Chapter 34
Yelena stared at Layla in confusion. Layla was angry, her arms folded as she tapped her foot impatiently. Yelena slowly closed the door behind her.
“What the hell are you wearing? Where were you?” Layla moved forward and Yelena planted her feet as Layla eyed her.
“I was with Nour--” Yelena barely finished her sentence before Layla was grabbing her shoulders, twisting her side to side to inspect her for injuries.
When she finds nothing, the concern on her face melted back to anger. “Did she threaten you? Did she hurt you?”
“No. She said she wouldn’t,” Yelena doesn’t understand Layla’s reaction. “Why are you here?”
“Because you said that you would come over in the evening,” Layla thrust a hand to the night sky. “It’s well past evening, Yelena. You didn’t show up. I came over here to check on you and do you know what I find?”
Layla marched right over to where Yelena’s gun was still in pieces on the floor from where she dropped it when Khonshu startled her with the pain in her hand. “Your gun, a weapon used to protect yourself, carelessly tossed to the ground in pieces,” Layla then moved toward the clothes Yelena had dropped off. “The outfit you were last wearing strewn about the room. It looked like you were in a struggle, Yelena!”
“I was not!” Yelena folded her arms. “I can protect myself just fine. I made the choice to go with her.”
“Why?” Layla demanded. “She practically killed you! You were bleeding out on my floor!”
“I was gathering information!” Yelena defended, her chest starting to ache from how hard her heart was beating.
“You are not allowed to disappear on me like that!” Layla snapped.
“You do not own me!” Yelena raised her voice. “Why are you upset? Nothing happened!”
“I’m upset because I care about you, Yelena!” Layla was starting to raise her voice as well.
“Well I never asked you to!” Yelena retorted. Layla’s face scrunched up before she reached out and Yelena suddenly regretted crossing her. As the adrenaline of the night out with Nour left her body, Yelena was too strung out to be rational. Yelena flinched hard, bracing for a blow for daring to do what she had done.
The hand gently laid on her shoulder was so much worse than a violent strike. One was sharp and quick and over within a moment. The other was teasing, cruel and wicked as she was made to wait.
“I’m sorry,” Layla’s voice was much softer, a dramatic decrease from the frustrated yells moments prior. “I’m not going to hit you, Yelena. Come here.”
Yelena doesn’t resist when Layla tugged her forward. She stood limp and compliant as Layla wrapped her up in her arms just like all the other times she had provided Yelena with comfort. But it’s all wrong this time. Yelena messed up, she doesn’t deserve Layla to do such things.
“I’m sorry, kid,” Layla apologized once again, her fingers running through Yelena’s hair. She doesn’t tug on it or use it to make Yelena look at her. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m not angry at you.”
“I made a mistake,” Yelena whispered in Russian. She remembered each time she made a mistake in the Red Room and how she had been punished so cruelly. She thought of Khonshu and how Khonshu did not care how many mistakes she made as long as she got the job done.
But this was no job. Layla was not Khonshu.
Layla pulled away a few moments later, still gripping Yelena’s shoulders. “Okay. Why don’t you go shower and change into something comfier? Then we’ll go back to my place and talk.”
Yelena doesn’t argue. She gathers her clothes up and heads into the bathroom. She carefully folded the dress up, trying not to think about the amount of money that Nour had spent on it. It would be useful in the future if Yelena needed it. At least, that was what she told herself as she stepped under the spray of the shower.
Yelena shuffled out of the bathroom in a pair of her favorite cargo pants and hoodie. She felt Layla’s eyes on her as she approached the dismantled gun still strewn on the floor and scooped up the pieces, turning them over in her hands to try and discern if anything had been damaged.
Layla doesn’t say another word until they’re back at her apartment and even then it was only to ask if Yelena would actually eat if she cooked. Yelena shook her head but Layla still prepared two portions anyway. Yelena didn’t want to waste food but her stomach was in knots and each bite settled in her gut like iron.
Layla eventually grabbed her wrist and pulled the fork from her hand. Yelena looked up at her, wondering if Layla would punish her by using food.
“You don’t have to finish,” Layla said, setting the fork down. “You look like you’re going to throw up. I don’t want you to eat until you throw up. I was just worried that you hadn’t eaten all day.”
Yelena propped her head on her hand as she stared down at the unfinished food in front of her. Layla wasn’t wrong, she hadn’t really eaten at all. “I’m not hungry.”
Layla let out a sigh. “I know.” She acknowledged. “Me either,” she pushed the bowl of unfinished food in front of her out of the way as well. “Can you tell me what happened? Walk me through how you ended up with Nour.”
Yelena does. She runs through exactly what happened from the moment Khonshu warned her all the way to the car driving off. Yelena reveals the photo that Nour had given her and Layla took it to look it over.
“You know what?” Layla commented as she inspected the photograph. She held the photograph up right next to Yelena. “You look like Safiyah.”
“Just because we both have blonde hair doesn’t mean that we look alike. Nour and Safiyah are Arab, I’m not. I am Russian… Ukrainian if my Red Room file is true,” Yelena swiped the photograph back, squinting at it as she stared.
“You’re both blonde-haired teenagers that Nour seems obsessed with,” Layla listed and Yelena didn’t bother to remind her that she wasn’t an actual teenager as she pulled the photograph of her and her sister from her boot to compare the two photos. “Did she tell you who Safiyah is?”
“You’re saying the name wrong,” Yelena commented. “It’s SAH, not SUH.”
Layla pronounced it a few times as Yelena frowned as she started to pick apart more things that she shared in common with Safiyah. “Well, do we know who Safiyah is?” She repeated her question.
“Not yet. Can I use your laptop?” Yelena asked. Layla packed up the leftover uneaten food as Yelena sifted through social media sites on the couch. Nour seemed like she was telling the truth about her name, especially when it was on the back of the photograph of her. Then again, it could just be a planted name for false evidence.
It didn’t appear that Nour had any social media but Yelena did find a Safiyah. She used the name along with what she could make out of the logo on the soccer uniform in the photograph to find a group photo of the soccer team that Safiyah was on. With that, she got a last name. Safiyah Sohl was easier to find.
Yelena found a death certificate. A name mentioned in a news article detailed of how Safiyah was walking home from a soccer field late at night after practice before she was jumped, sexually assaulted, and killed by a group of men. Safiyah Sohl died at the age of fourteen, three months after the photograph was taken.
Yelena was able to backtrack and find a birth certificate. There was no father listed but the mother was indicated to be Nour Sohl.
“What did you find out?” Layla sat next to her and Yelena jumped slightly, having forgotten where she was. She had been so used to Khonshu warning her of her surroundings if she needed to pay attention to something that now she was easily spooked.
“Safiyah was Nour’s daughter,” Yelena’s lips twisted at the thought of how she died. “She was murdered six months ago after being assaulted by a group of men.”
Layla got really quiet after that.
Yelena closed Layla’s laptop and turned to look at her. “Are you okay?” She asked when she noticed the upset on her face.
“Yeah…” Layla blinked tears out of her eyes, wiping them away quickly. “It’s just, uh… with my ties to Tawaret, sometimes hearing these types of things just makes me upset.”
Yelena pushed the laptop out of her lap to set it on the coffee table in front of her before she slowly turned to adjust herself to kneel so she was a little taller. Then she wrapped her arms around Layla, unsure of how exactly to comfort her but remembering all the times that Layla had done the same thing for her.
Layla leaned into her, wrapping her arms around Yelena’s waist in return. “Sorry, kid.”
“It happens, I suppose. You can’t control what happens with your Goddess,” Yelena commented, frowning when Layla shook her head.
“Not just for crying. I’m sorry for yelling at you. You didn’t deserve for me to freak out. I just… I sometimes forget that you’ve been on your own with only your God for so long that you’re not used to people worrying about you disappearing,” Layla sighed into Yelena’s hoodie. “But I care about you. I worry when you’re gone and if you disappear then I’m going to come looking.”
Yelena doesn’t know what to say to that exactly. “You’ll come looking because I’m Dina,” she deduced because Dina El-Faouly was a real person now and Layla being unable to explain where her underaged niece is wouldn’t fair well for anyone.
Layla pulled away, reaching out to grip Yelena’s shoulders. “No. I don’t care about Dina El-Faouly. Dina isn’t even real,” Layla gave Yelena a small smile, squeezing her shoulders. “I care about Yelena Belova. I’ll come looking for her.”
“Promise?” Yelena questioned quietly. “You can’t say things like that and not mean it.”
“I’ll make a vow if you want me to,” Layla flips her hand over to show the mostly healed slice in her palm. Yelena placed her healed hand over Layla’s, lining their scars up.
“You don’t need to,” Yelena shook her head. Just the fact that she was willing to do so in the first place was proof enough.
Natasha felt like something had changed that night on the roof when she finally saw Dina’s face. Not just a glimpse or a quick look, but she got to stare at it.
There was no doubt that Dina had seen pain and violence and was intimately familiar with it. It was etched in her skin in the form of scars and marks. But mainly, Natasha could see it in her eyes.
That small moment on the roof changed things. Dina had seemed so nervous to reveal her face and when she did, she shrunk in on herself as if waiting for Natasha to say something.
Natasha didn’t know what to say. She assumed that Dina was waiting for comments on the multitude of marks littering her body, some of them very fresh, but Natasha didn’t want to make her feel self-conscious.
Natasha was able to get a little bit of closure regarding her little sister, even if the answers weren’t what she wanted to hear.
Each time that she thought about that moment in General Dreykov’s office, being handed the clipboard and made to read her sister’s name, her memory went fuzzy. She knew for a fact that it had been her little sister in the video, she could remember just knowing. But each time she tried to recall the memory, all she could remember was blood pooling under her sister’s small body.
Her therapist called it “fragmentation of memory”. The way that Natasha had shoved the memory into the back of her mind because she couldn’t show herself grieving in the Red Room caused flaws or irregularities in the memory each time she recalled it.
Sometimes when thinking about it, Natasha wouldn’t be able to remember her sister’s name on the clipboard, just a jumble of unrecognizable letters. Other times, she couldn’t see anything but fuzzy static on the screen as the video was played. But most of the time, she simply couldn’t remember her sister’s face.
Dina knew Yelena. When Natasha asked if Yelena had suffered, Dina had been unable to do anything but bow her head in silence. Natasha was reminded that she wasn’t the only one who lost Yelena.
Yelena had spoken about her to Dina. Dina’s words had done something to Natasha’s heart and when Dina ran off, Natasha had to let her go because she couldn’t make herself get off the ground.
Clint had been the one to come and find her, kneeling next to her and placing a hand on her shoulder in concern.
Natasha couldn’t tell him what had happened. The words were stuck in her throat as her mind tried to tell her that Yelena was hers to hold onto, that nobody else could know, and that Natasha deserved to be selfish and keep her dead little sister tucked close to her heart.
The one good thing that came out of the whole meeting was that now that Natasha had seen her face, tracking Dina was easier. When Dina popped back up on her radar, she was with the woman that had taken her to the high-end hotel.
Natasha refrained from interfering no matter how much she wanted to. The woman bought Dina an expensive dress and shoes and they went to a charity auction.
There was nothing nefarious about the woman that Natasha could dig up. Nour Sohl was a mother who had lost her daughter and worked a mostly quiet life as a teacher at a self-defense center. She quit her job a month after the loss of her daughter and not a peep had been heard out of her since.
At least, until she suddenly showed up taking a teenager around the same age as her daughter to different high-end places.
Nothing made sense. But Natasha knew that if she pushed that she could spook Dina away for good. She wanted to help Dina but she had to be patient.
How can she rescue Dina from herself if Natasha was drowning in the grief dredged to the surface that the reminder of her little sister yanked free?