Chapter 10
Yelena eventually has to peel away from MJ to go to the bathroom.
“Hey FRIDAY, is Natasha still with the others?” Yelena asked.
“Miss Romanoff is with the two guests. Would you like me to alert her that you need her?” FRIDAY replies and Yelena frowns.
“No…” Yelena shakes her head. “That’s okay. Where is Tony?”
“In the lab,” FRIDAY said. “Would you like me to alert him?”
“No. That’s alright, I’ll go myself,” Yelena pulls the blanket over MJ. “If she wakes up then tell her where I went.”
“Yes, little Romanoff,” FRIDAY agrees and Yelena heads down to the labs.
It takes Tony a few moments until he noticed her. “Ah, Barbie! There you are. How long have you been standing there?”
“Not long…” Yelena approached him. “What are you working on?”
Tony glances up at her with a grin. “Something for you.”
“Me?” Yelena leans on the table to peek. “Is that a suit?”
“I make suits for people important to me,” Tony comments, setting a wrench down. “My friend Rhodey. Pepper. You.”
“I’m important to you?” Yelena can’t help but blurt and Tony pushed himself away from the workbench to look at her.
“Did I ever give you the impression that you weren’t?” He frowns. “Kid, you’re my goddaughter. You’re important to me. I care about you.”
Yelena glances away as a small smile crosses her face. “I care about you too…” She said.
Tony nods his head and pulls himself closer to his workbench again before pausing. “Do you remember when I told you about how I got my reactor?” He was hesitating and seemed nervous.
Yelena frowns at the weird question. “I do.”
Tony reaches up to rub his chest before sighing. “I was in a bad place mentally for a long time. I needed help that my friends couldn’t give me. Pepper and I broke up because I was being horrible to her.”
Yelena watches him cautiously. “How did you get better?”
“I went to therapy,” Tony tells her. “And… I think that you should to.”
Yelena flinches away from him. “I’m not crazy.”
“I never said that you were,” Tony placates. “Kid, going to therapy doesn’t mean that you’re cuckoo.”
“Needing help means that you’re weak,” Yelena folds her arms. “I’m able to regulate my emotions and deal with my mental state just fine.”
Tony lets out a huff and runs a hand through his hair. “I never said you were weak. Getting help doesn’t mean that you’re insane or weak or any of that. I thought that too at first. I didn’t want to get help because I thought I was doing fine.”
“I am doing fine! Shuri got rid of the triggers in my head,” Yelena glances away from him. “I’m fine.”
“It’s okay to not be okay. Nobody here is going to judge you for it,” Tony takes a step toward her and paused when Yelena automatically takes a step back. “It’s okay to ask for help. To know that you are struggling and acknowledge that you can’t handle everything by yourself.”
Yelena stares down at her boots for a few moments. “In the Red Room, getting help meant that it was a weakness. Weaknesses were not tolerated. They would fix your weaknesses.”
“How would they fix mental health?” Tony raised an eyebrow.
“They’d take away your free will so they didn’t have to worry about it,” Yelena swallows hard and runs her finger along the hem of her shirt. “Many Widows tried to kill themselves to end the pain and they’d put us under mind control because our lives weren’t our own to take. They owned us.”
“Did you ever try?” Tony’s voice gets soft and when Yelena doesn’t answer he continues. “I did.”
Yelena’s head jerks up to look at him. “You tried?”
“I didn’t actively try to kill myself. But if I died by my actions then I wouldn’t have been sad. I drank a lot of alcohol and I did drugs. I was reckless. When I first got my arc reactor I realized that the pallidum was poisoning me and I was dying. And I suddenly realized that I didn’t want to die,” Tony tells her, his fingers drumming against his arc reactor.
“I didn’t want to die, I just wanted to stop hurting people,” Yelena looks down at her hands and flexes her fingers. “I’m scared of dying. I wasn’t before but then I had somebody to love me and care for me and the thought of leaving them scares me.”
“Death is scary,” Tony nods his head and tries to move toward her again, continuing when Yelena doesn’t move away. “Growing up I learned that crying was a sign of weakness. My father used to tell me ‘Stark men are made of iron’.”
Yelena looks up at him. “Widows are made of marble.”
Tony snaps his fingers. “See? That’s wrong.” He reaches out to grasp her shoulder. “You are much more than what they tried to make you.”
“I feel like a burden on my sister. I shouldn’t, Okoye told me that I shouldn’t feel that way but I do. I feel like it’s unfair that I hurt so many people but I get a happy ending when they didn’t,” Yelena can’t help but lean into the hand on her shoulder. “I was a monster and I got a family that loves me.”
“You deserve to love and be loved in return,” Tony leans forward to look at her face. “Kiddo, look at me.”
Yelena brings her eyes up to look at Tony.
“I love you.” Tony said it with such sincerity that Yelena’s eyes started to water. “And I will not think any differently of you for asking for help.”
Yelena reaches up to scrub at her face when tears start to fall. “All these emotions are exhausting. I don’t know how to control them. They’re new and I don’t know what they mean or how to make them go away.”
Tony pulls her against him. He smells like motor oil and mint. “I think you should at least think about going to therapy. My therapist is really nice, you’d like her, I think.”
“Okay…” Yelena leans into his hold. “I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I ask,” Tony squeezed her briefly before pulling away. Yelena knew that he wasn’t much of a hugger.
Yelena wipes at her face to ensure that she got all of her tears before looking up at him. “I did try. Once.”
Tony tilts his head to the side in confusion so Yelena elaborates.
“Killing myself. I tried. Natasha and I were taking down the Red Room. There were so many other ways that I could have done it but I thought that killing myself with the man at the head of it all would be sort of poetic. I had no life and no home for me so I figured that maybe I could go down as a hero,” Yelena shrugs her shoulders. “I was going to blow myself up and fall to my death. And as I was falling I felt this sort of peace come over me that I hadn’t felt in a really long time.”
Yelena watches Tony’s face. “I was happy, I think. I was going to be free. Nobody could control me anymore. But then I’m tackled in the air and there’s a harness being strapped to me. Natasha had jumped after me.”
“I’m glad she did. I’m glad that you’re still with us, kid,” Tony tells her.
“I don’t understand why I was so happy at that moment but I have nightmares of me falling. I hate falling. It scares me,” Yelena stares up at him.
“I don’t have an answer for you,” Tony said honestly.
Yelena lets out a soft sigh. “I don’t want to die but living sometimes is really hard.”
“I get that,” Tony nods his head. “Have you talked with Natasha about this?”
“I can’t,” Yelena shakes her head. “She doesn’t understand. She underwent mental conditioning, I underwent chemical subjugation. Two totally different things.”
“I never underwent any of that and you’re talking with me about it,” Tony points out at her.
Yelena’s shoulders droop as she finally reveals the real reason. “If I tell her then she’s gonna blame herself. It’s not her fault and I’m not mad at her but she’ll get all upset with herself and I hate it when that happens.”
Tony lets out a hum at her words. “I see. You can come talk to me about this stuff or anything at any time.”
“Thank you, Tony,” Yelena smiles up at him. “I think I’m gonna go find my sister now.”
“Roger dodger,” Tony nods his head and turns to walk back over to the suit. “One more thing…”
Yelena glances over at him.
“If you think about trying to kill yourself again or if you even want to hurt yourself then come to me first. Please. We’ll figure this out, okay?” Tony tells.
Yelena swallows hard. She can’t manage to get any words out so she settles on nodding her head before turning and leaving the lab.
Natasha, Hill, and Coulson are in the living room talking. Everyone else had been sent to their room or somewhere else so that Natasha could speak with Coulson without everyone bombarding him with questions about him being alive.
The conversation ceased when Yelena enters the room. There was a bottle of wine that had been cracked open. Natasha’s eyes fall onto her and Yelena knows that she’s looking for signs of distress.
Yelena approached Natasha and glances down at her before taking a seat on her lap. Natasha shifts to accommodate the weight.
Yelena glances at Coulson and Hill before reaching for Natasha’s glass of wine.
Natasha hesitates before letting Yelena take it. Yelena brings the glass up to her lips and takes a long sip, closing her eyes at the taste before curling against Natasha.
“62742-4455” Yelena murmurs before taking another sip.
“What?” Natasha asked, bringing a hand up to run her fingers through Yelena’s hair.
“Your phone number,” Yelena glances at Hill. “I still remember it.”
Hill blinks in surprise before nodding. “I had forgotten I gave it to you.”
“I nearly called a few times. I never brought myself to enter the last digit,” Yelena takes another sip of wine and Natasha finally pulls the glass from her fingers and downs the rest before Yelena takes it back.
Hill was frowning at her.
“If I entered the last number would you have come? You promised that you’d help me but I was pretending to be Alyssa. I shot and killed one of your men and swallowed a USB full of important files that could have brought SHIELD down,” Yelena doesn’t meet Hill’s gaze.
It was quiet in the room for a few moments before Hill speaks.
“I would have come. You were a child, Yelena. You didn’t deserve what they did to you,” Hill said, her voice steady.
Yelena rests her head against Natasha’s shoulder and feels Natasha gently scratch at her scalp. “I used to call you Ria.”
“You still can.” Hill replies and Yelena finally looks at her.
“Aren’t you mad at me?” Yelena blurts in confusion.
“No. I’m not. Your name might have been Alyssa but you were still the same little girl as Yelena. I should have done more to help you. I should have pushed more,” Hill shakes her head. “I knew something wasn’t right with you.”
Yelena clenches her jaw, focusing on the feeling of Natasha’s fingers in her hair. “The Director is mad at me.”
“He used to keep a jar of hard candy in his office just for you. He was fond of you. He let you get close and then you betrayed him. He… took it hard. He closed himself off and added a lot of new rules,” Hill shakes her head. “You were important to us. You made SHIELD brighter. Alyssa Daniel, the daughter of a single father who couldn’t afford childcare so she shadowed the higher-ups.”
“I was really Yelena Belova, the greatest child assassin ever in the making,” Yelena murmurs. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” Hill said and the room goes quiet again.
“So. Natasha told us a lot about you,” Coulson speaks up and Yelena shifts her glance to look at him. “Caught us up on what we’ve missed.”
Yelena glances up at her sister, reaching up to wrap an arm around her neck. Natasha looks down at her and kissed her forehead gently to reassure her.
Yelena can’t help but smile softly. Natasha’s forehead kisses never failed to make her feel safe and secure.
“We’d like to establish connection again,” Coulson continues. “We want to put everything on the table.”
“No more faking deaths,” Yelena tells him, shifting to sit up slightly. “Or lying. You gotta be honest.”
Coulson nods his head. “I’d like to introduce you to my new team.”
“What are your thoughts on General Ross?” Yelena asked and Coulson blinks in surprise at the abrupt turn in conversation.
“I’m not a fan. Why?” He glances at Natasha before looking back at Yelena.
“He’s gone after Yelena to try and get to me,” Natasha replies for Yelena. “We’re trying to take him down. What does SHIELD know about him?”
“I can get you a file,” Hill offers before downing the last sip in her glass. “I can’t promise SHIELD’s help in helping but you have mine.”
“And mine as well. And my team,” Coulson nods his head in agreement.
Yelena sinks back against her sister with a small nod.
Things were looking up.