natasha- shield
Natasha never stopped thinking about Yelena.
Not while she was cycled through the Red Room. Not when she was given a chance to defect. Not even when she was going through deprogramming.
When she was waiting to give the go-ahead to detonate the bombs strapped to the building Dreykov was in, she hesitated.
For a brief moment, she thought of the Widows that Dreykov could have standing guard. She thought about one of them having blonde hair standing at his side.
“Confirmation?” Clint repeats in the earpiece and Natasha swallows hard.
“Go ahead.” She says, her mouth dry. The building explodes and Natasha watches flames lick at brick and plaster and wonders what bodies they’ll find. How young are the girls going to be?
There was at least one child she killed. One innocent, naive child.
Natasha thinks of Yelena. Small and innocent and kind. Her sweet little smile and her bubbly personality. She thinks of someone killing her because they needed to escape.
She understands. She understands the need to get out but it doesn’t hurt any less.
Clint keeps chattering her ear off the entire time they’re holed up in a vent in the subway hiding from special forces. He picks up that there’s something wrong, that she’s deep in thought, but he doesn’t know what he can do to help.
“Hey.” Clint finally said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “I’m your partner. Your friend. I’ve got your back. If you ever just wanna talk, I’ll keep an open ear out.”
But Natasha doesn’t want to share Yelena. She doesn’t want to confess about how she had pushed and bullied a toddler away from her because she was scared of getting attached but then got attached anyway. She doesn’t want to explain that they were trafficked back and Natasha didn’t even fight for that little girl’s freedom.
She can’t force out the words that she killed whatever innocence that sweet girl had left.
Instead, she shakes her head, swallowing hard as she gives him a reassuring smile. “Just shaken up that it’s over with.”
Clint picks up that it’s not really what she’s thinking about but he doesn’t call her out on it, instead carving another set of lines to play another game of tic-tac-toe.
January third was a hard time of the year for Natasha.
It’s Yelena’s birthday. Natasha keeps counting how old she would be and thinks of a little girl all alone.
She searched for Yelena. She searched and there was no trace of her and Natasha can only pray that all the young underaged girls were somewhere with reliable people. That perhaps the softer older Widows were looking after them.
Each time Natasha sees a blonde-haired child in the streets, she has to pause. To look and make sure that it’s not her.
Each time she doesn’t know whether she is disappointed or relieved when it’s not.
Natasha asks for January third off each year from Maria. Maria asks her a reason why the first time she asked and Natasha simply said that it was a trigger from the past. Maria had accepted the answer and would pre-approve January third off for her each year. Natasha will leave base and go to a bakery and pick up a red velvet cupcake. Just one. She will ask for extra cream cheese frosting on it.
She will split it in half and eat one side, wishing that Yelena was at her side to eat the other. Natasha can picture the frosting getting smeared on her face and how annoyed the messes once made her but Natasha will do anything to cradle that sweet little face in her hands again, even if it means wiping crumbs and messes off of Yelena’s face.
She thinks of how Yelena barely cried when she broke her arm as a child. She was more upset that her parents wouldn’t listen to her and she finally sought out Natasha. Natasha then thinks of how Yelena cried when she fell and scraped her knees. Yelena was wild and free as a child.
Natasha wonders how many times Yelena cried after being trafficked to the Red Room. She wonders if Yelena ever cried out for her, hoping that Natasha would come back and protect her from the monsters.
Her sweet little one becoming a broke shell just like she was.
“Hey.”
Natasha peers over at Clint as he takes a seat next to her on the park bench.
“So this is what you do, huh? Eat a cupcake?” Clint gestures to the half-finished sweet sitting next to her before he frowns. “Are you crying?”
Natasha slams a mask over her face so fast that Clint startles. He holds his hands up, shaking his head.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Clint’s voice is soft. “I worry about you. This is the third year in a row you’ve done your disappearing act.” He reaches out and sets a hand on her shoulder. “I care about you, Tasha. You can talk to me.”
Except she can’t. She won’t. Yelena is hers and hers alone. Natasha doesn’t want to share her with anyone else.
But Natasha does give him something. “I’m celebrating.” She says simply, her voice hoarse, the red velvet cupcake tasting like ash on her tongue.
Clint eyes her because people who are celebrating don’t run away every year to cry. But he merely nods his head as if he understands. “How are we celebrating?”
Natasha glances at him. “We?” She repeats.
“Well, whatever it is you’re celebrating should be celebrated properly…” He paused. “But if you want me to go away and leave you alone then say it and I will.” He promised.
Natasha cannot share Yelena with him. But she needs someone at her side to remind her that things are real. She got out. She can look for her sister.
“Okay.” Natasha says and Clint grins at her.
Natasha is starting to think that perhaps Yelena simply doesn’t want to be found. Natasha has been in papers, she has been in magazines. She is part of the Avengers and her face is plastered on merchandise. Yelena would have known how to get her, where she is. Yelena could have reached out.
Natasha wonders if perhaps Yelena thinks she didn’t care.
But it was real. It was real to her. Natasha loved her. She loved her so fucking much that it hurts to not have her here at her side. What Natasha wouldn’t give to just explain.
The thought lingering in the back of her mind the entire time she is on the run after the Avengers broke apart was that Yelena would have a hard time finding her now.
But she doesn’t have too much of a hard time apparently when a box with no return address shows up at the trailer Natasha was stationed at in Norway. Natasha expects a bomb when she opens it, confused to find a bundle of red vials tied together with a hair tie. Something flutters to the floor when she picks it up and Natasha stoops down to scoop it up, turning it over in her hands.
It’s a photograph that Natasha had long ago forgotten had been taken. There in the photograph is her and the child she loved very much grinning widely at the camera. The photo had weathered with age, fading and yellowing slightly around the edges, but it only proved that it was very well loved.
Natasha looks down at the bundle of vials in her hand before she tucks them back into the box and sets upon hunting the not-so-little girl down.