“Melina can get you set up with a new identity and some money to start so you can settle down. You don’t have to leave right away, you can take a little while to orient yourself, find out who you are,” Mischa rambled slightly to the newly freed Widow sitting beside her in the plane.
The Widow was just a little older than her but she was the first one that prominent facial scars from what looked like knives. Mischa had freed her from a martial arts dojo where she was stationed to survey the son of a wealthy family who took lessons.
The Widow hadn’t spoken a word other than to mumble her name, Cassandra, when Mischa had asked, and to apologize for cutting her with a knife. Even now she cautiously eyed Mischa as they touched down and Mischa waited for her to be ready first. “Do you have any questions?”
The woman cautiously nodded but didn’t ask them. Mischa started to answer each possible question that she might have had. Cassandra eventually glanced toward the door of the plane and Mischa figured that that was her cue.
Mischa introduced her to one of the Widows she recognized who greeted them first. The Widow, Nyssa, took Cassandra from Mischa to lead her to go take a shower and change out of her uniform. Mischa went to go inform Melina about the latest release, mark the woman off the list, and pick up another dose of the antidote.
Mischa waited patiently just inside of the lab as Melina worked, waiting to be acknowledged. Melina glanced at her but continued to work and Mischa huffed but stayed quiet.
“I thought you quit,” Melina finally commented, peering through a microscope. “Left to go lay with another girl.”
Mischa bristled at the statement. “I didn’t quit, I took a break. Cassandra was stationed in the same state that I was so I saved my sisters a few hours and did it myself,” she paused before she continued. “And I’m not laying with another girl.”
“No?” Melina hummed, taking notes in the notebook next to her as she moved to add some chemical to the mixture. “You’re not a dyke then?”
Mischa froze at the word, curling her fingers into fists to stop herself from lashing out. “I’m not a… a dyke. I’m a lesbian.” Mischa stumbled over the slur, swallowing hard.
“So you are laying with a girl?” Melina inquired and Mischa really wished that she didn’t need a refill on the antidote.
“I’m not laying with anybody! I’m not-- I’m not ready for that,” she folded her arms, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “I don’t want sex.”
“Everybody wants sex. Your girl will want it,” Melina finally glanced over at Mischa. “If you want to go be normal then you cannot carry the Red Room with you.”
Mischa blinked a few times, trying to decipher what Melina was talking about. “I’m not trying to ‘be normal', I just… I just want to be. I have a girlfriend and I love her.”
“So she knows then? About you,” Melina raised the goggles on her face up to rest on her forehead, inspecting Mischa. “All of it?”
Mischa slowly shook her head. “No. She knows bits and pieces but nothing about the Red Room.”
Melina lets out a huff of a laugh, shaking her head as she turned away, pulling her goggles back down. “Of course not.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mischa demanded, angered at the dismissal.
“This is what I was talking about with Yelena,” Melina commented and Mischa paused at the sound of her mom’s name. “She coddles you far too much. Convinced you that you can bury who you were. You can’t, the Red Room is a part of you and it always will be. Widows cannot have normal lives, and we never will. It’s just the way it is.”
Mischa swallowed hard as Melina picked at an insecurity that she had. “I don’t have to leave it behind. It’s part of me.”
“Yet you lie to your girl,” Melina shook her head, starting to fill a vial of red dust.
“I’m not lying!” Mischa snapped because she wasn’t lying to Phoebe.
“You are omitting the truth then,” Melina corrected her words. “But that is still a lie. You lie about your past, what do you think she will do when she figures it out? Tell me, does she say that she loves you now?”
Mischa slowly nodded. “Yes,” she whispered, thinking of each time that Phoebe would smile up at her and whisper those three little words.
“But she doesn’t love you,” Melina secured a top onto the vial and held it up to inspect it. “You are pretending to be someone that you are not. You are hiding your past. When she finds out, not if but when, she will feel betrayed. We have enemies, Mischa. You are playing a dangerous game. Your girl will get caught in the middle of something terrible and if she doesn’t know how to prepare to protect herself then you are taking her choice away from her and she will get hurt.”
Mischa felt like she was punched in the gut with each word that Melina spoke. “No…” her voice wobbled with uncertainty the longer she thought about it. She thought about Phoebe getting hurt because of Mischa’s past actions in the Red Room. About Phoebe being held for leverage. “I’m not… I’m not taking her choice.” Because she wasn’t, she knew how it felt to have her choices taken from her.
“You’re lying to her about your past, you are having her fall in love with someone who doesn’t exist. That is not fair to her, no?” Melina started to fill another vial. “She should get to pick whether she falls in love with a killer. You are a Black Widow, Mischa. You have slept with many people and you have killed each and every one of them.”
Mischa ducked her head down, digging her nail into the palm of her hand.
“Yelena has convinced you that you can live a normal life. She is wrong, she doesn’t understand,” Melina shook her head and Mischa clenched her jaw at the action. “She is in no position to be telling you these things.”
“Yelena is my mom,” Mischa defended her.
“What does that word even mean?” Melina turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow. “You are a possession for her to collect and look after.”
“I am her daughter,” Mischa corrected, her voice shaking as she contained her rage. “I am Mischa Belova. She is my mother and I love her. You could never understand that because you drive everyone away from you!”
Mischa hadn’t meant to raise her voice. Melina had stilled and Mischa’s heart thudded dangerously in her chest as she debated about running. “Do you really think that they’ll stick around for you?” Melina inquired.
Mischa took a few moments to gather her words and calm her racing heart. “Yes. They’re my family and I love them. I would kill for them and they would kill for me.”
“Yelena sent you away the first time that you met,” Melina reminded her. “A rejection.”
“She wasn’t looking for daughters then,” Mischa was getting agitated and she just wanted the antidotes so that she could leave.
“So then what changed?” Melina prompted.
“She was there. She was the stability that I didn’t know I needed. She wasn’t my mom at first, I thought that I didn’t need a mom. But then I saw my little sisters with her and realized that even if I didn’t need a mom… I wanted one,” Mischa plucked at the sleeve of her uniform to try and busy her hands so she could focus on something else. “She’s my mom, that’s not going to change. I picked her and she picked me.”
“That’s not how it works,” Melina commented.
“It is for us,” Mischa’s family was built of broken girls who knew each other inside and out. They were all raised the same way. They were her family and she didn’t want another. Yelena was all that she needed in a mother. Mischa held up her hand and Melina glanced over at her at the movement. “This leather cuff on my wrist symbolizes our family. This means that I am a Belova, that I have a home to return to, and that I have a mother that loves me.”
Melina stared at it before she focused on filling another vial and then focused on making a few exploding pellets filled with the red dust. Mischa thought that that was the end of the conversation and was grateful for the quiet. She leaned against the wall, content to wait and watch Melina work.
“Yelena wanted to be a mother as a child,” Melina’s voice startled Mischa after the silence blanketed the room. “She had a doll that she named Baby and she would tell each and every person that she met that she wanted to be a mommy… but of course it’s only natural for children to mimic their parents, displaying typical gender roles as they discover their place in life at that age. She looked up to me to guide her and I had been her mother. It was a milestone she reached and nothing more. So perhaps she never wished to be a mother in the first place. Yelena was a wild and chaotic child, very emotional and messy. I could never picture her being a mother. She would never be emotionally mature enough to handle things appropriately.”
Mischa didn’t know how to reply to that. She hadn’t known that bit about Yelena as a child and she tried to think of her mom as the wild and chaotic mess that everyone was talking about. Her aunt Nat had mentioned it as well. Her mom may be a little messy with her sense of fashion and terrible organization skills but she was learning just like her. Just like she and her sisters, Yelena was also learning to develop emotionally and mentally. They had their bodies and mind taken from them, they didn’t get the chance to grow.
“What she was like as a child doesn’t matter anymore. She’s not that child and you need to stop treating her like it. She’s my mom, everything that I need her to be, and I’m tired of you insulting her,” Mischa folded her arms as Melina secured the fresh antidotes in a bundle. “You are more than the Red Room made you to be. Just like Yelena. You’re not the same people that you were years ago and you can’t be what the other wants. But you are stuck. You are stuck in the Red Room even though it’s gone. You are a mouse on a wheel in a cage that has been left open.”
“Watch yourself, Mischa,” Melina warned and Mischa straightened up.
“Or what? It’s the truth! You are scared because the Red Room was your whole life! But guess what, it was my life too! I am a product of the Red Room, I am a Widow, but I am more than what they made me!” Mischa hadn’t realized she was yelling until the door swung open and the Widow who greeted them earlier stood there, Cassandra at her side. Mischa fell quiet at their appearance.
“Is everything okay?” Nyssa inquired as she glanced between Melina and Mischa as if looking for signs that they were fighting or going to start.
“Everything is fine,” Melina calmly replied, lifting the goggles from her head and setting them on the table as she finished securing the vials and container of pellets. “We were merely talking.”
Nyssa raised an eyebrow but doesn’t call her out on the raised voice. Instead, she glanced at Mischa. “Are you alright?”
Mischa wasn’t. She just wanted to go home and crawl into her mom’s bed for comfort. She needed the reassurance that she wasn’t lying to Phoebe or that her mom still wanted her. “Yes.”
Nyssa doesn’t call her out on the lie, instead introducing Cassandra to Melina. Melina let Nyssa take the small batch of antidotes from her and Mischa took a deep breath as Nyssa led her out of the room. “Here,” she gently pressed the antidotes into Mischa’s hands. “Do not take anything she says to heart. She’s been cycled through the Red Room four times. She does not understand.”
“She wasn’t wrong about a few things, though,” Mischa had to admit, tucking the antidotes away in her uniform. “Thank you. Look after Cassandra, yeah?”
“You don’t even have to ask,” Nyssa reached out to ruffle Mischa’s hair with a grin. Mischa smiled slightly because pretty much every Widow that didn’t stray far from the farm knew that Mischa liked having her hair touched and played with. “Are you heading back to your girlfriend or your mother?”
“Mom this time,” Mischa tucked her hands into her pockets. “I need her.”
Nyssa inclined her head in understanding. “Fly safe,” she ordered and Mischa nodded.
When Mischa arrived home, it was dark but Mischa still had to call her mom to warn her that she was on the front doorstep and that she was coming in. She stepped inside, kicking her boots off at the front door, and made her way upstairs immediately. Ksenia sat up when she entered their shared bedroom but Mischa settled her back down before changing out of her uniform and immediately heading to the master bedroom.
Yelena raised her arm to welcome her into the bed. Varvara was sprawled across one side fast asleep but Yelena had untangled herself to get ready for Mischa.
Mischa hesitated before she crawled into her mom’s lap like a small child and curled up into a ball. Yelena’s arms are warm and comforting as they wrap around her. Mischa let out a sigh of contentment as Yelena kissed her forehead.
“Is everything okay, Cha-Cha?” Yelena questioned softly, running her fingers through Mischa’s hair.
All the feelings she had bottled up at the farm came tumbling out of her mouth in the form of insecurities and quotes from Melina. She started crying at one point and she almost missed as Varvara woke up and slipped out of the room.
Yelena let her ramble on until she didn’t have anything else to say. Yelena then pressed their foreheads together and started to help Mischa sift through her feelings and thoughts. Yelena made promise after promise, bringing Mischa’s leather cuffed write up to her lips to kiss it and remind her that Mischa was her daughter and that was never going to change.
Mischa and Yelena then have a very long conversation about her relationship with Phoebe and how to proceed going forward. Mischa came to the conclusion that she ultimately had to come clean to Phoebe. Phoebe needed to know. And Mischa was terrified that Phoebe would leave but she couldn’t keep hiding who she was.
Varvara eventually climbed back into bed with a glass of water and a cold cloth for Mischa. Mischa accepts them from her with a tired smile.
Melina had a few truths to her words but one thing she was absolutely wrong about was who Yelena is as a person. Yelena is not the same six-year-old that she knew, Yelena has grown and changed and become the mom that all of them needed.
Melina just can’t see that. Cycled through the Red Room four times made the woman unable to adjust to life without it. Melina couldn't step outside her comfort zone and discover who she was as a person and was completely content to just be the scientist that the Red Room molded her to be. Melina was stuck and nobody could help her but herself.
Mischa falls asleep tucked between her little sister and her mom and tries not to think about it.