silence
Yelena is surprised to see that the Christmas decorations are still up the next morning. She’s up early, letting Natasha sleep in as Yelena tries to ignore the pain thrumming in her lower abdomen. The strand of lights wrapped around the tree still glows in the morning just before the sun rises just as the timer had been instructed to do. The stockings are empty and back on the hooks.
“Everything okay?” Clint appears next to her, donned in the yellow sweater that Yelena had given him for Christmas. He’s cradling a mug of coffee in one hand and a sleeping toddler in the other.
“You… still have decorations up,” Yelena points out to him and Clint frowns, glancing up at the tree before looking back at her.
“We do.” He agrees slowly, pulling his mug up to take a long sip of coffee before he spoke. “Why wouldn’t we?”
Yelena eyes him before shrugging. “I thought that when Christmas was over then you took them down.”
“Well, yeah, but not the day right after Christmas,” Clint glances at her before carefully moving the arm holding a coffee mug around her shoulders. “We want to enjoy it just a little bit longer and bask in it.”
Yelena frowns, remembering how the day after Christmas she’d wake up to all the decorations gone like they were never there in the first place, not even a fake pine needle left on the floor as evidence that it was ever even there at all. “Oh.”
Clint gives her a brief squeeze before letting her go and taking another long sip from his mug. “Why don’t you go get the LEGO sets and I’ll help you build them.”
So Yelena selects one of the sets from her pile of gifts and heads downstairs. Clint shows her how to sort through them and then read the instructions. He takes great delight in instructing her how to build it and how to place the stickers on the pieces perfectly.
When Yelena is finished, she has what looks like a model plane suspended on a stand. It reminds her one the first plane she ever learned to fly. Clint holds his hand up to high-five her and asked her what she thought of building it.
“It was fun.” Yelena replies. She hadn’t spent a lot of time alone with Clint doing things so this was nice, even if the nagging ache in her stomach kept distracting her. “Can we build more?”
Clint’s face lights up and so Yelena selects another set and works on it with Clint. Natasha comes downstairs only after the first few steps into the project. She stands behind Yelena’s chair, wrapping her arms around Yelena, and watches the two work.
Eventually, Maria joins them in the kitchen with a mug of coffee, watching them work as well. It’s peaceful, and the atmosphere of the excitement of the previous day still lingers.
Yelena plays on her Game Boy when they finish with the LEGOs. The games that Hunter sent her were a little dusty but Clint showed her how she could clean them so they’d work again. Yelena sits with Natasha in the living room as she plays, curled up and leaning into her side as Natasha strokes her hair. It’s a comforting touch that Yelena had desperately missed from Natasha while she was out doing missions for SHIELD. But right now and for the next six days, Yelena had Natasha’s undivided attention.
Yelena kept shifting to try and stop the tracker from rubbing against her wrist, sticking her finger in the small gap to rub at the sore skin. Yelena did think it was a little unfair that she had to wear a tracker while Natasha didn’t. If Natasha knew how uncomfortable it was, she probably would have already come up with a solution to stopping it. Yet SHIELD had trusted Natasha enough with the work she put forth that she wouldn’t run.
Yelena would have worked to get them to trust her too but they wouldn’t let her. Not until she’s eighteen. She still had the blank SHIELD badge that Fury had given her, a reminder of what she had to look forward to.
Maria appears and takes a seat on the other side of Yelena, holding her hand out. “Lemme see your hand.” Yelena glances over at her but paused her game and held her hand with the tracker out. Melina pulls a single fingerless glove from her pocket and slips the fabric over Yelena’s hand, tucking it between her skin and the tracker. It’s a relief from the constant rubbing.
“Thank you,” Yelena says quietly, rolling her wrist to see how the fabric kept a barrier between her skin and the tracker.
“You should have told me it was bothering you,” Maria chides softly, and Yelena shrugs. It barely bothered her, her abdomen would ache far more than just some chafing. It just wasn’t important. “Hey, look at me.”
Yelena tilts her head up to peer up at Maria at the order.
“I want you to tell me when things bother you. Even if you don’t think it’s important,” Maria says, her tone firm and leaving no room for arguments. She wasn’t going to accept a shrug or protest as an answer. “Okay?”
Yelena nods her head. “Okay.” She replies, focusing on the feeling of Natasha brushing her fingers over Maria’s fingerless glove on her hand.
“Good,” Maria smiles at her, glancing up at Natasha briefly before she settles back on the couch, content to join them for the moment. “What are you playing?”
“Super Maria Land,” Yelena replies, unpausing the game to continue. While she originally didn’t understand the point of video games, Hunter had gotten her hooked. He claimed it improved hand-eye coordination and a smile crossed Yelena’s face at the thought of the Red Room utilizing video games to teach Widows.
It also didn’t fail her attention that he only gave her games with a T rating at the highest, saving the M rated games for when she was playing with him. Jokes on him, she has a gift card now and can purchase whatever game she wanted.
Yelena’s character eventually dies and she tilts her head to rest it against Natasha’s shoulder, the ache in her abdomen back with a vengeance.
“Are you okay, Lenochka?” Natasha questioned quietly, stroking Yelena’s hair. Yelena lets out a hum.
“Just… tired,” Yelena says quietly and the way that Natasha lets out a small hum tells her that Natasha didn’t believe her. Yet, she didn’t call Yelena out on her lie. Yelena had no doubt that she’d be interrogated that night and thought about maybe finally telling Natasha what was wrong now that Christmas was over.
Then again, she might wait until they’re back on the Helicarrier. She doesn’t want to end the trip here with the Barton’s early.
At some point, Yelena wiggled her way down to rest her head in Natasha’s lap, her legs in Maria’s. The television had been turned on to play re-runs of the Christmas movies she had watched the previous two days. Yelena only half paid attention to them, more interested in the conversation that Natasha and Maria were having. Maria was telling Natasha embarrassing stories of some of Clint’s past missions.
When Natasha pats Yelena’s head to tell her to get up so that she could go to the bathroom, Yelena simply sits up and then falls the other way to rest her head on Maria’s lap. She was hesitant and unsure about how Maria would react but she acted like it was no big deal. Maria simply rests a hand on her head.
Yelena asks about some of Bobbi’s missions and Maria grins down at her as she tells Yelena about Bobbi just starting out at SHIELD.
Yelena can hear Natasha talking with Clint in the other room and it sounded like she was teasing him. Yelena focuses on Maria’s voice and the safety she felt with the commander.
Then Cooper starts to cry upstairs where he was with Laura. His cries spark a reaction and cause his little sister to start to wail as well.
Yelena winces at the cries. She still hated it whenever Cooper or Lila cried. Loud, noisy sobbing reminded her too much of the little girls in the Red Room. She reaches up to clasp her hands over her ears, not caring how she looked. She just needed to drown the sound out.
Maria guides her to sit up and leaves the room quickly. Yelena curls up, pressing her hands tighter over her ears. She had closed her eyes at some point, not even realizing it until a hand touches her knee and she jerks away from it. Maria is in front of her, holding up the companion piece to her tracker that Clint carried with him. Maria motions toward the back door and Yelena doesn’t hesitate to scramble outside. It’s much quieter outside and it’s not until they’re a few yards from the house that Yelena doesn’t hear the screeching anymore.
“Are you okay?” Maria questioned when Yelena finally peels her hands away from her ears. Yelena’s slightly embarrassed about her reaction to the noise, glancing away from Maria as she nods her head.
“Yeah… I just--” She starts before pausing and letting out a sigh.
“You got overwhelmed,” Maria supplies as they follow along the trail in the backyard that looped into the forest and back out onto the road a mile or so later. Yelena nods her head, relieved that she didn’t have to explain. She wonders how Natasha was fairing and glances at Maria.
“Natasha said she was okay,” Maria supplies and Yelena frowns slightly at the awkwardness that Natasha’s name brought Maria. She wonders if Maria was still upset about the mistletoe incident. “She knows you’re with me.”
Yelena nods, focusing down at the trail as they move. She slows down slightly at the sharp reminder of the pain in her abdomen, lagging a few feet behind Maria who had gotten a text on her phone and was trying to tell them to fuck off unless the world was ending.
That’s the only reason she sees the red dot on the back of Maria’s jacket. Yelena jerks forward immediately, the pain in her abdomen spiking at the sudden movement. “Maria!”
Maria immediately spins around as a shot rings out. Maria lets out a cry of pain as her shoulder is hit, the force knocking her over as she stumbles back and trips over a branch. Yelena immediately moves toward her, reaching into her pocket to pull out the knife that Natasha had given her for Christmas and flicking it open as her eyes scan the trees.
She just had to cover Maria enough for help to come.
Maria had rolled onto her stomach and pulled out her own knife as she clenches her jaw in pain, blood pooling onto the leaves under her.
Another shot rings out and Yelena spins toward it, inhaling sharply as the shot connects with her chest. She reaches down and pulls the dart from her chest, recognizing it immediately. Cold fear fills her as her hand shakes. She blinks black spots out of her vision as her eyes fall onto the shooter.
“Widow!” Yelena hissed out. Her knees give out on her, her vision going fuzzy. She can’t concentrate and that scares her.
“Pathetic.” Another Widow reveals herself. A single shot from her injects a dose of sedative into Maria who had refused to leave Yelena’s side. Yelena wanted to tell her to run, to forget her, but Maria didn’t leave a man behind. “You were supposed to be the second-best, White Widow.” The Widow spits Yelena’s title out like it was poison. “You traitor.”
Yelena’s limbs fail her and she falls forward onto the dead leaves. Only a few moments later does Maria hit the ground next to her, already unconscious. The gunshot wound combined with the sedative made for a nasty combination.
Yelena tries to force herself to get up, to protect them, as leaves crunch when the Widows approach. “D-don’t touch her!” She snaps as one Widow rolls Maria onto her back. It doesn’t come out as strong as she wants it to. She forces all of her energy into one swipe with the knife in her hand. It lands on one of the Widows and she smashed her boot into Yelena’s stomach in retaliation.
Yelena retches at the pain, too weak to stop the knife from being ripped from her hand.
“Stop dragging things out, that is enough,” A familiar man’s voice spoke. “She has a tracker. Get it off in one piece.”
Yelena’s arm is stretched out, a boot stepping on her forearm to hold it in place as fingers rest onto a weak point in the joint in her thumb. Yelena lets out a cry of pain as her thumb is broken and the tracker is harshly ripped from her wrist and discarded into the leaves along with the black controller that Maria had on her. It was getting very hard to keep her eyes open now.
“I’m going to kill you--” Yelena hissed out at the Widow holding her arm down. She’s struggling to breathe, torn between focusing on inhaling and exhaling or scanning her surroundings.
The Widow above her merely chuckles.
“Frisk them,” The man’s voice instructs and Yelena’s pockets are turned out with Maria’s. Yelena stares at the pile of items next to her.
She holds her breath as her hand snaps out to grab the grey case, the mere act of rolling over to knock the Widow loose has her feel like she’s going to throw up and pass out at the same time. With black spots in her vision, Yelena’s thumb pressed the button inside the case before letting it drop. She’s shoved back onto her back, another kick sent to her ribs.
This time Yelena vomits, retching as nothing but bile and saliva is forced from her stomach. She’s shoved onto her side so she doesn’t choke on it.
A new set of footsteps approach and Yelena is face to face with a pair of boots, her vision waning. Her eyes flicker up to peer at the last assailant.
“Hello, Yelena. Miss me?” Damien’s grinning face is the last thing Yelena sees before the darkness finally overtakes her.