yelena- reunion
When Natasha first shows up at her safe house nearly a year after Yelena sends the antidote, Yelena doesn’t know how to react.
They fight. Yelena will admit that she attacked first. Natasha slams her head into a cabinet but Yelena smashes a plate over her head in return. They only stop when they’re at a stalemate, choking each other with a curtain that Natasha calls a truce.
Natasha then talks about how the Red Room is gone and Yelena thinks that she’s making some dark joke but Natasha is genuine. That makes it hurt even worse.
Because if Natasha thought that she took down the Red Room then that means she never looked for Yelena. Yelena wasn’t hiding very hard, she was waiting for her sister to do something or track her down.
It’s not until later on after they’ve escaped the Red Room tail that Natasha led to them, that Yelena will ask about where she was. Natasha takes care of the gash in her arm, focusing on it like it’s the most important thing at the moment.
For a brief moment, Yelena feels like she’s six again, her big sister cleaning up her scraped knees. Natasha’s touch is gentle and kind and Yelena is just waiting for a knife to sink between her ribs in another act of betrayal.
Natasha can feel her stare, Yelena doesn’t try to hide it, and Natasha peers up at her briefly before giving her a soft smile.
Yelena hates the way it looks because she had missed it so fucking much.
Natasha tugs at her sleeve when they’re in a motel room and Yelena immediately assumes the worst. She screams at Natasha, assuming that the older woman is trying to strip her. She lashes out, making sure that Natasha wouldn’t dare to touch her in the way that others have.
Natasha tells Yelena that she was bleeding through her bandages and that she only wanted to check. Yelena was indeed bleeding through the bandages but shame and embarrassment burn through her with the fear. She doesn’t know whether she can believe Natasha and she would rather be safe than sorry.
When Natasha traps her in the corner before pulling her into her arms, Yelena flails. She’s drowning in panic because it’s been ten years since someone had held her in their lap and not hurt her. Natasha doesn’t understand, she wasn’t there.
But the hold is exactly how Yelena remembers, even if their bodies don’t fit together the same way anymore. Natasha is gentle when she loosens her grip and Yelena can’t help but burrow into the hold, desperately wanting the moment to last because she knows that as soon as Natasha lets her go then it’s over.
But for a few moments, Yelena can sit here and pretend she’s six again with her big sister protecting her from all the monsters in the world.
Yelena has a violent night terror the first night they’re reunited. She wakes up in a panic, ready to fight for her life, and for a brief moment, she had thought the hands tugging on her clothes in her sleep were Natasha.
She had screamed at Natasha, daring her to just go further and cut her clothes off because Yelena would do nothing for her, even if they were sisters once.
Natasha says that she got tangled in the sheets. Yelena is curled up in the corner like a feral animal, overreacting because of a sheet .
Natasha wants to talk about why Yelena thought someone would try to strip her while she sleeps and Yelena briefly wonders how Natasha couldn’t fill in the blanks. If Natasha was a Widow then wouldn’t she have experienced the same thing?
Natasha doesn’t understand. She should but she doesn’t. Yelena briefly wonders if this woman was just wearing her sister’s face, a stranger just like she had always been. It doesn’t seem fair for Natasha to have been gone for so long that she forgets how the Red Room works.
Yelena wants to forget as well but at the same time, the thought of forgetting terrifies her. Her mind had been messed with enough. She has had her mind thrown in a blender with whatever the Red Room wanted before it was poured back into her head. There are gaps in her memory and she doesn’t know what happened between them.
Forgetting would mean forgetting everything that the Red Room taught her. The Red Room taught her to be wary. To never trust anyone. To never let your guard down. They taught her how to hide in her mind, pull a mask over her face, shove her emotions away, protect herself, and so much more.
Yelena thinks of how Natasha claimed she thought Yelena was free but didn’t want to reach out. Yelena wasn’t even the legal age in Russia or America, where would she be? She didn’t even look like she was an adult, her face was still youthful. The Red Room used her child-like frame to pose her as a child or young teenager for undercover missions. Innocent children often fade into the background.
Did Natasha not care what happened to her? Was she content for Yelena to be homeless, fall in with a bad crowd, go into foster care, or just survive somehow?
Yelena thought that perhaps Natasha had been waiting for her to reach out. But Natasha had the Avengers before she went on the run. Yelena could have tracked her down if she wanted but the last thing she needed was to get rejected and then caught up in whatever authorities were chasing Natasha down.
The day after her night terror goes alright and Yelena supposed that was much better than what she had expected. Natasha takes her out to eat and she lets Yelena fly the plane they had.
Natasha tells her that she flies a plane better than Captain America. Yelena is pleased with the comparison but at the same time, her stomach twists with bitter jealousy at the reminder of Natasha’s other family. Her ‘real’ family. This family wasn’t fake like her other one.
The somewhat ease that she had fallen into with her sister faded the moment they sprung the man that Yelena once called ‘daddy’ from prison. He makes a joke about her period after Yelena swings at him. She tells him exactly what happened to her reproductive organs.
She doesn’t tell him how she got hers out four years earlier than the other girls to utilize her youthful appearance in honeypot missions. Some people just like them younger and having no risk of pregnancy was what was necessary. No attachments, they make you weak.
When Alexei tells them how proud he is of them, the little part of Yelena that still wanted her daddy died out. Alexei hugs them tightly and sings out their praises, how proud he is of the blood they’ve shed.
Alexei tells Yelena how proud he is that she earned the title of greatest child assassin ever. Yelena shoves herself away from them and wraps her arms around herself. The red in their ledger didn’t seem to bother Natasha or Alexei in the same way that it bothered her.
Natasha’s arm falls over her shoulder and Yelena glances up at her, taking a few moments before she slowly leans against Natasha’s side. The kind touch is still as overwhelming and new as it was the previous day when Natasha patched up Yelena’s arm.
Yelena had assumed that the woman posing as her mother died when she was shot and passed out as they were trafficked back to the Red Room. She had tried to pretend that her mama didn’t want to go back either and Yelena preserved her memory.
Melina was her mother, the only one she ever had. Seeing her alive had been a great shock but seeing the Red Room issued tablet in her hands made her heart drop.
Melina shows off the mind control serum she had made. The exact one that took away Yelena’s free will. Yelena watches her show it off on pigs like Yelena was nothing more than livestock to be manipulated and then later killed. Yelena watches as Melina forces them to stop breathing.
The image of the soft and kind mother that Yelena had remembered was washed away as she stares at the woman in front of her.
When Natasha says that their family wasn’t real while Melina and Alexei talk about playing their roles, Yelena wants to curl into a ball and die.
The best part of her life was fake and nobody ever told her. She had two loving parents and a loving big sister but that wasn’t real. She had no family. Nobody cared enough to actually keep her around. She was passed around from one person to the next like some filth-ridden object.
Yelena loses her temper. She screams at them, all the hurt that she had been taught to hold back comes bursting forth and Yelena can’t control herself.
Melina says that they only ever loved her.
Yelena doesn’t know if she’s ever felt actual love. If nobody believed that it was real then how could they have loved her?
Yelena snatches up the bottle of alcohol in the middle of the table and darts toward an empty room to go stew in her thoughts in peace.
That wasn’t real.
Yelena wishes that she never shipped the antidote off to Natasha in the first place. She wants to free the Widows and take down the Red Room but being here and surrounded with reminders of what a piece of unwanted trash she was hurts so badly.