mainframe
“Here.”
Skye reaches out to take the cell phone from Yelena, pulling the backing off to look at the exposed wires underneath. “Are you sure about this?”
“I’m sure,” Yelena nods her head, watching as Skye fiddles around with the technology. “I have to.”
Skye shrugs, slipping the phone over to mess with the screen. “Okay. And if they ask where you are?”
“Tell them I’m in the nest,” Yelena replies. “Or with Goose. That should keep them away for a little bit.”
Skye nods her head. “You have to promise to try and stay safe,” She bargains, holding the cell phone out of Yelena’s reach before she takes it. Yelena could easily snatch it from her but decides to humor her.
“I promise to try and stay safe,” Yelena says and Skye holds out the phone. “Thank you.”
“It’ll give you security clearance for the next twenty-four hours,” Skye tells her. “After that, you’re on your own.”
“Thanks, Skynet. You’re the best,” Yelena grins and Skye smiles back up at her.
Yelena was going to sneak out onto the mission as well. They couldn’t make her go back if she was already with them and Yelena was tired of being left behind.
She wanted to do something. She wanted to fight. She wanted more than doing the same ten moves with Bobbi in the gym every day.
She knew it was selfish but she wanted more. Living between a bunk, a gym, and a cafeteria wasn’t what she wanted with the freedom that she had been granted. Even the Red Room dumped the girls outside to see the sun every month, even if they were being punished in solitary.
Yelena gathers what she needs for when her sister would leave within the day. Skye had found out the plane that they would use and when it was taking off.
The team would consist of Coulson, Clint, Natasha, Bobbi, and Hunter. Coulson wouldn’t leave the plane, running back up and being their handler. Bobbi and Hunter weren’t originally pointed for the mission but Yelena should have guessed with Bobbi’s sudden cancellation of their training.
The clearance Skye gave her let Yelena enter the plane with ease. She had flown a similar model plane in the Red Room when she was thirteen. She knew all the nooks and crannies. She had to, the Red Room tested her by placing things out of place and waiting for her to notice and place them back.
There was a small space under the row of seats lining the walls in the back. It wasn’t well known that the space was hollow, seemingly a sturdy bench to secure gear to.
Yelena finds the tiny latch near the floor and pushes the piece up, lowering herself to her hands and knees and tucks herself down into the tiny space just large enough for her to fit in. She hid there once when she failed a mission and her handler had been waiting for her.
Yelena curls up, focusing on listening to her surroundings.
She doesn’t know how long she waits until footsteps eventually appear and she hears the muffled sounds of Bobbi and Hunter bickering.
She listens as the plane eventually starts and pats her head with her arm. She was wearing the vest she had picked out at the store, filled with the things she had been trading for.
Yelena had been completely hidden and concealed until the plane takes a sharp turn and throws her body against the side of the compartment, her body spilling out into the cargo hold.
“Yelena!” She hears Natasha's sharp voice immediately before she’s hauled up by the back of her shirt, staring up at the very angry face of her older sister. Natasha barely spares a glance at Bobbi before descending into harsh Arabic. “What do you think you are doing?”
“Coming with you.” Yelena retorts, flinching slightly when Natasha’s grip shifts to grab the back of her neck.
“No.” Natasha turns to look at Clint. “We have to turn back.” She tells him in English.
“We’re over the halfway point,” Clint tells her with a frown. “There’s no turning back now.”
“She’s here now, there’s no reason to make a big point of it,” Bobbi pipes up from her seat. Yelena can only assume Hunter and Coulson are up front. “Sit down.”
Yelena lets Natasha shove her into one of the seats. Her body language tells Yelena that she is pissed off and Yelena is suddenly less sure about her actions.
Natasha sits next to her, her arms folded as she stares at ahead of her. Yelena honestly expected a lecture but being ignored was much worse.
Yelena ducks her head down, unsure of how to tell Natasha that she only wanted to help.
Natasha doesn’t even spare her a glance or reach out to rest a hand on her like she usually did when Yelena sat so close to her.
“Are you angry at me?” Yelena whispers in Arabic. She hates having Natasha angry at her. It makes her feel surges of fear that Natasha would leave.
Natasha doesn’t even glance at her. “Do you even know where we are going?” She demanded.
The details hadn’t been in the file that Skye had filched when she hacked into the database. “No.”
“We are going to the Red Room!” Natasha snaps at her harshly and Yelena leans away from Natasha. “The base stationed in Ohio that Alexei and Melina reported to. The one they brought me to report in to. The one I wanted you far away from!”
“You were going back to the Red Room and you didn’t even tell me?” Yelena demands, hurt bubbling in her chest. “You go and you take down the main base, you kill the General, and you go back and you never breathe a word of any of it to me!”
“Because I never wanted you to ever go back,” Natasha finally looks at her, reaching out to grab her face. “You deserve to never have to face that place again. If I had it, you would never lay sight on another Red Room operative, base, or Widow again.”
“You killed the General but I didn’t see his death. I want to be involved. I want to see. I need to be involved. I need this--” Yelena didn’t even realize it until she blurts it out to Natasha. “I want to watch your back. I want-- I want to do this with you.”
Natasha’s jaw is clenched, betraying how Yelena’s words impacted her. She pulls Yelena’s head forward and pressed their foreheads together. “You deserve better.”
“I deserve you.” Yelena replies quietly, enjoying the gentle touch her sister provided. “That’s all I want. I’d follow you anywhere, you know that.”
Natasha lets out a long sigh. “You must listen to everything that Coulson says and stay here on the plane, do you understand?”
Yelena wants to protest, to tell her that she can help. But Natasha was already angry at her and Yelena doesn’t want to rock the boat. “Yes.”
By the time they finally land and Coulson and Hunter are caught up on their sudden extra passenger, Yelena watches as they go over the plan for getting in and downloading information from the mainframe.
They were instructed to incapacitate whether they felt the need to kill or subdue. Yelena had very little doubt that most if not all would end up dead.
Yelena would stay back with Coulson and be allowed to listen in on comms and watch cameras. She doesn’t say a word to Coulson as Clint, Natasha, Bobbi, and Hunter leave the plane to approach the base.
Yelena hadn’t spoken to Coulson very much since the whole situation with May when she had attacked him when he grabbed her. She even stopped showing up to cheesy bread Tuesdays with him, ashamed and embarrassed to face him again.
Yelena focuses on comms, ignoring Coulson’s attempts at small talk that he tries to spark up. She hears the sounds of grunts as the four make their way through the base, incapacitating any guards they come across.
They finally reach a door but it’s heavily guarded and locked. The devices they have to unlock the door aren’t working and the window they have is closing quickly.
“What do you have around you that could help you get in?” Coulson questioned, flicking through the cameras.
“There’s a ventilation shaft. Much too small for our resident bird to squeeze through,” Hunter comments. “Little red might be able to squeeze through.”
“Hunter, Clint, boost her up,” Coulson instructs and Yelena hears the grunts as they boost Natasha up to the vents.
“She’s just a smidge too large,” Bobbi lets out a huff. “I certainly won’t fit. We’ll find another way in.”
Yelena can feel Coulson glancing at her as the four searches for another way in, taking down guards that start to stray toward them.
Five minutes later, Coulson speaks up. “I’m sending Yelena in.”
Natasha immediately snaps at him to not send Yelena in, not caring at the moment that he was her superior.
“Our window is closing. The mission is the priority,” Coulson tells her firmly before looking at Yelena. “Meet up with them, get the flash drive, download the information, and get out. Is that understood?”
Yelena gives a curt nod. “Yes sir.” She says. He sends Yelena inside to meet with the others.
Yelena moves past the bodies of guards and to where the four were waiting. Natasha grabs the back of her neck and tells her firmly to stay safe as Hunter passes her a knife before he and Clint give her a boost up to the vents.
It’s a tight squeeze but Yelena manages to shimmy through the vents. She peers through the slats as she reaches the room, able to see a guard positioned in front of the computer. She takes a carefully measured breath before dropping into the room, flipping and taking the man down with her legs around his neck.
He reaches for his gun and Yelena twists her legs and his neck snaps, his body going limp and hitting the ground with a thud. Yelena sticks the USB into the computer, watching the download start. Curious, she starts to peer through the files.
She comes across files of Widows and where they were stationed. She also comes across a section dedicated to the chemical subjugation.
Yelena freezes, her eyes growing wide as she sucks in a breath when a large image comes up on the screen along with the file.
Yelena stares up at the aged face of Melina Vostokoff, the file declaring her alive and the one who headed the experiments that had fucked with Yelena’s head.
The computer chimes to let Yelena know that the download was complete. Yelena’s broken out of her thoughts, shoving the hurt and anger that surged through her at the file as she pulls the file from its place.
The door opens and Yelena locks eyes with a guard. She darts toward him, brandishing the knife Hunter had given her.
It’s a little bit of a struggle mainly because Yelena doesn’t want to get bloody and leave a trail behind her. She finally manages to land the knife in his gut, giving it a twist before yanking it out and tucking the bloodied knife away. She moves the chair toward the vents to give herself a boost. She’s nearly out when a hand suddenly grabs her ankle and she’s yanked back out of it.
The others hear the banging as she’s yanked from the vents and worried voices chatter in her ear, distracting her from the guard that had made her topple down. He had armor on and Yelena wouldn’t do much damage sticking the knife between the joints where he was exposed.
Instead, Yelena sends a hit to his face covered only by a helmet, her palm striking his nose and causing blood to gush out. She sends a roundhouse kick to his head and when he crumples to the ground, Yelena raised her foot and stomps onto his throat, quickly making her escape again.
As soon as she drops down on the other side of the vents, Clint and Bobbi catching her as she drops, Yelena holds out the knife toward Hunter.
Natasha glances over for wounds but ultimately decides that they needed to fall back before any more attention was drawn to them.
When they’re back at the plane, Yelena holds out the flash drive to Coulson, who takes it from her slightly bloodied hands. “Good job, rookie.” He tells her.
Out of danger, Natasha now frisks Yelena for injuries and makes sure that the blood was not hers. Yelena had no doubt that she would make Yelena strip when they got back to their bunks to ensure that she was indeed not hurt.
Still, Yelena’s mind is stuck on the file she came across. Bobbi digs out wet wipes and Yelena barely realizes that they had been offered to her until Natasha and Bobbi are wiping her hands when she didn’t take them.
Yelena had a lot of hurt and resentment toward the people she thought were her parents but had long ago learned to forgive her not-mom because she had died and Yelena thought her just a pawn in the General’s game of chess.
But the image of the woman that Yelena saw in there was not her mama. That was not the woman that kissed her boo-boos or wiped her tears when Yelena was sad.
That was the woman that messed with Yelena’s mind, allowing them to break her down and build her up just how they wanted her to be.
Natasha asks her what happened.
Yelena doesn’t mention Melina.