aliens
Before Maria or Fury have the chance to pull Yelena aside to explain anything more, Yelena’s favorite Captain shows up in all her glory.
Yelena was with Skye, playing a game on her Game Boy when she sees Carol. Yelena excuses herself, letting Skye borrow the gaming system as she gets up to greet Carol.
As soon as they’re in Goose’s office, Yelena starts to ask questions.
Carol doesn’t seem bothered in the slightest that Yelena found out Goose was an alien. In fact, after Yelena summarized the events that led up to finding out that Goose was an alien, Carol scoops the flerken off the ground and affectionately kisses the top of her head. “Oh, did you protect our little ragamuffin?” Carol coos to the cat who looked smug and prideful, something Yelena didn’t even know a cat could manage.
Carol then sets Goose down, turning her attention toward Yelena as her stance and tone softens. “Are you alright?” She questioned.
Yelena eyes her, Rambeau having asked her the same thing. “Yeah…”
Carol reaches out to ruffle Yelena’s hair and after the encounter with Damien, Yelena does her best not to flinch at the hand. “Goose only eats people that pose a threat to those they grow fond of. Who posed a threat to you?”
Yelena had purposefully left that out of her summary. “One of the agents…” She stays vague. “Got really upset with me. They tried to grab Goose and she swallows him whole, there were like--” Yelena pauses, unable to remember the word in English but she tries to mimic it, waving her hands. “These things--”
“Tentacles.” Carol supplies and Yelena nods her head, glancing down at Goose who still proudly licked her paw.
“Tentacles!” That was the word Yelena was looking for. “And then Goose spits them back up and they’re still whole and alive, and Goose is apparently an alien, and--”
Yelena goes silent when Carol abruptly pulls her into a hug, blinking a few times in confusion as Carol rubs her back.
“It’s a lot to take in, I know that,” Carol said gently, the pressure of her hand rubbing Yelena’s back was comforting in a way, the hold strangely reassuring. “Don’t even try to understand it. Flerken work in mysterious ways. The only thing that you need to know is that Goose is a flerken and will undoubtedly end up eating more people that pose a threat to you.”
Yelena listens quietly, focusing on the soothing circles Carol rubs on her back.
“And it’s okay to have questions and it’s alright to not be okay,” Carol continues on. “Does anyone else know about what happened?”
Bursting in on Maria’s meeting with Natasha and Clint hadn’t been the best idea when Yelena looked back on it. She never would have made such a mistake in the Red Room but she had not only let Maria know that she knew but let Natasha and Clint know too. “I told my sister… and her partner.” Yelena admits, suddenly unsure if Carol would be angry about it. She shifts to pull away from the hold before it tightens.
Carol lets her pull away, merely nodding her head. “That’s alright. The less people who know the better, and I’d really prefer you didn’t tell anyone who you didn’t trust,” Her tone isn’t angry. “I have something for you. I picked it up on the way.”
Yelena frowns. Carol was always giving her things and while they weren’t unwelcome and Yelena enjoyed them, receiving things she didn’t earn still unsettled her. She felt like she owed Carol a lot.
Carol pulls out a slim gray rectangle from her pocket the size of Yelena’s palm. “This is a pager. Have you ever used one before?”
Yelena shakes her head. She has a vague memory of her not-dad having one and it would call him into work late at night but she’d never seen it up close or used one.
“I don’t really get cell service where I am. But this will reach me wherever you are and wherever I am.” There are two buttons on the pager when it is flipped open, one red and one green. “This red one means that there is an emergency and you need me now. The green one means that you need to talk but it’s not life or death. You can use it whenever, okay?”
Yelena reaches out and Carol sets the pager into her hands. Yelena doesn’t think Carol realizes the weight of what she just put into Yelena’s palm. “Okay…” Yelena nods her head. “Why do you care?” She can’t help but blurt. “I’m just some teenager SHIELD picked up.”
Carol shrugs. “I like you. Goose likes you.”
“Do you and the Director just trust people based on whether Goose likes them?” Yelena raised an eyebrow. That seemed like a really stupid way to judge people.
“Goose knows if you’re a good person.” Carol replies. Yelena can’t help but think that the statement was the biggest load of bullshit she’d ever heard.
“I’m not a good person.” Yelena replies and Goose lets out an indignant chirp. “I’ve done a lot of bad things.”
“Doing bad things doesn't make you a bad person,” Carol replies in a way that reminds Yelena of Maria. “I’ve done bad things too. But I try to do good and I try to help people the best I can.”
Yelena eyes her before nodding her head. She didn’t really feel like arguing over good vs bad at the moment.
“Where is your sister?” Carol finally questioned, glancing around for any sign of Natasha.
“With Maria and Clint.” Yelena replies. Natasha had seemed grumpy that morning and Yelena didn’t really want to argue about being allowed into whatever meeting they were having with Maria. She already interrupted them the previous day. “Where did you get Goose?”
Carol is content to tell Yelena all the stories she wants. Yelena’s unsure of how much to believe because Carol being enhanced and able to travel to space and going on adventures sounds like something from a story she would read when she was little. But Carol proves it to her, showing off a little bit of her strength in a way that reminds Yelena of the super-soldiers from the Red Room.
“Are there a lot of people like you?” Yelena questioned, wondering just what kind of threats she had to keep a lookout for.
“Not that I know of,” Carol shakes her head. “I’m one of a kind.” She grins at Yelena.
“Would you be willing to explain everything again but to my sister?” Yelena knows that Natasha probably thinks everyone is going mental at the moment and is worried about Yelena and her mental state, especially after the Red Room fucked with her mind.
Carol chuckles. “Sure, baby agent.”
“You know I’m not an actual agent, right?” Yelena raised an eyebrow.
“I would sure hope not. You’re like…” Carol holds her hand up to measure how tall Yelena was and the teenager bristles at the comment on her height. “A baby still.”
“I’m seventeen. Not a baby,” Yelena retorts, folding her arms. If Yelena thought she wouldn’t get into an argument, she’d bring up the hundreds of people she’d killed without a second thought. But Carol was here because Yelena asked and Yelena didn’t want her to get upset and leave so she keeps quiet.
“Sure.” Carol gives her a wide grin but doesn’t say anything else about her height or her age.
Natasha is still in a bad mood when Carol finally gets the chance to talk with her about everything. Yelena curls against her big sister, observing her face as Carol explains Goose, aliens, and even her enhancements.
Natasha takes it a lot better than Yelena does, merely nodding her head as she listens to Carol. Yelena does expect her big sister to deal with it all later when it was just the two of them.
Even when Carol says that she’ll spend the night and they can think over any more questions they have for her to answer in the morning, Natasha still just nods her head.
It was getting pretty late at that point and Yelena’s mind was in overdrive from all of the new information it had been given. Still, Maria manages to track them down on the way back to their bunk and asks them to step into her office.
Yelena’s tired and getting kinda grumpy if she’s being honest. The past few days have felt like a fever dream and Yelena still isn’t sure that she’s not losing her mind.
Maria addresses the sisters in her office. “I know you’re both tired so I’ll make this quick.” Her gaze shifts to Yelena. “How are you holding up?”
Perhaps it is because of how hard Yelena has to think on how she can answer without drawing concern toward her or have Natasha pick up on her lie but Maria’s brow draws together in concern, the exact thing Yelena didn’t want at the moment.
So Yelena settles on a shrug because she had learned that sometimes non-answers were okay with Maria.
“I see.” Maria frowns slightly, folding her arms as she leans against her desk. “That’s alright. It’s a lot to take in and the prospect of aliens, another danger to look out for, is frightening, isn’t it?”
Yelena opens her mouth, ready to spew out the first thing that came to mind which was ‘I am a Widow, I am made of marble, and marble doesn’t feel fear’. Instead, she peers up at the commander that she had grown to trust and slowly nods her head. Natasha’s grip on her tightens when Yelena admits that she’s scared and overwhelmed and not okay.
Maria pushed herself off the desk and slowly approached the sisters before reaching out to set a hand onto Yelena’s shoulder. “I am going to do my absolute best to keep you safe.” Maria glances at Natasha. “Both of you. Both as the Deputy Director and as your friend. It’s okay to be scared and it’s okay to not know what to do next. I’m right here and I will support you, as will your other friends.”
Yelena doesn’t know why but she closes the gap between them and wraps an arm around Maria. Because Yelena was still tucked under Natasha’s arm, Natasha is dragged into the hug as well.
Just like Bobbi, Maria was warm and Maria was safe.
“It’s alright,” Maria promised, raising her arms to embrace them back. “I’ve got you.”