Chapter 4
The house is sent rattling with explosions, and Yelena wakes up to cold.
It reminds her of the avalanche, of the snow and mist and pounding. But this is not that.
This kind of cold is man-made and still, and it prompts her to open her eyes.
A man maps out something on her forehead with a sharpie.
“This is a much less cool way to die.”
She closes her eyes as she tries to resign herself to the fact that this might be it. This might be all she gets- but she can’t do it.
I’m not done yet.
There are still girls being stolen from their homes and turned into killers against their own wills. There are still black widows under mind control. The work is far from done, and Yelena Belova plans to try and see it through.
Whatever it takes.
She refuses to think about Natasha, Alexei, or Melina. Refuses to wonder. Instead, she focuses on spinning up some semblance of a plan.
Three doctors- or agents, possibly. Medical tools on the counter to her right. Straps on her limbs, a cot that rolls.
Yelena flexes her fingers in frustration.
“Yelena! It’s mama!”
She jolts at the sudden voice in her ear.
Her mother instructs her of the two-inch blade she’d hidden on her, and for a moment, all Yelena feels is shock.
“What?!”
Immediately, she realizes her mistake (and oh, Yelena knows how a mistake like that would’ve gotten her punished) and she covers it up skillfully, “W-what are you going to do to me?”
Her mother… hadn’t she betrayed us… how?
But it didn’t matter, so Yelena shoved it aside. All that mattered was finishing what they started.
Yelena grabbed the blade, and let loose all the instincts the red room had ingrained in her.
She ripped past her restraints, all grace and slices, whirling and punching with ease. She was vicious blows and hard calculations, and, for barely a second, that was all.
She didn’t think to categorize the syringe in one’s hand as a threat until it was buried in her flesh.
Tumbling down, she took the last man out with her. Whatever had been in the syringe was coursing rapidly through her; there was a pounding building in her head and a faint weakness flooding her limbs. She didn’t want to think of what that meant.
She yanked the thing out of her shoulder, grimacing as she felt more of the liquid in it spear through her.
What the hell was in that thing?
Yelena didn’t have time to think about it, so she forced that thought down as well.
She made her way to Natasha, to the widows.
There wasn’t time for Yelena to freeze when her vision began to blur.
She didn’t stop when a tremor went up her legs.
She knew whatever had been in that syringe had been meant to disable her, but she hadn’t let herself give thought to what it was. She hadn’t had time then, and she didn’t have time now.
Spin, and leap, and twist, and slam. The man she needed to unlock the door was knocked unconscious.
It should’ve been easy.
And yet, Yelena’s breath came in hard pants.
That too, she shoves aside.
She pushes it away the same way she’d pushed down her pain, her rage, her hope, her fear. The same way she pushed everything down but what the red room wanted to see. The same way she’d learned to survive.
But now, she wasn’t pushing it away to please her trainers, to please Dreykov.
She was pushing it down for the widows who were trapped in their own minds.
For the girls who were being beaten into the red room’s idea of perfection.
For her mother, who had raised her strong but kept her heart. Who continued to feed occasional instructions in her ear.
For her father, who, even as he loved all she hated, at least he still loved her.
For her sister. Yelena didn’t give a sh*t if Natasha didn’t think of them as family. They were Yelena’s family, and she would fight for them.
So, Yelena fought for that one thing that was more important than a mission.
The widows were gone from the room when she entered.
Though she had hoped she was wrong, Yelena had known they would be, and she didn’t give herself much time to pause. The explosives were in her hand in moments and she began to run.
Melina’s voice was in her ear and Yelena made her way towards her sestra.
Steady, strong, and running- racing.
The room exploded into red dust.
For a moment, Yelena relives it.
Standing over that dying deserter once more with red fading from her vision.
On her knees.
Shoving hands against a gaping wound.
Bianca’s voice echoing in her head,
“We can free them all, моя любовь.”
Her own voice screaming back, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!
Then Yelena was moving, the dust fading, and she was pulling Natasha to her feet.
The mission she’d chosen for herself is so far from done.
She had been stolen, beaten, whipped, lectured, and tortured through her childhood. She had learned to act heartless to survive (though, of course, her aching heart stayed with her). She had become the widow - the monster - they’d wanted her to be. Millions of girls had gone through the same, and millions were still destined for it.
Yelena’s heart bled for them. It let down it’s walls and screamed.
So Yelena broke for the man responsible, the target, the reason for all this f*cking pain.
Her sprint was steady despite the drugs in her system and she didn’t glance back at the beautifully burning wreckage behind her- beneath her.
She calculated and leapt.
Her feet carried her across the wing to the engines, and a grim smile twisted her lips.
As Yelena pulled her baton, she looked up.
Straight into the eyes of her sister.
She saw the pain and fear in them, the emotions that their trainers would’ve beaten them for showing. The kind that sprouted from a heart that beats, and pounds, and burns for others.
Natasha Romanov hadn’t lost her heart either.
Yelena called out to her, bringing it back to when she finally believed she could have a sister again.
“This was fun!”
Her heart sings with what she’s about to do. The red room will never end until he’s gone. Until everyone one of them is dead and the girls are free, and her heart knows this as deeply as Yelena does.
Her sister will free the widows. Her mother had sent the red room on a blazing crash course with the earth. Yelena might not be able to see it through, but she can d*mn well kill the man that wiped girls clean to do his bidding.
She is a weapon of the red room’s creation, and she will bury herself to the hilt in its heart.
Yelena Belova thrusts the baton into the engine.
And she falls.
The jet goes up in flames and she watches them as the wind rips through her.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
Her heart whispers the words to itself, to the hole where Bianca had been.
Yelena doesn’t fight as her eyes close.
But then hands are pulling at her shoulders.
She’s pretty sure the drug has finally gotten to her when she finds Natasha staring back at her.
She’s there and gone, and Yelena continues to fall, though this time something holds her upright and slows her speed.
Yelena opens her eyes once more to find her sister with her.
She doesn’t try to stop the joy that washes past her walls, or the memory that comes with it.
“We’re both upside down,” she says.
That elicits a smile from her sestra.
Yelena pushes herself up carefully, and her heart aches at the look on Natasha’s face.
And then her sestra tells her it was real.
And, for a moment, Yelena can’t believe it.
But Natasha - her sister - repeats herself and holds her, and Yelena hugs her back with all she has, and her heart is full and open and almost whole, and, for a moment, she lets her walls go.
In the end, her sister doesn’t go with them. She stays to face Ross, and Yelena knows she has to, but that doesn’t stop her heart from hurting. Yelena doesn’t want to let her sister go. She wants to see her smile again and trade remarks, to hear Natasha’s whistle in response to her own once more, and she wants to share with her the life she had for a short, precious time when she was first free.
But Yelena Belova can’t have that, so she shares the thing she can.
She leaves the wreckage missing three things.
She doesn’t see any of them again.