Chapter 12
Natasha asked Peter about volunteering the next day. Peter gets very excited.
“There’s this shelter by my apartment and they always have the cutest little puppies in their window on display,” Peter gushes before blushing furiously when he realized that he was speaking with Black Widow.
Yelena is both excited and nervous.
She’s nervous because the past few times that she went out she got kidnapped by SHIELD and the day always ended up with Yelena having a meltdown and struggling to breathe.
James and Sam volunteer to hang out near the shelter. They promised Natasha that they wouldn’t let SHIELD take Yelena without a fight.
Steve volunteered as well but Captain America was too recognizable and still wanted by the government.
Tony builds Yelena a panic button with a GPS tracker on it. Yelena’s not offended at the tracker. If anything, it makes her feel better. Peter is given a matching one and Tony makes a comment about “forgot about JJ” and made one for MJ as well.
“You’re making me soft,” Tony shoves a finger at Yelena in accusation but continues to make things to keep the three teenagers safe.
MJ tags along with Yelena and Peter as they finally head to the shelter.
Yelena had never seen so many dogs at once. Peter immediately coos and sweet talks the dogs.
MJ gets a small grin on her face as she interacts with the cats that they have.
Yelena passes by the animals, filling their food bowls and ensuring that they had fresh water. She comes across one cage containing a dog that quickly becomes her favorite.
The dog is dubbed the ‘bad’ dog. It was known to be aggressive and snapped at anyone that got too close. The dog had been so many times and didn’t even have a name it responded to.
Peter finds her at the end of the day sitting just outside the cage and tossing bits of kibble to it through the slots in the metal bars.
“Aw,” He coos at the dog. It was a german shepherd and its left ear had a tear in it. The dog lunged at the bars and startled Peter bad enough that the boy fell over.
Yelena returns the next day to see the same dog. She spends her whole time just sitting in front of the cage and feeding the dog, whispering praises under her breath.
It takes a week before the dog stopped snapping at her whenever she neared and another one after that until it gets closer to Yelena for her to touch.
Yelena goes through a list of names. She finds out that the dog is a boy and responds to the name Firefly.
Firefly started to wag his tail each time he smelled Yelena. The workers remark that they’d never seen him so calm.
Yelena thinks of herself when she sees Firefly. Firefly just needed some patience and love along with someone who didn’t give up on him.
The manager tells Yelena that she should just adopt Firefly because he wasn’t going to get adopted.
Yelena shrugs because she’s pretty sure that Tony didn’t like dogs and it was his tower, not hers. She just lived there and had no say in who lived there.
Yelena returns home in the afternoon or evening with James and Sam. She’d sometimes walk in on Natasha finishing up a phone or video call with Maria and Coulson.
Yelena’s life gets busy and she finds herself drifting away from her sister slightly.
At the end of the day they sleep in the same bed but Yelena feels like Natasha might as well sleep on another floor.
Yelena thinks that it’s great that Natasha is able to talk to Coulson and Maria again. Her sister deserves support too.
But Yelena still needs her.
Yelena isn’t quite sure how to ask though. She doesn’t want to seem selfish or take Natasha away from her own feelings.
Natasha missed going to bed one night and Yelena wakes up from a nightmare and no one to calm her.
Yelena spirals to the point that she realizes what she’s done only after she’s sitting in the tub in the bathroom with neat cuts along her thighs and a blade in her hand.
Yelena passes by Natasha on the phone with Maria on the way to the elevator. She heads to Tony’s lab where the man was working on her suit.
“Hey kid, would you pass me that piece there?” Tony questioned, barely glancing at her when she enters.
“I hurt myself…” Yelena said quietly and Tony paused before dropping his tools and spinning around to look at her.
Tony’s eyes drag over her body as he approached her. “What happened?”
“I had a nightmare and Natasha wasn’t there and I needed to feel control,” Yelena replies quietly.
Tony reached out and wrapped his arms around her. The hug feels nice and Yelena sags against him.
“I’m really proud of you for coming to me,” Tony said softly and Yelena clenches her jaw. “How did you hurt yourself?”
“With a knife,” Yelena murmurs, and Tony nods.
“Was the blade clean?” Tony asked and Yelena nods. “Good. Have you bandaged yourself up?” Yelena nods once again. “What do you need from me?”
“You told me to come to you next time…” Yelena tilts her head up to look at him. “I came.”
Tony nods his head. “I’m glad that you trusted me enough to come.” Tony gestures for Yelena to hoist herself up and sit on the workbench. “Does Natasha know?”
Yelena shrugs. “Not this time.” Yelena doesn’t know if Natasha knows about any of the other instances. “I think I’d like to go to therapy.”
Tony nods his head. “That’s good of you. I’ll set something up with a therapist I trust, okay?”
Yelena sits at the workbench and watches as Tony gets back to work on the suit. “I think I feel jealous.”
“What makes you say that?” Tony asked and although he’s focused on the suit in front of him, Yelena knows that he’s listening.
“I don’t know exactly what I’m feeling. I’m happy that Natasha can talk to her people but I still need her. It’s selfish.”
“It’s not selfish to need someone,” Tony tells her. “I’m not selfish for needing Pepper, am I?”
“That’s different. Pepper’s your girlfriend,” Yelena said. “Natasha’s my…” Yelena paused. “Natasha.” There wasn’t really a label that fit.
“If you could tell Natasha what you needed, what would you say?” Tony lets out a hiss when he burns his finger.
“I need you. I’m happy you have Maria and Coulson but I need you too. My mind gets loud and I don’t know how to quiet it like you do,” Yelena states, her fingers messing with the hem of her shirt. “I’m sorry that I’m needy.”
“You’re not needy,” Tony immediately replies, glancing up at her. “Kiddo, needing someone is different than being needy.”
Yelena wrinkles her nose. “How? I can’t even sleep alone at night because my mind gets all messed up and muddled and I need to hurt myself to feel in control.”
“What happened to you was fucked up,” Tony leans back to admire his work as he spoke. “But it wasn’t your fault. Needing help doesn’t mean you’re needy. Your needs are important just as much as mine.”
“It doesn’t feel that way sometimes,” Yelena confessed quietly. “I don’t feel important enough to matter sometimes. I feel selfish and greedy for just wanting my sister to myself.”
“I think that you are so kind and understanding to everyone but yourself,” Tony tells her. “You extend kindness and understanding to situations where you wouldn’t if you were involved. You tell me that Natasha deserves support and friends and shit but then you don’t think that you deserve the same.”
Yelena swallows hard and shrugs. “It feels like I’m not worthy of being held to the same standards, I suppose. I feel like I’m still the object that the Red Room made me. I look into the mirror because sometimes I forget that I am a person.”
Tony picks up one of the gauntlets and approached her, gripping her forearm to strap it to her hand and test it. “You are a person that deserves to love and be loved in return.”
Yelena watches him adjust the material wrapped around her hand. “I don’t feel like a person. I feel like a stranger in somebody else’s body and sometimes I feel like I’m watching the world go by through a window and all I can do is watch helplessly as everybody but me moves on.”
“I’m sorry that I don’t have the magical answers that you need,” Tony said, manipulating Yelena’s hand in the gauntlet. “I can’t tell you that you’re going to wake up one day and all of your issues will be solved. This kind of trauma doesn’t go away. It’s been… at least a decade since this.” Tony taps the arc reactor in his chest. “I still wake up at night thinking I’m back in that damned cave.”
“I’m jealous that James can forget,” Yelena said. “James is angry and upset that he can’t remember what went on in Hydra but sometimes I just want to forget.”
“You don’t,” Tony said quietly. “I really think that you don’t want to forget.”
“I’ve hurt a lot of people. I can’t even remember a lot of the ones that I have. I’ve killed children. I’ve done horrible things,” Yelena watches Tony pull the gauntlet from her hand. “I’m weak.”
“Weakness isn’t a bad thing,” Tony said, setting the gauntlet to the side before focusing on her. “You are strong, Yelena. You are a good kid who didn’t deserve the shit that happened to you and you deserve to be loved.”
Tears well up in Yelena’s eyes. “It doesn’t feel like it.”
Tony clasped her shoulder with his hand. “Things might not seem like it now but everything will be okay. Talk to your sister, even if it’s hard.”
“Okay…” Yelena sighs, leaning into the touch.
“Do you think you’re going to hurt yourself again?” Tony asked softly and Yelena shakes her head. “If I send you back to bed or to talk with Nat will you go?”
Yelena nods her head. “I’m sorry for ranting and unloading myself onto you.”
“I know you are,” Tony squeezed her shoulder. “You shouldn’t be.”
“Thank you, Tony,” Yelena murmurs before disappearing back down her bedroom.
Natasha was still on the phone with Maria when Yelena appears and approaches her. Natasha glances up at her.
Yelena wrapped her arms around Natasha’s waist and buried her face into the crook of her neck. “I need you.”
Natasha quickly bids goodbye to Maria and hangs up the phone before shifting her attention to Yelena. “You have me, little one.”
Yelena shakes her head. “I need you more than what I have right now.”
Natasha’s fingers brush through Yelena’s hair. “Talk to me, little one.”
Yelena does.