman, and it was so far working. She had noticed about four men following her- although she highly doubted their intent was only to steal. She noticed an alleyway nearby, small enough to deter other passerbyers but large enough to put up a decent fight in. Yelena winced, knowing she was going to have to play the victim- her least favourite role. She was willing to bet half of her life savings that this spider-themed ‘superhero’ was a middle aged man who thinks that he deserves a ‘reward’ for helping others.
The main problem with this mission was that nobody knew this hero’s identity. All Val had told her was what the public knew- it was a male, had the abilities of a spider- whether from the suit or himself was unknown, and had been causing many problems to the assassins. Usually it was unintentional, helping capture an assassin’s target before the assassin could get to them, but lately he had moved to capturing the assassins and exposing entire extremely important missions. All of the assassins got out, of course, but Val knew he had to be taken down.
The mission was laid out like this: step one, get through the plane ride, preferably without a panic attack or any sort of injury. That was always step one, and nine times out of ten she failed, setting back the mission a day or two. Val understood, however, and always made a plan B to fit into the new schedule if need be. This was one of the rare occasions where plan A was in action. Step two of the mission, attract thieves. Rather than dealing with world-threatening villains like most of the Avengers, this particular ‘hero’ stuck to the streets, helping with minor inconveniences and regular things police would do. Muggings always seemed to be thwarted by this ‘Spider-Man’, so Yelena was to play a helpless, rich young lady who can’t fight for herself. If the mission was not going well and she was in legitimate danger, she was to fight back and contact Val. She had direct permission to kill if need be, and she was definitely going to use that to her advantage. Step three, continue to play the helpless woman. Once the man in red, blue and gold had dealt with the danger, she was to thank him profusely. Unfortunately, Val had requested lots of physical touch to make her seem much more vulnerable. This way, she could slip a tracker onto him without alerting him immediately. Many other assassins had tried this and they came to the conclusion that, like Iron Man, his suit was run by an AI. One of the other tech-savvy assassins had been working on an undetectable tracker- after many attempts, they were certain they had it right.
“Besides,” they had told her, “we always have a large supply of Photostatic Veils if we need to try again.”
The final step of the plan was to analyse his sleeping patterns and routine. This way, they wouldn’t screw up and show up to the wrong place at the wrong time. This would take a week to make sure they had his home and not anyone else’s, (they had learnt from experience on this one. There were multiple witnesses to the ‘murder’ and they ended up having to smuggle the poor assassin to Australia for two years). Then, by the morning, everyone would be mourning the loss of their ‘Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man’ while she had a few beers before returning to their headquarters in Florida.
It sounded almost too easy. The hardest part would be restraining herself from dealing with those creepy men herself, and let the man do it for her.
She ducked into the alleyway, and in the corner of her eye watched as the four men followed her. She cleared her throat, getting ready to put on that sickly-sweet voice she hated being able to do. Knowing exactly what steps to take and what to do, she turned her head, looking them dead in the eyes and let her face fall. She began to sprint, well, as much as she could in these stupid heels. She had already felt blisters forming from the too-small shoes half an hour ago, but she’s been dressed worse. And the amount of times she has had to wear heels is ridiculous. She felt the men advancing on her and resisted the urge to turn around and punch them in their annoying rat-looking faces. Instead, she let them get close enough to grab her. As soon as one reached out for her arm, she began to scream. One of the others grabbed her other arm, the other reached out to silence her and the final one- obviously the leader- advanced on her. She kept ‘sobbing’, but she was really just laughing. It was lucky she knew how to tear up on command. Just as the leader was about to speak, the one grabbing her left arm was torn away from her in a flurry of white, red and blue.
“Hey, I recognise you! I met your dad, like, last week? We had a lovely chat, guess the police noticed and brought him in! They were so nice, even gave him his own jail cell,”
Yelena physically cringed. It was obvious he was trying to be funny, but he was failing miserably. Though, to his credit, the men holding her had nothing against him; within seconds, their groans of pain were muffled from the layers of webs covering their body. Then again, they were weak, she could tell. They weren’t gripping her right either, she could have easily elbowed them in the face and broken their noses, and the man behind her was positioned so that one kick and he would be on his knees. But, she had to pretend that she was grateful rather than annoyed (she was really hoping to break a few bones herself), so she plastered a teary smile on her face and lurched towards the man.
“Thank you so much! I-I was so scared, I didn’t know what to do, they just grabbed me and I couldn’t defend myself, I thought they were going to take me- I’m only visiting so who knows what they could have gotten away with- thank you, thank you!”
She spoke in one breath, taking a gulp of air that was interrupted by a sob, wrapping her arms around him (he was about the same height as her, surprisingly, but she had an extra two inches on him due to the heels). He wrapped his arms around her, too, obviously trying to comfort her, (which was actually quite nice, not that she would ever admit that) and assured the woman that she was safe and would walk her to her hotel if she wished. To that, she shook her head and pulled away, done with the physical touch. The tracker had been planted and so far so good as he obviously had not yet been alerted. After more ‘thank you’s’ and fake tears, as well as trying to offer some of her jewelry, which he refused, he finally shot a web at the building and swung away. The police arrived not a minute later, having been alerted by the local Spider-Man about the attempted burglary of a poor woman by four men, but by then she was long gone.