mirror
Yelena’s not really surprised when Maria finds her first. She still had the tracker on her wrist that had yet to be taken off.
But Maria doesn’t say anything, merely taking a seat next to where Yelena had tucked herself in the corner with Goose curled up on her lap.
It’s quiet and Yelena thinks that Maria is waiting for her to say something first. “I’m sorry.” She says because she doesn’t know what else to say.
“You don’t need to apologize for the way that you’re feeling,” Maria states, leaning back against the wall. “Natalia told me that you run when you get frightened.”
Yelena hadn’t really considered that she was frightened but doesn’t deny the statement either. “Maria?”
“Yes?” Maria turns her head to look at Yelena.
“I don’t want to do this.” Yelena suddenly states.
Maria stares at her for a few moments. “Do what?” She prompts.
“I just want to stay with my sister. I don’t want to follow the schedule or do things for SHIELD for a little bit,” Yelena confesses before shaking her head. “I’m sorry.” She repeats.
“Don’t be sorry. Tell me what you’re thinking,” Maria urges. Yelena stares at her, wondering if Maria really wanted to know or if she was just saying that. “Explain it to me, please.”
“I don’t think you’ll understand,” Yelena replies but it sounds childish to her ears. Maria doesn’t seem bothered by it.
“Would you try?” Maria inquired and Yelena figures that trying wouldn’t hurt anything.
“You can’t tell anybody,” Yelena barters despite the fact that Maria could do just that.
“I won’t,” Maria reassures her, her tone honest and body language open.
Yelena observes her body language before starting. “I am a soldier…” She starts. “The best child soldier there is. And I-- I come here and people don’t see that. They see a child that needs protecting.”
Maria patiently waits as Yelena collects her thoughts.
“It’s like… you’re a soldier. You were in the army,” Yelena remembers the dog tags that hung around Maria’s neck. “It’s like if someone came to SHIELD and told you that you’re not allowed to be a soldier anymore. They tell you to go home and do things that other people your age do. They take your weapons and they ban you from having a phone and the internet. Then they take your best friend and then they ship them to the other side of the earth and you’re not allowed to contact them.”
Maria listens patiently as Yelena focuses on stroking Goose’s fur.
“When you don’t know how to do normal things, they get frustrated. You don’t act how they want you to act and you don’t understand. You don’t know how to act like that. They then ask you a lot of questions that you don’t know the answers to and they’re mad that you don’t know the answers. Then they shove you with a bunch of new people. You have to learn a new schedule but the person who was showing you how to adjust suddenly decides that they don’t like you anymore when they find out something you have no control over. They abandon you…”
Yelena glances at Maria. Maria was listening intently, quiet and deep in thought.
“And then, while you’re out one day with some friends, you see someone from your past. They hurt you in the past and they spot you. You have to make a choice about whether you should protect yourself and those with you or let them get away and have more people who hurt you come after you. So you attack her. But now everybody is mad at you for attacking them, especially when there is no proof that they are who you say they are…
“Nobody believes you… you’re punished for it, confined to your room. Suddenly, you get a proposition to contact your friend halfway around the world if you go into the room and interrogate them and prove who they are. They hurt you but you miss your friend a lot and you’re willing to do anything to contact them. So you go in to do it but they apparently don’t like the way you do it and everybody is upset again.
“Then you’re taken away for your actions. You get to stay in someplace nice but it doesn’t feel right. You miss your friend a lot and you have a really hard time sleeping. You’re trying to adjust to a new set of rules and schedules despite the fact you just got used to the other one. Your friend finally comes back and they tell you that they killed someone who hurt you. New guidelines are put into place and you go back to the place they took you from. These new guidelines are…” Yelena finally paused her rant, trying to find the right words. “A lot. You don’t like them. You just want to see your friend and spend time with them but they keep telling you what to do…”
Yelena looks down at Goose before letting out a sigh and ducking her head down. “Your friend worked really hard to get you a second chance but you’re having a hard time adjusting. You feel… guilty. You hate that you don’t like what they risked so much to get for you.”
Yelena finished. Maria waits a few more moments before realizing that Yelena wasn’t speaking anymore.
“I think that if that happened to me that I would be very conflicted.” Maria reaches out and sets a hand onto Yelena’s knee. “I think that I’d be very upset and angry.”
Yelena hadn’t even realized she was breathing hard until Maria gently touched her. “I can’t be angry.”
“Why not?” Maria inquired and Yelena sighed. Goose lets out a sleepy churp, nuzzling their nose against Yelena’s thigh.
“Widows aren’t allowed to show emotions. Anger. Sadness. Happiness. Fear. Widows are made of marble and marble doesn’t feel that.” Yelena fidgets with Goose’s collar. The cat doesn’t seem to mind.
Maria shifts closer, giving Yelena the time to pull away if she wants. “Give me your hand.” She says, holding her palm out. Yelena frowns at the odd request but pulls her hand away from Goose to set it into Maria’s hand. Maria gently presses her thumb into the heel of Yelena’s palm. “Do you feel that?”
“That’s a pressure point,” Yelena replies, focusing on the feeling.
“Marble doesn’t feel that. Marble doesn’t get hot or cold. Marble doesn’t sleep. Marble doesn’t feel pressure or pain. You do. You feel all of that,” Maria looks up at Yelena’s face. “You are a girl, Yelena. A human teenage girl. And you are not perfect, but nobody is.”
Yelena stares down at the hand Maria was grasping. “Not being perfect isn’t allowed.”
“Have you met the agents I’m in charge of? If not being perfect wasn’t allowed then we’d have no agents,” Maria replies. Yelena stares at her dubiously. “I’m serious. Let’s see… do you think Bobbi is perfect?”
Yelena knew Bobbi could be impulsive. She had screaming matches that turned into intense makout sessions with Hunter. She was good at mimicking behaviors but seemed to leave her left side open when she fought, something she was working on since training with Yelena.
“No.” Yelena finally replies. “But that’s different.”
“Please, tell me how that is different,” Maria urged and Yelena sighs, dropping her face into her hands.
“She’s never had to be perfect!” Yelena retorts. “She wasn’t a soldier, you said it yourself!” Her raised voice doesn’t disturb Goose in her lap. Yelena lets out a frustrated growl, gripping her hair.
“Hey--” Maria grasped her wrist quickly. “Let go.”
Yelena huffs, forcing her fingers to uncurl from her hair. Maria pulls her hands away, gripping them tightly in hers.
“Squeeze my hands as hard as you like and ask me a question,” Maria orders her and Yelena does, gripping Maria’s hands tightly.
“Why are you helping me?” Yelena demanded, unsure if the same ‘no limits’ rule was still in play.
“Because you’re my rookie. My… my friend. I care about you, Yelena,” Maria answered, her voice softening. “Ask me another. Nothing off limits.”
“Do you leave to visit your family?” Yelena asked, focusing on her hands in Maria’s, squeezing them.
“No. My mother died in childbirth and my father was a horrible man,” Maria’s reply was said steadily. “I have no siblings. Ask me another.”
“You ask me one.” Yelena retorts because she doens’t understand the game or why Maria was giving her all this information.
Maria raised an eyebrow before thinking. “If you could do anything with your sister, what would you do?”
Yelena thinks about it for a few moments. “I’d go to Ohio.” She paused before asking another question. “What’s your middle name?”
“Christine.” Maria then asks another one. “Why Ohio?”
“I lived in Ohio when I was little… I met Natalia there. We were part of a Russian sleeper cell. My not-father worked at SHIELD for three years,” Yelena says quietly.
Maria sits up slightly. “The one that burned down the Ohio facility stealing intel on rewiring the basal ganglia?”
Yelena blinks a few times. “Yes. Yes, that was us.” She murmurs, moving to pull her hands away from Maria’s in case she was angry.
“You would have been… seven years old?” Maria guessed. Yelena shakes her head.
“Six.” She corrects her. “Nattie-- Natalia was eleven. We were trafficked to the Red Room when the whole thing was over… well Natalia was put back. It was new for me.”
“Natalia mentioned that a bit ago… you were having a bad day and Natalia mentioned it was the aniversary of the date your fake parents trafficked you back to the Red Room,” Maria admits. “I didn’t realize you were so young.”
“They take children in first grade, the age of six or seven. Old enough to have coordination to shoot and fight as well as listen to instructions,” Yelena lets out a small sigh as Goose readjusts themselves in her lap. “The information they got from the Ohio facility lead to them conjuring up a mind control serum.”
“Successfully?” Maria questioned, her eyes slightly wide at the new information.
“Widows in Natalia’s age group were put under psychological conditioning… I was put under chemical subjugation,” Yelena finally admits quietly. “Natalia got me out before too much damage was done… but--” Yelena shakes her head. “Nevermind…”
Maria was frowning before she reaches out and drapes an arm around Yelena’s shoulders. Yelena tenses up at first, unsure of the reason for the touch. Maria Hill didn’t just hug people. She only pulled Yelena against her when aboslutely necessary.
“Thank you for trusting me with this information,” Maria spoked in a low tone. “I’m not angry with you for the past. Everything that you just told me? Your feelings and bits of the past that bothered? Doctor Chambler can help you with those.”
“I don’t like her,” Yelena pulls Goose up closer to her chest, unable to help but lean against Maria’s side. “I don’t know the answers to her questions.”
“There is no correct answer, Yelena. And it’s okay to say that you don’t know. She’s not going to be upset if you don’t understand or don’t know,” Maria say. “I know you don’t believe me and that’s okay.”
Yelena can’t help but let out a heavy sigh. “I feel stupid.” She murmurs in Russian.
“You’re not stupid,” Maria replies back and Yelena jerks slightly, having forgotten that Maria was learning Russian and apparently getting much better at it. “I know that having feelings are hard and that it’s easier to push them away…” Maria pauses. “You want to spend some time with Natalia away from SHIELD?”
Yelena, unsure of where Maria was going with the line of questioning, nods.
“Clint’s leaving to head home for a bit. You and Natalia could probably accompany him. He lives out in the middle of nowhere,” Maria says.
“I don’t wanna intrude,” Yelena shakes her head immediately.
“Trust me. You wouldn’t be,” Maria reassures Yelena. You could have…” She pauses as she counts. “Five days off with your sister off base.”
“Really?” Yelena questioned suspiciously. “What do you want in exchange?”
“Your sister just got back from an extremely long and hard mission. Agents are usually required to take some time off before they go back into the field.” Maria shakes her head. “Nothing is required.”
“So I tell you that I want time with my sister and you just offer it?” Yelena continues incredulously.
“You told me what you needed,” Maria corrected. “As far as I’m concerned, this break will help Natalia’s psycological state, something that is worried about every agent when they come back from an assignment like this.”
“And if we go with Clint then we can have five days to ourselves? Me and her?” Yelena continues.
“Well, you’d be with Clint in his home but yes,” Maria agrees, gently tugging Yelena closer.
The door to the room opens and Yelena tenses up briefly before she realizes that it’s just Natalia.
Natalia pauses in the doorway, taking in the sight of Yelena curled up against Maria’s side with a cat cradled against her. Natalia enters, immediately making her way toward Yelena.
Yelena sets Goose down, leaning forward to wrap her arms around Natalia.
“You ran.” Natalia says in Arabic.
“I’m sorry.” Yelena murmurs, burying her face into Natalia’s shoulder.
“Don’t be,” Natalia shakes her head, switching spots with Yelena to sit next to Maria so she can pull Yelena into her lap. “I’ve got you.”
“I love you. I love you so much, Nattie,” Yelena tells her, finally relaxing. “I missed you.”
It’s only been an hour since they’ve seen each other but they both know that’s not what Yelena was referring to.
“I adore you, little sister,” Natalia murmurs, pulling Yelena close. Maria doesn’t pull away from the close proximity of the sisters, not minding that Natalia was sitting against her instead of Yelena or that Yelena’s shes brushed against her knee from where the teenager was curled up in Natalia’s lap.
Yelena then proceeds to tell Natalia what Maria just told her. Yelena doesn’t care where they go, five whole days with her sister was something that she wanted desperately.