Chapter 3
Hill hands the phone back to Yelena after getting a verbal dressing down from Natasha. Yelena would have stayed on the phone with her sister but her phone battery was running low and she wanted to save it for an emergency.
Hill leads her down the hallways and Yelena follows along quietly.
“Natasha Romanoff isn’t someone I want to get on the bad side of,” Hill glances at Yelena. “I’ve worked with her for six years.”
“Natasha talks about you a lot.” Yelena finally pipes up, glancing at agents they pass to try and memorize their faces. “About you, the director, a man named Phil Coulson, and a woman named Melinda May.”
Hill paused briefly at one of the names and Yelena raised an eyebrow as she glances at her.
“Natasha kept telling me about her time at SHIELD. She remembers it fondly. Then you guys kidnap me and she tears down the pictures she has on her wall and scratches out faces,” Yelena continues, watching the way Hill falters in her steps the more Yelena talks. “Honestly, besides this whole trying to kill me thing, SHIELD seemed pretty cool.”
Hill leads them through a series of twists and turns and Yelena pauses, twisting in her place. “Hey, I know you!”
“Oh my god--” Hill groans out, reaching out to physically refrain Yelena from getting closer to the man.
The man turns to glance at them from where he was talking with a woman. “I’m sorry. You are?...”
“I thought you were dead,” Yelena comments, looking over his form. “She’ll be very mad.”
“Coulson--” Hill grits out. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Coulson frowns at her. “Why not?” He looks between Hill and Yelena. “What’s going on? I didn’t get any messages.”
Hill shakes her head. “My office for a debriefing later…” She tugs on Yelena’s shirt to try and get her to follow her down the hallway but Yelena wants to stay.
“Do a lot of people fake their death and then lie about it here?” Yelena twists out of Hill’s grasp to tilt her head up and look at the man.
“I actually died,” He retorts, looking down at her in confusion. “I’m sorry, who are you?”
Yelena grins. “Yelena Belova. You look much different than your pictures. Then again it’s probably been a few years since then.”
The man stares at her, obviously trying to put her name to an important face in his memories. “Right. Yelena.”
“We’ve never met,” Yelena replies. “But my sister is going to love to know that you’re alive.”
“No--” Hill interrupts. “Absolutely not. You cannot tell her.”
“You say that like I have a choice,” Yelena replies, glancing up at her. “As soon as I see my sister then I’m going to have a very good panic attack where I will probably ramble my guts out until I take a nap.”
Coulson squints at her. “How old are you? Where did you come from?”
“Coulson, my office,” Hill stressed and Yelena glances at the woman.
“Oh hey! I know you too,” Yelena grins and the woman merely raised an eyebrow at her.
Hill sighs and pressed a hand between Yelena’s shoulder blades to try and get her to move once again. “All of you. My office. Now.”
Yelena watches as they follow after Hill.
“We have like an hour or two before my sister gets here and I don’t think she’ll be very willing to spare the director without a promise that he’s not going to kill me,” Yelena tells Hill.
“He’s not going to kill you,” Coulson said but Hill glances at him and he blinks in surprise. “What? Why would he do that?”
“Because I nearly toppled SHIELD when I was eight and he’s still sour about it,” Yelena murmurs, letting herself be pushed into Hill’s office.
“You’re Alyssa Daniel?” Coulson asked in surprise and Yelena twists to look at him.
“Did we meet back then?” She asked curiously. “I don’t remember you.”
“Maybe once or twice in passing--” He frowns. “You’d only be sixteen or so now… right?”
“Sixteen?” The other woman echoes with a displeased frown.
Yelena nods her head. “Yup. Sixteen.”
“And who is your sister?” Coulson asked as Hill points at one of the chairs in her office and instructs Yelena to sit.
“Natasha Romanoff,” Yelena replies and watches their bodies go stiff. “You’re Phil Coulson, her old handler, and Melinda May, the woman who taught her to how to adjust.”
“Natasha doesn’t have a sister,” Coulson replies automatically and Yelena grins.
“A lot’s happened since you pretended to die,” Yelena pulls her knees up to her chin. “You know, if you reveal that you’re not actually dead to Natasha then she probably won’t kill the director.”
“Do you think that’ll work?” Hill asked and Yelena shrugs.
“Your death devastated her,” Yelena looks up at Coulson. “Actually, if she knew you were still alive, then a lot of things could have happened differently. She needed you and you were off living your life.”
“She’s a big girl.” Coulson replies but his frame looked wary and his tone held regret.
“What happened?” May asked and Yelena tells them.
She tells them what Natasha told her. She talks about the Red Room and how they took it down for good. She talks about the Avengers Civil War, about James Barnes, about the falling out between Natasha and Clint.
Yelena doesn’t hold back.
She piles information and guilt on them because Natasha really needed people to talk to in her life because she wasn’t on good terms with Clint.
Coulson, May, and Hill listen as Yelena catches them up on what she knew about Natasha’s past.
Yelena knew that Natasha would either forgive her for doing so if the three came back into her life, or be very angry that Yelena divulged the information that didn’t have anything to do with her.
Hill finally gets the alert that Natasha Romanoff, Tony Stark, and Pepper Potts had shown up and were demanding to see Yelena.
Hill sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose briefly before glancing at the three in her office. “Right. We’re doing this, I suppose.”
“You have no one to blame here but yourselves,” Yelena comments, unfolding herself from the chair and stretching before moving toward the door to head back toward the entrance.
Hill sighs and stands to follow her, Coulson and May finally following after her.
Yelena just wants to make her sister happy and she hopes that she wasn’t about to screw everything up.