Chapter 1
Yelena absolutely did not want Melina and Alexei at the tower. Especially while Natasha wasn’t there.
But she can’t be selfish. Natasha needs to be rescued. So Yelena shoves her personal feelings on the matter out of the way.
Still, she talks with Tony. Tony promised that if any of them even mumbled past the first three words when he’d take them out himself.
Yelena is crumbling without her sister. She can’t seem to keep herself together. MJ can’t be there all the time. She has school and her family.
The others keep giving her pitying looks. Yelena is going to have a meltdown soon. She called Clint and told him what happened.
Clint was going to make his way down to New York to help. He wasn’t supposed to leave the farm but this was a risk that he was going to make.
Yelena tries to sleep without her sister. She digs her handcuffs out and it helps her sleep some but ultimately, she needs someone to sleep in the bed with her.
She finally seeks out Wanda, her limbs heavy with fatigue and her frame shaking because she’s so tired and she’s going to fall apart at any moment and she just needs her sister.
“Wanda…”
Wanda doesn’t ask questions. Yelena explains anyway.
“I can’t sleep without someone I trust in my bed,” Yelena tells her. “And I know that we don’t really know each other but everybody else is unavailable or a man. Natasha trusts you. That’s good enough for now.”
Wanda’s eyes are soft and she lifts the sheets to her bed and Yelena curls up into a tiny ball even though her ribs scream with protest. Wanda doesn’t wrap around her like Natasha nor does she take the place closest to the door.
Yelena’s carefully built schedule that she had settled into was ripped out from under her. She never realized just how much Natasha being back in her life impacted her until she wasn’t there anymore.
She gets really mad. Mad at how unfair it is. James takes her to the gym and they fight until Yelena can’t.
Wanda seems to be irritated with how much Yelena is hanging off of her but Yelena isn’t in the best mind frame to accurately judge that. She sees Pepper doing paperwork in the living room during late nights.
Yelena gets desperate enough to ask Pepper if she she can just sit next to her and sleep. It’s horribly awkward and Yelena shifts uneasily because she and Pepper are not close. But whatever Pepper sees when she looks at her makes her soften and she nods.
Yelena sits next to her, their legs pressed together and she tilts her head back.
She has a nightmare that makes her panic. Tony finds her in Natasha’s closet.
Yelena cannot function. This was what the Red Room meant when they said that love makes you compromised. Why they said love is for children.
Yelena is a child. She loves her sister so much that her absence leaves behind a hole that nobody else can fill.
Six days after she called, Melina and Alexei show up along with an unplanned visitor.