bitter
Natalia knows immediately that the day was going to be long and tiring for her little sister when Natalia needs to get out of bed at four in the morning because Yelena can’t sit still.
Natalia doesn’t claim to be any expert on handling emotions but Yelena doesn’t know how to handle overwhelming amounts of anger and frustration.
After the spar on the mats and head to breakfast, Yelena makes a remark that causes Natalia to pause.
“Do you remember when we ate Pop-tarts? We got to eat them on the weekends when we didn’t have to eat a ‘proper’ breakfast before school,” Yelena pokes at her food.
The reminder of Ohio causes Natalia to take a look at the nearest calendar for the date. Eleven years to the day since they were trafficked to the Red Room.
“I can ask Clint if he can get some for you. He has a way of doing things like that.” Natalia offered and Yelena doesn’t reply.
“I miss Ohio…” The teenager whispers as she pokes at her food.
While training with Clint later on, Natalia will make stakes on who will win the spar. Clint blinks in surprise at the random request but does along with it.
They both know Natalia doesn’t ask for favors because she doesn’t like that being held above her head.
Natalia asks Clint if he can get strawberry Pop-tarts. “Yelena used to eat them sometimes when we were kids…” Natalia comments and shrugs her shoulders.
Natalia kicks his ass in training and Clint promised to procure Pop-tarts for her.
Natalia waits for Yelena after training but enters the room when Yelena doesn’t exit.
Yelena is angry and Natalia instantly knows that she’s not in the right headspace to be training. May is pushing her and Yelena isn’t ready for the push.
Natalia steps forward when Yelena lunges to take May down. Natalia pins her sister up against the wall and grabs the back of her neck, squeezing slightly. “Enough is enough.” She warns Yelena.
May steps forward and makes a remark about Natalia staying away from Yelena’s neck. As if Natalia didn’t know about Yelena’s triggers.
“I got this!” Natalia snaps impatiently at May before turning to look at her sister. “Submit.”
The anger overwhelming Yelena’s body seems to vanish as the teenager sags against her. “Sorry.”
Natalia knows what Yelena needs. She orders Yelena “En pointe!” much to May’s dissatisfaction.
May tells Natalia that she’s pushing it too far.
“Shut up!” Natalia finally snaps at her. Her baby sister needed her at the moment and this superior officer is trying to tell Natalia what she thinks Yelena needs.
“Do I need to get Coulson?” May asked her and Natalia grits her teeth.
“Get him for all I care. In fact, why don’t you get the commander too and we’ll make it a party!” Natalia growls at her. “Just leave me to do this!”
May does leave and Natalia turns to focus on guiding her sister through ballet sets. There’s a faraway look in her eye that tells Natalia that Yelena had safely retreated into her own head to deal with her emotions.
Natalia shouldn’t have challenged May because she should have known the woman would have taken Natalia up on her bet and brought the commander anyway.
Coulson notices the bleeding first. Yelena’s feet bleed from not wearing the proper equipment. Maria’s eyes follow his.
“Enough is enough. She’s bleeding, Romanov.” Maria warns and Natalia glares at her.
“Let me finish this,” Natalia refuses to stop. If she did then Yelena would probably have a meltdown that would result in Natalia pinning the teenager against her as she screams and tries to hurt herself to make her mind shut up.
“You don’t care that your sister is bleeding?” May digs and Natalia sneers at her.
“You don’t understand. She needs me to finish this,” Natalia snaps before realizing Yelena had paused and was waiting for the next set of instructions from Natalia. “En Pointe!”
When Yelena finally finished the set, her eyes flicker and briefly land on the new people in the room as if just noticing them for the first time.
Natalia cups the back of Yelena’s neck. “How do you feel?”
“Safe.” Yelena whispers and Natalia knows that she did her job. Screw the consequences, Yelena felt safe and that was enough for Natalia. “It’s been eleven years.”
Eleven years that Natalia had spent after Yelena was cruelly ripped from her grasp. “I know.”
Maria sends them off to medical with a promise that she and Natalia would speak later regarding her disobedience and backtalk to a superior officer.
Thomas Malley makes Yelena ice her feet and Yelena huddles against Natalia shivering slightly.
Clint joins them half an hour into her treatment and sits on the other side of Yelena, pulling the Pop-tarts he owed Natalia out of his pocket.
Yelena eats hers and cries. Natalia can’t say that she understands why Yelena misses Ohio so much but she sympathizes with her sister.
Thomas Malley wraps Yelena’s feet and lectures her about doing ballet without proper footwear.
Natalia is sure that Yelena will receive the same lecture again and again in the future.
Natalia curls around her in their quarters until Coulson comes to fetch Natalia to speak with Maria.
Yelena doesn’t want to let Natalia go at first. Natalia is angry with May so she asks Coulson about one of the other girls that trained Yelena, Barbra Morse.
“Can you get her to sit with Yelena?” Natalia eyed Coulson and the man gives her a small smile as he nods his head.
Natalia follows him down to Maria’s office where May was already there.
“Agent Romanov. Please, take a seat,” Maria gestures to one of the three seats set up at the foot of her desk. Natalia has no choice but to sit in the middle one next to May. “I’d like to discuss your aggressive behavior toward your superior today.”
Natalia glances at May before looking at Maria. “Okay…”
Maria raised an eyebrow. “Well?”
Natalia mimics the raised eyebrow in confusion.
“She’s giving you a chance to explain yourself,” Coulson tells her.
“Oh…” The word leaves Natalia’s lips faster than she can catch it. “Does it matter?”
“I like to hear both sides of things,” Maria replies, tilting her head to the side. “Tell me yours.”
Natalia was never given a chance to explain her side of things. Her superiors were always right and if they lied then Natalia was blamed anyway. “What do you want me to tell you?”
“Maria’s not looking for a right answer,” Coulson interrupts again and Natalia glances up at him. “Let’s start with the biggest concern that May had. Yelena having the back of her neck grabbed is a trigger and May doesn’t like that you grab her like that.”
“I’m not hurting her,” Natalia refuses to look at May. “It’s a conditioned response and a means of control. Our superiors taught her that if they grabbed her like that then she was to submit.”
“But you can grab her like that?” Maria arched an eyebrow.
“I can. She trusts me to do it when necessary,” Natalia said.
“And in the training room? That was necessary?” May questioned.
“You were pushing her too hard,” Natalia finally looked at May. “She was going to hurt you if I didn’t stop her.”
“She knows that if she needs to stop then she can tap out or tell me,” May folds her arms.
“She doesn’t always realize that she needs to stop,” Natalia shakes her head. “She’s my sister. I know her.”
“Then you know why she’s in such a bad mood today,” Coulson said. “Did something happen?”
“Probably the fact that our fake parents trafficked us to the Red Room on this day eleven years ago?” Natalia barely refrains from rolling her eyes. “It’s just a bad day.”
Natalia doesn’t expect the three sets of eyes staring at her.
“Trafficked?” Maria repeats when the others don’t speak up.
“Where do you think Widows come from?” Natalia scoffs. “Do you think we just poofed into existence? My mother chucked me away like trash.”
“Yelena would have been, what? Ten?” Coulson frowns.
“Despite how old or mature Yelena likes to say she is, Yelena was six,” Natalia glanced down at her lap. “I was eleven.”
“Despite the date or its importance, you cannot yell at your superiors. I don’t enjoy being used as a threat, Romanov,” Maria comments dryly.
“I trust you to train my sister and keep her safe, something which you have failed before,” Natalia said as she straightens up. “However, my sister's emotional needs and mental state is mine to deal with.”
“It doesn’t have to be. We only want to help, Natalia,” Coulson soothes when he sees Natalia getting worked up.
“You were trying to stop me from dealing with it!” Natalia gestures at May.
“Agent Romanov, settle down,” Maria said firmly and Natalia grits her teeth as she settles back in the seat.
“Okay,” Coulson taps his fingers together. “Let’s take a moment. We are all here because of our concern for Yelena.”
“I can handle Yelena!” Natalia snaps at him and Coulson raised his hands in surrender.
“Nobody is trying to say that you can’t. I believe that you know what Yelena needs better than any of us. We’re simply a little confused about the way you seem to get aggressive with her and others around her when she needs… help,” Coulson watches Natalia.
Natalia hesitates. She knows that they mean no ill will toward her or Yelena. They’ve been very accommodating up until this point and Natalia might owe them some answers to soothe them. “Yelena can’t handle being able to make her own decisions sometimes…” Natalia starts.
The others wait patiently for her to continue and Natalia to gather her thoughts.
“She’s spent the last eleven years being told what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and never being told why. She’s relinquished control for so long that she gets overwhelmed having her own,” Natalia glances at the wall so that she doesn’t see their reactions. “I’m not… aggressive with her. I’m firm and I’m controlling but that’s because it’s what she needs.”
Natalia stops to wonder if her answer was enough or if they needed more to satiate the anger at her for yelling at May.
“Thank you for sharing that with us,” Coulson said when he sensed she was finished. “I have a question about your earlier statement.”
Natalia really doesn’t feel like talking about Ohio at the moment and it must have shown on her face because Coulson quickly backtracks.
“But that’s not important,” Coulson glances at May. “You have something to say?”
Natalia glances at May.
“You told me that I was pushing her today. I didn’t pick up on any cues that I was pushing her,” May frowns slightly before meeting Natalia’s gaze. “How do I tell if I’m pushing her?”
“There’s no easy answer to that. I apologize for snapping at you.” Natalia glances at Maria. “I apologize for my insubordination and using you as a threat.” Natalia then glooks at Coulson. “I apologize for taking you away from whatever it is you were doing before you were forced to come to subdue me.”
Natalia then leans back in the chair.
“I apologize for pushing you to a place where you felt threatened enough to snap at me. I apologize for overstepping my boundary when it concerns what I thought was best for my rookie,” May said and surprise flickers over Natalia’s face.
Superiors didn’t apologize. Ever.
“I never meant to question your relationship with your sister,” May continues. “I never meant to push you to the point that you had to fight back and threaten me with the commander.”
May’s lips twitch up slightly at that.
“Right,” Maria leans forward on her desk. “Agent Romanov. For your insubordination, you will be required to wipe down the gyms after training for the next week.”
“You had Yelena do that once and you didn’t even shove her head into the bucket of chemicals,” Natalia tries to keep the grin off of her face.
She made a bet with Clint on just how horrified she could make Maria Hill. Clint didn’t believe that the Hardass Hill could express actual horror.
“If we wanted to do so then we wouldn’t use Lysol and Windex, we would use bleach,” Maria comments dryly. “If that’s all then you’re dismissed back to your sister.”
“Wait, that’s actually it?” Natalia questioned. She couldn’t help herself, the punishment was barely anything.
“That’s it,” Maria nodded her head. “We don’t believe in corporal punishment here, Natalia.”
Natalia makes her escape before Maria can change her mind.
She can hear Yelena giggling when the door to their quarters slides open. Natalia lays eyes on Bobbi who has a cell phone out. Yelena was pressed against Bobbi, watching something on the phone and grinning.
“Natalia!” Yelena perks up when she sees her, jumping up onto her feet and wincing at the stab of pain. “Come look! Bobbi is showing me videos of dogs.”
Natalia leans over Bobbi’s shoulder to peer down at the phone that is, sure enough, playing a video of a dog in a tutu that was learning tricks. “I can see that. Enjoy yourself?”
Yelena wrapped her arms around Natalia’s neck and nods her head but leans in to whisper. “Are you okay?”
Natalia lets out a hum and Bobbi takes that as her cue to leave. As soon as the doors closed behind Bobbi, Yelena lets Natalia go.
“Strip,” The playfulness disappears from Yelena’s face and Natalia sheds her clothes so Yelena can look Natalia over for new physical marks. “What is your punishment?”
“Menial labor,” Natalia tells her. “Just like you did.”
Yelena scrunched her face up. “I’m sorry. This is my fault.”
Natalia dresses and takes a seat on the bed next to Yelena. “I’d face punishment hundreds of times before I let anything happen to you.”
Yelena lets out a long sigh and leans against Natalia’s side. “It’s silly. It wasn’t even real but I still miss it. I can’t remember anything before Ohio. I was too little.”
Natalia only ever knew the Red Room. She couldn’t imagine the betrayal Yelena felt when she was ripped away from the only home and family she ever knew and was told it was all just an act. “You can still miss it… I miss it sometimes. It was nice.”
“I’m glad that you came for me,” Yelena murmurs, and Natalia wrapped an arm around her.
“I’ll always come for you,” Natalia swears. “You’re my sister.”
Yelena smiles up at her. “I love you…” She whispers.
Natalia froze. Yelena hadn’t spoken those words aloud since she was six and they were ripped away from each other.
“You don’t have to say it back,” Yelena said quietly. “I know you love me too.”
Natalia leans forward to press her forehead against her sister’s, relieved that Yelena understood her.
Love is for children.
Perhaps, but Natalia loved Yelena and would do absolutely anything for her.