Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The tower is filled with ghosts hidden in all of its corners. Everywhere she looks, Yelena finds something that isn’t hers. Cross-shaped markings on the ceiling, where arrows met their targets, lichtenberg figures on the wooden cabinet that has been repurposed into Ava’s nightstand, a hook for a shield beside the place where their keys dangle, a ring of fresh concrete where a Hulk-sized fist went through the basement floor.

The renovators must have left these phantoms of the previous team as some sort of honorary act, making sure their history wasn't completely erased, but it just makes Yelena’s mouth sour when she sees an old scar in the foundation. She feels not as a replacement but a parody of the heroes she’s meant to be taking the mantle from. Their existence couldn’t be more of a joke. Two super soldiers, bargain bin Captain America, a British person, and a Russian assassin become the babysitter for an unstable drug addict who doubles as a nuclear bomb that could destroy the universe when he has a bad day. 

The Avengers are dead, long live The Avengers. 

Everything in the tower is new, from the furniture and gym equipment, down to the kitchen appliances and flooring. The bedroom walls maintain that fresh-paint smell, even months later. Yelena can’t get rid of that new home smell, all cedarwood oil and shitty Yankee Candle plugins. She hates the process of breaking something in; she’d rather buy things used and well-worn so she knows they have already lived a good life. 

While Val tells them they have free reign of the refurbished tower, it’s not without monitoring. Yelena notes where every camera is installed, tracks the blind spots for her personal use in the future. There are few, but they are large. Thankfully, she finds none in the bedrooms or the attached bathrooms, but she does tape over the two in the gym. If Val wants to out herself by telling them about Yelena’s tampering, she is welcome to do so.

Yelena hates the tower, and she tries to hate the people living there with her. It’s a universal mockery to have her living in a building that was once her sister’s first true home, pretending that she can be a modicum of the heroine Natasha was. She doesn’t feel like she deserves to be there; she’s haunting an already haunted place, stalking hallways she doesn’t belong in and pretending she doesn’t see the remnants of the heroes who lived there before. 

This is not a home, simply a place for her to sleep and eat in between missions, coalesce with these strangers who have barely made it out of her category of enemy. 

All except for Bob, of course. He’s a curiosity. The connection between them caught everyone by surprise, especially themselves. There was that initial kinship they found when they blew up the vault and first fell into a memory room, a broken person recognizing a broken person. A wounded bird finding comfort with the maw of a feral cat.

The Void only exposed their cracks further and drew them together, mostly by force, but Yelena wouldn’t have walked into that darkness if she had even an inkling that he would hurt her. She saw something in him that she recognized from within herself, that shitty feeling she tried to swallow down, but could never keep buried. Bob must’ve seen that same darkness, because he let her in. 

She has yet to understand what she feels for him, and what it means for who she thought she was before they met. It’s not animosity; it never really was. When first encountering the others, Yelena felt cornered, on guard, like they would kill her or leave her to die because she would do the same in their positions. But with Bob, they skipped being enemies and strangers and landed in something without a label. Friends, perhaps. Maybe even companions. She doesn’t know. 

She still doesn’t.

Even when consumed by The Void or under de Fontaine’s influence, she never feared him, but for him. Every mask he put on, she easily saw through. The Sentry, The Void, all of it.

The first weeks in the Watchtower are a trial run, trying to adjust to living together without killing each other. Besides John and Bob, they're all natural lone wolves, often forgetting that the tower isn’t just for them. They have their own pans and cutlery in self-designated cabinets, drawers they’ve silently claimed in the fridge. Bob shares a shelf with John on the top row because they have distinct Southern appetites the others find ridiculous. 

Bucky is the only one who still has yet to fully move in, keeping his apartment in the city as some sort of keepsake from his past. He’s polite, though, when he’s around, and often out on whatever business Congressmen are up to on any given Tuesday. Yelena sees him as a grumpy old grandpa who occasionally graces them with his presence between press conferences and failing to get bills passed. She gets excited when he’s around; even with his metal arm and super soldier serum, he’s a great partner to spar with because he doesn’t hold back. 

Alexei, well. They’ve lived together before. Even though it’s been decades, and he’s since dropped the habits he had during their rendezvous in Ohio, he still is and acts like her dad. Yelena sometimes will sneak into his room and shuffle through his things for keepsakes she knows he’s kept from their false life. He must know that she does this, but he lets her keep what she finds. It's mostly photos. A ticket stub for a drive-in, a letter Yelena wrote for Santa asking for a pink Schwinn she never got. She never thought she’d enjoy living with him again. 

John is clean, thank Christ, and keeps to himself. He’s not as irritating as she would've expected. Yelena should’ve anticipated this kind of militant cleanliness from such an obedient soldier. She thinks it’s him trying to make up for his past, one politely brewed cup of coffee at a time. The only glaringly annoying thing about him is how much he tries to bond. It must be his old army ways, all camaraderie and teamwork building bullshit. What actually sucks is it works. They actually get along better than in the beginning. Yelena will never confess it to him, even though she never hides her joy when she wins as the renegade during an intense game of Bang! He does use it to her advantage, luring her to hang out with the allure of social deduction card games. 

Ava has no sense of privacy or shame and will phase into any room no matter what time or what they’re doing. She is quiet, which should be a virtue in a roommate but makes it much worse. Walking into a room is a gamble because she could be lurking in a corner, being half-tangible just for the hell of it. On multiple occasions now, Ava has walked in on Yelena while showering just to steal her shaving cream or nab a tampon from her drawer. Her presence is almost nice, as the only two girls in the tower, but she’s just mean enough that they keep their distance. Yelena wonders—secretly hopes, really, but will deny it if asked—that maybe they could one day be real friends. 

While Yelena knows she’s not the best roommate—she and John have gone neck and neck several times for her leaving crumbs in the cream cheese—at least she keeps to herself, lurking in the corners and rejecting any effort for bonding. She hopes to keep it that way.

She doesn’t.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Tonight is their ‘government-mandated bonding time,’ as Bucky calls it, where Alexei forces them to watch a movie to get to know each other better. While it could be going better, these nights together haven't devolved into a massacre. Yet. 

Yelena learns far too much about her new companions through their rancid tastes of film. Bucky always chooses pretentious think pieces, which will make Yelena fall asleep halfway through, and John only ever watches military propaganda movies that he defends vehemently when Ava makes fun of him. Alexei refuses to put something on in English, and Ava only picks horror movies. Bob has the most normal taste, which just means he likes everything. 

Because she’s never watched films until she was well into her twenties, Yelena did not liken herself to be a movie person, but she’s growing accustomed to sitting down for two hours at a time. She finds that she loves rock musicals, which Bob showed her on a whim, and that means every time her turn comes around the rest are subjected to their third watch of Next To Normal. 

Because John chose the movie last week—who the hell willingly watches The General’s Daughter and not just plays it in the background while doing literally anything else—so the duty falls to Ava tonight. She has seen few movies in her time outside of SHIELD’s control, and yet she lands on some romcom Yelena has never heard of because Bucky refuses to watch her first choice: The Exorcist. 

The three leather couches surround the large television from all sides, giving them all the space to tolerate each other’s presences. When they first moved in, John claimed the front-facing couch for his own, leaving Ava and Bucky to awkwardly but amicably split the one on the right. Alexei has his own recliner in the corner that he brought from his old apartment that nobody wants to claim. They call it the cuck chair, but nobody has the heart to tell him to his face. 

Yelena lies across the couch on the left, torso propped by the cushioned armrest. Bob is on the other end, her feet pressed under his thigh for warmth. It feels like a sleepover forced upon them by annoying parents, but at least there are snacks and decent company. 

There is an odd risk being near Bob that she circumvents by doing nothing special. Yelena doesn’t stray from touching him because she no longer fears being thrown into a painful memory. When he is Bob, not that egotistical Sentry or the self-destructive Void, he poses no threat to her. She enjoys his presence, surprisingly enough, which is rare, because she tolerates people at most. 

She distracts herself from the boring movie by balancing a box of sour patch kids between her knees and trying to toss them into Bob as accurately as possible in the dark. He weaves towards the candies, catching them only on occasion. The citric acid sprinkles the front of his sweater. Any loose stragglers, he just plucks from the couch and feeds to her every time she opens her mouth expectantly. His fingers linger on her bottom lip, and she tries not to think about it. 

“Are you two even paying attention to the movie?” John questions.

They look at each other and snicker like children caught stealing cookies from a jar.

“Obviously not,” Yelena replies coolly. “What if the fiance answered the door instead? Why is he showing up at her house with flowers if he knows she’s engaged?”

“Because he’s in love with her.”

“No, he’s psychotic. That’s stalker behavior. Even when she’s choosing a romcom, Ava ends up putting on a horror movie.”

“I’ve actually never seen this movie before,” Ava adds. “But, you’re right. This is terrifying.”

“It’s romantic!” John defends.

“Of course you’d say that,” she shoots back. “You’re a man.”

John tries to argue with her further, but Bucky chucks the remote control at him as a threat. He reluctantly returns his attention back to the movie. Yelena glances at Bob, whose face burns a pretty embarrassed pink in the television’s glare. She somehow contains her laughter. 

Tonight, he’s Bob and nobody else, clumsy and twitchy and gentle when he sets the sour candy in her tongue. She keeps her gaze on him as she chews, grinning at how his eyes follow the movement of her throat when she swallows. 

Something about him makes her come back. She shares the couch, she shares her sweets. Her feet stay pressed against him, inching beneath his legs for warmth, and Bob lets her do it. He’ll even let their hands brush together when they walk side by side and he only flinches away half of the time now. 

It’s not just a simple kinship of broken things. This is a feeling Yelena has never experienced before, a feeling she has never had to label and refuses to do so now. 

When the movie ends, Yelena is the first on her feet, using the excuse of having a press conference in the morning to advocate against Fisk’s anti-vigilante laws so she doesn’t have to spend a second longer with these people she still barely knows. As expected, she hears Bob putter behind her like a lost pet. 

“I feel like I’m a duckling,” he told her one night as they drank coffee on the balcony, the air frigid but grounding, “and you’re the person I imprinted on. I don’t know why you keep me around besides having someone to load the dishwasher. It’s not like I’m much use to you guys without the Sentry.”

“You don’t need to be a hero to have a purpose,” she had replied. 

She could tell by the face he made that Bob didn’t believe her, but she will repeat it as many times as she has to until he does. 

“Thank God it’s your turn next,” Yelena complains as they walk together to their bedrooms. “I never understood romcoms. It’s not comedy enough to make up for the creepy romance. And why are the men always so mediocre but the women are drop dead gorgeous? That doesn’t seem very fair to me. I want a hot man and an ugly woman to fuck on screen.”

Bob laughs. “Well, sorry to say, but I’m putting on Mission Impossible next week.”

“We watched that one last time.”

“There’s seven more movies,” he says. “Get ready, because we are gonna be Tom Cruising through the franchise.”

She rolls her eyes, unable to hold a chuckle back, and shoves his shoulder. “Ugh, stop it with the bad jokes. You’re as bad as Walker.”

“You still laughed.”

“It was a pity laugh.”

They part ways in the hallway but linger in front of their doors. She doesn’t know what she's waiting for, or if she simply struggles with saying goodnight. The funny thing is their rooms are across from each other. Yelena can’t help but think of those cliche sitcoms she watched to forget Natasha’s death, of shared glances in doorways, lovers just a door and a knock away.

She swats at the thoughts like the pests they are. 

“Do you want the rest of these?” Yelena asks, holding out her sour patch kids. “I have plenty more in my room.”

“Oh, um, sure,” Bob says. “Thanks.”

His hands are expansive and still tanned from days spent in the sun, his knuckles marred with bandaged cuts from a boxing match with Bucky. They have a perpetual tremble that he blames on all the drugs he’s taken. When his sleeve rides up just an inch up his arm, there are dozens of thin, self-inflicted lines scattered across his inner wrist. Some are old and white, others fresh and aggressively red. She pretends not to see them as she passes him the box of candy.

A current of energy passes when they touch, then a rush of air over her skin. Yelena sees flashes of a childhood bedroom, crayons littered carpet, doing handstands in the yard. When the memories hit, they come all at once, almost like stepping in and out of a dream. She will never get used to the way it makes her feel. 

The reputation he has is bad, but not all of the memories are shameful. They make her sad, yes, but most of her life does. Bittersweet is still sweet in a way. 

Breaking the connection between them, Bob tucks his hands into his body and backs away with an apologetic grimace. She knows he saw it, too. He’s always there when she needs him. 

“Good night, Lena,” he says before disappearing into his room. 

Lena. He calls her that sometimes, in that soft and apologetic tone that must mean something that she has yet to decipher. Only Alexei has ever called her that before. Yelena wonders what about her compels Bob to say her name like that. She always wonders, never acts. 

While she can’t even figure out what it makes her feel, to hear her name spoken like it’s a prayer rather than a wound, she does know it’s not as violent or repulsive as she expected. At one point, she’s sure she decided she liked it, because she hasn’t tried to stop him.

Alone in the hallway, she stares at her fingers where they tingle with Bob’s touch, trying to hold onto the flashes of her life he conjured for a few seconds longer. They are not always bad memories. She will have to tell him that one day. Closing her eyes for a brief moment, she searches for blue eyes and red hair in her mind, but soon the memory is gone, like mist on a lake. 

Yelena returns to her own bedroom, only to dream of the ghost of her sister walking the halls of the tower she won’t call home. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Compared to the rest of the New Avengers—god, Yelena hates that name—Bob is an enigma of personality and of strength. Simultaneously, he’s the strongest and most fragile of them all. He is made of so many things at once, like all people, except those facets of himself are constantly exposed like sparking wires of a bomb. There are no limits to what he can do except the ones he unintentionally places on himself.

Bucky once called him the bull and the china shop, and Yelena agrees wholeheartedly. This contradiction of self makes Bob so much more human than the rest of them, and yet he's barely human at all anymore. Val and OXE made sure of that. 

In the first couple of weeks, Yelena would often forget that he houses such a terrifying and deadly power because, besides that day she found him downing Hennessy right out of the bottle, he looked almost normal. Bob haunted the halls, church mouse quiet and awkward when interacted with. He refuses to burden them any more than he has to, and Yelena knows he’s still bottling things up, even if he allows some of the pressure to be released with little mentions of a past he hates to speak about. The grief he never was relieved of, the guilt of what he’s done and what he had done to him. 

When their adjustment period ended and they all actually started to interact with one another, they soon saw the true extent of his condition. Bob does a good job pretending, too, until he can’t. He pretends he doesn’t slip, but when he does, it’s obvious. Drinking on an empty stomach to counteract his heightened metabolism, barricading himself over the smallest of indiscretions, luring shadows into the rooms he enters. His swings are high and swift. 

Normally, he’s quiet and skittish, almost childlike in nature. His hands are always busy with either books or tugging at rubber bands on his wrists. He keeps to himself often, leaves no traces of him behind in any room. But he’s one pendulum swing away from crumbling. 

On the bad days, it’s like another person. Yelena can always see it coming. Bob becomes confrontational, sarcastic, that invincible type of man that is so easy to topple. He goads John into sparring just so he can show how much he really holds back when he wants to. That is The Sentry, pressing through the gentle shell of Bob. His mania manifests like the hum of an overwhelmed lightbulb before it short circuits and bursts from being fed too much power. Delusional grandeur, a masquerade, self-induced godhood. It doesn’t help that he truly does have the powers of a god, but they can live with him because his aggression is never physical, only a little mean and self-inflicted. 

When he inevitably crashes from the heights he’s climbed, the darkness that comes is nearly impenetrable. His dip into The Void is less of a dive and more of a plummet. While Bob doesn’t ever return to Shrouding-Manhattan-In-Shadow depths of The Void, it doesn’t make those days any more pleasant to deal with. They’re quick to memorize the signs, and the only times the New Avengers get along is to be there to catch him when he falls. While The Void doesn’t make another full appearance, they catch glimpses of him on the bad days. He’s never gone, and he never will be. They learn to live with him, too. 

Sometimes, when he has a nightmare, Yelena will appear in his room before any of the others and witness The Void again. A tangle of shadows and light blinking in and out of existence as Bob trembles beneath the sheets. His eyes are like the lights of an empty cityscape under the blanket of midnight. He hates himself when he gets like this and apologizes through the darkness even if he can’t stop it from coming. She isn’t afraid to approach him in this state, having to remind her own instinct that he would never hurt her. Not on purpose, anyway. 

Yelena thinks of The Void as those broken plates whose fissures are filled with gold. She doesn’t try to fix him because she knows Bob can’t be fixed. The Void isn’t a fracture to be mended but fed. If given care and understanding, she might be able to soothe the edges of his soul so they don’t sharpen.

Today, he doesn’t come out of his room the whole time, not even when Alexei asks if he wants to get pierogies. Yelena worries, but she hides it well.

Sometimes, the crashes come without the rise. They’re softer falls, bad mornings that turn into bad days and worse nights. Bob sleeps those days away, waiting out the sadness. His eyes earn darker shadows under them, and he walks around the Watchtower like a zombie, wearing the same clothes he fell asleep in. He doesn’t eat much, barely speaks. It’s almost as if he’s sleepwalking. Nothing as catastrophic as what has come before ever happens, but it still pains them to see him this way.

Their care for Bob started off as a way to ensure The Sentry and The Void didn’t end up in the hands of someone who would take advantage of how malleable his broken mind was. Bob knew this; he even encouraged it to stay that way. 

“The Secret Service doesn’t really become attached to the nuclear codes they guard,” he joked once, though it fell flat. 

He wasn’t something to be guarded but protected. One day, he would understand that.

Living with people means seeing every flaw of a person during their most vulnerable moments. It’s near impossible to stay partial in that kind of environment. Eventually, their contractual care became real. Yelena doesn’t know when the shift happened, as she watched the other Avengers slowly come around to actually wanting Bob around, each at their own pace. She hopes he can feel that shift, see the true efforts they're making now. 

They can’t always help. That is an unfortunate truth of such mental anguish. His depression isn’t helped by the fact that the rain hasn’t let up in weeks, and whatever new superhuman antidepressants OXE has given him to temper the mood swings are bound to have drastic side effects. Yelena is learning when Bob needs to be held, and when he needs space.

Still. Yelena worries, even if she hides it well.

Her knocks go unanswered, but she enters his bedroom anyway. None of the doors have locks, which makes it easier for her to find him and harder for him to hide. She searches around the room, carefully calling out to him so he’s not startled. Once, she snuck up on him and ended up in a memory of Oksana bleeding out in her arms on the streets of Morocco. 

Compared to the others, his bedroom is messy but not filthy, clean but as cluttered as his mind. His laundry basket is stuffed to the brim beside the door to his bathroom. The room looks lived in, like a person actually exists here. Hers is just as barren as the day she moved in. She has no keepsakes, nothing worth keeping. Yelena bets the others are the same.

There are shelves and shelves of secondhand books in his room despite how slow of a reader he is, stored in Ikea bookcases that he built on his own when the others were hunting magical white supremacists through Colorado. He likes self help books, even though Yelena is sure they’re mostly bullshit, but he has a few books of every genre. His favorite author is Matt Haig, a British man who writes sad but fantastical stories, and Bob has every copy of his books.

Those, he rereads on the bad days. Familiarity helps ground him, he explained when they caught him in his third read of The Radleys in as many days. It grants him comfort. Yelena borrowed his copy of How to Stop Time and had to return it because she couldn’t stop crying. She didn’t tell him that. 

His large windowsill is lined with tiny green dragon figurines that he’s been collecting since he was little. Pocket dragons, they're called. They were initially his mother’s, he explained to Yelena when she asked, the only good thing he has left of her, his single keepsake from a life he’d rather not revisit. When they go into the city, he’ll enter every antique shop they come across in search of them. 

Yelena likes to collect these details of Bob like shards of a picture she plans to reassemble. For instance, he likes western-themed board games and sad movies with happy endings. He’s picky but loves to try new foods, and he eats mangoes like they’re apples because it makes Ava squirm. While he claims not to be religious, he does the sign of the cross when they pass the churches downtown, and he sometimes sings Nearer My God To Thee when he’s trying to calm down.

He’s singing it now, his voice broken and almost frustrated. The mumbled hymnal draws her around his unmade bed. Yelena finds him sitting on the floor with his head bowed between his knees, hands clasped together at the nape of his neck. Bob is shirtless. She can see all of his scars clearly now, and her heart twists in her chest at the sight of them. 

A swiss army knife lies between Bob’s feet, the blade retracted and bent into a V. His leg is bouncing frantically. The air around him glows with shields of heat. It almost looks like he’s praying. 

Her mind goes on alert. Is this Bob, or is this The Sentry? She still has a hard time telling. Sometimes, when he has a bad day, his powers will show themselves without him knowing. He can control it in small doses, minor mendings of broken cups or heating his coffee with his hands when it gets cold. But other times, it’s like his powers have their own consciousness, working against him. Another manifestation of his self-destructive nature that he masks as being helpful. 

Yelena stops for a moment at his side, waiting for him to recognize her presence. When he finally looks up, bulbous tears are rolling down his cheeks. He looks like a wounded child. Bob looks away. He hates when people see him cry.

She sits beside him, cross-legged, and tosses the swiss army knife across the room. 

“Have you been here all day?” she asks.

He nods, hiccups as a sob gets caught in his throat. His head drops again in shame. 

“It didn’t fucking work,” he murmurs breathlessly. “I don’t know why I thought it would. I’m invincible. I can’t be hurt. But I had to try. I can’t, I fucking can’t.”

“Why is that a problem?” she asks, but as soon as the words leave her lips, she understands. She eyes the knife. “Bob, were you trying to hurt yourself?”

“No,” he says, so quick and deflective that they both know it’s a lie. His head drops again. “I mean… I wasn’t trying to kill myself, I just… I needed relief. I needed something I could control.”

“And you can control this?”

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Bob says. “That it feels… not good but… like a release. It’s like drugs, I guess. Addicting in a different way.”

She doesn’t understand, but she does. That’s what alcohol does for her. Yelena remembers what it means to be overwhelmed to the point that the only thing that calms her down is pain. When she first escaped the Red Room and was still searching for her sister in Budapest, she’d dig her thumb into the thigh gash where her tracker was to remind her how to breathe. It was the only thing that could keep her from going insane those few, terrible days. 

“And I deserve this,” he continues, “for what I’ve done.”

Yelena shakes her head. “That’s not true.” 

“Yes, it is.”

His irises flash with that golden glimmer before he closes his eyes, fingers drumming fervently against the base of his spine. Bob is unharmed, thank God, but the shadows being cast from the sunlight drag his shadows across the room like an imposing figure. This must be The Void, then. A softer darkness that is controlled but still present. 

“Why the hell am I crying? I’m not even sad,” he says and he’s laughing in a way that raises the hairs on her arm. “I’m pissed. I don’t know why I cry when I’m angry.”

Unsure what to do, Yelena simply sits with him. She doesn’t touch him, doesn’t speak. She sits, and hopes her presence is enough. 

Bob’s breathing gradually returns to normal, and he begins to unwind his limbs. She wraps an arm around him. At first, he hesitates, like he expects the touch to hurt, but quickly sinks into her side. He presses his face into her shoulder. His folded legs lie halfway into her lap, arms wound around his stomach. Yelena rests her chin on top of his head, listening to his fragile breathing. 

“I’m not gonna get all dark and spooky, if that’s what you’re waiting for,” he says. “At least, I don’t think I am.”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

“Then why?”

She presses her cheek into his hair. He smells like her stolen shampoo. “Because I want to be. And because it seems like you need a friend right now. Am I right?”

He inhales shakily and nods. Bob’s upper half lies across her lap, his head against her thigh. Yelena curls around him, like if she holds him tight enough, he’ll never have to hurt again. If only that’s how it worked. 

“I woke up and remembered what I did to the little girl that your dad saved,” he whispers. “She was young, so her worst memory was losing her toy rabbit on a roller coaster, but still. Sending a kid into the nightmare realm is… that’s gotta be unforgivable, right?”

“I’ve done much worse,” she says.

“I don’t think you have.”

“You don’t know half of what I’ve done.”

Yelena has slaughtered so many people. She has cheated and stolen and contributed to the Red Room by training the girls who were meant to inherit her title. And those are the things she can just barely handle remembering. There are memories she must leave untouched for her own sanity. 

“You had no choice,” Bob says. “You were under some sexist’s, like, ultra creepy chemical mind control for most of your life. I was just really sad.”

“Manipulation is manipulation. Valentina took advantage of you when you were vulnerable.”

Bob hums in disagreement, but says nothing else. 

“Why do you sing that song?” she asks. “Is it a church song?”

“Yeah, it's the only hymn I remembered growing up.” He’s still crying, though less so than before. “I dunno why, but it calms me down.”

Yelena dries his tears with her thumb. “You’re Catholic?”

“I was raised Catholic. Trust me, there’s a difference.”

“I never understood religion,” she says. “Granted, I was raised by assassins, so I didn’t know what kind of pressure your culture has when it comes to God. But I don’t know if I could find comfort in something so divisive, knowing someone else will use God’s words against who they see as an enemy.”

Kate Bishop had told her something once, after they kissed for the first time, about how if God didn’t want her to fall in love with girls then he should’ve struck her down before she met Yelena. She remembers the looks they got at diners, sharing milkshakes and holding hands under the booth. 

“You’d be surprised how much our lives are about God, even when He’s just used to excuse some bullshit people do.” Bob sounds lighter, calmer. “Florida is technically the South, but it’s also its own beast. There’s the Bible Belt influence without really being part of it. We get all the religious restrictions without the Southern charm. But most devout Catholics actually get married before having their bastard child.”

Yelena is surprised by his cold tone, even if it’s not directed at her. “Bastard child?”

He’s quiet for a moment, eyelashes fluttering against her thigh like feathers. “I was born out of wedlock. Not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but it was for my mom’s side. I was almost not allowed to be baptised, but my mom insisted.”

“And your… your father’s?”

“I don’t know. I never met any of his family. Not like I wanted to, judging by how shitty he was.” He lifts his head from her shoulder, and she immediately misses the weight of him. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be just dumping all of this on you.”

“Don’t ever apologize for sharing things with me. I like listening to you. You always have such interesting things to talk about.”

“You guys are so nice to me,” he whispers, “and I still don’t understand why.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

He shivers a bit as the heat waves around them ebb away. Yelena wonders if it’s meant to be a comforting gesture, like the warmth of a hug he’s never had. 

“I’ve been to lots of places, and it’s always weird to see these strangers going out of their way to help others when they don’t even know someone. Once, I broke my ankle trying to—anyway, I was stuck on the train tracks and some guy in a suit jumped down to help me. I never learned his name. Stranger’s kindness reminds me that not everyone is so cruel. Most people aren’t. But my dad’s shadow is so big. It clouds everything.”

“Do you see yourself as cruel?” Yelena asks.

Bob hesitates, then shakes his head. “I don’t think so. At least, I try my best not to be. But I’ve done so many things I just can’t shake. The memories from when I was… The Void, they sneak up on me on these calm, boring days. I can’t run from it forever.”

“You don’t have to.” 

Still shrunken in on himself, but Bob looks up at her through watery lashes. His eyes are this dark thallasic blue she’s only ever seen in the deepest parts of the ocean. Looking at him is diving into the end of the world, where there is no shore to be seen, only endless water in every direction. She could stare at him for hours and still discover something new. 

“I don’t want to be like this,” he says. “I’m the fucking Sentry and I’m sitting here crying before I couldn’t… I was chosen. That’s what Val said. I’m special. All of those failed experiments, and I somehow survived. I could be something so much bigger than this.”

His eyes earn that glimmer of gold again, irises reflecting the light from the window. Yelena hates to hear Valentina’s name on his lips with that lingering bit of hope. The delusions she fed him for her own sake were just so she could stay out of federal prison, but it is not an easy thing to shake. She remembers that misgiven hope from when she first started taking contracted jobs for Val, trying to make a change. 

Because Bob is as fragile as he is kind, as strong as he is unstable. He is so susceptible to what people think. In the wrong hands, he could be violent. Yelena hates to think of him this way, as a thing that has to be medicated and controlled, but she has to on these days where he is delicate. 

The light dies, and he closes his eyes. “But right now, I just feel like all I’ll ever be is wasted potential.”

“That’s not you. At all.” With him still in her lap, Yelena hears his stomach growl with protest. “Have you eaten today?”

“No. I barely had the strength to get out of bed.”

She stands and brings him up with her. “Do you want to get burgers from Mad Cow?”

His eyes light up, and he nods eagerly. 

“Get some shoes on, then. We’re stealing Walker’s motorcycle.”

Chapter Text

Yelena understands better than most what it’s like to carry a darkness that is too heavy for one person to hold on their own. People pull up guardrails in their minds, dam up that river, wall up the pain, and forgo the pressure that builds inside. Dam after dam after wall after wall. The mind becomes a cityscape of avoidance, darkness lurking in every corner, waiting either to be noticed and dealt with or to be added to the pile. She also knows that those mental guardrails will always burst at the most inopportune moments. 

Today is, fortunately, not that day. 

It’s a nice day, something rare for March in Manhattan, minimal clouds and no chilling wins. They're all on the balcony for an impromptu barbecue. Yelena is curled up on a cushioned chaise lounge in a sports bra and shorts, soaking up as much sun as she can. Sitting in a lawn chair beside her, Bob reads aloud his favorite chapter of Beartown, a book he’s read a dozen times over and re.

He has such a nice voice to listen to, soft and deep and never above the hum of an engine. The words he speaks don’t matter as much as his presence. She feels as though she’s domesticated herself to be with him, and it’s as unusual as it is sweet. If this softening of her hard edges means she gets days like these, then it’ll all be worth it. 

This is the first lull in violence since their induction as Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and they’re sure going to make the most of it. Bucky and John are arguing over the grill on the best way to cook the burgers while Alexei tosses sesame seeds at the family of pigeons that have made a nest in the bonfire pit. Ava is making cocktails at their mini bar faster than Yelena can down them. 

Maybe she lied about them being strangers bordering on enemies, but Yelena will never tell them, no matter how many drinks she has in her.

Could they be a family? Maybe. A team is only as strong as the bonds between them.

But what a clusterfuck of a family they would be. 

“There are plenty of things that hurt people without people ever really knowing why. Anxiety can act as internal gravity, shrinking the soul. Benji—”

“You are so boring it’s fascinating,” Yelena says, interrupting Bob in the middle of a sentence. 

She only tells him this because she’s tipsy, but it still rings true. Bob cracks a hesitant grin at her, and dodges the finger she pokes at his chest with. He looks far more sober than her, even though she’s had half to drink in comparison. His serum, like the super-soldier concoction, must give him a greater tolerance. Yelena would guess that, even if he wasn’t superpowered, the amount of drugs he’s done would make him a heavyweight anyway.

“How is being boring also fascinating?” he asks. “Those words are contradictory.”

“Because most of us here didn’t get to live that kind of normal life. You did.”

“What about Ohio?”

Yelena makes a noise of dismissal. “Eh, that doesn’t count. I was in Ohio for only three years.”

Those were the best three years of her life, but it is only a drop of beauty in the bucket of blood that stains her life. Bob mockingly makes the same noise back at her.

“And I was concussed by a loaf of frozen bread,” Bob says. “Normal doesn’t mean good.”

“I know.”

A pang of sadness echoes in her chest. Yelena wants to scoop up that child version of Bob and protect him from the life he’s gone through, suffer the trauma on his behalf to keep him safe. She wonders to herself who he would be without the pain of his past. If he would’ve still fallen down the path he’s traveled thus far. Nature can only do so much before nurture ruins any potential. There is only so much he can control about himself. 

“I want to know everything about you,” Yelena says. “The good and the bad. All of it. There is nothing about you I’d ever be afraid of.”

With him, she’s honest because she can never find a reason to lie to him.

Bob leans back in his lawn chair and hides his blushing face behind the cover of his book. His fingers hold his place between the sun-warped pages. It’s a well-loved copy of Beartown that Bucky found him in a book exchange downtown, the dog ears smoothed out on the corners, the title cracked with white lines along the spine.  

“You’ve been in my head, I think that’s enough to know about me,” he mumbles. “I’m not really all that interesting beyond the Sentry stuff.”

Yelena is sitting upside down on the chaise lounge, her legs splayed out on the lifted half where her torso should go. Her hair spills over the edge. Looking at him, haloed by the sunlight like an angel or a god, isn’t helping with her dizziness. “You were a methed out chicken mascot spinning a big sign. That’s pretty interesting.”

Because of summer on its approach, they’re all in warm weather clothing. Bob is the only one wearing a long sleeve shirt. Although she doesn’t ask to be polite, he confides in Yelena that he’s ashamed of his scars. Many are self-inflicted, others brought upon by the cruel hand of his father. The rest are just reminders of who he was before he met them, and he hates to think of that version of him.

There’s no reason for him to be ashamed, as they all have their fair share of scars, but a part of her understands why he shies away from exposure. Bikinis aren’t exactly her favorite to wear to the beach when all it does is shine a light on the hysterectomy scar that is spread across her lower abdomen like a crude smile.

And those are the things that have been done to her; she can’t imagine having to show the world what she’s done to herself. 

“There’s lots of stuff about me I’d rather keep to myself,” Bob says.

“So do I.” Yelena plucks an ice cube from her drink and pops it into her mouth. The crunch of it makes Bob grimace. “But I can settle for whatever you want to share.”

The blush on his cheeks must be from the heat. “Right, well I’m sharing chapter fifteen, so listen up. This is where things get crazy.” He reopens his book, beginning to read again. She closes her eyes to listen. “Benji was always good at falling asleep and bad at actually sleeping. He wakes up early on the day of the game but not from nerves…”

When the heat does inevitably get to him, Bob reluctantly rolls up his sleeves, revealing an inch or two of beautiful but battered skin. He keeps his arms close to his chest to avoid someone catching a glimpse, although nobody except for Yelena is close enough to see.

She pretends not to stare at his pale inner wrists that are threaded with lines and dots of decade’s old scar tissue. The wiry muscles of his forearms tighten as he reaches over to take her empty glass from her hand. He returns it to the floor so she doesn’t drop it without stumbling his narration. Yelena doesn’t ask about his scars, but she really wants to. 

Bob has the face of a troubled young farm boy, something she’s only ever seen in old western films or country shows like Yellowstone. Premature worry lines carve across his baby face. Wilted cobalt eyes that are a confliction of pain and kindness, tanned skin tattered by time, a thin, soft-looking mouth curved in a perpetual pout. She bets his lips are soft; she wonders if he tastes like the sun.

Dark spots from time spent unprotected beneath the sun decorate his cheekbones and the rounded knobs of his shoulders, and Yelena resists the urge to trace them with her fingers. 

When he gets too tired to shave for several days, his jaw fills out a reddish-brown beard that makes him actually look his age, though the facial hair never lasts for long. Yelena wishes he’d let it grow out. As much as she adores his baby face, he looks just as beautiful with a beard. She would be content with any look as long as he never bleached his hair again. 

To counteract the heat of his long sleeves, he’s wearing a pair of basketball shorts he borrowed from John. He still has scars on his legs, though fewer than on his upper body. That doesn’t mean they’re any less gruesome. Yelena wants to ask. If she takes one more sip, she just might. 

His shorts ride up his legs when he leans back to down the rest of his drink, and Yelena stares at the soft, pale flesh. There is a rectangle patch of white tissue, puckered and hairless, a skin graft taken from his inner thigh after his harrowing car accident. The oval of misshapen flesh and muscle where the skin graft was placed. Permanent knee scrapes, dotted scars along his calves from bee stings and scratched bug bites. Red calluses on his heels that had blistered and healed and cracked from years of wearing stolen shoes that were the wrong size. Wide, eye-shaped scars on the highest parts of his thighs where he took a bux cutter to his body. 

Because she’s drunk, Yelena can get away with letting herself voice the thoughts she normally keeps to herself. When Bob finishes the chapter, she finally asks him about the long and narrow scar that winds from his Achilles heel halfway up his calf in the shape of a lightning bolt. Bob looks at his leg, and he must be drunk too, because he doesn’t shy away from answering this time. 

“Some rich lady’s fluffy lap dog came after me when I was sleeping on the Myrtle Beach boardwalk,” he replies. “The owner thought because it was a small dog that she didn’t need to leash it. She yelled at me for running when I was the one bleeding out in the sand. The little fucker was rabid, I swear. It punctured my artery and I needed thirty-one stitches, but I got to steal a bottle of morphine pills before running out of the hospital.”

Yelena frowns. “Why’d you run?”

“Oh, I had no insurance,” he says. “And I gave them a fake name. It was something stupid too, like, Reynolds Robertson. I wasn’t exactly creative.”

“How’d you remove the stitches?”

“I took ‘em out myself. Hurt more than I thought it would.”

“How do you remember so much when your memory’s so shit?” she asks.

“Pain is one hell of a reminder.” The straight edge of his jaw shifts with the humorless smile he sends her. “It either makes you forget everything or nothing. There is no middle.”

“See what I mean, though? ” Yelena waves a hand over his body. “You’re fascinating. I’ve never had my artery punctured by a chihuahua before.”

“It was a pomeranian, actually.”

She holds a hand out, and Bob helps her sit upright. The blood rushes from her head, making the world tilt around her. A warm, large hand grips her waist to hold her steady. As her vision clears, Yelena blinks away the rest of the dizziness.

Bob has the chiseled features of someone who has seen the worst hell that life has to offer and made it through the other end fractured but mostly intact. He has so many scars—acne spots on his cheeks, a white line that curves on the bridge of his nose where it’s been broken in bar fights, frost bite marks on his cheeks from winters spent on the streets of New England states—and she wants to collect the stories to hold in her heart.

These pieces of him, he can throw away if it helps him heal. She’ll greedily keep them for herself. 

Yelena is sure in another life, under other circumstances, Bob was a farmhand, content with taking care of cows and sheep and other animals. He gets to keep that soft Southern charm he always wishes he had. There, in the midst of dried stalks and churned dirt, grassy knolls and marshlands, he can put those gentle hands of his to good use.

She wishes she could know him in a different world far away from the only one they know, but she will make do with what she has. 

When Bob doesn’t immediately remove his hand from her waist, Yelena looks up at him. His eyes are locked on hers. The glow of his irises must be a trick of the light.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he says, still staring at her. “You call me fascinating as if you aren’t.”

“Of course I’m fascinating, I’m an assassin.”

He playfully rolls his eyes at her and pulls his hand away. She wishes he’d kept it there. “Why do you look at me like that?”

“Like what?” she asks.

Bob shrugs, as if she’d know better than him. “I dunno. You just… you look at me like you’re looking for something. Or trying to figure me out.”

Yelena pretends it’s the alcohol that raises the heat of her cheeks. “Like I said. You fascinate me.”

Ava calls her over, and Bob looks away first. He’s still blushing, deeper now, but Yelena disregards it as a result of being under the sun for so long. She stands from her chair, still a bit dizzy but manageable, and joins Ava at the bar.

“I have a dilemma,” Ava announces when Yelena approaches, then pauses for dramatic effect.

Yelena leans over the bar, stealing a maraschino cherry from the jar. “Don’t we all.”

“I need your help.”

“Is it a girl problem?”

“Yes, but not really.” Ava moves the jar away from Yelena. “I’ve never gone shopping before for, like, hair or makeup or anything like. My hair’s naturally curly, but I don’t know what kind of products I would need. And also… the clothes.”

She gestures to herself. Ava is wearing a floral sundress she borrowed from Mel, an outfit that is so unlike her. It looks terrifically uncomfortable.

Because most of her clothes are borrowed from Mel, the dress rides up high and clings to her curves. Ava is pretty, but she doesn’t seem to know it, judging by how she habitually tugs the skirt down to no avail. She definitely doesn’t see how John’s eyes wander up her long brown legs when he thinks nobody will notice. Yelena notices; she notices everything. 

Before living together, all Ava used to wear were things she stole from stores or Ben Foster’s hand-me-downs. They quickly learned that she’s a kleptomaniac—the result of being a thief for hire since she was nine—and doesn’t even care about half of the shit she steals. That’s what she says, anyway. Yelena thinks she just likes the thrill, because if Ava doesn’t have a use for something, she always returns it.

They all have their chosen vices. 

“Are you asking me to go shopping with you?” Yelena asks, biting down on her excitement and replacing it with a teasing edge. 

They haven’t had many days to themselves without the others around. Because of Ava’s skills, she often has her own solo missions, and Yelena is unfortunately the primary face of this godforsaken team, so their paths cross only sometimes when outside of the tower.

But Yelena clings to the women in her life like they are her only connection to girlhood. Without them, she doesn’t know what parts of her are her and what parts are Widow. 

A deep embarrassed blush crosses Ava’s face. “Don’t say it so condescendingly, but yes. Tomorrow. You can invite that girlfriend of yours too.” 

“Ex-girlfriend, actually,” Yelena corrects. “And we only ever slept together, you can hardly call us exclusive. More like friends with benefits. The benefits being sex.”

“Whatever. Kate was raised like a normal person. She knows things about makeup and clothes, right?”

“Probably.” She tilts her head and hums like she's considering it, even though her heart has already made the decision for her. “I suppose I could check my schedule. I’m a very busy woman, you know.”

“We have the same schedule, Belova,” Ava says with an unconvinced look. “Our next mission isn't until next week. You’re free.”

“Fine, fine.” Yelena lets herself smile then. “Sounds like fun. I’m sure Kate’s going to be ecstatic. She’s been trying to convince me to dye my hair again. ”

Ava’s stiff shoulders lose their tension. “Cool. Now stop stealing the cherries or I’m cutting you off.”

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

The mall is a hellscape of metropolitan delights. The scent of leather and plastic and perfume. Yelena has only ever gone shopping a handful of times, and never in a place like this. She frequents secondhand charity shops and thrift stores, never luxury boutiques selling whatever is new and trending any given month. There is an appeal, she has to admit, and judging by the stars in Ava’s eyes, not even she is immune to the charms of this promised joy. 

“This place is horrendous,” Ava says, although the awe in her voice claims otherwise. 

Yelena grunts in agreement, her hands shaking in the pockets of her vest. “I feel like I’m going to have a panic attack and we only just walked in.”

“Is it too late to back out?”

“I think so.”

Kate skips ahead of them, beelining it for the large Sephora in the center of the mall. She’s wearing platform boots, a violet top that swoops low in the front, and dark torn jeans that hug her ass in an obscene way. Her hair is in a high ponytail, and she has on this black lipstick she swears is impossible to smudge and will be put to the test later tonight. Yelena thinks she’s so beautiful. 

When they asked if she wanted to go shopping with them, she dropped everything she had going on with the Champions and agreed like they’d just offered her a million dollars. Yelena should’ve known just how excited Kate would be; she’s what people call a girl’s girl, after all, and it’s not like any of them have girl friends outside of the hero business. Or, rather, by friends in general.

“Let’s go!” Kate calls, unable to contain her glee. “I have so much to show you, I have a list and everything. I hope you guys don’t have a budget, because I’m spoiling the absolute hell out of you ladies today.”

Ava grimaces. “I already regret inviting her.”

Yelena shrugs. “I told you she’s a lot to handle, like a kid on meth. But she’s sincere and she’s… well, she’s Kate Bishop. Just don’t get her started on shoes. She’s a big sneakerhead and there’s not enough space in the car.”

“Thanks,” Ava says. “For agreeing.”

She sounds so sincere. “Of course,” Yelena says. “Besides, who else were you going to ask, Walker? He still wears t-shirts he wore in high school.”

“Trust me, I know. He has the style of a teenage boy.”

They follow Kate into the store and are immediately bombarded by the overwhelming varieties and brands of makeup. Yelena’s only past experiences with makeup was whatever she could find in a drug store, eyeshadow palettes and flavored chapsticks she’s constantly losing. Ava has never worn it outside of the photo shoots Valentina subjects them to. Even then, she never applied it herself. 

When they walk up to a large case lined with lipsticks and eyeshadow palettes, Ava makes a sly face. Her hand flickers in and out of existence. Yelena swiftly grabs her wrist. 

“No shoplifting,” she warns in a whisper. “We have a reputation to uphold.”

Feigning ignorance, Ava responds, “I didn’t even do anything.”

“I know you, and I know when you’re about to get all ghosty. You have a tell, you little thief.”

Ava pouts and slips her fists back into her jacket. “Fine, fine. Hands in pockets.”

A pair of eager employees approach them, asking them about their shades. Kate dives into a detailed explanation of what they need—concealer, blush, some shit called setting powder—and pushes Yelena towards the testing station. A nice older man, Keith according to his nametag, tests pale shades of foundation on the back of Yelena’s hand until they find the one that matches, while Kate drags Ava to the hair care section.

“Girl’s day out?” the employee asks, eyeing her eager friends just a few aisles away. 

“Unfortunately,” Yelena replies without insult. “We’re all… busy, so we rarely get time to ourselves.”

“Oh, I get that,” he says. “If I didn’t work here, I’d never have the time to glam up.”

“Glamming up every day for work sounds exhausting, but at least you pull it off so well.” She stares at his makeup, vibrant blue glitter on the bridge of his nose and sharp eyeliner. “Can I ask why you wear makeup? Not as a man, I mean. Just in general.” 

She’s sure he hears that question often as a man, but he must hear the sincerity in her voice. Kevin tips his head to the side in thought.

“I’m not sure,” he finally says. “It just feels right, y’know? Makeup isn’t about looking how other people want you to. It’s about showing the world what’s inside of you.”

Yelena nods sagely. “And your insides are… very glittery.” 

“Yes, they are.” He chuckles, then drops the foundation bottle into her basket. “You seem like a messy eyeliner and dark lipstick kinda girl. Am I right?

She shrugs. “I don’t know, really. Can you help?”

“That I can do.”

Keith winds his arm with hers, and Yelena is sure she’s found her new best friend.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Kate insists on paying for their products—“I have a steadier income,” is her argument, and they can’t really disagree with her—but Yelena gets away with buying lunch for them in the large and busy food court. They get Chinese food and hunker down at an unsteady four seater table with their bags of new makeup and products in the fourth chair. Ava keeps pulling out a bottle of hair oil to sniff it. 

“You’re such a weirdo,” Yelena says. 

“It smells really good,” Ava replies defensively. “I've never used Moroccan oil before.”

“I use it all the time. It’s super good for frizz.” Kate flips the end of her braid off her shoulder for emphasis. “Then again, my hair’s a lot thinner and straighter than yours. I just hope that the mousse helps with your curls. My ex in college had hair like yours, and I stole all of her products from her shower when we broke up. That’s the only reason I remembered what any of these were.”

Yelena bites into her orange chicken. “That sounds like something you would do, Kate Bishop.”

“When you and Yelena broke up, did you take anything?” Ava asks.

Yelena kicks her under the table.

“What? I’m curious.”

“Oh, we didn’t—” Kate looks between the two, blushing. “Did we?”

“Yes, Kate,” Yelena says. “We dated. We’re not dating anymore. That’s a breakup. I think.”

Kate pauses, nods, then says, “I stole one of your throwing knives.”

Yelena claps her hands. “I fucking knew it.”

“Wait, what do you mean you think?” Ava questions.

“Well, we never talked about it,” Kate says.

“About dating or breaking up?”

She and Yelena look at each other before simultaneously saying, “Both.”

Some days, Yelena feared that Kate cared more for her than she can give, and other days Yelena was love drunk on the taste of her. Kate liked to feel wanted, and Yelena just wanted to hold onto her trust. Sex was a bonus. In reality, Yelena was trading one addiction for another, and Kate was too invested in her new title as Hawkeye to be what either of them needed.

“You know, for a pair of exes, you two are pretty good friends,” Ava says.

Kate shrugs. “I mean, we were friends before. And it’s not like we had a big falling out like Bucky and Captain America are having, right?”

Yelena makes a face. “So that’s why Bucky keeps stress baking.”

“Can’t believe there’s more than one woman on the Avengers this time,” Kate says wistfully, easily changing the subject. “We are headed in a beautiful direction as a country.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Yelena mumbles sarcastically. 

“There’s three if you count Mascot,” Ava says.

“Who the hell is Mascot?”

“Yelena’s guinea pig.”

“You named your guinea pig Mascot?”

Yelena shrugs. “She’s our mascot.”

Kate looks absolutely confused. It’s a cute look on her. “Seriously? That’s like naming yourself Superhero or some shit.”

“I mean, all hero names are kind of redundant,” Yelena says. “It’s part of the identity. Ava’s called Ghost because she can walk through walls. Walker’s literally a U.S. Agent. And that’s not even to mention whatever crazy shit Hell’s Kitchen has going on. They’ve got devils and punishers and that scary green lady shaking ass in the courtroom.”

“Besides, aren’t you a part of a team called the Champions?” Ava adds. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.”

“Whatever.”

Kate eyes Yelena with adoration, as if their falling out never happened. It wasn't a falling out, per say, as queer people can never have a normal breakup. Not to mention Kate is the only friend Yelena has outside of her team. They were sort of together, then sort of not. That is how Yelena sees it. 

They haven’t spoken much since they both realized their chosen paths would take them in opposite directions. Yelena is not even sure if it was a breakup. They weren’t dating, but they weren’t just friends. Their relationship was amorphous; it still is even now, even after it ended. Even after kissing and sleeping together and sharing things they will never repeat. 

Yelena learned from Kate what being ace is. She’d always just assumed her lack of sexual attraction was trauma, and maybe part of it was, but turns out she could still feel lust, just on rare occasions. It cropped up only with people she can truly trust, and those are near impossible to find. This kind of trusting desire is something she’d only ever felt with Kate Bishop. 

(And someone else now, but Yelena has yet to accept this revelation, silently tucking it into her heart for future review.)

Yelena knows Kate must still be wounded from hearing about the New Avengers’ assemblage. It wasn’t as if any of them had a say in the matter: their new status as Earth’s Mightiest Rejects was forced upon them. If Yelena had a choice, she doesn’t know if she’d have stayed. Then again, outside of this new life, she didn’t have much of a purpose. That much, Kate understood. She saw her at her lowest and stayed for as long as she could. Just not long enough.

Yelena wishes, if things hadn’t gone how they went when they met, that they could’ve worked out. She thinks she loved Kate, though she still isn't sure. Maybe Kate didn’t even love her back.

Those what if’s don't really matter anymore. What’s done is done.

“How is the Champions thing going, anyway?” Yelena asks. 

“It’s… going alright,” Kate replies tentatively. “We’re still in the planning stages, mostly, so we're not even a real team yet. There’s this kid Kamala’s been trying to reach out to, a boy with this magic helmet from Arizona, but he’s kind of an asshole if I’m honest. I think I’m the oldest on the team.”

“So you’re like the mom,” Ava says.

Kate makes a face and spins her fork around her lo mein. “God, I hope not. I’m only twenty-four. At least Riri and Shuri are over eighteen. The rest are basically like my siblings I have to wrangle around on those child-leashes. I never thought I’d be the mature one on the team.”

Yelena spins her fork into “But it’s going well?”

“I mean, yeah. They’re all good kids. Powerful, too. And I know they want to do something with the powers they have.”

The Champions. It’s a nice name. Yelena wonders briefly if they’ll be the real heroes this world needs, and what will happen when the next big threat inevitably comes to destroy Earth. She hates the idea of a handful of kids fighting off aliens, but that’s exactly how it always goes.

Age doesn’t matter. Intentions are much more powerful than the strength of a suit. 

“At least you’re not getting sued for copyright,” Ava says. “We don’t even like our title. We should’ve stuck to the peewee soccer name instead.”

Kate’s eyes light up. “Oh, you mean the Thunderbolts? God, you were such a cute kid, Lena.”

Lena. Besides Kate, only Bob calls her that now. 

“I was a shitty goalie,” Yelena says to hide how warm she feels hearing that nickname fall so casually from Kate’s mouth. “Finish eating, ladies, I want to hit up the David and Busters before they close.”

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

On undeserved good days like these, Yelena forgets that she was ever a Widow. She discusses with Ava about how many buckles a pair of boots can have before it becomes impractical. Today, Yelena is a young woman, free from the dark and weighted clutches of her past, buying things she doesn’t need and drinking mango bubble tea with extra pearls. 

Kate ushers Ava and Yelena into dressing rooms with stacks of clothes she picked out for them, and unfortunately for them, she has good taste. Their hands grow heavy with bags. The clothes are mostly practical, but Yelena comes across a pretty navy blue bralette in a lingerie shop that she can’t take her eyes off. It gives no support for her chest, but God does the lace feel so soft against her skin. She just can’t help herself. 

To round out the day and make it officially a girl’s day out, Kate insists they get coffees and pretzels, and then get proper manicures. While it’s impractical for Kate to get acrylics because of her bow and arrow, she gets a very vibrant green gel color while Yelena and Ava try out shorter nails. Yelena likes how the rounded tips sound when she obnoxiously clicks them against the smooth plastic tables of the salon, and she decides to paint them a bright yellow, thinking of nobody in particular when she chooses the color. Ava gets hers with white french tips.

For a brief moment, Yelena understands why normal people crave these silly indulgent days. There are luxuries in forgetting, even in small moments.

They pass by a trinket shop on their way out of the mall and Yelena almost misses the green dragon figurine the size of her palm. It wears a striped blue nightcap and holds a blanket between its tiny ceramic claws. Its painted eyes are wilted and sleepy and cobalt blue. The label beneath it read, Pocket Dragon Collectible: Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep.

She imagines Bob as a child, holding the shaky hand of his paranoid and drug-addled mother, pointing to the small creature and asking her to buy it for him. She imagines Bob as a teen and older, just as paranoid and just as drug-addled as his mother once was buying it with the money he’d meant to spend on meth. She imagines him clean, untouched by the cruelty of life, and the thought of him is so overwhelming she can’t leave the mall without that stupid dragon. 

Yelena peels away from the other two—Kate is trying to convince Ava that Doctor Sleep is a better adaptation than The Shining—and purchases the figurine. When the others ask, She simply shrugs.

“It was cute,” is all she says. “I was thinking of starting a collection.”

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Yelena thinks often of who she would be if she hadn’t been brought into the Red Room. She creates versions of herself that will never exist, because she doesn’t know who she would be without the parts of her that exist now. If she hadn’t lived in Ohio for those few years, she wouldn’t be as kind and curious as she is now. Without her time taking down the Red Room, she’d have a completely different set of skills than she does now. 

She daydreams of other versions of her often. If the multiverse really does exist, which has been basically confirmed by whatever bullshit the original Avengers did to reverse the Snap, then maybe she gets to grow up in Ohio with a family that isn’t hers, living a life that doesn’t belong to her. Yelena gets jealous of these alternate hers, because she can’t fathom what she did to deserve this life. Thinking of a world where things are worse doesn’t make her feel any better either. 

All Yelena knows is who she is now, with this past and these memories, so she can’t begin to fathom who she’d be without them. There is no her without what her experiences, which makes it so much harder to imagine herself as happy. But if she could keep this version of her without the horrors of her adolescence, she’d erase it all in an instant.

Yelena never understood the concept or original sin until John tried to explain it to her, but it just doesn’t make sense. If people are born evil, then who is good? Is she so rotten inside because of what’s happened to her, or did all those things happen because she was evil to begin with? Her kindness exists not because of her past but in spite of it, and she barely clings to it even now. 

“Lena.” Kate Bishop pulls her mouth away where it’s latched onto Yelena’s throat. She’s breathing heavily, her braid undone and sending dark, wavy hair falling around her pretty pink face. “Where’d you go just now, angel?”

Her body has gone rigid beneath Kate’s unmoving from how lively her inner workings are. Yelena blinks herself back to reality. She forces herself to relax, reacclimate herself to the comforting weight of Kate’s body on top of hers.

That’s right. They’re back in Kate’s apartment. Yelena had kissed her outside of the David and Busters—just Dave and Busters, Ava corrected, but Yelena thought it was rude not to call him by his full name—and they ended up going back to her apartment.

They always do. It feels as inevitable as the end of the night. 

“Sorry,” Yelena says and kisses Kate to cement her apology. She was right—the lipstick really is difficult to smudge, though not impossible. Having to scrub it off her throat in the morning is going to be a satisfying struggle. “My brain is doing its own thing again. Going nuts in here. ”

Kate kneels back, thighs splayed on either side of Yelena’s waist. She is so beautiful. “We can stop if you’re not—”

“No, no. I want to.” Yelena smooths her hands up Kate’s lean stomach, the curve of her hips and stripes of muscle. “If you weren’t the new Hawkeye, who do you think you would be?”

“What do you mean?”

“If there were no aliens and no need for superheroes, what would you have done with your life?”

“Hmm.” Kate dances her fingers along the hem of Yelena’s boyshorts as she thinks. Her touch is as electric as the first time. “I dunno. I am who I am because of what I’ve been through. The idea of me without it all feels like a stranger.”

Yelena understands that all too well. 

“Indulge me.”

Something dangerous flashes in Kate’s eyes. “Oh, I will.”

Yelena nips at her lips. “You know what I mean, Bishop.”

Kate laughs, and Yelena feels it when she presses her mouth against her upper chest.

“I think I’d be what I was before I became Hawkeye. I’d be just another nepo baby manager inheriting a security company in a miserable old city. But when I was a kid, I wanted to be a singer. Maybe I’d be that. How about you?”

“I think I’d be…” No answer comes to mind. Yelena shrugs.

“What would you want to be?”

That one’s easier. “I want to be happy.”

Kate frowns. “You can be happy in this life.”

“I know. But it’s not as easy.”

“Nothing ever is.” She tilts Yelena’s head up and kisses her gently. “That doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying, right?”

Yelena sits up, mouthing along Kate’s slim throat, and undoes the clasp of her bra. “Do you think we’d still meet in that other life? You as a singer, me as… whatever it is I’d be.”

“I hope so. As long as you don’t try killing Clint again.”

“Very funny, Kate Bishop.”

Kate drops her bra off the side of the bed and kicks off her panties. Yelena pushes her onto her back and spreads her quaking thighs. This is a sight she will never get used to. 

“Well, there’s no use crying over missed opportunities,” Yelena says before dipping her head between Kate’s legs.

This is a sound she will treasure forever. Kate could be a singer, because the noises she makes are like an angel’s choir. 

“I’m glad things happened the way they did,” she whispers, half-moaned. She clutches Yelena’s hair and pulls her where she wants her. “Because at least in this life, I got to meet you.”

That sentence will echo in her mind for the rest of the late, late night they spend together. It is passion, and it is something else entirely. Kindness. Love, maybe. But nothing romantic anymore; it remains in the watery threshold of familiarity. They know they can let their guards down with each other and nobody else, and that is the thread that continues to bind them. 

Kate once said Yelena fucks the same way she fights, and she still doesn’t understand what she meant but takes it as a compliment. Maybe it’s the way she exhausts herself, pouring all her energy into her actions. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t trust a soul to be near her, with only two exceptions thus far in her life. And even then, that trust is still a shaky truth.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

“Maybe you’re ace,” Kate told Yelena over milkshakes and burgers. “Or somewhere in the realm of ace-ness.”

They had slept together for the first time—it was the first time Yelena had ever wanted to sleep with someone, and also the first time she actually did—and the idea of labels and identity cropped up.

In the Red Room, Yelena didn’t worry about these things before there was no space for it. She had no identity. So now, on the outside, she clung to labels like they were holy items. 

“You can still have sex with someone you love without wanting sex,” Kate continued, “And maybe those feelings just… take a little longer to show up for you. You don’t need to feel everything at the beginning of a relationship, you know. With some people, it just takes time. And trust.”

Yelena laughed, and Kate smiled like she’d won something.

“Me? Trust? Those two words don’t go together.”

“I know. But it’s something to think about.”

And she did.

“Ace makes sense,” Yelena had responded later on, but they never spoke of it again. 

She had never felt want before she met Kate Bishop, and when it curls in the pit of her gut like a viper readying a strike, she can’t help but feel as if this lust doesn’t belong to her. Yelena wishes she could tear herself apart, tag labels on these tangled and messy feelings when they crop up for the first time in her scattered, blood-soaked mind, and put them back together in a way that makes sense.

A lifetime without emotions means, when she feels something new, she feels thirty year’s worth of it all at once. But it’s better than not feeling at all. That is what she tells herself when she misses being numb. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

When Yelena leaves on the brink of sunrise, the sun barely making an entrance, she kisses Kate goodbye. Kate grabs her wrist, whispers a plea for her to stay. She doesn’t.

The cold morning breeze outside grounds her, and Yelena wonders if Kate would feel this same way about her if she knew half of what she has done during her time as a Widow. The blood she’s shed. The red on her ledger.

Yelena licks her lips, and they still taste like her. 

Before the New Avengers, Yelena has never trusted someone the way she trusts Kate Bishop. She’d never cared. But Kate needs air, and Yelena needs gravity. That’s what they can be for each other, temporary or otherwise. She doesn’t feel guilty. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

Yelena repeats this to herself as she does a pleasantly crisp walk of shame back to the Watchtower before the others wake up.

It’s fine. What’s done is done.

Chapter Text

“Can I ask you something that might make you hate me?” Bob asks Yelena. 

They’re standing together on the balcony, drinking in the cool aura of the late morning. Bob has a cigarette pinched between his dry lips, one hand protecting it from the wind as his thumb strikes, strikes, strikes the zippo’s flint wheel until a tiny flame booms. Below them, the city smells of exhaust and piss and weed and vendor food. It clouds the world in a canopy of something wholly New York City. Yelena never thought she’d live in a city, much less one so loud. She was hoping she’d be a recluse in the Scottish Highlands by now, herding sheep and drinking herself to death. 

“Depends on the question,” Yelena says jokingly, but Bob doesn’t laugh.

Taken aback by the intensity in his eyes when he thoroughly looks at her, Yelena blinks away the sleep still clinging to her thoughts. It is too early for a serious conversation, not when she hasn’t even started drinking her coffee yet.

If it weren’t for the desperate edge creeping into Bob’s voice, Yelena might have brushed his comment off. He gets oddly intense when asking questions, but this is different. There is something new in his eyes, not Sentry or Void. It’s fully Bob in control, a balance of gold and shadow.

Yelena sets her mug beside him on the balcony railing and leans towards him like a sunflower to the sun. Even when there’s no reason for it, she always feels this need to be near him. It’s as if gravity is drawing them together. She wonders if he feels the pull, too. He must, because he turns his body towards her until their shoulders are pressed together.

“Is something wrong?” she asks, becoming concerned by his silence. 

“Not… right now.”

She sips her coffee. “That is not comforting.”

“Yeah, well. I’m trying to be proactive,” Bob says.

He sucks in a deep breath from his cigarette. His cheeks hollow out with the inhale. Smoke curls from his mouth and nose as he sighs, content.

Smoking is the only craving he still indulges in, as it’s the only one he has left. Pills and meth don’t affect him the same way they used to, psychedelics just end with nightmares, and his skin is too tough for heroin needles. Before he continues, Bob stares at the cigarette like an old lover he can no longer have. Yelena isn’t even sure if he feels the effect of nicotine or it’s the habit that remains addicting. 

“I need you to promise me something,” Bob says, partially facing away now, “and I know you’re gonna want to say no, but I really need you to say yes.”

Yelena nervously taps her fingers against the railing. “Okay.” 

Bob takes another deep breath, as if he’s preparing himself for what he’s about to say. “In the future, if something goes wrong, and I get out of control—”

Before he’s done, she’s already shaking her head. He doesn’t need to finish his sentence for her to understand what he means. She cuts him off, unable to handle the rest of what he’s going to say.

“No,” she says, and she’s more offended that he’d even suggest it. “Absolutely not. Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Bob sighs, frustrated. “I didn’t even finish.”

“I know what you’re going to say. You're going to ask if I’ll take out The Void. Which means, Bob, killing you. And I won’t do that.”

“Yelena, please just—”

“You can’t ask that of me, Bob,” she hisses, pointing at him accusingly. “You can’t.”

“I have to.”

Yelena is still shaking her head. A foreign heat presses in the space behind her eyes, spilling down her cheeks so quickly she hadn’t even felt herself begin to cry. The mere thought of carrying the responsibility to kill Bob in case things go wrong is enough to bring her to tears. She is so much more emotional than she ever thought.

“Why me?”’

Bob leans his shoulder into her further, their hips now pressed together. He makes a motion as if he’s going to dry her tears, but he doesn’t follow through. 

“I don’t trust anyone else with this,” he finally says. “And I certainly don’t trust myself enough to put a bullet in my head before The Void takes over. I don’t think he’d let me if I tried. And believe me, I’ve tried in the past.”

The image that flashes in her mind is a brutal one. Yelena recoils as if burned. 

“Besides, that’s what you guys are here to do, right?” he continues. “Keep me in check and take me out if I ever become a threat again.”

“Is that how you see yourself?” Yelena questions. “As something we’re keeping in check?”

He looks confused by her horror, as if he can’t understand that they would be around him for any other reason.

“I mean, yeah? That is what I am. The Sentry. Or The Void. Take your pick, really. It’s all still me, and the only reason I’m even here is because I’m too dangerous to be anywhere else with people who are… a lot meaner. It's not like it’s a secret. We all know what I’m capable of. That’s why I can only trust you guys with this. You’ll do what it takes to protect the world from… you know.”

Although his words trail off, she hears what he means. Me. Protect the world from me.

Yelena wants so badly to grab him by the collar and shake that nonsense out of him, but her hands have taken root around her coffee mug. With a softness seldom found in such a violent world, Bob pulls the sleeve of his shirt over his hands and dries her tears. She leans into it. 

“That’s not at all what you are,” she says. “You’re not some kind of weapon we feel the need to keep around so you don’t land in the wrong hands. You’re our friend. My friend. You’re a vital member of this team. And you are too important to me to even stomach the idea of killing you.”

He looks disappointed, but he nods. “It’s okay. I understand. It’s a lot to ask from someone. I just—I need to know in case something goes wrong and I lose my shit… I care about you, you know. More than the others. I don’t really know why, because three months ago we were strangers, but I still love you. And I wouldn’t be asking you to do this if I didn’t think I had to.”

Hearing him say those words— I love you, he says, with such casualty, as if this isn’t the biggest thing in the world —even though she knows how he means it, makes her heart skip up into her throat, threatening to escape and run to him. She swallows around it, forcing it back into place. 

A month into living in the Watchtower, Bob had asked her to go pottery painting with him. It was one of the first things he wanted to do after getting out of the cage, and he had no personal effects besides what he managed to save from the vault’s ruinous flames. Yelena has a hard time saying no to him, so she agreed. John teased her about how it was obviously a date, and Kate laughed, saying it was the gayest straight date she could’ve gone on, and Yelena told both of them to shut the fuck up. 

Bob painted a mug with thick black and red spiderwebs and a shitty spider in the center, and Yelena decorated a ceramic bowl with shelves to make it look like a little library. Without even discussing it, they’d painted something for the other, and when they picked up their pottery weeks later, they awkwardly exchanged them at the counter. 

The mug has texture from his heavy hand when painting, and a tiny chip on the bottom from debris in the kiln. It’s her favorite thing she owns now.

“If I say yes,” she begins, and Bob’s shoulders immediately sag with relief, “it’s only for you. I’m making this promise because I know it won’t ever come to that. I won’t let you.”

Only for you, her mind whispers with some weird giddy. All of me is only for you, only for you. 

Bob smiles and rests his head against her arm. His cheeks are warm and carry the sandpaper edge from not shaving. Even with the difference in height between them, he always seems so small. “That’s a good compromise. I’m sorry to ask this of you, I really am. I just… need the reassurance, I guess.”

His tone alerts those same bells in Yelena’s hand that always ring before a shadow comes crawling down the wall. He has on the same clothes he fell asleep in three days ago. She hopes he’s not getting bad again. The days where he’s happy seem to be growing shorter. 

“How’ve you been, Bob?” she asks carefully. “I know we haven’t seen much of each other since I’ve been away.”

“I’m fine.”

Yelena doesn’t believe him. 

“Seriously,” he defends when he sees her unconvinced look. “I just—I’ve been working with Val and her scientists to do more with my powers, and all of that progress feels good. Really good. And that scares me. I know how I can get when I feel… unstoppable. And the meds help with whatever is wrong with, like, chemically, but it’s not a cure. When I’m in that mood, I don’t see how bad it’s getting. Not until I remember.” 

“Remember what?” she asks.

He hesitates. “That… I’m never going to be a real hero. Not like you guys. And I don’t matter outside of how dangerous I can be.”

Her heart twists, and it twists, and she’s so sure he’s going to kill her by speaking alone. No Sentry powers necessary. She never thought she could hurt for another person. Yelena takes her hands from the mug and pushes Bob’s hair from his eyes so she can see them better. There is no glimmer, no shadows. This is Bob making peace with the Sentry and the Void. 

When the skin of her knuckles brushes his cheek, she catches a flash of memory that is not hers—a scrawny teenage boy is curled in the lap of a sallow-faced woman. There is a baseball bat on the floor at their feet, cracked in half, and a man lying on the floor in a pool of blood. The boy is crying, clinging to his mother like he’s seven and not sixteen.

The woman is singing to him. Nearer My God To Thee. Her face holds evidence of a heavy hand. 

“He was going to kill you, Mama,” little Bob says to his mother, so choked up the words are barely words. “I know you tell me not to get involved, but I had to. I had to.”

“It’s okay, Bobby,” she whispers, petting his hair, kissing the tears from his cheeks. “I know. You were only trying to help.”

Bob lifts his head from Yelena’s arm, and he won’t look her in the eyes. He mumbles an apology. 

“You matter to me, Bob,” Yelena says. “You matter to all of us so much more than you realize. And it’s not because of your abilities, it’s because you’re you. Power always comes with the risk of losing control. But I know you’ll be able to control it one day, and when you do, you’re going to be an amazing hero.”

When he finally meets her gaze, Yelena can tell that Bob doesn’t believe her. But he smiles anyway.

“Does the medication help?” she asks. “I know you said that it was making your insomnia worse, but you seem… I don’t know. Softer at the edges. Not so skittish.”

“The side effects aren’t too bad anymore. I think I’m feeling less, but I still haven’t decided if that’s a bad thing or not.” Bob must see her shock, because he continues, “I’m not numb or emotionless, I promise. Nothing like that. It’s more like what I feel isn’t as strong as it used to be. Everything I felt before was dialed up to, like, a thousand. It was overwhelming and, honestly, it was unlivable. Now, it feels like my emotions are in a different room from me. I can deal with them better that way.”

Yelena frowns and she wants to touch him, just cradle his face or hold his hand or something. “Even your happiness? That just sounds sad.”

He smiles, mirthless and stiff. “The alternative is much worse. I can survive with night sweats and hand tremors and muted emotions. I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt any more people because I decided to get off my meds.”

Mindlessly, Bob takes her hands, wraps them around her mug, and leaves his hands around them. His touch is fire. She can feel him heating up her mug through their palms, warming the coffee which has no doubt gone cold. How can he perform these little miracles all around him and still see himself in such a horrible light?

Yelena hopes, prays really, that one day Bob will see himself through her eyes, a skewed but beautiful lens. 

“Does the medicine help you control your powers?” she asks.

He shrugs, and his thumbs absently run over her knuckles. “I dunno. I think so? But it definitely helps with the, uh, excitement that comes when I do something right. It’s like a drug, almost. Val doesn’t realize how dangerous that feeling is. I do.”

Yelena stares at their hands where they’re clasped around the mug. Despite all the harm they’ve caused, the lives they’ve taken, her hands appear delicate. Her skin is soft despite years of callused work, callused circles on her palms and invisible raised scars that are only seen by touch. The acrylics have held up surprisingly well. While still trimmed short, her nails are no longer chewed to the quick. 

“I need you,” she says. “You don’t even know how much I need you, Bob. and I can’t stomach the idea of ever hurting you. But if you need to hear me say it… then I promise you I’ll do what I have to.”

The relief in his face is instant. “Thank you.”

When he pulls his hands away, Yelena misses the warmth and weight of him instantly. Bob presses his mouth to her temple. 

“Are we still on for trivia night tonight?” he asks. 

Yelena wants to kiss him. That thought is as startling as it is right.

“Of course we are. I’m not getting that free bar tab without you.”

When he leaves the balcony, his cigarette butt fizzling out in the ashtray, Yelena’s smile immediately drops. It feels harder to smile when he’s not around. She wonders what that means.

She doesn’t think about it too hard. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Despite the new age of camaraderie between these people she pretends not to care about, there are often times where they will not cross paths for days or weeks at a time. The Watchtower feels almost endless on the inside, spacious and easy to lose yourself in.

It’s more difficult to avoid the others than she thought. Even when living in such a large building with an endless array of floors to wander in, they frequent the same circles—kitchen, gym, living room, bedrooms—but there is enough variety in their routines that they can just miss one another in between movie nights and shared dinners. Bucky is rarely there at all. 

There is no malicious intent behind the distance, as they have nobody else but each other. They still eat, have movie-game nights as a bonding exercise, and go on missions together. Yelena believes the longest time between seeing any other soul was two weeks, and it drove her insane. She doesn’t do well on her own.

Her and John’s routines sync up without them realizing. She blames their training. When she’s letting her frustrations from a sour mission out on a punching bag, he strolls in with a goal for the bench press. When he’s hitting his targets without a millimeter of error in the gun range, Yelena’s entering with a dull Bowie knife in desperate need of sharpening.

They don’t speak much when they cross paths, as their first meeting began with him trying to shoot her. But they don’t need to talk to understand what the other needs. Yelena gives him room to empty his clip into the paper enemies while sharpening her knives in the corner. John silently plants his foot on the punching bag’s stand so it doesn’t fall over when she lands a hefty kick strong enough to break ribs. He wraps her fingers tight with bandages so she doesn’t break her fingers, and she conveniently grabs an extra water bottle from the fridge, ice cold. 

There is a silent understanding between them that Yelena has only ever felt with Natasha and her fake parents. Pain recognizes pain. And their pain comes from the same source: renewed autonomy. Neither of them can function without being given orders, so they look for that in routine. Patterned days are just another way of control, but it’s on their terms. Of their own volition.

On the days when Yelena sees no one—not even Bob, which is already rare since they live on the same floor—she truly feels like a ghost haunting these already haunted halls. She can almost feel her mind unraveling like ribbons, pulling loose an inch at a time. Seeing it coming doesn’t mean she’ll do anything to stop her descent.

Yelena eats just enough to quell the pain, fights her reflection in a dim-light sparring room, dreams alone in the dark. She stops living and simply exists, one foot planted in the world she knew and the other teasing the abyss. Time blurs until daylight and nightfall don’t matter to her anymore, and the only thing that distinguishes the two is the burning of her eyelids.

She loses complete sense of the world around her, and sometimes.

Sometimes she wishes she’d never left the Red Room. 

It is an abhorrent thought that comes from the desperation not to feel, to go back to when Yelena was an unthinking piece of a giant machine. Being her own person is exhausting. Holding herself together takes so much energy that, when she loosens her grip when alone, she completely falls apart. With agency comes the realization that there is nothing she can ever do to make up for what she’s done.

When she’s alone with herself and the ghosts that follow her—Natasha, Antonia, those who are still living but she will never love the way she did before—Yelena allows herself to buckle under the weight of all her regrets. She grieves the lives she could’ve had, the lives she’s taken. She exhausts herself in the gym, eats enough to stop the pain, and fills her stomach up the rest of the way with liquor. 

The past is an impossible wall to climb; her future is shrouded in its shadow. 

She has never relied on people; Widows may be trained as teams, but they are only fragments of a larger whole and must be just on their own. Yelena still has yet to learn how to lean on them. But the days when she comes back into contact with another soul, just as lost and aimless, she remembers who she is. They help remind her.

Bob finds her in the kitchen well past three in the morning. She is eating dry Corn Flakes right out of the box. Even though she’s sure she looks terrible, he doesn’t look any better. He’s in a yellow crewneck sweatshirt with the faded words Savannah Bananas printed in blue block letters. There’s a banana with eyes and cartoon hands holding a baseball bat. Yelena stares at the banana, because looking Bob in the eye in this state is too humiliating. 

He hasn’t come to her bed in almost a week, and Yelena had already begun to forget the heat of another person’s body beside her. It’s easy to forget when she’s spent so much of her life without it. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t miss it. Miss him. 

Yelena cowers away when Bob turns the light on for the kitchen, animalistic. She even hisses at him when he approaches her, and he raises his hands like he’s taming a wild animal. In a way, he is. Her nerves feel exposed and overly sensitive. She holds the box in front of her like a shield, as if a flimsy layer of cardboard could stop him.

Bob smiles down at her, but it’s not a happy smile. He sits in front of the fridge, far enough enough that she could still run if she wanted to. She doesn’t.

“I haven’t seen you in a couple days,” he murmurs. “I thought you finally got tired of me.”

Her voice comes out like spilled gravel. She hasn’t spoken in days. “Never.” 

“You look, um.” Bob grimaces. “Rabid.”

“I feel rabid.”

“Are you… well, I don’t wanna ask if you’re okay because you’re not.”

“I’m not okay,” she says, and she feels like crying. “I get… wild when I’m alone. It’s a side effect.”

“From the mind control?” he asks. 

She nods.

“How does it work?”

Yelena chews on her words, trying to spit them out in a way that will make sense to him.

Natasha first found her in this feral state a week after they dismantled The Red Room, when Nat snuck away from General Ross to visit her sister in their rendezvous point: the Holiday Inn in Bucharest. Being on her own so long nearly drove her insane; Yelena had torn apart the hotel room she’d rented, drunk off of several airplane sized bottles of Grey Goose and eaten nothing but the fruits and yogurts she stole from the continental breakfast.

It wasn’t the first time Yelena had devolved this way, as she had spent plenty of days on her own while waiting for Natasha in Budapest, but it was the first time with a witness. Someone to care for her, lure her back to humanity. The descent is quick. Being drawn back out of this state takes time. 

Melina explained it as a consequence of being so abruptly released from her chemical subjugation without mental preparation; whenever Yelena is without consistent external stimulation, her internal structure begins to fall apart, and she becomes mindless like an animal. There is no real cure, and the only way to counteract is by being around people. Yelena hates it, because she doesn’t particularly like most people.

“My sister, Natasha, she… affectionately called this version of me stray kitten mode.” Yelena uses air quotes. Just by talking to Bob, she feels much more like herself. “The only other person who’s ever seen me this way was Kate.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Bob asks.

After hearing all of this, that is the first thing he asks. There is no revulsion in his expression the way she expected, nor fear. He’s concerned for her, the way she is for him.

“You can wait it out with me, but that’s all there is to do,” Yelena says. “It’s a permanent chemical imbalance. There’s no way to… I just need to be stimulated.”

“Like with drugs?”

That makes her laugh, and it catches her off guard. She hasn’t laughed in weeks. “No, no, like. Physical stimulation. Human interaction. Shit like that.”

He cracks a grin. “But you don’t like people.”

 Something warm stirs in her chest when he speaks so fondly of her to her. Yelena remembers that feeling from the first time she and Kate kissed on the roof of her building after a night of drinks and pool games. She has to look away from him.

It feels like exposing her insides, and she doesn’t know if she’s ready for him to see her in such a vulnerable state. Yelena wants to hide in the cupboards until her equilibrium returns, shy away from the people she so desperately needs to be with right now. Bob doesn’t seem too bothered by this beast wearing his friend’s skin.

“Have you eaten?” he asks. As she opens her mouth, Bob interrupts her with, “And dry cereal doesn’t count. I mean, like, real food. People food.”

She shakes her head and puts down the box of Corn Flakes.

“Can I tell you something?” she asks shyly. 

“Of course,” he says. He never hesitates with her. 

“I don’t know what day it is.”

“It’s Saturday.”

“Which Saturday?”

Bob tilts his head, confused. “Uh. I dunno.”

“You haven’t come over,” she says, as if it’s his fault she’s like this. “I missed you.” 

“Oh, I was…” He chuckles nervously, picking at the sleeve of his crewneck. “I tried to, um. Well, I learned I probably can’t drown.”

A flare of fear burns awake inside of her, and it’s as if all of her humanity returns all at once. “What did you do?”

His brows furrow. “Nobody told you?”

“I haven’t seen anybody since…” She blinks, trying to remember what the world was like before the darkness she’s in took her over. “Movie night. We watched The Hangover. It was fun.”

“Jesus, Lena, that was almost two weeks ago. Have you been like this the whole time?”

“What did you do, Bob?” Yelena repeats instead of answering his question. She won’t let him change the subject so easily.

Bob hesitates, then looks away. He holds a hand out to her, a silent invitation into his mind, and she wraps her cold fingers around his wrist. 

She feels cold water enveloping her, tastes salt and blood all the way down to her throat. White foam curls around her vision like whirls of clouds. Bubbles escape her mouth in a quick and panicked rhythm. Beside her, she sees a blurred visage of Bob, eyes closed. He almost looks at peace as he sinks into the navy depths below them. 

Someone—it looks like John, or maybe Alexei—grabs Bob and pulls him above the unruly waves, letting air re-enter his burning lungs. As Yelena follows, she catches sight of a tall bridge above their heads, shining like gold behind the sunset.

When the memory ends, Yelena doesn’t let go. Her grip only gets tighter. Bob is trying not to cry by biting a hole on the inside of his cheek. 

“You told me you were doing better,” she accuses.

He smiles crudely, tears filling the brims of his eyes. “I lied.”

With a pained groan building in the back of her throat, Yelena lunges at him. Bob flinches at first, like she’s going to attack him. She isn’t aiming to hurt him but to curl into his body. Knees on either side of him, Yelena claws her way beneath his sweatshirt and tucks herself against his bare chest, her ear pressed to his heart. The heat of his skin soothes her nerves. His heart thuds hard against his ribs, hiccuping when she rests her hands on his furred stomach. 

When Yelena returns to herself later on after a long, decompressing shower, she will be embarrassed by how insane she’s acting around him, and how she straddled him so roughly that she hadn’t realized she was sitting on his dick, but tonight she allows herself to be feral and to keep him as close as she physically can. If she could crawl into his skin, she would. Maybe she will. 

The top of her head stretches the neckline of his sweatshirt as she nuzzles her face to his throat. He smells like sweat and despair. Bob huffs in faux frustration but simply hugs her closer, arms wound around her waist like they were made to hold her. Her hair spills out over the neckline. 

“You’re like a cat,” he grumbles playfully, voice shaking.

Yelena murmurs, “I wanna crack your ribcage open and crawl inside you and never leave.”

That makes him laugh, but she’s being serious. 

“You’re not allowed to leave me,” she declares. “Ever. I won’t let you. If you made me promise to… to kill you if I have to, then you have to promise me to stay. You don’t want a choice. Promise me.”

“I promise.” His mouth is in her hair.

“Good.” Yelena closes her eyes and breathes him in.

Maybe she doesn’t need to be around people, just Bob. She feels like herself when she’s with him, warm and centered and human. 

“Can I—” His voice cracks against her skin, and she feels him swallow. “Can I sleep with you tonight?”

“You don’t have to ask, Bob. You’re always welcome.”

Yelena doesn’t tell him about how giddy it makes her to think he needs her just like she needs him.

Stay with me, she pleads in her mind, hoping he will intuit it and obey her. Staystaystaystaystay.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Bob spent the first two weeks living in the Watchtower locked up in the basement that doubled as a containment unit. It was rigged with every possible precaution to stop whoever, or whatever, was locked in to make sure they didn’t make it far upon escape. There was nothing in the room except for a mattress, a blanket, and a stack of books Bob brought in with him. 

The entire section of the building was designed by Dr. Banner and a pair of SHIELD scientists called FitzSimmons to contain the vicious strength of the Hulk, and it showed. There was one window made with glass reinforced to withstand a nuclear blast, the metal walls and ceiling was a unique blend of tungsten and palladium to ensure strength and withstandability. The floor was made of two retractable doors, and beneath the room was their final assurance: a pit so deep it could probably kill even the Hulk. Or at least leave him very injured. 

Nobody on the team was privy to the idea of putting him in a prison, least of all Yelena, but Bob insisted on caging himself up for their own safety. He feared what would happen if he was set free too soon after his slip into The Void. 

“I’m not leaving until I’m on lithium or zoloft or some kind of antipsychotic that makes sure I don’t get manic again,” he told Val when she tried to lure him out of his self-made prison. “You think you can control me, but you can’t. I can barely control me. So, either medicate the fuck out of me or let me get comfortable.”

He was also made suicide risk, too, after he intentionally melted the vents shut and tried to suffocate himself overnight. Luckily, it seemed like Bruce Banner had tried to do the same in the past, because someone else had set up alarms for that very scenario.

Yelena was miserable for weeks after that because she spent the entire time sleeping outside of his chamber, listening to his breathing through the monitors in place out of fear that it would stop when nobody was looking. Her back ached for days afterwards, but she couldn’t care less. If sleeping on the floor meant keeping him alive, then she’d let it hurt for the rest of her life. 

OXE had to manufacture a very specific blend of medication for him that could affect him through the Sentry Serum metabolism. Just like any other medicine, dosages and combinations are never perfect on the first try, but Bob was, at least, satisfied by the mental dampening of his powers. He wasn’t any happier, but at least his appetite returned. 

Val tried to convince him all he needed was guidance, maybe even a little therapy, but Bob refused to hear her out on that. Talking things out can only do so much when the highs and lows are crafted by a chemical imbalance in the brain. He told Yelena once that he tried to think about it like if he had an iron deficiency; there is no chance in supplements if it means he gets one step closer to normal. While he hated being on medication, he needed it the same way Ava needed her quantum energy chamber to keep her atoms from pulling apart. 

Deciding who shared a floor with Bob was their easiest choice. Yelena was the only one who offered, obviously, and nobody tried to talk her out of it. It was always going to be her. The unspoken tether between Yelena and Bob made it clear she would live down a narrow, carpeted hall from him, like an unofficial RA to ensure that his nightmares weren’t left to fester alone. 

There was a night, two days before he let himself out, when they lied back to back together on the floor, separated by only the glass. Yelena had woken up screaming, dreaming of her Bowie knife splitting open the Austrian Chancellor's throat. Bob hadn’t fallen asleep, and he couldn't do much inside his cage to soothe her.

So, he sang to her. It was a little clumsy, and it was a song Yelena hadn’t known but now knows is that same hymnal he sings during panic attacks. But it helped, gave her something to focus on that wasn’t the memory burned into her mind even well after waking up. 

After that, whenever either of them would wake up from a bad dream, they’d wordlessly seek each other out at night and would be welcomed with open arms. The others may know. They may not. It doesn’t matter. Those moments are precious and for them alone. 

Yelena believes that night is when their unique connection became one of codependency. She is not known for being needy or even affectionate, but the allure that Bob has penetrates every wall she’s built within herself.

Whenever they’re apart, it feels like amputating a piece of her soul, and returning is ecstasy. Yelena thinks of him so often it’s concerning. She dreams of him, of who they could have been in other places, if their paths would’ve still crossed. If he’d still care for her the way he does now without all of the damage. Everyone already knows that Bob trusts her more than anyone else on the team. Maybe in the world. As selfish as it is, she thinks she’d like having him all to herself. 

But codependency is as pretty as it sounds. If Yelena is not within his line of sight while Bob is in the testing facility, his powers will turn frenzied and unstable. He calls out for her in his sleep. They circle each other, subconsciously or not, at the dinners and galas Valentina hosts for the sake of publicity. 

Bob doesn’t like to be touched. Bob always makes an exception for her. If an all powerful being like him has an Achilles heel that can be exploited, it’s Yelena.

Maybe that’s why Val sends her on the most solo missions; there is no love lost between them. If Yelena were to die in a firefight or get caught in a bomber’s range, then that last tether keeping Bob instact snaps, and he is loose. Val thinks this is a good thing; she continues to underestimate how terrifying he can be if he has nothing to go home to.

But Yelena will always come home to him. That is a promise she intends on keeping.

Chapter Text

Living with Bob—not just him, but the others too—is a constant reminder to Yelena that, compared to the rest of her teammates, she is painfully human. No super soldier serum coursed through her veins, there was no quantum phasing ability that allowed her to become the ultimate thief and spy, no power-of-a-thousand-suns made her someone to be feared. 

She is strong, yes, and quick, and can kill a man in any way that can be taught. But she is still fragile. A pretty piece of China sat on a shelf alongside nuclear weapons. The others border the line of extraordinary and godhood. She is just as human as the strangers they save. 

Yelena is the first in a line of defenses to teach Bob how to fight and defend himself to ensure he doesn’t have to rely on The Sentry. It had been John’s idea, and the only reason they waited months to actually start was because nobody wanted him to be right.

The day the training wheels are removed from Bob’s training is the day Yelena’s heart will break forever. That last session will close a chapter in her life she wants to write forever, and it pains her to know she’s the only one who isn’t physically equipped to handle his strength.

They still spar together while Bob is wrestling with internal control, mostly working on knife work and weapon’s training. That, at least, she’s good at, though nowhere near the best on the team. Despite his best efforts to convince him he would never be any good in combat, she easily and proudly proved him wrong. Once he gets a move down, it comes to him like second nature. He has good enough reflexes to begin with, and he picks up hand to hand combat surprisingly quick. Yelena doesn’t want to think about why that might be.

Their fights are never anything serious; Bucky calls the way they fight more like flirting, and he may not be far off. Because Bob pulls his punches, and Yelena can’t dig into his tender spots like the others do to spark a reaction from him. It’s for the best, really. She wouldn’t be able to hold her own against Bob in a real fight. But Yelena still likes holding him, whether in a grappling hold or, her favorite, the triangle choke. He feels like he belongs between her legs. 

It’s easy to get distracted from the sword of Damocles, her own mortality, when her legs are wrapped around Bob’s neck, not squeezing but simply holding. She can feel his breath against her inner thighs in short bursts that sparks want up her spine. Bob does little to escape her, and when he does tap out, he turns away to adjust himself in his pants. Yelena grins.

“Too much adrenaline, huh?” she teases, flattening the tape of her hand wrap back down.

“Shut up,” is all he says before he’s on his feet and tackling her to the ground.

Alexei expresses concern that Bob will slip up one day, too doused in adrenaline, and hurt her. There is always a chance he loses control. If he truly ever tried against her, or if The Void takes over for even a second, Yelena would be a stain on the pavement quicker than her neurons could tell her she was in danger. She worries that one day not even she will be able to talk him down from the ledge. But until that day comes, she will continue on this path. Yelena has never been one to stray from death. 

Even when Bob isn’t trying in a fight, he still outspeeds them all. Just a percentage of his powers is enough to stifle an army. John and Ava don’t fare much better against him, but at least they have the advantage of abilities and heightened strength. Bucky and Alexei can just barely keep up with him, and that’s only because Bob is still holding back.

When Bob gains full control of his power, he really will be unstoppable. They’re so lucky he has a kind heart, even if his mind is broken. 

A part of Yelena hopes Bob never gets full control. It is a selfish voice in her mind that wants to keep him close to her, stay at her level forever. She wants him to be something she can protect. He won’t be that forever. One day, he will grow wings and fly away from the nest, and Yelena will be alone again. It is a selfish voice, but it is loud, and she does her best not to listen. 

Compared to him and everyone else, Yelena was a vanilla type of heroine. She was much like her sister in that way, but with the added trauma of relearning how to have agency while being the face of their team. She was not special in ability nor in name.

Nothing about her was worth keeping around other than the fact that she somehow has gained secret access to the heart of the earth’s most terrifying weapon that was buried in the heart of a broken, broken man. But he won’t need her forever. 

Widows like her were manufactured dozens at a time. They only kept their names because it was easier to distinguish them, but it did little to grant them agency, even before being struck by the Charlotte Serum. There was an abundance of women like her scattered in the corners of the earth, learning to live with who they are without the Red Room. They could easily be killed without causing even the tiniest ripple through the world. Antonia was proof of that.

Antonia. Yelen found her to be sweet in the brief time they knew each other. She kept a log of different desserts she tried while traveling around the world, and would occasionally send Yelena a postcard as a signal that she was still alive. When Natasha died, they shared a drink with some other gathered ex-Widows. That was the last time they crossed paths, until the fault.

Once upon a time, Antonia was the Red Room’s greatest weapon. The Taskmaster could take on any fighter and match them in speed, strength, skill. And she was taken down by a single unanticipated bullet by the one superhuman whose powers she couldn’t anticipate. While Yelena tries not to hold it against Ava—they weren’t close, after all, but friendly compared to what they’d experienced together under Drekov’s control—there is an itch of bitterness that she sometimes picks at when watching the others fight.

Fate is a cruel joke, and she isn’t laughing anymore. Why was it Antonia who died, after all she endured in her life? Why not Yelena, who deserved to die? She was the top of her class, after all. The darling student, a star pupil even before the chemical subjugation. 

Was Ava sent in particular because her skills were the only ones Antonia couldn’t mimic? Or was it just chance once again saving Yelena’s life when someone else deserved to live more? 

She’ll never really know, no matter how hard she tries to conjure something that makes sense. None of it does. But she will always wonder. 

The only reason Yelena has even survived this long were her allies, her friends. Without them, she’d definitely already be dead. 

But they alone will never be enough to make her feel like she’s pulling her weight.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

They are sent on a mission to the Florida Everglades to gather information on a splinter group of AIM led by some rogue scientist. It’s pretty standard for them; there’s always splinter groups of splinter groups led by rogue scientists who will no doubt become a pain in their asses later down the line. 

Yelena was there to put a tracker on the group’s lead scientist, and the others were there to make contact with an ex-SHIELD chemist who went undercover to document the progress made on whatever nefarious nonsense they were doing. While there, however, she discovered another double agent, someone working for AIM directly to impede their progress.

At least, that’s what the briefing said between the blacked out text of redacted information. Val never gives them the full details, but unless it ends up on the news, Yelena could care less. She’s just there to do a job and go home. 

According to their last transmission from their insider, they were using SHIELD’s previous plans from Project: Gladiator to try and recreate Steve Roger’s super soldier serum. These projects are a dime a dozen around the world, made in any radiative variety and resulting in every type of monster mayhem known to science. Red Skulls and Hulks, Deathloks and Flag Smashers. Quite frankly, it’s getting tiring having to chase down these idiots who think they can make another Captain America with dollar store chemicals. At least it’s something where the end results are expected. 

Because Bucky is bogged down by some bureaucratic bullshit and Ava is doing a covert op in Canada, that left John, Yelena, and Bob to hunt them down with Alexei as their getaway driver.

Bob was a last minute addition. Val wordlessly assigned Bob on the mission without consulting or informing any of them about her reckless decision. John and Yelena only found out beforehand because of how excited Bob was to “finally be useful around here.” 

Sure, it was simply reconnaissance and the experience would help them gauge how much stress he can handle and raise his tolerance under duress, but Yelena didn’t like the idea of Bob being on the field so soon. Especially in Florida of all places, where anything could trigger a reappearance of The Void. 

Bob promised he was ready to finally go on missions. His worst incident was the first one, and it can only really be uphill from there. Through medication and lots of needed therapy, he’s finally in a place where, even if he did lose control, he could easily reign it back in. and, as their last resort, Yelena can try and ‘hug the depression away’ like she did the first time around. Bucky’s words, not hers. 

But Bob still has his value tied to how useful he can be. They all do. The Watchtower is basically a toolbox of broken things that are only useful because they’re all that’s left.

Yelena doesn’t know if she could say no to him when he’s so earnest about being out on the field like they are, not when she’s in similar standing with her own lack of self-worth. John promised her that they’d be together the entire time, and he wouldn’t let anything happen to him. She hates to admit that she trusts him enough to relax. 

While Bob warned her of the exceptional Florida heat, he forgot to mention the humidity. The air itself is dense and the wind does nothing to cool her balmy skin. Yelena gulps down all of her water reserves within the first two hours of reconnaissance and wonders how important this mission is when an ice cream truck rolls by.

Her tactical suit is thick enough to prevent knife slices from penetrating her skin, and even absorb some hits so long as they’re not from a bullet. That just means her sweat gets trapped in the crooks of her body in uncomfortable ways. The black material only soaks in the sun’s harsh rays. Yelena takes off her gloves to maintain a better grip on her rifle. 

Of course, those two Southern boys of hers are having a grand old time where they’re positioned, measuring childhood stories like it’s the length of their dicks. Yelena is glad they can’t see her rolling her eyes every time one of them says “y’all.”

“These assholes will never let that serum go, huh,” Yelena grumbles into her ear piece as she scours the lush forestry surrounding AIM’s white-concrete laboratory through the scope of her rifle. “There are more variations of that godforsaken power than actual super soldiers. When are they going to come up with something new, like world peace or clean energy?”

“I’d rather them keep trying to manufacture up the same bullshit than actually make something dangerous,” John replies. He and Bob are positioned on the other side of the facility, looking for a way to get a message to the chemist without blowing her cover since little signal is coming in or out of the concrete building. “Any sign of Forson?”

“Not yet. It’s been nothing but crickets on this side.” Yelena leans back against the trunk of the tree she’s made her hiding spot. She is hanging dozens of feet in the air, belted to the thick branch she’s lying across with her rifle lying across her lap. Although she’s melting in the heat, the sun feels excellent against her skin. “How about the chemist?”

“Looks like they’re keeping Morse in the second floor lab,” John says. “There’s a few other scientists with her, but can’t confirm their identities yet. Facial recognition is taking forever.”

“The signal is shit out here. I wish we could hotspot this thing,” Bob says.

Yelena smiles at the sound of his voice. “Is Valentina even sure Forson is going to show up? Last I heard, AIM was still working out of Baruda, and we’re pretty far from there.”

John grunts. “I trust her about as far as I throw her, but her intel’s always been reliable. At least when she doesn’t have some agenda.”

“When doesn’t she?” Yelena grumbles. 

“It’s not like we’re going to take him out. It’s just a rag and run.” 

“Hey, um.” The worry in Bob’s voice makes her perk up immediately. “Walker, are you seeing this?”

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“God damn it. We have a problem,” John says gruffly. “Belova, meet us on the north side of the island, above the garage”

“Copy that. On my way.”

She undoes the belt across her lap in one swift movement. With her rifle tucked under her arm, she drops off the branch onto the facility’s roof and sprints across the shingles. John guides her through her ear piece, and she starts running faster when she hears gunfire. Yelena finally catches sight of them where they stand on either side of the first floor’s entrance, arguing quietly among themselves. 

“We’re here to gather intel, not to interfere,” John hisses.

“She has a gun!” Bob argues. “We can’t rescue the chemist if she’s dead.”

“We’re going to blow her cover.”

“And that psycho is gonna blow her head off!”

Yelena whistles, drawing their attention up to her. “What the hell are you boys arguing about?”

“One of the scientists is holding the other’s hostage,” John explains. “And Bobby here must’ve been watching too many Tom Cruise movies, because he wants to go in, guns blazin’. Which is idiotic, because the guards inside have actual weapons.”

“I am a weapon! Did you forget that I folded your shield into a taco?”

“How could I forget, when you won’t shut the fuck up about it.”

Yelena nimbly drops to the ground between them. “Enough, both of you. Did you tell Val?”

John shakes their receiver with emphasis. “Of course I did. She hasn’t responded.”

“How do you know she received it?”

He raises his eyebrows, and Yelena sighs. Val is ignoring them. She always does that when she expects them to do something mildly illegal without telling them explicitly. Something about avoiding accountability or whatever.

“Right.” Yelena pinches her nose. “So, we’re on our own. As usual.”

Bob looks to her for guidance, a deep crease forming between his eyebrows. “What should we do?”

He looks distractingly good in his tactical gear. The suit is all black, like the rest of them, save for the faded yellow seams and the gold S-shaped belt buckle that Val insisted on adding to distinguish him from the rest of them. As if being indistinguishable isn’t part of what makes their job safe.

While he’s a weapon himself, he has a gun holstered on his hip, a Bowie knife on his thigh, and a pair of batons strapped to his back that match Yelena’s. His gloves are fingerless, as his powers manifest easier when his skin is exposed. A pair of goggle binoculars hang around his neck. 

The thick, tight material emphasises the figure he hides beneath his bulky clothes, broad shoulders and defined chest. His muscles move with ease beneath the leather. Bob keeps touching the cuffs of his sleeves, a nervous habit to ensure they don’t roll up and expose his secrets before he’s ready. Yelena has to stop herself from staring at his arms and how the pants cradle his hips and ass.

She’s glad Val didn’t force him to wear that eyesore of a Sentry suit again. Capes are impractical. And maybe a little too eye-catching for a group of covert agents.

Pulling her eyes away from Bob, Yelena glances at John, then up to the window they’d been looking into. “You said she has a gun?”

John nods. “I’m not one to disobey orders, but if you say we go in, then we go in.”

“Why am I the leader now?”

“Since when aren’t you?” he questions.

A smile tugs at her lips, but it drops as soon as more gunshots fill the air. Closer this time. Either their little hostage situation or the guards have found out that they have uninvited guests.

“Fuck Forson,” she decides. “Our priority is the chemist and whatever information she has on AIM’s research. We’re going. Walker, you go in the front, clear the way for our exit. Bob and I will find a way into the lab to try and get Morse out safely. We’ll rendezvous at the pier. Got it?”

He winks and tightens the strap of his shield. “See you guys for lunch.”

John shoves his shoulder into the front door, which crumbles like paper against him, and he disappears into the building, followed by grunts and gunfire. Yelena tosses her rifle over her shoulder and glances back up to the window. 

“Like we practiced,” she says. 

Bob knits his fingers together and holds his hands out for her. His eyes are glowing with golden rings of light, and his grin is infectious. “Giddyup, partner.”

Backing up to get a running start, Yelena leaps into his grasp. Her foot lands in his clasped hands. With more than enough superhuman strength to toss her into the stratosphere if he wanted to, he launches her skyward. Yelena lands on the window sill with ease. As Bob flies up to join her—it’s still uncanny to see him do so, and she isn’t sure how she feels about it yet—Yelena quietly breaks the lock with her baton, and they sneak in. 

Despite their less than silent entrance, the argument going on inside the lab hides their approaching footsteps. A brunette woman in a lab coat with tears rolling down her cheeks points a revolver at two scientists, her gaze trained mainly on a dark haired man holding a syringe of a vibrant green liquid.

Another blonde woman is trying to talk her down. That must be Morse, according to Yelena’s files. They’re all speaking over each other. 

“Ellen, put the gun away and we can figure this out together, okay?” Morse is saying, stepping in front of the man. “I don’t know what happened between you two, but this isn’t—”

“No, you don’t understand, Bobbi!” the other woman shouts, and she fires into the ceiling. Bob flinches. “This isn’t going to end well, Ted, and you know it. We were never going to recreate that serum. It’s too corrosive to ever work on a living patient. I am your wife, and I am tired of being put second to this monstrosity of a high school science project.”

The man makes a noise, affronted. “A high school science project? Who the hell do you think you—”

The barrel whirls to the man, and he immediately shuts up.

“Destroy it all,” Ellen demands. “Now.”

Hunkered behind a lab cart filled with chemical tubes and tweezers, Bob tugs at Yelena’s sleeve and mouths, what now?

Yelena shakes her head, still trying to formulate a plan. Ellen’s finger hasn’t left the trigger. Any noise could make her fire. They need to incapacitate her before making their presence known. She catches sight of a beaker sitting on top of an unlit heating pad. An idea blooms. It’s not a great idea, but it’s better than nothing. 

She nudges Bob and points to the beaker, then draws her finger towards the woman. Bob scrunches up his face in confusion. Yelena repeats the movement, wiggling her fingers for emphasis. 

It clicks in his mind just as the deranged Ellen starts screaming about Ted being a horrific man-thing who left her behind on their honeymoon to study toxic waste in the marshlands. His hands barely lift, twitching in the direction of the woman, and the beaker flies.

The glass shatters against the back of Ellen’s head, and she collapses. Morse and Ted look at her unconscious form with confusion before Yelena and Bob step out from behind their hiding place. 

“Hi,” Bob says, waving awkwardly. “We’re here to, uh, save you from. Well, her, I guess.”

Panic flashes in Morse’s eyes, and reaches for the dropped gun. Quick as lightning, Bob snatches it from the floor. He proudly hands it to Yelena.

“Barbara Morse?” Yelena asks as she drops the gun behind the lab cart they’d been hiding in, and Morse nods carefully. “I’m Yelena. This is Bob. Sorry to blow your cover.”

Morse sneers, but she relaxes a bit. “De Fontaine?”

“Yup.”

“Shit. I haven’t even finished my objective yet.” Morse shrugs off her lab coat and drapes it over her arm. “The serums are in the refrigerator. None of them have worked, but we got close. Scarily close.”

She gestures for them to follow her down the hall. Ted tags along, too.

“Sorry, what’s going on?” he asks.

“Y’know, for a scientist, you’re pretty slow,” she says over her shoulder. “I’m not really one of you, dumbass. I was here to make sure your shit didn’t reach completion, but I didn’t have to do much. The SO-2 Serum was never gonna work, Sallis. You saw what it did to those poor test subjects.”

“Have you administered it to anyone?” Yelena asks. 

“No people,” Morse replies. “Some crocs. None of them survived. They all disintegrated into acid and toxic waste within twenty-four hours.”

Ted interjects with, “But before that they showed promising signs of regeneration and body malleability. I was getting somewhere, Bobbi. You saw it.”

“I did. And it was terrifying. If you were allowed to succeed, you’d probably end up making something even worse than the Hulk. Something unstoppable and unstable.”

Bob grimaces. 

“So, I’m guessing you guys are here to destroy the facility,” Morse says.

“Just recon on Andrew Forson,” Yelena says. “We weren’t supposed to blow your cover in AIM until we had probable cause to strike him down.”

“But being held at gunpoint isn’t exactly great for undercover work, so we thought it was best to… well, not let you die,” Bob adds. “Sorry about that.”

Morse sends him a curiously soft look and Yelena can’t decide what it makes her feel.

It’s not jealousy. It isn’t. 

“Thanks for the backup,” she says, sending Yelena a friendly smile. “Ellen Brandt is… well, I suspected she was the one in cahoots with AIM, but now I’m just guessing this was a lover’s quarrel.”

“Lover’s quarrel?” Yelena repeats with confusion.

Ted meekly holds up his hand, revealing a silver band on his finger. “We just eloped.” 

Bob makes a face. “Congrats?”

“My condolences,” Yelena says at the same time.

From around the corner, John stumbles in, dropping an empty magazine. He looks at them and huffs in frustration.

“Taking a nice little stroll, huh?” he snaps without heat, wiping sweat from his cheeks. “How many guards does one lab need?”

“One holding something dangerous,” Morse says.

Just as they make it to the lab, Yelena hears the telltale click of a gun’s safety behind them. She’s the first to turn around and see Ellen Brandt standing at the end of the hall, glass and blood streaking down her face, pointing a gun right at them. Adrenaline kicks in. 

Without thinking, Yelena throws herself in front of Bob as Ellen begins to empty the clip in their direction. A line of heat strikes her in the side. Bob screams Yelena’s name as she hits the floor with her knees. He’s unaffected by the bullets that bounce off his body as she he covers her. Heat runs down her waist, but the pain hasn’t kicked in.

Bob scoops her face in her hands. A dangerous glow fills his watery eyes, flickering in and out like a dying lightbulb. It’s still him. It’s not the Sentry. She has to keep it that way. 

Ted, who’d been standing behind her, endures the brunt of the blast, his white coat spotted with growing red spots. He jerks with the blows before collapsing. Morse ducks behind John’s shield and drags Ted along with her.

Bob looks over his shoulder with that dagger-like stare she only ever sees when he’s Sentry, and the gun in Ellen’s hand begins to glow with heat. The barrel sags, and Ellen drops it with a yelp. Seeing her opening, Yelena lifts her wrist, charges her Widow Bites, and aims. She strikes Ellen in the throat. Blue sparks flash over her skin as Ellen spasms and collapses to the floor. 

Once she’s down, John lowers his shield and he and Morse tend to Ted’s wounds. Bob looks down to Yelena, still holding her face. She puts her hands over his. 

“I’m okay, Bob,” she says to stave off the appearance of The Sentry. Not here. Not how. “I’m okay. It only grazed me. I’m okay.”

Bob chuckles, and it rings like a hollow bell. “Shouldn’t I be the one saying that to you?”

“I’m not the one with the sun in my veins. But do your best.”

He makes a pained noise, presses a large hand against her side. “You’re alright, Lena, looks like it just nicked you. Must hurt like a bitch, though.”

She winces a bit at the applied pressure but presses into the heat of his skin. “Yes, well, I was still shot.”

“You’re gonna be fine,” he says, more for his own sake than hers, “but now it seems like I’m gonna have to keep a closer eye on you.”

“Sounds miserable.”

“Enough flirting, you two lovebirds.” Morse stands behind them, exasperated. “I didn’t know Ellen was, uh. Unstable.”

“She wasn’t this crazy when we got married,” Ted grunts.

Above their head, the lights begin to buzz painfully bright. It could be Bob, or it could be whatever the fuck is about to happen to Ted. Yelena is still looking at Bob, holding him steady with her gaze, forcing herself to stay awake so he doesn’t lose himself.

She can see the war going on behind his eyes, the flickers of light and shadow fighting for control. His breathing is ragged, but it’s still him. For now, he is still just Bob.

“I’ll carry her,” he says to John, who doesn’t even try to argue with him.

“I can walk,” Yelena snaps. “I’m shot, not dead.”

As Bob helps Yelena to her feet, Morse turns Ted over and recoils. 

“Oh, God,” she murmurs, her face deathly pale. “Ted, what did you do?”

Clutched in his bloody hand is the syringe, now empty, the needle still buried in his throat. Thick green smoke expels from the various bullet wounds in his chest as the veins in his neck swell like they’re about to burst. The wounds… they’re closing.

Whatever he injected himself with is healing him, but the transformation doesn’t stop there. He twists and writhes on the floor in pain, the tan of his skin darkening to a distended and molted vine-green, blanketing over his body. His back bulges, joints cracking. 

“Jesus,” John mutters, and does the sign of the cross.

“What’s happening to him?” Yelena asks. 

Morse shakes her head. “I don’t know, we’ve never tested on humans before. But the animals, none of them—”

“Bobbi.” Ted looks up at Morse, mouth twisted in pain. His eyes are wide and glowing a dangerously bright red. “Run.”

That’s their cue to get the fuck out.

Despite the blatant concern in his eyes, Bob hooks an arm beneath hers to help her walk. Yelena buries her face into the curve of his neck to distract herself from the pain that has begun to kick in. She presses her weight to his side and stumbles along with him out the front, where John has cleared a path of unconscious bodies.

Their exit is surprisingly quiet, but behind them, they hear the noises of Ted Sallis becoming whatever it is that discounted Steve Rogers concoction will make him. If they’re lucky, he’ll be dead before they get out of the facility. 

Blood trails down the pier boardwalk behind her. Alexei already has the armed truck running. All four of them collapse in the back seats. Morse kneels in front of Yelena, grabbing the med kit beneath their seats, and begins to mend her wound. The bullet just grazed Yelena’s rib, but that doesn’t mean the bleeding is minor. Every breath exacerbates the pain. 

“We can’t go yet. What about Forson?” Yelena asks, as if she’s not actively bleeding.

With a roll of gauze and medical tape in hand, Morse looks up at her with confusion. “You were here for Andrew? Not me?”

“We were meant to check in with you and make sure you weren’t dead, not blow your cover,” John explains. “Sorry about that.”

She sighs, shaking her head. “Yeah, well, what can you do? Things never go the way they should. At least I don’t need to worry about them bastardizing Project Gladiator.”

“What do you mean?”

Morse nods towards the truck’s narrow window. As they all clamber to the back to look out, they realize that the facility has erupted into flames. Thick, toxic, neon green smoke explodes from the windows, swallowing every inch of the building. The fire looks unnatural, almost alive, like it’s eating the entire building. 

Their eyes, save for Bobbi Morse’s, dart to Bob in an almost accusatory manner. His eyes are glowing lanterns, barely holding back the part of him that is The Sentry, but he looks just as confused as the rest of them. He looks at Morse. 

“Was that you?” he asks her, completely oblivious to the fact they all thought it had been him. 

“Nope. Today's just a series of coincidences, huh? At least this disaster will set AIM’s research back decades. Good riddance. I really fuckin’ hated those guys.” She cranes her neck to the side. “I’m retiring after this.”

It’s in moments like this when Yelena remembers Bob is not the weakest link in their chain of false heroes. He may be emotionally unstable, borderline menacing when he’s truly angry or scared, but he is still powerful. John may be an asshole, but he’s still a team player, and his super strength helps at times like these. Ava can walk through walls, for fuck’s sake. Not to mention Bucky and Alexei, who’ve both been on the battlefield longer than most of the team has been alive. 

Compared to them, Yelena is a small cat in a den of lions. She is fierce, she can bite. She may be their leader, but she will be trampled when faced with an actual opponent. 

Yelena wonders if Natasha ever felt this way. If she did, it never showed on TV. Tony Stark may not have been superpowered, but he still had his cool Ironman suit and billions of dollars at his disposal. At least Natasha had Clint to complain about being powerless with.

Her mind wanders to Kate Bishop. Kate has no powers and she still holds her own. Kate is Hawkeye now. Another generation of Black Widow and Hawkeye, fucking and fighting side by side. 

Morse tells Yelena that she’s going to need proper stitches when they get back, which is not what she wants to hear. There goes her crop top summer. 

Bob nudges her a bit. “You still with me?”

Yelena mutters an affirmation and leans her body against him. He smells like sweat and gunpowder. 

“Why did you jump in front of me?” he asks. “I’m bulletproof. You’re not.”

“I forgot.”

Yelena wasn’t thinking about him being The Sentry when she moved. She was thinking of how scared he looked when OXE’s firing squad lit him up. And it didn’t matter if he was bulletproof or the world’s most unstoppable man walking the planet; she’d do the same thing every time. 

“You don’t have to keep trying to save me.” Bob’s fingers rest in her hair, gently massaging her scalp as a distraction from the pain. “I’m not entirely useless.”

“I know you aren’t,” Yelena replies. “But like it or not, I will always try and protect you. We are stuck together, you and I. ”

He smiles sadly down at her. “I can live with that.”

Chapter Text

When they return to the Watchtower after their half-successful mission, Valentina questions them on how their covert mission led to a scientific facility on fire even though they were nowhere near it when it exploded. She wasn’t relieved they all made it out alive or that they saved Morse and her very important gathered intel that would help them dismantle the rest of AIM’s facilities. No, she was pissed. There really is no satisfying this bitch.

In the same breath that Val yells at them for fucking up the mission when they quite explicitly didn’t, according to her own rules, she praises Bob for not losing his cool despite the setback. He flounders a bit under her harsh tone, shrinking despite not being the victim of her ire. 

Throughout it all, Val is red-cheeked and furious while she shouts at them like they’re incompetent children. She paces with her arms behind her back, when they’re not waving around, like some kind of supervillain. Yelena imagines exploding her with her mind so she doesn’t kill her. Mel stands awkwardly behind Val, rolling her eyes and making faces that only the team can see. At least they have some in-home entertainment while being yelled at like a child. 

“Andrew Forson is still out there doing God knows what and now we don’t know where he could be because the princess decided to get shot,” Val says. Yelena doesn’t miss how the lights flicker above them. “He could be in the wind now, for all we know.”

“That’s not our fault, “ John argues on their behalf because Yelena is too tired and in pain to do it herself. “He never showed. Yelena was watching the whole time, and he—”

Val steamrolls his defense, continuing on her tirade. “How am I supposed to explain this clusterfuck to Congress when it makes it onto the news?”

“It’s not our fault that some deranged lady decided to try and kill her husband on the same day you sent us for recon. Just count yourself lucky that we didn’t die and Morse made it out with the intel you wanted. If the princess died, it would be a PR nightmare, don’t you think?”

“At least that wouldn't be an ecological disaster.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Yelena finally jumps into the conversation where she’s lying sideways on the couch as their on-call doctor cleans her injury. “We didn’t get close to the swamps.”

“Maybe not,” Val says, slamming a photograph on the coffee table. “But something did and now the entire Everglades has some… man-thing lurking in it.”

It’s a blurry image of the marshlands at night, the flash granting the cattails and mosquitoes a creepy aura. In the background, something looms, tall and wide, its writhing, vined body taking up a majority of the frame. A pair of bright red eyes stare directly down the camera’s lens. Yelena shivers a bit at the grotesque, large form. 

So, that is what Ted must have become. 

“Creepy,” Bob says. 

“Ted Sallis’ car was found at the bottom of the swamp. Empty. No sign of him or Ellen Brandt’s bodies. We suspect this is him now, since according to Bobbi Morse’s report, he injected himself with the SO-2 Serum after being shot and his body wasn’t in the facility. The serum, mind you, that you folks were supposed to destroy.”

“You didn’t tell us that,” John says.

“I shouldn’t have to,” Val replies coldly. “It’s your job to know what needs to be done.”

“We deserved to know what we were walking into,” Yelena adds with a roll of her eyes. “We can’t do what you want us to do if you don’t tell us about shit like this.”

Bob nods along with her. “We’re strong, Val, not telepathic. You should've told us that he could’ve turned into fucking Sasquatch.”

When she directs her attention to him, she softens a fraction, but it’s practiced, almost fearful in case she says something wrong. It makes Yelena giddy to see her scared. 

“Well, what’s done is done,” Val says, turning to walk away. “Get Yelena to the med bay. I can’t have that pretty face bleeding out before the military gala next month.”

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Thankfully, the bullet missed Yelena’s lungs by a mile and had grazed her enough to leave a clean, open line across the flesh wrapping her ribcage. Minimal damage, blood loss is a bitch but a few IV transfusions and sugary drinks makes her feel right as rain. 

Yelena earns a row of stitches for her troubles, limiting the movement of her left arm until she’s fully healed. Thank God she’s right handed. It will heal just fine, so long as she gets the rest she needs. When the doctor taking care of Yelena says this, she adds a knowing look, as if she can tell Yelena will not be resting. She must work with lots of idiot heroes. 

The doctor offers Yelena a prescription of pain medication to go with her antibiotics. Ever since Bob went sober and she tried to do the same in solidarity, Yelena doesn’t trust either of them to take the pills mindfully. She’s handled her fair share of pain in the past, she can do it again. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Alexei scolds her for trying to protect a bulletproof man, as if Bob and John wouldn’t have done the same for her if their positions were reversed. For a reason she can’t quite place yet, she is deeply bothered by his worry, but she allows him to care for her regardless. When she’s allowed to leave the med bay, Alexei pampers her the way he did when she was five and broke her wrist doing gymnastics. Snacks and drinks and sweet compliments.

He’s coddling, and that bothers her, too, for that same unknown reason. Yelena is unused to this kind of attention from him; living with him in the Watchtower after a lifetime apart has come with the unfortunate bonus of him finally trying to be a father.

But he’s trying. She can give him that much credit. 

Sometimes, when she looks at him, all she sees is the man who handed her over to the Red Room without flinching. A blinding, large figure, dressed in foul red leather and boasting about how he had the highest rate of trafficking innocent little girls into The Red Room. The man oblivious to how evil his actions were. 

Other times, her view of him is rose-colored, blinded by the nostalgia of a life they will never have again. A husband. A father.

Yelena wants to hate him. She should. After what he’s done to her under Dreykov’s orders is unforgivable, even if she can set it aside in exchange for his adoration. 

Despite all of her efforts, Yelena still loves Alexei more than she hates him, and she’s unsure if the balance will ever tip in the direction it should. 

Yelena has been through so much worse than a simple grazing bullet during her time as a Widow, and he only ever praises her for those injuries. Knives and guns, nailed bats and chained nooses, eviscerations and deadly poisoned gases. She’s died and been revived, drowned and suffocated. Any way someone can be killed, she has dodged death that way. While she’s painfully human, her resilience is enough to make up for it. 

However, lately Alexei has been acting as if this life they’ve chosen—correction: the life that was chosen for her—is too dangerous for her now that they’re on the same team, infantilizing her now that he’s a regular part of her life. Yelena knows it’s because she’s not a super soldier like the rest of them and he just cared. She supposes that it’s better late than never for his parental instinct to kick in, but it feels like he’s overcompensating. 

He wasn’t there for Yelena back then; she needed him most, and then she didn’t need him at all. She still doesn’t need him now. 

She doesn’t have the heart to say that to his face.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

She can only find comfort sleeping on her right side because any other position puts pressure against her stitches and makes her wake up in agonizing cold sweats. Unfortunately, she moves a lot in her sleep, meaning Bob has to carefully turn her back onto her side every few hours. His body acts like a sturdy wall to keep her in place.

Yelena thinks it’s just his excuse to cuddle her when they sleep, though she’s not complaining. Sleep always comes easier when he’s with her. That comfortable weight against her back grounds her to the earth when she wakes up disoriented and unaware of where she is, who she is.

Sometimes, Bob talks in his sleep, murmuring right against her ear. She talks back. It’s always nonsense, but it’s a reminder that he’s there. He’s not going anywhere.

The first two days out of the med bay are a blur of being hooked to a saline solution to help her with the dizzying blood loss and sleeping off the stress of the mission. Yelena is certain that Bob doesn’t rest that entire time they’re waiting to make sure she doesn’t go into hypovolemic shock; he can’t sit still long enough to fall asleep, always pacing around her bedroom and picking at the same stack of laundry he’s folded about three times already.

Eventually, he cleans her bathroom, organizes her books, even scrubbing the baseboards when she specifically tells him to chill the fuck out. Bob runs out of things to clean, but hs always finds something new to focus on. She can’t blame him for this worried mania; she’s sure if their roles were reversed, she would be just as frantic. 

He comes up with a variety of excuses before giving up and simply telling her, “I want to be with you.”

Although he doesn’t mean it the way it sounds—the way she wants him to mean it—her heart sings at the thought. 

Bob doesn’t leave her side for days, eating and sleeping and showering in her bedroom. They are attached at the hip on a good day, and now he’s a tattoo on her side that she doesn’t regret. He’s practically moved in too, which isn’t as harrowing of a transition as she thought it’d be. 

When she convinces him to at least lie down with her in the bed at night, he rests his head on her chest, rising and falling with the tides of her breathing. It’s the only thing that calms him enough to fall asleep. Yelena wonders if he’s afraid of the moment she stops breathing; it reminds her of her fear when the alarms went off in the basement containment unit and she found him gasping for a breath that wasn’t in the room.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

While she hates to make the others worry, she also secretly enjoys the attention they give her. Bonding without effort, a temporarily bridged gap. It also means she doesn’t have to do much for a while and can boss them around with the excuse of being shot. 

John cooks for her every day leading up to when she can get her stitches removed, using the excuse of making too much food and needing someone to taste test the Southern mac and cheese he definitely didn’t make specifically for her. He’s actually a great cook; when Yelena asks how he learned to cook, he explains that his mother raised him to be a caretaker, not just another bumfuck man who’d dump all of the work on his wife.

“That’s what a real man should be,” he tells her, as if he’s teaching her some life lesson. “Someone who can provide in and out of the home. Someone you can rely on.”

“You make it sound a lot nicer than it is,” Yelena says. “I thought the South was all rednecks and racists bible thumpers.”

“It is, but not all of it. I know the South gets a bad rap, and for good reason, but we’re taught to be independent and provide for our families outside of just bein’ a breadwinner. At least, that’s how I was raised. Lots of men are coddled. I wasn’t. And I know I have my shortcomings, you don’t have to remind me.”

She snorts but doesn’t reply, lathering the inside of the cheese biscuit with butter.

“I may have been a shitty husband,” he continues, “but I would’ve been a great father.”

Before she can stop herself, she says, “You are a great father.”

The look he sends her is wounded but grateful. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Ava drops between the floors to check in on her every now and then. She paints Yelena’s nails. Kate joins them in between her own missions and gossips about what she’s overheard during her spying like they’re teenagers because neither Ava nor Yelena ever got to live that cliche teen girl movie.

Which senator is sleeping with who, family dramas within the government, Mel’s horrendous singing when she thinks she’s alone in the labs. Kate tells them about their failed attempts to recruit some kids, and how she feels like a babysitter who’s not getting paid enough.

“You don’t get paid at all,” Ava points out. “You’re not an officially recognized team yet.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know that, Danny Phantom. I’m working on it, but the paperwork is hell. Fisk is making it, like, impossible to do it. What a piece of shit.”

It’s nice to have friends. Yelena feels like she doesn’t deserve them, but she still keeps Ava and Kate as close as she can. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Because Bucky is still swallowed up by whatever congresspeople are up to, he simply sends her a text asking if she’s alive.

Yelena replies with a thumbs up.

He sends one back.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Without Yelena having to ask, Bob offers to help her shower. She tried to do it herself, but she kept forgetting she can’t wash her hair properly with one good hand. Ava helped her with her hair a few times, but she was gone on a mission, and Yelena was getting tired of feeling so gross. And she already popped open a stitch from reaching for a plate on the top shelf in the kitchen.

“Who puts them up there anyway?” she’d complained when John admonished her for not asking for help. “I’m five foot four. Put the dishes where I can reach, you fucking tree.”

Bob tapes plastic over her healing stitches, his fingertips brushing her skin every now and then like match strikes. With how deliberate each stroke is, it can’t be an accident, but she allows it. He is so gentle with her that, if Yelena didn’t know any better, she’d never suspect how much harm those hands of his could do. 

The coconut-scented water is hot, bordering on scalding, exactly as she likes it. She sits on the tub’s edge, feet dipped beneath the murky blue surface, her sweatpants rolled to the knees. Her toes curl at the tub’s bottom, kicking up bits of the beach-themed bath bomb he dropped into the water that has yet to dissolve. He’d dropped it in before they both realized that she probably couldn't soak in the tub with her stitches. Yelena isn’t much for baths, but now that she can’t do them, she wants to. 

When Yelena starts to pull her tank top off, Bob’s head turns away so quickly his neck cracks. He pushes the trucker hat on his head further down to cover his eyes, but his ears are unmistakably blushing red. She can’t help but laugh at his bashfulness. 

“You don’t need to be so shy with me, Bob,” she teases, dropping her sweatpants and underwear onto the bathroom floor. The tile feels cool against her feet. “You’ve been inside my head. More than once, if I recall. You’ve seen far worse things than me naked.”

“Yeah, and I did that without your permission,” Bob replies, voice tight and restrained. “Several times, actually. I’m working on keeping boundaries.”

“You’re so silly. Since when do we have boundaries?”

He’s blushing down to his shoulders, pretty and rose-tinted. “Fair point.”

His sleeves are rolled up to the elbows, already damp from filling the tub. He glistens with sweat from the humidity and heat building in the small bathroom. Yelena wants to ask him to take his sweater off for her own indulgence, but she bites her tongue. 

“Help. I can’t get my bra off,” she says instead.

His hands flex across her bare shoulder blades, then retreat. Bob is careful when undoing the clasps of her bra, slipping the strap from her right arm and pulling it free from the left without her having to lift her hands. Then, he runs his fingers down her back, tracing the knobs of her spine and rounding beneath her shoulder blades. She shivers. He has calluses on his palms from a lifetime of running and whatever other shit he was up to, rough and burning against her skin. 

“Is the water too cold?” he asks innocently. 

Yelena shakes her head. “It’s perfect.”

“Okay. Just checking.” Bob leans over her to grab her shampoo and conditioner. “Why do you need two different shampoos?”

“What do you mean? That’s my conditioner.” She watches him read the labels and put back the conditioner. “Oh, no. Please don’t tell me you use two-in-one.”

“Don’t judge, that’s all I could find in the men’s section,” Bob says defensively. “It was either that or the five-in-one you can use as body wash, aftershave, and deodorant. It’s shaped like a motor oil bottle. Super manly.”

She makes a face. “Boys are so gross. I need to take you shopping sometime.”

“Right, I forgot you’re the expert in soap.” When he chuckles, his laugh vibrates the air.  “But shopping sounds like fun. I mean, anything with you sounds fun.”

She can’t identify the buzz that his words make her feel.

He scoops the warm water in a cup and pours it over her head. Yelena closes her eyes, resting her back against his clothed chest as he massages the shampoo into her scalp. Bob thumbs the soap off her forehead before it drips into her eyes.

Every touch is deliberate, lulling her to the border of sleep. She bobs against him with each breath he takes, a buoy on gentle seas. When he rinses the shampoo and applies the conditioner, detangling her hair with his fingers, Yelena sinks further into his touch. 

“You’re so gentle with me,” she says, glancing up at him. He’s upside down in her vision. “Thank you. I can handle the rest on my own.”

For a moment, his eyes briefly trail to her bare chest, across her scarred and stitched stomach, down to the space between her legs. Bob’s cheek darken even further. He looks away.

“Damn, you got me wet,” he says, then groans when he realizes how his words sound. “I mean my shirt. My shirt is wet.”

“You can take it off,” Yelena suggests slyly, unable to hide her grin when he looks at her with wild eyes. “I don’t bite. And I can’t be the only naked one in here.”

Bob stiffens, pulls away. Before she can laugh it off and tell him she was joking, she looks over her shoulder to find he’s already taking it off. The muscles of his chest shift with the moment in a way that captures all of her attention. 

He’s gained a comfortable amount of weight since living with them, the lovely consequences of finally eating well and not smoking meth anymore, but she can barely notice. If anything, the addition only exemplifies the width of his shoulders, the strength of his arms, the expanse of his stomach. Instead of being malnourished, he actually looks healthy. 

His skin is a warm tone of tanned gold, wiry muscle rolling and relaxing beneath as he pulls the sweater off over his shoulders. The veins of his forearms are pronounced. A thin blanket of light-colored hair touches along his chest. It trails down the center of his abdomen, darkens and grows thicker at the loose waistband of his corduroy pants. Bob hasn’t shaved since the mission, filling out his face with the shadow of a beard. She’d never thought body hair was attractive on men, but Bob is constantly making her realize things about herself.

Yelena doesn’t try to hide her heady gaze at all. She traces him with her eyes, memorizing the rounded edges of his shoulders, the way the shadows mold over the definition of his abdomen, and she wonders if his chest is as soft as his hands. Bob self-consciously touches his cheek but keeps eye contact as if he can’t look away from her. His smile is beautiful, like stepping into sunlight after being trapped for years in the dark. 

“It’s rude to stare, you know,” he says, teasing her. 

She bites the inside of her cheek, unable to hold back her smile. “I can’t help it. You’re beautiful.”

Yelena grabs the soap bar on her shower shelf and dips it into the water, lathering her palms enough to scrub it into her skin. It’s a little harder than she thought, cleaning herself with one hand, but she thinks asking him to do it for her is going too far. She does her best.

Bob sits on the floor beside her with his back against the tub, watching her movements with wide-eyed reverence. Most times, men look at her like she’s something to be devoured. His gaze, however, is soft, as if he’s savoring every inch of her skin. When her hand dips between her legs, he lingers for a moment before turning his attention to her spine. 

“How’d you get this?” he asks, reaching up to graze a scar on her back.

Yelena twists to see which one he's speaking of. Five thin scratches below her shoulder blades. 

“A mission in São Paulo,” she replies as she cups the water to wash away the soap from her legs and stomach. “I was hopping the fence into a secure compound and got tangled in some barbed wire. It hurt so fucking bad even though they were basically like cat scratches.”

“Wait, that happened to me too.” He taps his shoulder, adorned with thin white hash marks. “Well, I was trying to break out of rehab, not in.”

She squints. “Why would you do that?”

“I wanted drugs. Addiction is a hell of a thing, Lena.” Bob touches her upper arm, where she’d been shot by Antonia. “What about this one?”

She doesn’t even need to look to know which scar he's pointing to. “Budapest. My sister and I were…”

The words turn to iron balls in her throat, and she stops speaking. Thick clouds of suds float on the surface of the water. Yelena parts them with a swish of her feet. 

Bob is quiet for a long time. Then: “You don’t mention her much. Alexei talks about her more than you do. I thought maybe you’d want to—”

“Don’t.” It comes out hostile, edged with grief. “Stop while you're ahead, Bob.”

If it was Natasha on this mission instead of Yelena, it would’ve been a rousing success. She wouldn’t have gotten shot, and she would’ve had the foresight to disassemble Ellen’s gun instead of just kicking it to the side.

Bob’s hand lands gentle over hers. “I’m asking permission this time.”

She doesn’t pull away, but no memory room manifests. Her eyes remain locked on his, watching for any signs of the Sentry or the Void. Yelena fears if she closes her eyes or looks away, she will let him in.

“These are memories I’d rather keep to myself,” she whispers.

“Okay,” he says, but he keeps their hands together. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not because of you.” 

What she doesn’t say is she doesn’t want to ruin this moment they have going on, and bringing up a dead sister tends to do that. Yelena turns away from him, and his touch vanishes for a moment. He sits on the tub edge beside her and taps a thin line on his hip, surrounded by dots from stitches. When she looks at him, she has to do a double table; she didn’t even see him take off his pants.

“I got appendicitis when I was twenty,” he says. “I was in Germany at the time. Or Austria, I don’t remember. I got lucky that they have free healthcare or else I think I would’ve died on the streets.” 

Yelena knows why he's telling her this: to distract her, yes, but to prove their trust goes both ways. He never talks about his scars with anybody else because he doesn’t let anybody else see them. The others know, vaguely, about what he’s been through, but not the way she does.

“And then there was my car accident,” he continues. “You know about those, though.”

He lifts his leg. The skin graft, that puckered skin and muscle of his calf. She can’t help herself but touch him. It feels tougher than the rest of his skin, bumpy but smooth.

“Does it hurt?” she asks.

“Sometimes. It’s kinda like an intense cramp.”

Bob takes the cup and rinses the conditioner from her hair, tugging a comb through the worst of the tangles. The water has become to temper. She washes the suds away. 

Keeping a hand on her lower back and bicep, Bob helps her rise from the water. She sits on the toilet as he dries her off, toweling her short hair and untaping her wound. 

“I have two surgery scars,” Yelena tells him as he takes a washcloth to the skin around her stitches, careful not to wet the healing scab. “One from my hysterectomy and another from when I broke my arm during an undercover mission seducing some billionaire in India. I crashed his car.”

“Did you have a lot of missions like that?” he asks. “Where you had to… sleep with these people to get information?”

He isn't jealous or bitter, like she’d thought he would, he sounds rather sad. Like her mindlessly getting her targets to bed hurts to imagine.

She shakes her head. “I never had sex with them. Kissing, groping, all over the clothes shit. Nothing real. Just enough to get them to bed and knock them unconscious. Didn’t make it any more pleasant, but at least I got to kill the creeps. The Red Room was keen on ensuring that their Widows were never put in compromising positions, and god forbid a woman actually gets touched in a pleasurable way.”

“Oh. I assumed, because of the hysterectomy, they would’ve. I dunno. Put you out there more.”

“You’d think so.” Yelena combs her hair with her fingers. “But no. It was more so a tactic to keep us from building personal connections. There is nothing scarier than a parent, after all. You should’ve seen the things my Mama did to get me to safety after we took down the Red Room.”

Melina is still alive, though Yelena doesn’t know where for her own safety. She continues to contribute to the world of science in hiding, though this time there is no chemical subjugation for female assassins or trafficking little girls to become said assassins. Yelena hasn’t thought about her in so long.

“So, are you… a virgin?” Bob asks it so casually it circles back around to being forced.

Yelena laughs. “No, Bob. I’m not. Are you?”

His face is red; she can see the pale divots of acne marks and scars along his cheeks. “No.”

“Can I ask about it?”

“Her name was Karoline Hayes. She was a redhead, very country bumpkin type. We met in the few weeks I attended high school. I promised her I’d be sober for it. We had sex in the back of her pickup truck on prom night. A snake snuck in afterwards. It was nice.”

“Mine was Kate Bishop,” Yelena adds. “We were drunk after a night of playing pool. I’d never wanted someone before that moment. I kissed her first. It was nice, too.”

“Are you—”

“I don’t know,” she says before he can finish. “I don’t like many people. But I liked her. And I like…”

I like you. 

“I don’t know,” she repeats, quieter this time. He seems to understand anyway.

Bob pulls the towel from her lap and dries off her legs. “That’s okay. You don’t need to know. Labels are kinda bullshit, anyway.”

“How so?”

“Labels are good if someone needs that comfort of knowing, or they want the community. But sometimes labels are just another way to put people into boxes. If you’re a bi woman and with a man, you’re not really bi, but if you’re bi and with a woman then you’re a lesbian in denial. Same thing with bi guys, too. It helps, but not for me.”

“Are you?” she asks.

“I’ve had my fair share of ladies. Guys. Doesn't matter what you call me, though. Labels have only ever made me feel like I had to be whatever people thought I was, so I just stopped giving it a name.”

Yelena hums in contemplation as Bob sits back to grab her dry clothes from the sink.

“That makes sense,” she says, allowing Bob to slip her underwear up her legs. He doesn’t need to do this, she can dress herself, but she wants this moment to last longer. She loves talking to him. “But for me, I’ve spent so much of my life without any identity. I want a label. I want to belong somewhere.”

“You belong here,” Bob says.

“So do you.”

After she’s dressed, Bob sits in her place on the toilet as she brushes her teeth. “So, have you found a label you like?”

“Ace,” she says through the mumble of toothpaste. She spits into the sink. “Or something like that. I don’t want sex the way most people do. Or relationships, or love or lust or anything in that realm. That doesn't mean I don’t feel it at all, but it’s just rare. I’ve only ever wanted that from, like, two people in my entire life.”

“Right, right. I get that. Drugs kinda killed my sex drive for a while, and when I’d get sober, I swear I’d pop boners like I was in middle school again.”

“Too much information, Bob.”

“Sorry.” Yelena doesn’t need to turn to him to hear the smile in his voice. “So, there’s Kate, who I get because she’s gorgeous, and… who’s this mysterious number two?”

She knows that he already knows, but Yelena wants to make him squirm some more. 

His boxer briefs look uncomfortably tight, and he’s fidgeting with energy. He looks about ready to pounce on her, and she’d let him. Yelena looks away deliberately so he can adjust himself, and briefly considers teasing him over it. 

Bob got hard just from looking at and touching her. It makes her dizzy with possibility. She wants to kiss him until he can’t breathe, reduce him to nothing but soft sounds and ecstasy.

Maybe another day, when she’s braver. 

Definitely ace, but not completely. Bob is, yet again, the exception to her body’s rules. She hopes to get him and Kate in the same room so she can inspect them properly, try to figure out what it is about them that overrides all of the walls she’s built in her mind. 

Fraternization was never explicitly banned from the team, but judging by their fucked up lineup, it didn’t need to be. Yelena is sure if Valentina found out any of them were sleeping together, she’d have them shot and buried beneath the Watchtower before they could even pull their pants back up. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know, perv?” she teases.

Bob groans, and he presses his head against her hip. “You kill me, Lena. You know that, right?”

“Speak for yourself. You do the same to me.”

Chapter Text

Bucky sleepwalks.

Yelena hadn’t noticed it earlier because he rarely spends the night in the Watchtower, opting to return to his apartment on the upper east side or stay over at Sam’s when they’re not fighting over copyright claims. When he does, however, stay overnight after their movie marathons or when he can’t be bothered to get the Underground after a long mission, Bucky will sleep in his barely touched bedroom, as desolate as the day Steve moved out of it. 

On occasion, however, he traipses the halls like a ghost, half alive and unaware of his surroundings. He doesn’t react well to others when in this state, on a similar fiendish autopilot of Yelena’s stray kitten mode where he’s bound to unknowingly attack anyone who approaches him. 

All of them do their rounds around the Watchtower for far different reasons, but it’s a blue moon event for their paths to intervene. Bob normally crawls to Yelena’s side, needing a body in the dark. Ava is normally found in her quantum chambers, writhing like a drying worm on summer concrete. They can predict her more often, as she always goes missing after a mission pushes past the limits her atoms are able to handle. 

John drinks himself away on the best of days. It’s really becoming an issue, but everyone else is not in a state of mind to bring it up without being hypocritical. Alexei is, surprisingly, the most well adjusted and sleeps through the night. Or at least he’s the only one on the team who doesn’t walk around like an insomniac freak. 

Tonight is no different, though it feels like it should be. Bob insists on not skipping the second Mission Impossible, even though he said it was the weakest in the series, because of how attractive Tom Cruise looks. They all agree wholeheartedly. It’s late when the movie finishes, and they all retire to their bedrooms soon after cleaning up. Yelena and Bob leave first, as normal, so she doesn’t see Bucky leaving. She anticipates he does anyways.

Unlike the others, Bucky has actual ties now outside of the team and doesn’t spend every waking hour with them. He has friends. Not family, not quite, but close enough. People who love him, at least. And now he has a real grown up job outside of this tall, crooked tower. A fucking Congressman, no less. 

Then there’s that situationship he has going on with Sam Wilson. Yelena envies those ties, although she will never say so to his face. Bucky fought through hell to earn this life, and she would never diminish his efforts to make himself into something that wasn’t a weapon. Whatever he has now, he deserves it. 

When Bob falls asleep beside Yelena, their backs pressed against each other and legs tangled, she expects to follow close behind, but she doesn't. Her mind is refusing to quiet down enough for her exhaustion to take hold. Thoughts flash in and out like busy bees in a hive, none sticking around long enough to even properly think.

Even on her best days, Yelena’s insomnia is a struggle. She never has slept normally, not even in the Red Room, and that is the one defining trait that they all share. Nobody endures what they have and gets out the other end without a few sleepless nights here and there. 

Since the Everglades, however, it’s gotten worse. For a mission so mundane and even boring, it haunts her. That man becoming a mindless monster they can’t find. The idea of Bob losing himself because she stupidly got shot in his defense. Guilt for something that hasn’t even happened yet.

Yelena doesn’t remember her dreams, but she doesn’t need to. That dread lingers long enough after she wakes is enough for her to know they are nightmares. Florida’s heat clings to her skin like an old memory. 

Being bedridden makes her anxious; a static itch runs just beneath the thick layers of her skin without release. She feels more useless than she normally does, watching everyone else continue life while she struggles to do menial things such as bathe on her own.

The only way she can release it is through movement. Although she has to be limiting how much she moves, Yelena would rather strain herself than stay still. 

In the deadest of dead nights, wandering the tower is akin to sneaking through the corridors of abandoned homes, the inkling of any other soul enough to make you cut and run. Yelena traces every hall, doorway, room, familiarizing herself with the spaces she can hide in, where she can see and not be seen in turn. If walking the tower becomes like muscle memory to her, perhaps she can shake the feeling that she still doesn’t belong.

Each floor of the tower is like its own separate home. Yelena doesn’t know why anybody would need so much space, even if a team of heroes were living together. Most of them are used for whatever bullshit Val has going on, but the New Avengers have little restrictions, so it doesn’t matter. They go where they want, and if she has an issue with it, then maybe she shouldn't have tricked them into becoming contracted superheroes. 

There’s an itinerary of what each floor consists of that Val made them read upon moving in, although there’s too many floors to remember them without making her rounds.

The first floor resembles a hotel lobby for whenever the public eye needs a ‘close look’ on who these New Avengers are. The next fifteen floors are glorified offices and labs.

Bob and Yelena share the twentieth floor, different rooms but a shared kitchenette and laundry room, then Ava and Bucky on the twenty-second and Alexei and John on the twenty-fourth. All of them, thank God, are ensuites. As much as she loves Bob, she hates sharing a bathroom. 

The thirtieth floor is a chef’s style kitchen, no doubt Tony Stark’s addition, with a connected open concept living room that could house a gala. It probably has. They usually convene there for meals because it has the most comfortable couches for their movie nights. It’s become the unintentional heart of the tower. 

Every couple floors there is a gym armed to the teeth with any kind of weapon and other amenities any assassin or superhero could desire. Then there’s the basement, which also acts as an indestructible room in case anyone too overpowered—The Hulk initially, and now The Sentry—gets out of hand and needs to be contained.

The twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth, and twenty-ninth floor are a connected series of labs made specifically to help Bob control his powers, and where Ava hunkers down to recalibrate her molecules when she pushes herself too hard during missions. It’s a maze, really. Yelena has walked them countless times, memorizing the corners, where to hide, where to flee. How to get Bob somewhere quiet and safe if he ever loses himself. 

Most of the other floors consist of luxuries—a sauna, massage parlor, boxing rings, a theater room, other miniature apartment complexes for the more reclusive Avengers members or their evening guests—but Yelena usually skips those and goes straight for the top floor, where a skylight shines down on the spacious, glass-windowed room and connects to the balcony.

She enjoys looking at the city below, feeling that dip in her stomach when she climbs over the barrier of the balcony and lets herself lean forward, hands gripped around the smooth, cold metal railing. Yelena hasn’t stopped jumping from tall places even though it freaked Alexei out, but she makes sure nobody sees her when she does. They have their own things to worry about outside of her needing a thrill every once in a while. 

Sometimes, she’ll allow herself freefall at midnight, pretend like she’s flying. She always has a parachute. 

Sometimes, she considers not wearing one. 

Tonight, Yelena does her routine walk, tracing the walls with the tips of her fingers, turning when they land on the smooth corners of the halls. She is tired, eyes burning and limbs heavy, but her body won’t let her rest. As she tiptoes down the hall leading to the elevator and stairwell, she encounters a shadowy figure in the corner. She tenses. 

The silhouette is familiar, tall and bullish, but it’s not until the moonlight catches on the silver-black panels of his metal arm that she makes the connection of which one of her friends it is. Yelena doesn’t relax, though, even at the familiar sight. Her skin prickles with uncertainty. 

“Barnes?” she calls out in a hushed tone.

He doesn't move a muscle. It's like he doesn’t even hear her. Bucky is standing in front of the stairwell door, facing the corner between the door and the wall. As Yelena slowly approaches Bucky, she squints her eyes to get a better look at him. 

Long, dark hair falls around his eyes, completely masked by the night. The exit light beside the elevator casted devilish shadows on his face. His metal arm whirs gently, the panels shifting and clicking like tensing muscle.

While Yelena doesn’t fully trust Bucky, she no longer fears him either, but it’s better to be cautious and wrong than complacent and dead. She knows what they did to him, better than the others. They’ve endured sister tortures. This is not something easily shaken.

“I didn’t know you were still here,” she continues, almost at a whisper, just to calm her nerves in the unsettling midnight quiet. “I thought you went home after the movie.”

Bucky still doesn’t respond, doesn’t even turn to her. She reaches out for him and hesitates. Alarm bells clang loudly in her mind. Yelena knows better than to touch him when he’s unreactive; it’s the best way to get a dagger in the throat. But his silence concerns her enough to take the risk.

He’s been deprogrammed. This isn’t The Winter Soldier. Not the way he used to be, anyway.

But, in the same way Yelena can’t outrun who she was as that deadly, silent Widow under Dreykov’s control, Bucky can’t outrun the weapon Hydra made him into. All they can do is bury in deep, deep down into their psyches and pray they never make a reappearance. 

Braving the chance, Yelena touches his shoulder and immediately catches his wrist before the blade burrows into her solar plexus. He may be quick, but they still have the same teachers. The tip of his Bowie knife touches down on the narrow space between her ribs, poking a hole into her tank top. The blade is cold. She’s lucky he hadn’t tried to stab her with his vibranium arm, or else she’d be done for.

Bucky’s eyes are half-closed, head drooping to the side like he can’t hold it up. The grey-blue of his eyes is tinted an unnerving lavender color under the exit lights. They shine like a silver blade. 

Beneath her grip, his pulse is a rapid tremble. His breathing is a smooth, slow rhythm. Yelena realizes then that he’s still asleep.

He mumbles something in Russian beneath his breath, and the words run through her blood like ice.

“Compliance is necessary. There is no other choice, not even death.”

No context is needed, but 

“Bucky.” She raises her voice, switching to Russian in an attempt to get through to him. “You’re in the Watchtower. You’re not in any danger.”

His head twitches a bit in reaction to her, or maybe the familiar language, but he doesn’t quite wake up yet. There is a glaze forming over his pale, shiny eyes. He snarls, mouth curling, and repeats those same words under his breath, hesitantly this time. As if he’s unsure of what he’s saying. 

Yelena wonders how similar the techniques they used on her to keep her compliant and controlled are to what they did to Bucky. They are sister programs, after all. But he precedes the Charlotte Serum by several decades. It must’ve been crude but powerful if, after all this time, even when he’s been deprogramed, the Winter Soldier comes to play. 

She repeats his name louder now, and she is speaking far above a whisper now. The knife in his hand is pressing harder into the divot beneath her sternum, slightly painful but barely breaking her skin.

He’s still in there. Otherwise, she’d already be dead. 

Not knowing what else to do, she starts to sing.

It’s a crude rendition of that hymn Bob sings during his panic attacks. She conjures the words from memory, so she knows they aren’t quite right, but she hopes it’s enough for him to register. Her voice is graveled from lack of use and exhaustion; it can barely be constituted as singing. 

If she’s correct about Bucky’s life before the war, however, then maybe he’ll recognize it. She remembers Natasha telling stories about their time together, how he was raised going to church but stopped after he and Steve kissed for the first time.

The thought of her sister makes Yelena’s voice crack, but she continues, reaching somewhere in her chest to find her friend. Bucky’s head twitches to the side. He closes his eyes, and she pauses, holding her breath in anticipation.

When he reopens them, the glaze fades away, the pinpricks of his pupils widening with the dark. Yelena watches recognition settle on his features like a fresh layer of snow, soft in her presence, and he drops the knife. 

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” she replies, relieved and shocked it worked. 

“You should be resting,” Bucky says, eyes darting to her stitched side. “Are you hurt?”

“You were sleepwalking.”

Bucky glances at her chest, where his blade nearly punctured her heart, and touches it gently with cold metal fingers. A pearl of blood forms where the blade just barely pierced her skin. When he looks back up at her, he has a heartbroken expression she has never seen before on his face.

To her, Bucky is what she aims to be. Everything he’s done, whether or not it was within his control, is in his past now. He’s climbed his way through hell, and he’s made himself into something worthy of being loved and looked up to. He’s not just any kind of hero; he’s a fucking Avenger.

“I hurt you,” he says, and his voice is small, higher than she’s ever heard it. 

“It’s okay.”

“I could’ve killed you, Yelena.”

“Are you questioning my abilities now, Congressman Barnes?” Yelena teases. He rolls his eyes. “I’ll have you know, I could’ve toppled the USSR over a weekend if I was so inclined. I was at the top of my class in the… The Red Room.”

Her words trail off, and she steps away from Bucky. The space between them rings with a heavy, unspoken dialogue. She wonders if he knew about it. About what they were doing to the little girls just like her. It’s not as if he could do anything to help, even if he did. He is just as much of a victim as the rest of them.

But it would make her feel better if he didn’t know a thing. 

“What’re you doing up so late?” he asks.

Grateful for the pivot, she replies, “Couldn’t sleep. I want to memorize every inch of this place. Makes me feel… I don’t know. Like I belong here.”

“You do belong here.” Bucky sounds surprised that she doesn’t believe it already. As if it’s a fundamental truth he’s always known. “I know it’s not ideal, the position Val put us in, but you’ve been doing a good job. Nat would be proud of you.”

Yelena flinches at the sound of her sister’s name, but she doesn’t run.

“Did you know her well?” she asks.

Bucky shrugs. “She was a friend. Nat was always kind to me when she visited me in Wakanda, and she joined Steve and Sam when they went to find me after Hydra fell. She didn’t need to help me, especially after everything I did to her, but she did. She never treated me like a weapon. To her I was broken, just like her. I loved her.”

“You loved her?”

“More than you know. When she died…” Bucky shakes his head. “I wasn't there. I got turned to dust, just like you did. But I still mourned her. You’re not alone in that. Or in feeling like you’re living in a home filled with ghosts.”

He says it with such kindness, familiarity. Her heart aches. Yelena wishes she knew that side of her, but life will never work out the way you want it. 

“Does it hurt any less?” she asks. “The grief?”

Bucky shakes his head. “It heals and scars, but it’ll stick with you forever.”

“It sucks.”

“It does. But that’s what it means to love somebody.”

Yelena doesn’t say anything else. She suddenly feels so tired. Bucky cranes his neck around, popping it, and turns back to the stairwell.

“You know, you remind me of her.”

She turns away so Bucky can’t see her cry. 

“I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to fall asleep now,” he continues casually, just to distract her from the falling tears staining her cheeks. “Wanna watch a movie? I found this Argento film I’ve been meaning to watch.”

Yelena sucks in a shaky breath and smiles in the dark. “As long as you don’t snore too loud.”

“Oh, I snore like a freight train.”

They grab blankets from the linen closet and stake their claim in the living room. It’s almost four in the morning; John will be up soon for his stupidly early jog, and their day will have to officially start. But it hasn’t started yet. 

Yelena doesn’t even make it ten minutes into the film before her heavy eyes finally close. She curls up against Bucky and lets herself float in the liminal space of sleep. His body is warm and solid like sun-baked earth in the heat of summer. He doesn’t seem to be one for physical affection, but he makes an exception for her. It makes her feel special. 

Bucky tucks the thin fleece blanket around her small body and curls his flesh hand into hers. As he holds her to his chest, he whispers her a final thanks into the shell of her ear.

She doesn’t hear him too well, already half-asleep, but she smiles to herself, holding his hand while she dreams of nothing at all. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

“Don’t be jealous, Bob, it was a one time thing.”

“Don’t be jealous, it’s not cute.”

Bob pouts at the glass display of pastries. “I’m not jealous. I was just worried. I woke up and you were nowhere to be found.”

“You found me. On the couch.”

“Yeah. Wrapped about Buck like a koala.”

“You are so jealous,” Yelena coos, poking his sides. “Of him. Might I remind you Barnes is three times our age. And not my type.”

“I’m not jealous,” he repeats, a smile teasing at the corners of his mouth. 

Ava speaks up from behind them in line. “Yes, you are. Now shut the fuck up and order before I find a way to kill you both.”

Yelena meets Bob’s eyes, and they both dissolve into laughter. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Yelena’s stitches finally get removed. At first, she was hoping to be immediately thrown back into the action, but according to the doctor, she needs to do six weeks of physical therapy to regain full movement of her arm before she’s mission-ready. She tries to do it on her own, even going on solo missions before she’s fully healed. But the hot streak of pain that rises up her side at the slightest lift of her arm makes her comply with the doctor’s orders.

Bob comes with her to each session. He sits with her in a spare chair, reading a book or chatting with the physical therapist, but he’s there.

She hopes he always will be. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Yelena sits up and fires two bullets into the space beside the invader’s head, making him drop the mugs in his hands. A burst of hot coffee explodes from the ceramic, which fortunately doesn’t shatter on the carpet, but it’s definitely going to stain. 

The man hisses when it splashes onto his legs. He hops from one foot to another. 

“Jesus H. Christ!” he shouts, alarmed, and he sounds far more Southern than he ever has before. “It’s me, kid!”

John. It’s not a stranger. Not an invader. It’s John. 

Yelena lowers the gun. “Walker?” Her voice sounds foreign to her ear, strangled. 

Even with a screwed-on silencer, the gunshots ringing in her ear wake her up the rest of the way. Yelena blinks. Just a second ago, she'd been in Casablanca, tracking a familiar friend through the busy Moroccan streets through the scope of her rifle. It felt real, like all her nightmares do, and like the rest that came before, it lingers for longer than it should as she blinks away sleep. Reality blurs with the edges of her memory. 

Her senses return one at a time. Vision. Hearing. Smell. Taste. Touch.

Yelena drops the gun to the floor as soon as she realizes that she’s not in any danger, though her heart takes a second to catch up with her mind’s signals. Her breathing is irregular, and every blink brings afterimages of her nightmares back to the front of her mind. 

“Holy shit.” Yelena pants, almost hyperventilating. She tugs at the collar of her shirt as if that will help her breathe. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Sorry, thought you heard me knock.” John steps around the brown puddle at his feet. Besides the strain in his voice, he looks unfazed by nearly being shot. “That was an impressive shot. Glad it was just a warning shot.”

Vision.

When she gets a good look at just how close those bullets were, she realizes the only reason she missed John was because her hands were shaking. 

Yelena stares at him as he approaches her bedside and narrows her eyes, suddenly suspicious of his appearance. He never comes into her bedroom and rarely seeks her out outside of mission briefings, movie nights, and checking in to make sure she’s taken her antibiotics.

Hearing.

“What are you doing in here?” she demands. 

 Suspicion is easier. Familiar. It keeps a comfortable distance between her and her fear long enough for her heart to stop pounding as hard as it is. If she acts as confused and scared and childish as she feels, then she’s going to start crying, and he is not the kind of person she wants to cry in front of. 

But John is full of surprises. He is kind in a way she hadn’t expected when they met. All she’d known of him was his mistakes, and she should’ve known better than to let that define how she viewed him. None of them were chosen by Val because of their virtues.

His eyes are soft when he looks at her, holding a familial yearning, as if she’s his own kid who he’s unsure how to comfort. While it softens her suspicions, she doesn’t let it show in her face. He looks away quickly, shuffling his feet.

“Well, I thought I could bring you coffee so you didn’t have to strain yourself doing it yourself since Bucky keeps putting the filters on the top shelf,” he says, gesturing to the cups on the floor. “And you’re, y’know. Short.”

She scowls, but lets him continue.

“Besides, I know you’ve been havin’ a rough time after catching that stray in the Everglades. Bob told me you haven’t been sleeping well, and I just wanted to check in on you. Make sure you were doing okay. I didn’t mean to spook you, though. I should’ve known to be more careful coming into an assassin’s bedroom.”

Unfortunately, John is right; she hasn’t been sleeping well, and apparently she’s making it everyone else’s problem.

Her insomnia began long before the Florida mission, but for some reason it has gotten so much worse since then. Yelena struggles to fall asleep on a good night, and when she does, she dreams of endless blood and smoke and death and pain. The images never stay long, but the feeling does. That bone-deep dread that has made a home in her marrow. Waking up is hellish and disorienting. She feels more exhausted in the mornings than at night. 

Smell.

Even with Bob curled up in Yelena’s bed beside her, guarding her body with his as if he can fend off the darkness alone, it takes her far too long to come down from the high of unrelenting terror. At least, when he sleeps with her, she doesn’t remember.

Except Bob had a panic attack yesterday during his lessons with Val and was sent to the med bay for monitoring, leaving her alone for once. Neither of them are coping very well, even for a night. 

There is something fundamentally wrong with her, either physically or mentally, and she hasn't quite figured it out yet. Yelena has been eating properly, she’s in the gym every day when she doesn’t have a mission, and no aliens or magical wizards have invaded New York since their induction as heroes. She takes her antibiotics when she has to, and her gunshot wound has turned into a rough but closed red line along her ribs. 

Things are going decently well in the tower. Not great, not yet. But they’re good enough that she should feel better than she does.

“Why are you bringing me coffee?” she asks, as if he hadn’t just told her. “Do you need something?”

John’s nose scrunches with distaste. “What? No. I just wanted to do something nice for you.”

“I don’t believe you. What did you break?”

His eyes roll so far back she thinks they’re going to get stuck. “We don’t all have ulterior motives, Belova. Like it or not, but we're teammates now, and that means I care about you. And sometimes I like to do nice things for my teammates without expecting them to do something in return. I don’t see why I should be shot for it.”

 Taste. 

Yelena looks down at her shaking hands. “Right.”

Softer this time, John adds, “You can always talk to me if you want. It doesn’t even have to be me, it can be anyone else. Just talk to someone. Nobody expects you to be at a hundred percent yet, even if you keep pretending you are. You’re not a solo assassin anymore. You can trust us.”

Yelena has the odd urge to ask him for a hug, like a child seeking comfort in a parent. Instead, she pulls herself from bed, grabs her towel from her laundry basket, and drops it over the spilled coffee. It’s definitely going to stain the carpet, but she couldn’t care less. 

She grabs John’s hands and searches him for burn marks. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“Don’t worry about me, it’s gonna take more than a little spilled coffee to take me out. I was Captain America, y’know.”

“Yeah, for like, a day.”

“Semantics.”

John leans his head down to get a proper look at her face. His eyes are blue, lighter than Bob’s, darker than Bucky’s. The color of a cloudless sky, soft and surrounding. Yelena never looked close enough to notice. How many people on this fucking team have blue eyes?

Whatever he sees in her face seems to make him sad. She looks away. “Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry I shot at you,” she says instead of answering.

“It’s alright.”

“I could’ve killed you.”

“Yeah, well.” He shrugs. “You didn’t.”

“Why are you being nice to me?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? We’re friends, aren’t we?”

She huffs. “No, we’re not, Walker. We’re barely coworkers, and even that was an accident. Three months ago we were all trying to kill each other.”

He looks at her with raised eyebrows, surprised but not angry. “Ouch. And here I thought we were making progress.”

There is no more animosity in her voice. Yelena looks down at her bare feet. When she speaks again, she sounds like a little girl.

“I don’t mean that. I’m sorry.” 

She thinks she’s crying, but she hopes he can’t see it. Yelena has cried more living in the Watchtower than she has in her whole life. 

“I’m not angry at you, Yelena,” he says.

His voice is gentle, concerned. For her. He reminds Yelena of Alexei sometimes, when he speaks like this. A real father. Someone who’s screwed up but is trying.

He rests his shoulders on her shoulder, heavy and grounding, reminding her that she’s standing. “I know you aren’t.”

So why is she crying?

John pulls her into his chest, warm arms winding around her. She feels so small against him. Yelena doesn’t lift her arms to hug him back, but John doesn’t seem to mind. He smells like newly oiled leather and breakfast foods. 

Touch.

“Are you feeling better?” he asks, rubbing her back.

She shakes her head.

“Do you want breakfast?”

She nods.

“I’ve got another pot of coffee brewing and Bob put some buttermilk biscuits in the oven. You’ve never had a proper Southern biscuit, have you? I grew up eating those. You’re gonna love ‘em.”

Yelena doesn’t see him as a father figure; she doesn’t even see the man who raised her as one. She has outgrown the need for one. But John could be something that she needs.

He could be a friend.

Yelena doesn’t trust herself to speak. There are tears collecting in the back of her throat, and if she opens her mouth, she's going to embarrass herself. She’s barely breathing normally. John doesn’t push her to respond. 

“Take your time, Yelena,” he murmurs gently, hands still soothing her taut spine, and it makes her think that maybe he’s a better father than she gave him credit for. “We don’t have to go out there right now. You can give yourself a moment. I know those nightmares aren’t too easy to shake. Just keep breathin’ for me, alright?”

She presses her face into his chest, shuddering as she reminds herself how to breathe. John holds her tighter. In that moment, he feels like the only thing holding her together. 

Finally, Yelena hugs him back.

Chapter Text

Yelena realized a long time ago that her fatal flaw is being too honest for her own good. She rediscovers this about herself every time she tries and fails to lie to Bob. There is something about him that makes it so she can never keep the truth from him, even if it hurts them. Even if she loses her own sense of control because of what she confesses. 

With Kate, her only real relationship that she can use as comparison, lots of things were unspoken and understood but still complicated. They didn’t fight, but their lives were taking them in very different directions, and neither of them could stop it from happening. Their break up was more so an acceptance of the paths they were walking, even if they wouldn't be able to walk them together. 

(Yelena still cried. Not in front of Kate, not in front of anyone. But she still cried.)

But when Bob asks Yelena a question, she always answers without hesitation, and he grants her the same courtesy with little reservations. It’s simple to be with him. They’re on the same team, and their lives are so entangled that she doesn’t see them walking away from each other any time soon. Things have never come so easily with someone before. 

Unfortunately, she knows that things aren’t going to stay simple forever. No, the universe won’t even grant her that. 

Since the ‘successful outcome’ of their Everglades Mission (read: Bob didn’t accidentally send the citizens of the city into the fucking shadow realm because Yelena was lucky enough not to bleed out in the back of their armored truck) Val has begun to push harder on Bob’s progress into becoming The Sentry again. Beforehand, he was doing so well maintaining control under stressful circumstances, but it doesn’t seem fast enough for her anymore.

Val makes him practice for longer hours, lift heavier objects, heat metals with higher melting points until they’re golden puddles burning through the floor. The constant pressure stresses him out, exhausts him so much he shorts out the power. 

The worst part is he does it with ease. 

They’re all lucky Bob can handle what Val throws at him, even if they grimace every time he uses his super speed down the halls to prove to himself that he can. Yelena is as proud as she is terrified of his progress. He has come a long way from his first bout with delusional godhood and the subsequent crash. Or his second, they’re still not sure. Val has yet to tell them what happened during his first tests in the Sentry Project, and all the tapes were destroyed in the vault with the rest of the evidence. 

While nothing has gone wrong yet, a relapse feels inevitable. As easy as it would be to shelter him, keep him away from anything that might stress him enough to blow, their efforts would be impossible considering his mind is his greatest enemy. 

They agree on one condition: he is never to be alone with her during his training. Val insists that Bob is in control enough of himself to work on strengthening his powers without parental supervision from his teammates.

That does not fly at all with them. The idea of him alone in a room with that witch of a woman makes everybody nervous, Bob most of all. 

All of the New Avengers silently take turns staying with him ever since he blew up their water heater because he got stressed out over becoming The Void again. One of them was always home from a mission when his routine practices came around.

Like everyone else who has had the displeasure of knowing her, Bob doesn’t like to be alone with Val for any length of time. He’s self aware enough to recognize how good she is at digging under his skin and getting him to do what she wants. Although he knows her gambit and distrusts her nearly as much as the others do—hopefully more, considering what she’s done to him—Yelena believes he will always look for approval in everyone around him, even if they’re the wrong people to look to. While he’s made great progress in the past few months, Val is as cunning and manipulative as ever. Bob is not easily trusting, but when he is so eager to please, even if it’s at his own expense.

So, Yelena stands obediently at his side in the twelfth floor laboratory that was once a greenhouse, all glass walls and metal seams, the warmer of the floors. She has planted herself firmly between Bob and Val, a very small but very violent guard dog. Yelena is unsure if her presence makes using his powers any easier, but he’s doing well enough with her there. Some might say too well.

She watches in unmasked horror as he easily lifts a table with his mind. It only took him one try this time. The metal table travels up with a quick jolt, bounces against the ceiling like Bob hadn’t meant for it to go so high so fast, then floats a few feet above their heads. He twirls it with a bit of a flourish.

Slowly, without even having to be told, the rest of the furniture in the lab begins to shift, and rise an inch or two off the linoleum. Just enough to prove that he can. The medical cabinets tremble with effort, making the glass beakers and metal equipment clatter inside their casings. Mel yelps as she’s lifted up as well, clinging to the chair she’d been sitting in.

Cowering behind their equipment, Val’s scientists exchange nervous looks. Yelena wonders if they’d been there when he was first turned into The Sentry, if they truly know what he's capable of when he’s not holding back. 

The monitors behind them say his heart rate hasn’t quickened a single beat. He is calm, confident in his abilities. The temperature in the room only rises two degrees. His brain waves remain heightened, erratic black lines scrawled onto paper, but they are always like that.

Yelena’s heart, on the other hand, is warring with her mind on what she should be feeling.

Is it pride? Is it terror? She remains unsure.

Lately, his powers have come to him like second nature. Bob has been practicing for a reason, after all, using his abilities around the tower in minute but simple ways. He warms his coffee with the flow of his palms or stops baseballs midair when they’re being shot from their practice cannon in the gym. There was a time during a boxing match that he accidentally tossed Bucky through the concrete wall and subsequently passed out from the panic and strength. 

But now, Bob doesn’t even break a sweat. 

Val’s mouth twists into a cunning smile, the cat with the canary between its teeth, and nods approvingly.

“Good job, Robert,” she purrs with praise, which makes Yelena’s skin crawl. “You’re improving so well. Don’t you think, Miss Belova?”

She glances pointedly at Yelena, who has yet to look away from the floating furniture. 

This small display of his power isn’t what scares Yelena. He’s done much larger and scarier things with less control. Even in the Void, she didn’t fear what he could do because her focus was on him, helping him. Saving him. She knew it wasn’t entirely his fault, not after being manipulated by Val and then discarded like he was trash with the flip of the kill switch. 

Once, he sneezed and froze the entire gym floor to the point that they used it as an ice rink. Compared to what he did to the city, Bob lifting furniture is nothing.

What truly scares her is the look in his eyes, as if he’s discovering himself all over again, without the reminder of what happens when he loses control. An ecstasy that rivals the allure of drugs. That frenzied joy that bordered on dangerous when left unchecked.

A ring of gold overwhelms Bob’s cobalt-black irises as he bends the table legs inward, crumpling like they’re paper straws. The Sentry swallows up what is familiar in his face, the soft edges of his jaw, the exhaustion beneath his eyes that has become another feature of his.

Bob looks at Yelena for approval, the way he always does when he connects a punch during a practice fight or when he rests his head in her lap during movie nights. He has a soft and proud grin across his face, the air around his raised hand twinkling with self-produced sunlight.

While she has been trained to lie, and she can do it well, it comes less naturally since her escape from Dreykov’s control. There are less reasons to lie. But sometimes, she wishes she wasn’t so honest.

Yelena wants so fucking badly to be encouraging about his progress because she knows he needs it, but she can’t. Her eyes hide nothing of what she’s feeling.

She understands The Sentry and The Void are still Bob—distinguishing them from one another is a useless task. While she’s at it, she might as well pretend the Widow who killed Oksana was a completely different woman from the one who’s now posing for Cheerio boxes. But she finds it easier to pretend that the man she cares so deeply for is a separate person from the man who attacked her and her team the moment he got a taste of power.

Yelena is not afraid of him. Not the Sentry nor The Void. No, she’s afraid of what he could be. That weapon Val was close to molding him into, who nervously but rapidly took down an entire team of superpowered soldiers without so much as earning a scratch in return. 

He is malleable and easily convinced when at the peak of his mania, like the curve of a river building pressure behind a fragile dam. It’s still Bob, but with the worst of him amplified. 

Valentina still has a few burrs of influence sticking to his skin, and Bob is doing little to push back against her. Progress is not linear and has its backslides.

His backslides just happen to send New York into endless darkness. 

He must see the terror written nakedly across Yelena’s face, because any semblance of excitement drains from his face. Never looking away from her, Bob lowers his hand to his side. The table cracks in half and unceremoniously thuds back to the floor, leaving a dent where it lands. The rest of the furniture falls with it. Yelena flinches, and he grabs her hand.

There is no memory room, no shroud of shadow. But the glow hasn’t let his eyes yet. She always thought his eyes were beautiful, even now. 

Valentina clicks her tongue in disapproval. 

“Miss Belova, would you be so kind as to leave the room for a moment?” she asks with a fake diplomatic smile.

Yelena smiles back, just as fake and just as bitter. “Not a chance, Valentina.”

“I want her to stay.” Bob says it as a statement, but it sounds more like he’s asking Val for permission. Yelena doesn’t like that.

“You’re impeding his progress,” Val continues without paying him any mind. 

“You’re pushing him too hard.”

Bob grunts. “I feel fine.”

Neither woman seems to hear him, though, too focused on their argument to notice how the table has begun to float again.

“Do you really think so little of him that he can’t make his own choices?” Val coos. “That’s not very team leader of you.”

Yelena’s free hand twitches instinctively towards her Widow Bites. Oh, how she wants to smack the white out of Val’s hair. She is one snarky comment away from doing so, but she keeps her bloodlust at bay for now.

“Oh, I trust him completely. It’s you I don’t trust.”

Their argument turns into loosely coated insults about each other’s character, and eventually into borderline yelling. Yelena keeps her voice as steady as she can manage, but everything about Val makes her blind with fury. She’s still holding Bob’s hand. His grip on her has only grown tighter. 

“Glad to see you’re just as forthcoming as before,” Val says. “How’s that front-facing role suiting you, when you’re not getting shot at trying to protect a bulletproof man?”

“Aw, fuck you very much for your concern, Valentina,” Yelena says with a false sweetness that makes Val’s cheeks flare red with anger. She flips her the bird for added disrespect. “You’d be rightfully rotting in a federal prison cell without us keeping up your facade. The only reason I’m here is to make sure you don’t take advantage of him like you always do.”

“Okay, enough. Both of you,” Bob says shakily, the color leaving his cheeks. “I’m an adult, I can decide for myself what I can or can’t do.” His words must’ve been sharper than he intended, because his next words are a balm directed towards Yelena. “I’m okay. Trust me. I can do this.”

One of the scientists presents them with a filled kettle on the floor then scurries away behind his observation deck. Bob looks down at their clasped hands, but Yelena doesn’t want to let go. He doesn’t seem to want to, either.

The kettle begins to whistle fervently, like a warning siren. Its lid pops off, allowing a plume of steam to explode outwar. He hasn’t lifted his hands. Bob isn’t even looking at the kettle but at her with knitted brows and a childlike pout. His eyes are glowing.

Without looking away from Yelena, he asks, “Are you scared of me?”

For the first time since they’ve met, Yelena isn’t sure what the answer is. A cold sense of abjection trickles down the back of her neck like ice water. Bob must see it in her eyes. He doesn’t just look sad, but deflated.

She squeezes his hand as reassurance. It doesn’t matter if she’s afraid or not; what matters is she’s not going anywhere. Yelena will never abandon him. In a world of improbabilities and cosmic uncertainties, she is certain of this. 

The kettle audibly crunches, plastic and metal bending in on itself like someone is crumpling paper into a ball. Above them, the lights flicker once, twice, then go out completely. It takes a moment for the emergency lights to come on, casting them in hellish red.

The air vibrates with a deep hum, like the deepest chord being plucked on a guitar string. Val steps towards Bob, asking him to take a breath and if he needs a break, but Yelena guards him with her body.

“You don’t get to touch him,” she hisses.

“I’m just trying to help.”

“Help yourself, maybe. But not at his expense.”

Yelena turns to catch Bob before his eyes are finished rolling back into his skull. The lights return. His body folds over her. He is so much heavier than she thought, as if he's made of tungsten metal. She struggles to keep him upright, and Val doesn’t help her at all. 

“I’ve got you, angel,” Yelena murmurs to him, her arms wrapping around his waist. 

“Look what you did,” Val says accusingly. “We were finally getting somewhere, too, but here you are ruining his progress.”

Yelena grits her teeth but says nothing in response. Her focus is now entirely back on Bob, whose fainting spell is luckily only brief this time. His eyes are already fluttering back open. She keeps her hands locked on the base of his bony spine. All of her strength is used in making sure his descent to the laboratory floor is smooth and painless. 

They don’t know the cause of his fainting spells yet, as they only occur half of the time when he uses his powers, and only ever inside the lab. Bucky believes it’s the pressure of performance and using too much power too quickly, like short circuiting a power socket, but Valentina insists it’s nothing but his body still getting used to the Sentry Serum. 

“You think you’re helping him by coddling him this way, but you’re not. You’re going to be the reason he loses control,” Val continues speaking, plucking invisible lint from the front of her pencil skirt.

“Fuck you,” Yelena spits. “I’m not coddling him. I’m protecting him.”

“Oh, really? Who needs protection from who? Him from me?”

“Exactly.”

Val barks out a sound that would be a laugh from someone less evil. “Please, don’t make me laugh. Robert is a grown man, Yelena, not some wounded little bird for you to nurse back to health and keep in a shoebox under your bed.”

“I know that,” Yelena argues, but her words are bulldozed through as Val continues her little speech.

“He’s a mentally unstable Florida-trash junkie who has a juvenile record long enough to fill a phonebook. You’ve read his file—he’s done more drugs than you’ve ever heard of. Robert is a big boy, he can make his own decisions. If you keep trying to protect him from everything you see as a threat, then you’re just hurting him in the long run. He'd be better off if you stayed away from him.”

She retorts, “Protecting him isn’t the same as coddling. I’ll always protect him, especially from venomous, soul-sucking bitches like you.”

“I don’t give a shit if you don’t trust me,” Val snaps. “You don’t have to. Trust me, I could care less about what you think about me. But I see how you two look at each other. You care so much for him, and we all know how he feels about you. That love is what makes you afraid. It makes you soft, and that is going to lead to something disastrous if you don’t nip it in the bud now, for both of your sakes.”

Yelena growls, actually growls like some kind of wild animal, but she doesn’t say a word. She hates that Valentina is right.

“Don’t forget that he doesn’t need protection from the world,” she adds before turning away. “The world needs protection from him.”

How silly for Yelena to forget something so easy to remember about him; Bob is still The Sentry. 

He is not all soft edges and kind gestures; there is so much more to him than that nervous man who does the dishes in his free time and cooks for the team when they return from missions because he needs to feel useful. Despite how Yelena views him, as this beautiful, rose-tinted figure in her life tinted by her own adoration, it slips her mind that he is just as broken and rotten as the rest of them.

He’s stolen from and hurt his family, done drugs since he was in middle school and went to juvie for fighting, and he can handle his liquor far better than she ever could. On the few occasions that he was well and truly sober, he sold his own blood to buy drugs and traveled the world by himself. Whatever money was left was used in back alleys, shaky hands exchanging with shaky hands. 

Bob nearly killed his father in self-defense when he was only fifteen. He collects pocket dragon figurines that remind him of his mother and reads sad books with happy endings and punches holes through boxing gloves when John taunts him in the gym and smokes cigarettes to curb his cravings so often that he practically sweats nicotine. He tries to cut himself on his bad days because he knows his impenetrable skin has some give when he’s sad, and he threw himself off a bridge just days after promising Yelena that he was doing better. 

While Yelena is nowhere near being perfect, neither is he. He is a walking dichotomy. His ledger is stained, blackened by pain and mistakes from his past. She just can’t help but focus on how lovely he is, the warmth he makes her feel when he’s near. How pretty he is when he’s concentrating on reading, the pride that flushes his cheeks from ear to ear after an afternoon in the kitchen. The way his jaw shifts around a cigarette. 

Pretending that he’s flawless is about as helpful as Valentina’s effort as inflating his ego to a detrimental degree. Maybe they have gotten too close. Maybe Yelena needs to let the reins loose. 

Maybe she was never meant to have him for herself. 

As Valentina exits the laboratory with Mel hot on her heels, the fog in Bob’s eyes fades. Clarity returns, and Bob blinks up at Yelena with a wide smile, as if he’s seeing her for the first time. His forehead is slick with sweat.

Her panic ebbs away seeing him returning to consciousness, weak and sluggish. She wipes his sweat away and lets her touch linger on his cheek. He naturally runs hot; the serum only made his resting body temperature even higher. It makes a great excuse to curl into him on cold nights, stealing his heat for herself. After every training session, he burns like a dying fireplace for hours after. That is normal for her to feel, the heat wafting off his skin and soaking into her palms. 

The red of his cheeks makes the frostbite marks on his cheekbones and the scar that runs just under his right eye pale in comparison. She touches them. His eyelashes tickle her skin.

He is hers. That is such a delusional, dangerous thought, but she thinks it anyway. Bob is Yelena’s, nobody else’s and that is all that matters. They are not friends, not lovers, not teammates. Something invisible and bonding, like their very souls have begun to melt together. He is hers, and she is his. 

Valentina’s words ring in her ears as Bob slowly recenters himself. 

He isn’t the one who needs protection from the world. The world needs protection from him.

Truths, she decides, are so much harder to accept than sweet lies. She would rather be lied to than reminded constantly how dangerous Bob is. Yelena doesn’t care. The Sentry doesn’t scare her. The Void doesn’t either. Even if loving him destroys her, even if she burns up like a falling star from her proximity to the sun, at least she will die happy.

But his eyes—

His eyes are still glowing. 

And that is terrifying to her. 

“There you are, angel,” she whispers.

Bob closes his eyes and hums at the nickname. “Angel, huh? Is it ‘cause of the glowing?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s cute. I like it.”

“You did so well today,” Yelena tells him, and she’s not really sure who she’s trying to reassure. “Val seemed impressed.”

“I’m not doing it for her, Lena,” Bob says, because he can read her mind like no other. “I don’t think I ever was.”

There is so much packed into that quiet confirmation. Even though she already knew this, how far she’s cemented herself into his heart, it’s still nice to hear. And that only amplifies her regret further. 

Yelena smiles down at him, smoothing his hair back out of his sweaty face. Something warm and fond settles in her gut when she looks at him, familiar and yet new. She only ever associated this feeling with the nights she spends with Kate Bishop.

“I know.”

She doesn’t fear The Sentry. She doesn’t fear The Void. But maybe she fears the whole of those pieces, the fuse and the gunpowder existing in this hot mess of a man she loves. 

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t want to know. Yelena would rather be oblivious to her own feelings, allow herself to live in this realm of could-be’s for a little while longer. Because even if she were afraid of him, it would never be enough to counteract her love. 

Concern flashes across Bob’s eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

When he lifts a hand to touch her cheek, his fingers come away wet. 

“Then why are you crying?”

The only thing Yelena can do is shake her head, because if she opens her mouth all that will come out is the truth. And she is beginning to realize that lying is a softer balm than honesty. She presses into his touch and kisses him. He smells like ozone and summer-baked earth.

“It’s nothing,” she repeats when she finds her voice again. It feels so wrong to lie to him. 

Bob’s frown is brief, but she sees it. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Yelena helps him to his feet. Bob drapes his body over hers like a blanket. She lets him, even if she struggles to hold him up during their trip back to their floor. When he pulls away to sit on the floor of the elevator, she misses the heat of his body immediately. 

Bob sleepily asks if they can get ice cream. “My mom would always take me to get ice cream after a doctor’s appointment because I was always scared .”

“We can buy some pints of Ben and Jerry’s and watch a movie in the living room,” Yelena says, punching the button to the ground floor. She hates how big this building is. “How does that sound?”

“Like a good time.”

She sits beside him. Bob rests his head on her shoulder as they begin to descend, the neon numbers flicking slowly, monotonously. It feels like a countdown. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

They’re rewatching the first Mission Impossible movie in his bedroom. It’s his favorite, but he isn't watching, paying more attention to the self-help book in his lap than the television. Yelena is reading vaguely over his shoulder, too distracted by her own thoughts to properly comment on either.

Even so, Bob sprinkles in comments without ever lifting his eyes off the page. He’s watched this movie so many times that it’s like second nature to him, even when his attention lies elsewhere. Yelena is lying under the sheets with him, arms tucked into his side, her cold feet nudging his in search of heat. She doesn’t particularly care for spy movies, after living them in her real life, but his enthusiasm for the franchise is infectious.

There is something sacred about these moments they share, an exchange of looks only the two of them will understand. Secret jokes, memorized habits. Exchanging smokes while pretending not to be highly aware that their mouths are wrapped around the same cigarette filter. Sleeping in each other’s bed, knowing they will always be welcome.

Manufactured domesticity. They’ve tamed themselves for one another. 

He is pretty in the moonlight. The silver rays catch his hair and turn it a shade like steel. She runs her hands through it, petting through the blond-brown strands that haven’t quite grown out yet. When it’s not gelled back like he’s some James Bond villain, Yelena secretly likes the blond on him. It softens him, makes him angelic.

But it also reminds her that their time together is limited.

The blond hair is a symbol of The Sentry, a piece of him he will never be able to get rid of now that he’s become him. There is no reversing what has been done to him, no healing what isn’t broken but utterly changed.

Bob is The Sentry the same way she is the newly branded White Widow. It is a piece of him, an important piece yes, but not the whole picture. More of a mask than a separate person.

No, not quite a mask. A piece of armor. The Sentry is what he hopes to become. Someone important. Someone needed. She knows this feeling all too well.

Bob is The Void the way Yelena was a Red Room Widow, the darkness within him concentrated into one mindless and hopeless creature. They cannot run from it, and embracing it is a delicate embrace because holding on too tight is just as dangerous.

She is not scared of him in these ways. She can’t be. Being afraid of him means she can’t love him. That is what she was taught in The Red Room, and this was only reinforced afterwards when she learned to become her own person.

Fear and love are opposites; one can’t exist where the other lives. 

One day, Bob will outgrow their sparring sessions, he will outgrow the nightmares that make him seek her out at night. He will outgrow her. Yelena is nothing if not useful, and he is the only one in this wretched world who actually needs her. When he no longer needs her, she doesn’t know what she will do with herself.

But that is, hopefully, far into the distant future. 

She wants to keep him for herself. At least for a little longer. Because she knows when she lets him go, that is it. Yelena will never have this time back. When he leaves her, and he will because everyone always leaves her, then she will have to reckon with being alone again.

He smells like her honeycomb body wash and a lingering air of sweat. She tucks her face against the slope of his throat, her hand lying flat against his chest to memorize the patterns of his breathing. Without looking away from his book. Bob wraps his free arm to draw her in as close as two people can be. He traces his fingers around the wound along her ribs, the stitches may have been removed but the flesh is still tender. She is surrounded by the heat of his body and the smell of him on the sheets. 

They still seek each other out even when there is no trouble to run from. Yelena doesn’t want to imagine the day where they no longer do. 

The Red Room forbade selfish behaviors. This is just her making up for lost time, indulging as much into her own desires as she can before she is finally satisfied for a lifetime.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Bob’s eyes glow in his sleep. The light is dim, a sliver of gold escaping from beneath his twitchy lids, but it is still there. 

She’s beginning to think she really is afraid of him.

Chapter Text

Yelena grabs Bob’s hand where it rests against her ass, twists his wrist to his back until he taps out, and pushes him away. Bob groans in pain when she releases him. He rubs his wrist dramatically, even though they both know he barely felt it. 

“Too slow.”

“I thought that was a good take,” he says. 

She pulls the tracker, small and round and the size of a dime, from her back pocket and tosses it to him. He easily catches him. “I had time to turn around and disarm you. You’re still too slow.”

With a grunt, Bob walks to his starting point. “I doubt my target is going to be as fast as you.”

“Never underestimate your opponent,” she chastises sweetly, “especially when that opponent is me. Now, let’s run through it again.”

Yelena reorients herself where she was standing, pretending like she’s browsing their decoy rack of books, her back facing him. She strains her ears, listening for even the slightest rustle of his clothes, those quiet steps that will become completely silent with more practice.

“I feel like I’m Simon Pegg, stealing diamonds,” he grumbles, and Yelena cracks a grin.

“This isn’t Mission Impossible. This is the real world.”

“I know. But at least Mission Impossible comes with cool spy shit and not world destroying robots falling from the sky.”

They’ve been working on his sleight of hand since Yelena’s not quite fully recovered yet from being shot to be a proper sparring partner. Although Bob reassures her by saying John has picked up his training while she’s recovering, that makes her even more anxious in a way she cannot fully comprehend. 

Yelena refuses to be bedridden any longer. It will drive her crazy being cooped up in that lonely room of hers, and that will do nobody any good. Besides, this way she remains useful. She still provides something new to the team for a little while longer until she has given them all she has to offer. 

John and Alexei may have super strength, Ava’s a master spy, and Bucky’s good at just about everything, but Yelena has this. A practiced slyness to her. An inherent cunning. This is something that can’t be powered or enhanced with serums; it can only be taught.

Yelena has Bob do various different tasks just so, no matter what kind of mission Val will inevitably throw at him before he’s ready, he will have the skills to succeed. Routine will become comfort, and even under new and scary circumstances, that familiarity in form and skill will ground him.

Because as much as she yearns to, Yelena won’t always be there. 

So, she doubles down. They slip trackers into pockets and bombs into purses, steal a mark’s package in a crowd with a shoulder bump and batting of eyelashes, needle someone so quick they don’t even realize what’s happened until the poison kicks in. 

He approaches, silent but too quick. The air shifts around her and alerts her of his presence. Yelena spins and snatches the tracker from his fingers before it even lands at the hem of her pocket, “Too fast. I could feel your approach.”

Bob groans, clearly frustrated, but they start again. Planting trackers is the easiest trick, and he’s doing well, but Yelena won’t stop until he has it down perfectly. He needs to be ready. 

“Good job,” she tells him when Bob manages to slip the tracker into her pocket without her realizing until he begins to back off.  “Make sure you don’t hesitate on the approach or when leaving. These people aren’t civilians—they’re trained hostiles who will no doubt be armed. If they see anyone suspicious, then our jobs get a whole lot harder.”

As bothered as he looks from the mind-numbing repetition, being forced to do the same thing over and over again until it’s absolutely perfect, Bob perks up at her mild praise.

“I think my hands are just too big for this.”

Before she can stop herself, Yelena glances down at his hands, wide and well-worked like a farmer’s. The tendons along the back of his hands are tense, veins pronounced beneath his tan skin. Ava painted his nails black, and it’s begun to chip from his nervous picking. She is tempted to grab his thick fingers and feel for herself just how big they are, compare their hand sizes like two horny teens in a romcom, but she is mission oriented. 

Yelena pulls out a cigarette from her carton—they're not even her cigarettes, they’re his that she always seems to carry—and holds it up for him to see. “This time, I want you to take this match from my pocket, replace it with the tracker, and get back to your original position without me noticing. Got it?”

 With a nod, Bob walks backwards to his starting point again.

“When you told me you were gonna be teaching me sleight of hand, I was kind of imagining close up magic,” he says. “Y’know, making playing cards disappear in the air or stealing a rolex off of someone’s wrist. God knows I could’ve used that when I was living in Los Angeles.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to use all these skills for evil, Bob,” she replies as she turns her back.

“Nah, but it’d be fun to do some card tricks. Do you know any?”

“Unfortunately, the Red Room only taught us valuable life skills. But I can teach you how to steal a rolex. It’s actually quite easy.”

She pauses, waiting for his response, but all she hears is a whisper of air, rushing to her and away. Yelena pats her pocket. The cigarette is gone, and the tracker is in its place. Bob did it without her even feeling his touch.

When she turns, she finds Bob standing right where he started. His hair is vaguely disheveled. The cigarette is tucked behind his ear. He’s got that wide, toothy grin plastered across his pretty face, one so close to Val’s when she gets what she wants.

The cat with the canary.

His eyes are no longer blue but colored by sunlight. They glitter like gold nuggets in a riverbank, and she has begun to dread that look in his eyes. Nothing good comes when he looks like that. 

Yelena pulls the tracker out and holds it out accusingly. “Cheater.” 

His grin softens, then drops completely. “But I did it. You didn’t even feel it, did you?”

“I said we’re doing this without powers, which means no super speed. We do this the vanilla way or we don’t do it at all.”

“Why?” he questions, throwing his hands up in the air like a frustrated child. “What’s the point of having these powers if I can’t use them while we practice? I can control them, Lena, I can. You’ve seen me do it. And I have to use them more often to get better, whether you like it or not.”

“It’s not that I don’t like it—”

“Are you sure? Because it feels like every time I use them, you get scared.”

She clenches her jaw and takes a step towards him. He doesn’t back down.

“They’re not going to magically make things easy for you when you’re out on your own,” she says, thrusting a finger into his chest. “Your powers are tools to use, and you can’t rely solely on them to be successful. You have to rely on yourself too.”

“Right, because junkies are so reliable.”

“You know what I mean. Things go wrong on missions all the time, or did you already forget Florida?”

He rolls his eyes. “No, I haven’t, but I didn’t ask you to go all self-sacrificial on me. It’s not my fault you tried to take a bullet for the guy who’s fucking bulletproof. Nothing can hurt me. You’re the master assassin, the top Widow in her graduating class. I’m just a fucking guy. You’re the one who should've known better.”

Yelena doesn’t hide how wounded she is. A small noise escapes her before she can catch it, a hiccuped breath that betrays her. Regret flashes in Bob’s eyes as soon as he says it, but that doesn’t stop her from responding as quickly as lightning. 

“Tell me this, Robert.” He flinches at his full name on her lips, mockingly. “If you’re out on a mission by yourself and someone ends up matching you in strength, and you can’t rely on that alone anymore, how the hell are you going to stop him then if you don’t take these lessons seriously? What is going to save you if not yourself?”

“Nobody can match me in strength,” he says. 

“Not yet. But you saw what that serum did to Ted Sallis. For every Steve Rogers, there are a thousand Ted Sallises. One of these days, being the Sentry won’t be the world’s most powerful hero anymore.”

“I’m doing my best here.”

“It’s not enough.”

Bob scoffs. “This is just a training session, give me a break.”

“I can’t.”

“I don’t understand why you’re being so paranoid about this, as if I’m going be sent to the fucking trenches in the morning. I won’t be going on a group mission any time soon, let alone a solo one. What are you so afraid of?”

“You.”

The word slips out like an eel, slippery and charged with something dangerous. Yelena slaps her hand over her mouth so quickly she slams her lips into her teeth, tasting blood. Bob’s eyes flicker wide with surprise, as do the lights above, but he doesn’t react more than that. 

“You’re afraid… of me?” His voice is weak, afraid. 

She doesn’t take it back, doesn’t apologize, even though she should. But she promised that she would always be honest with him. 

After a moment of staring at one another, Bob straightens his back and lifts his chin, revealing his full height to her. He always slumps his shoulders forward, head down, shrinking in on his own body to make himself as small and unintimidating as possible. When he gets like this, manic and delusional and a little assholeish, Yelena can always tell because of his newly fixed posture.

The glow in his eyes grows with every second that passes. Yelena’s eyes dart behind him to the exit, then back to his face. 

“Good,” he says, his voice slow and laced with cruelty. It sounds… wrong. A little too uncertain. Not quite how she remembers The Sentry sounding. “You should be scared of me. I’m unstoppable, remember?”

This isn’t just Bob anymore. Yelena’s fingers itch for her Widow Bites sitting on the table behind her, even though she knows it won’t do anything but piss him off.

Unfortunately, her mouth is also her most dangerous weapon. 

“Not yet.”

That is the wrong thing to say. 

Before Yelena can so much as take her next breath, he has her pinned to the gym’s far wall, his hand pressed against her sternum. The skin of his palm burns through her hoodie like a hot poker. She writhes against him but he doesn’t budge. Her shoulder blades dig uncomfortably into the wall. 

Bob—no, The Sentry—is not using his strength to hurt her but simply hold her in place. The rough skin of his palms buoys with the beat of her frantic heart. She can feel his pulse when she wraps her fingers around his wrist. It is just as quick, just as scared as her own. He’s not going to hurt her, but he could. He could do so much worse.

One more ounce of pressure, and he breaks right through her ribcage her bones are bird-hollow. It should scare her. But that’s exactly what he wants from her. Fear.

Her eyes, steeled with nothing but calm, stare into his. Yelena has gotten so used to the little hills in his moods, the little valleys. Bob hasn’t had this sort of high in months, and while it was always a possibility, she hoped it would never get this bad again. 

Their breath tangles in the proximity of their bodies. He smells like ozone and sun-baked earth. Yelena looks down at his mouth, the thin curve of his lips twisted into a false scowl. 

“I could kill everyone in this building right now without breaking a sweat,” The Sentry continues. “I could kill you.”

His fingers are trembling against her chest. Yelena looks in his eyes, trying to decipher what he thinks he’s doing. This isn’t a real threat. No. It’s a scare tactic. A test. She just doesn't know why yet.

He doesn’t want to hurt her, not really. Because he is as much Bob as he is The Sentry. Bob would never hurt her.

Would he?

She doesn’t resist him; it’s useless to try and outrun the sun. Yelena takes a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment. 

“Then do it,” she whispers in response.

Daring. No, begging. 

It’d be okay if it was him. She thinks she could live with that. 

(Or not live at all.)

The corner of his mouth twitches, eyes flickering to her lips. Bob hesitates then, the light of his eyes flashing like a beacon. He looks away, back, and leans into her. 

Without missing a beat, Yelena meets him in the middle. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Bob must remember something violent. Yelena stands in the kitchen entrance of his childhood home—she has seen enough of his memories to recognize the layout—while his father strangles his mother. The man has one large hand around her throat, the other pointing in her cherry-red face as he yells. What he’s saying doesn’t matter anymore. 

Yelena looks for Bob, finds him nowhere, not even his kid self.

“Don’t do this right now,” he says. “I don’t want to see this.”

His voice floats in from an ephemeral distance.

Yelena turns towards the attached living room, sees a boy, thirteen at the oldest, with large blue eyes crouched beneath the knee-high coffee table. He’s in a baseball uniform that is two sizes too big. His round face is blossoming with fresh bruises. She kneels in front of him curling her body around him to block his vision from the violence beyond her.

“I don’t wanna be him,” the little boy whispers. “I promised myself I’d never hurt anyone but myself.”

“You didn't hurt me,” Yelena replies gently. 

“But I could.”

“Did you want to?”

“No.”

“Then you’re not like your father at all. He made his choices. You can make your own.”

The little boy touches her chest, where it still burns, and looks up at her almost reverently. “I lied.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think I could ever kill you, even if I wanted to.”

She doesn’t have time to ask him what he means.

Yelena is thrown by an invisible force into the wall, crashing through the flimsy plaster and into the sticky heat of a Cuban airport. She grunts upon landing, rolling over her shoulder and landing somehow on her feet.

Her younger self is being dragged away from her fake parents by soldiers, and Natasha disarms a man with ease. She’s shouting in Russian for them to stay away, or she’ll kill them all. 

“Bob,” Yelena says sternly. “Stop. Whatever you’re trying to do, it’s not going to work.”

A hand slips into hers from behind. “I can’t control this. Not yet, anyway. It just happens sometimes.”

“I know. I just don’t understand why these memories. Why now?”

“Why would I be thinking of my dad hurting my mom when I’m threatening your life?” Bob snorts a bit. “It doesn’t take a psychology degree to figure that one out.”

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

With her eyes still closed, Yelena’s fingers come to tangle in his hair as Bob tilts her head up to deepen the kiss. She bites his lip, trying to get him to open up for her. Yelena needs to taste him. She needs all of him or else she fears she’s going to crack apart. He shivers, lets her in. The hand on her chest curls into the fabric of her hoodie, pulling her closer.

His memory does little to deter their desire, too entranced with each other to pull apart. Yelena can feel his heartbeat against her own, his hand slipping down to cradle her hip. He presses her into the wall with his body, forcing her on her toes due to their height difference. The heat of his body pulses like the sun, and she wants to burn. Oh, how she wants him to burn her. 

But Bob, apparently, has much more control than she does. He pulls back suddenly, stopping her with a gentle shoulder shove when she chases him. She stays put where she’d been pressed against the wall even when his hands vanish from her. Breathless, she lets her mouth hang open, panting. The sting of his kiss lingers on her lips like a brand. 

When she finally opens her eyes, the tears she’d been holding in have already begun to roll down her cheeks. Bob is looking at her with dismay and confusion.

“Were you just gonna let me do that to you?” He shakes his head, laughing incredulously, and drops the tracker to the floor. “Jesus, Lena.”

It takes her a moment to realize he was testing her, just like she tested him. To see how far he can push before she does what she promised him she’d do. 

“It’s not like I could’ve stopped you if I wanted.” Although he put no pressure on her throat, her words come out scratchy and quiet. “And I didn’t want you to stop kissing me.”

Bob begins to pace around the gym, the air around him glowing with building heat. Sweat has begun to form on her bare shoulders, at the nape of her neck. He’s muttering to himself now, tugging at his clothes and hair, his face twitching alongside his inner monologue. Yelena wishes she could crack his mind open and see what he was thinking. She massages the burning spot on her chest where he’d touched her. 

“Don’t ever let me touch you like that,” he says, eyes flickering to her for a moment. He looks away just as quickly, as if just looking at her hurts him. 

“If you regret kissing me, then you shouldn’t have—”

“Not that. No, I could never regret that.” That should make her feel better, but her heart only sinks further. “But I don’t—I don’t know why I said that, why I did that. I could’ve really hurt you. God, I’m just like my fucking father, I—”

“It’s—”

“Don’t say it’s okay,” he barks, then quiets down immediately. “It’s not.”

Yelena swallows, rediscovering her voice’s strength. “No. It’s not. It’s far from okay. It’s fucking terrifying when you go all Sentry on me, but what am I supposed to do when you get like that? I won’t always be around to save you from yourself. You need to learn how to do this on your own.”

He stops, and the look he sends her makes her shiver. “I don’t know if I can.”

“You can,” she insists, and she’s still crying, though she’s not sure why. “I know you can. You do it every day. Hell, you did it now. Even if testing me was kind of fucking mean, you dick.”

He grimaces. “Right. Sorry.”

“You’re so much stronger than you know. Not because of what the Sentry Project made you into. Because you’re you. You’ve endured hell and you’ve come out of it gentle and loving. Don’t you know how rare that is? To have lived what you’ve gone through and still choose kindness?”

“I’m not a good person,” he says. “I’ve hurt a lot of people.”

She scoffs. “What, you think my ledger is clean?”

“That’s different. You’re a hero. I’m a bomb.”

“You’re exactly like the rest of us. We’re all far from perfect, but what makes us different from the people we fight is that we’re trying to be better. And yes, I’m trying to make up for what I’ve done. Yes, I wake up terrified sometimes that you’ll lose control because I didn’t teach you what you needed to know and I won’t be able to talk you down. But if I can train you, if I teach you everything I can, if I give you room to grow and rely on yourself…”

Bob glances away, nodding with her implied words. “Then maybe I can start making up for what I’ve done without risking making things worse.”

“I’m not scared of you because of what you’ve done. I’m scared that I won’t be enough for you when you need me the most.” Yelena lifts the bottom of her hoodie, drying her tears and sweat from her sweltering cheeks. “And I know I won’t be.”

“You’ll always be enough,” he says.

The sentiment is nice, even though it’s wrong. She smiles bitterly, and looks away. His eyes are no longer glowing, and that makes her sad.

“Why did you kiss me?” she asks. “Was that just another test? Were you trying to scare me away?”

“I don’t know,” Bob says.

“Well, if it was, you’re wrong.”

“You said you were scared of me.”

“So what? Scared or not, I’m not going anywhere.”

The beat of silence between them feels like suffocation. 

“You can’t be afraid of me and… care,” he says.

Funny. She’d told herself the same thing the other day.

“Why not?”

“Because then you’re just proving to me that I’m just like my dad.”

“You’re not,” Yelena says, demanding him to believe her. “You are nothing like him. You’re angry, yes, and you deserve to be. Hell, I’m angry all of the time. I don’t even know what to do with all this anger inside of me sometimes.”

“What… do you do with it?” Bob asks, briefly making eye contact before shamefully looking away. He looks like a little kid, shoulders slumped forward and hands hanging limply at his sides.

Yelena doesn’t know. It builds out of nowhere sometimes, erupts like volcanic veins bursting from the earth. And it hurts.

“I think that’s a question for your therapist,” she says. “I’m just a little underqualified. But I would say boxing. Or making fun of Walker, that seems to help. If you beat the shit out of him, I won't tell Bucky.”

"Deal."

She loves his laugh. It always sounds as if that kind of unfiltered joy catches him off guard, almost painful to him. He doubles her, a fist over his mouth, and suddenly Yelena is laughing too. When Ava walks into the gym a few minutes later, they’re still laughing over something they can’t recall, both having collapsed to the floor in a fit of exhaustion and delirium.

Yelena lets herself laugh and laugh and laugh because, if she stops, she’s sure she will begin to cry. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Despite having gone months without drinking—three months on the third of that month, actually, but who’s counting—she flushes all that progress away.

There is no real reason. No bad thing that has happened. Nothing she didn’t cause, anyway. Yelena thinks she’d have coped better if something had gone astronomically wrong, but no. She was the thing that went wrong. Every choice she’s ever made feels wrong.

Chapter Text

When Yelena awakens in the middle of the night to find Bob missing from her bed, she assumes he’d retired to his own room some time in the middle of the night. But she can’t fall back asleep now that she notices his absence. The bed is too big without him, and she’s cold blooded. She tosses off her sheets and blindly toes on her slippers before exiting her room. 

The Watchtower breathes and creaks like a living thing, exhaling with the rise and drop of outside temperature. Each sound drives her a hair more alert. She jumps at the smallest sound, from the distant car horn to the grumble of the water pipes. Her nightly routine helps her adjust to the ambient sounds that surround her, even months later, but Yelena is unsure if she will ever have a home that she doesn’t feel wrong in. Maybe one day she will feel like she belongs. 

Until then, she traces the halls, running her fingers across the textured stucco, rounding corners. She steps over the wooden panels that creak in the halls. Her instincts guide her tonight, as there is almost no moonlight. The growing storm blots out the sky, save for the few lightning strikes that reorient her in this endless space. 

The times she runs into the others are rare, and due to bouts of nightmares they all endure. They take their turns losing their minds every once in a while. Alexei has been good with keeping to himself at night, or he leaves to ravage some nearby tavern and drain them of all their vodka. He’s quiet when leaving but loud upon reentry, waking up the whole tower with his slurred words and booming voice, and Yelena always finds herself too annoyed to try and comfort him. 

She’s only seen Bucky recently, during his sleepwalking incident, and he hasn’t sleptwalked since. He still apologizes for nearly skewering her, but to her it was nothing. Helping him actually made her feel useful. And whenever she finds him in the gym at night tinkering at his arm or taking out his rage on a punching bag one throat chop from exploding, Yelena keeps it to herself. 

Sometimes, though, John will be up three fingers deep in a Johnnie Walker bottle perched at the empty dining table like he’s waiting for someone to arrive who isn’t coming. He looks sad, and Yelena hasn’t felt it was right to interrupt this little ritual of his. There is something ironic to Yelena about drinking an expensive liquor with the same name, but whenever she mentions it he gets oddly defensive. Not because of his over drinking, no. For his drink of choice. She wonders why. 

Ava only lets herself be seen on occasion, though Yelena has gotten fairly good at spitting when she’s around. The air shifts, like a change in temperature or pressure. She can’t always control when she turns into vapor, and sometimes Yelena has to drag whatever is left of her intact atoms to the closest medbay and stuff her in her quantum suit. Nighttime makes her forgetful, Ava says. Complacent. And her atoms suffer the consequences.

And then there’s Bob. Sweet Bob, skittish Bob, the one who she found raiding the medbay once for morphine pills after he had a nightmare of his car accident. He is the worst of them all when it comes to accepting comfort because. Well, Yelena isn’t sure. Maybe he thinks he doesn’t deserve it, or that he can do it on his own. Yelena can’t scold him for such a thought process. She used to be the same. 

Yelena takes the stairs, having walked them so often she can do it blind without tripping or holding onto the railing, and makes her way to the kitchen. As she opens the stairwell door, the air shifts. It feels different. Colder, thinner, like the upper atmosphere during a HALO jump. She hesitates, keening her ears for the smallest of sounds.

Someone is there; Yelena can hear their gentle but quivering breathing. Like they’ve been crying, or are trying very hard not to cry. A sniffle, some deep, thunder-like mumbling. She can’t make out the words from this far. 

Her brain is screaming, urging her to turn away and return to her bedroom. Whoever is here, or whatever, is dangerous.

She wonders if she didn’t notice Bucky spending the night again. It wasn’t movie night.

No, he’s in D.C. for the week. It can’t be him.

John, maybe. Or Ava. Not Alexei, he sleeps like he’s dead.

Or.

Yelena steps out of the stairwell and into the living room. A chill rolls up her body. She recognizes that it’s Bob without getting a good look at him. His breathing, his presence, it’s as familiar as her own body. Even in this endless dark, she can find him, as if her heart is attuned to him. Her eyes fall onto him with ease, a compass turning North.

So, that is where he’d gone.

Relief washes her like a gentle tide. Yelena finds herself not as scared as she thought she’d be, finding him blanketed by the black abyss of night. It’s becoming a common occurrence for them to find each other in these vulnerable positions.

Bob’s hunched-over form melts into the U-shaped couch, perfectly centered in the curve. The shadows around him seem to bend towards him the way black holes drag everything, even light and time, into their devouring maws. They swirl and move, their edges ragged but their interiors so badly that even the night is bright compared to it. There is no true way to see where he ends and the rest of the dark begins. It appears to all be him.

Without any light to illuminate him, he appears as if he’s made of nothing but nightcast darkness and glowing eyes. His sharp, beacon gaze lifts to her. Yelena smiles, and she wonders if he can see it. 

“I was wondering where you went,” she says casually.

When he doesn’t respond immediately, she reaches for the switch on the wall.

His voice cracks like a whip in the air.

“Don’t turn on the light.”

He speaks in that deep, tired tone she recalls from their time in The Void, like it’s taking all of his strength to string together a single sentence. Her hand pauses, then she carefully lowers it to her side, her movements practiced and slow.

This is not Bob. Not entirely.

“It’s not like you to be up this late,” she says. 

He huffs. “I think it’s technically early.”

There he is.

“If you say so.”

Yelena stares into the shadows, assessing her next moves, while the darkness stares back.

The Void is not her enemy. He is just another side of the same man she loves.

She can see a vague path through the couch in the dark, walking around long enough for her eyes to start adjusting. The Void watches her approach, not moving but not welcoming her either.

Yelena sits far enough that, if anything goes wrong, she can get away before he even stands. She catches the scent of something sharp in the air. Like metal. Or blood. Her mind wanders without her permission. 

“Are you hurt?” she asks.

“What? No, I’m—I’m fine.”

“Being unhurt and being fine are two very different things, Bob. And you’re obviously not fine.”

There is a gun under the couch that she has made sure within her reach no matter where she sits on the couch. Just in case. It wouldn’t do much to slow him down, but it’s something. She chastises herself for thinking about this right now when he needs her.

“A nightmare?” Yelena guesses.

The Void shakes his head. He’s scratching at his inner wrist. “A memory.”

“Aren’t those one and the same?”

“I broke a mug.”

“Okay.” 

His starlight eyes and shadowed form may be The Void’s, his voice a thunder roll in charged air, but his words are gentle. When he speaks, his voice comes out rasped and watery from crying. A darkness in him deepens his voice. He’s looking at her. No, past her, at a distance somewhere beyond her. 

She wishes she could see his face properly to guess what he’s thinking. When he is himself and not The Sentry, Bob doesn’t hide what he feels, even when he pretends he’s not feeling them. His face is a blank canvas, like hers, vulnerable and open. They are both unable to conceal the emotions they should probably keep to themselves. 

But The Sentry is all false confidence and emotional delusion. He is manic panic manifested, insecurity masked with violence. Too much energy, too much emotion. It’s as if all the dials in his mind are thrown into high gear and then stuck there until the power goes out inside of him. 

The Void is the darkness when the sun sets, the mental power outage. That hollowness in him amplifies, personifies, stretching to the corners of his mind until the darkness is all that’s left. He is not outright dangerous—he’s not dangerous right now—but that doesn’t mean he can’t be. She knows these sides of him like the phases of the moon. 

But after the session earlier that week, Yelena no longer understands what she feels towards him. It is no longer just affection or fear, but an amalgamation of everything that is so strong it makes her feel nothing at all.

Her heart tells her one thing while her mind screams another. She’s afraid, she isn’t. She trusts him, she doesn’t. She loves him, she can’t. 

Val’s words echo in her mind. Love is what makes you afraid. 

“That’s it?” The Void questions when she’s quiet for a long time. “That’s all you have to say?”

Yelena blinks at him, confused, and nods before remembering he probably can’t see her either. “Did you get hurt?”

“I mean, I can’t really get hurt, can I?” Bob pauses, then says, “I did cut my hand. It surprised me. I cleaned it, though, so don’t worry.”

“Did anyone get mad at you?”

“No. Nobody saw. I was just making tea, that chamomile and lavender one Ava brought me from her trip to London to help me fall asleep, and I… I dunno. Something hit me, a wave of this weird detached panic, and I dropped it.”

“What’s the problem, then?”

He shifts, and Yelena’s eyes strain against the dark to get a glimpse of his movements. It’s still storming, though more distant than before. There is not enough moonlight to give her guidance.

“I dunno. Nothing. I expected… repercussions, I guess.”

Her heart aches with realization. She can see him a bit better now that her eyes have adjusted to the lack of light, the slouch of his shoulders, his long legs drawn to his chest. His arms are limp at his sides, cheek tucked between his knees. But his thoughts remain a mystery to her. Before she can convince herself otherwise, she slides closer to him. 

“Repercussions,” she repeats, pained.

“My dad, he would, um. I didn’t make much of a mess in the house. I was too scared to. But he would blame me for when he’d get mad and break plates. I’d have to clean it with my bare hands. I think I still have some splinters under my skin from it.”

Yelena blanches, and she wishes his father was still alive so she could kill him all over. “Christ.”

“Yeah.”

She isn’t even sure if this is The Void at all, or if there’s degrees of separation between the three entities wound into the same body. No, they’re not separate people but a variety of faces to hide behind. They bleed together like layered shadows of the same image, no matter how they all try to neatly segment these portions of him to make his troubles more palatable for them.

But all that’s going to do is make them ignore these blink-and-you-miss-it moments, when he is not Bob or Sentry or Void. He teeters on the edge of this unknowable darkness where a single pull or push forward decides which way he will fall. 

When Yelena doesn’t say anything else, The Void continues.

“Since moving in here, I feel like that kid again. Someone small and—and scared. And you guys haven’t done anything to make me feel like that, I swear. I just haven’t lived somewhere in a while. I mean, I’ve couch surfed, spent months at a time in hostels and short-term rentals. But it was all temporary. This feels permanent in a way. And it makes me happy to have a place to return to and people who I think care about me, but—but I sometimes feel like I’m back in that attic, tiptoeing around on eggshells only I can see because walking too loud might mean I get the belt.”

Memory strikes her like a stray bullet. Yelena feels the whips cracking against the backs of her hands when her bullet was a centimeter off from a bullseye, the sting of a cold blade splitting her hip to hip because the surgeons didn’t bother to wait for the anesthesia to kick in. Expected punishment with no way to anticipate or avoid it. 

Afraid to grow any louder for fear of him skittering off, Yelena braves another scooch closer, just enough to put him within arm’s reach.

“You don’t have to be afraid that we’re going to hurt you,” she says. “We’re a team.”

“Are we? You guys are, because you’re heroes with actual skills, but me? I’m basically your mascot. If I can’t be The Sentry, then I’m useless to you.”

“That’s not—”

“And because of The Void, I can’t be The Sentry,” The Void continues. “So, what does that make me?”

“A friend.”

In an effort to comfort him, Yelena grabs blindly for his hand and finds it with surprising accuracy. Bob pulls away for a moment, hissing out a breath like she burned him. The air around him is frigid, so thin she feels like she’s reached the peak of a mountain, vertigo sending her falling into him. Slowly, slowly, he returns his hands to hers. He’s cold. 

Still made of shadow and emptiness, he threads their fingers together, his thumb rubbing over the side of her wrist. He’s trembling. 

“Is that all I am to you?” he asks.

Yelean smiles. “You know what you are to me.”

He is delicate in these states, more than usual. Tempered glass. But that does not mean he’s stupid. 

“I know it can’t be easy,” she says, “living with killers and people who… well, none of us exactly get off on the right foot.”

“We did.” He sounds softer now, almost hopeful, and she catches the way his eyes flash silver in the dead of night. She catches a glimmer of him beneath the weighted blanket of darkness. “You always felt safe to me. I don’t know why.”

“Me neither.”

“With you, I actually feel like I can be something better than what I was before. Not just some Florida white trash hick who started doing drugs in middle school and spent most of his twenties on meth, or this bipolar freak of nature who drags the universe down with him when he starts to spiral. When I’m around you, I feel like I’m… I dunno. Someone worth keeping around.”

“You’re worth all that and more,” she says. Because the truth is so easy with him. “You’re everything to me. And it’s been so long since I’ve felt this way, if I ever have.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I’ve never meant anything more.”

The dark makes her brave. It makes Yelena wonder if she’d do this in the daylight, when they were both exposed and vulnerable, no blankets of black to keep them safe from each other. She threads their fingers, steadying the tremble in his cold, blackened hands. 

“I’m sorry I scared you,” he says. “The other day. In the lab. And during training. I feel like I keep pressing boundaries I’m not ready for yet. I don’t know my own limits, and I keep thinking if—if I know how hard to push I know when to stop. It used to work before I was, you know. The Sentry. That’s not a good excuse”

“It’s not an excuse at all,” Yelena says. “Explaining isn’t the same as trying to excuse it away.”

“Okay.”

“And it’s not your fault for pushing yourself. I just got spooked, is all. You’re figuring out your powers, and I’m proud that you know yourself enough to be able to do that.”

“Sure, but the last thing I wanna do is break your trust. And I’ve already done so much harm. I don’t deserve the kindness you guys have given me. I have a home. A job. A family. I went from alone and suicidal to belonging somewhere.”

“Because you deserve it,” she says. “I can show you.”

He’s looking her in the eyes now. “How?”

Yelena can feel her heartbeat quicken as she sits closer, trying to approximate how close her face is to his by the stuttering of his breath. Her nose bumps against his, and this time he doesn’t retreat. He lets out a tiny, surprised gasp, but that’s it. The light in his eyes is dim but warm. 

She shouldn’t be doing this. She really shouldn’t. They are good as they are, and any change will no doubt be a bad change when things come to fruition. This cannot be a box she opens.

But Yelena’s heart has stolen control from her mind, and she’s already leaning forward. 

“Do you trust me?” she asks. 

His answer is immediate. “Always.”

“Good.” She can’t help the giddy, childlike smile that crosses her face, not bothering to conceal it in the night. “Trust me now.”

Soft lips, tepid movement. It takes her a moment to reach him, trying to gauge how far apart they are. His mouth is quivering and tastes vaguely of toothpaste and something chemical. The kiss is enhanced in the darkness, each sensation dialed up to the max. She can feel him holding his breath, the twitch of his nose as his lips shift against hers, the way his hand tightens around hers. 

They’ve exchanged cheek kisses in the past, mouths pressed into hair and pecks on shoulders. Even that kiss in the gym a week ago, which was like resurrecting something long dead inside of Yelena, feels lightyears away from this one. Compared to those, this kiss is a lightning strike. It’s a level of intimacy they’re both inexperienced with.

It’s not just desperate or kind or fearful or loving. It’s everything. 

Yelena hums against him with a thrum of something pleasant echoing in her body. His body trembles as they part. She can’t see much of his face, but his stammering breath is enough of an indicator. He must be smiling; she can hear it in his voice when he murmurs, “Jesus.”

The Void is still there, concealing him from her gaze, but there is something else accompanying it. Cobalt and gold intertwine in Bob’s wide eyes. Need. 

All of him is there, just for her. He’s breathing heavier, anticipating her next move. She can only imagine how blown his pupils must be beneath the protective curtain of shadows, and she has to kiss him again.

Harder. 

His lips part with a startled gasp when she returns to him urgently, and she dives into him, needing more. She makes a small noise at the taste of him, desperate and carnal, and licks at his mouth, intent on devouring all of him. Bob curls his free hand tightly into her hair and drags her closer. He moans when her chest presses into his; he must’ve realized she’s not wearing a bra. 

“You taste so good,” he murmurs. “You’re so—you’re.”

Hands grapple. Teeth click. She bites at his throat, kisses his Adam’s apple, and he returns the favor by digging his nails into her hips. They kiss and kiss and kiss and it’s like Yelena has never kissed anyone before in her life, bodies shifting together like the ocean waves lapping against a ship.

It’s her first time kissing a man—she doesn’t count the seductions under chemical subjugation because it wasn’t her, not really, and they weren’t great kissers anyways—and she never thought she would ever want someone. Especially a man.

But this is Bob, and he seems to be the exception to every rule her body has made. She is drunk on him, on possibility, on this feeling that was reserved for Kate Bishop. 

In a flash of speed and strength, Bob is on top of her. Yelena’s back hits the couch with a bounce that makes her laugh. Bob’s elbows dig into the cushioning on either side of her head, his fingers threaded on the back of her neck to ensure he didn’t hurt her. Their chests press together with each short breath they take in tandem. There is just enough slack that she could squirm away if she wanted.

Her thighs bracket his, the weight of him settling hot and heavy between her legs. He presses her into the upholstery. Yelena has no space to run, even if he’s giving her an out now, but she is exactly where she wants to be.

Their difference in height means he dwarfs her, blocking out any hint of moonlight and lightning outside. Bob’s arms are wound around the small of her back, pulling their chests together, leaving no space between them. Heat pools in her gut at the contact, warming her cheeks and between her legs as he grinds down into her. 

While his body is splayed over her like the world’s heaviest weighted blanket, he shifts to make sure there is no pressure on her tender ribs. Shame. She thinks she’d like the pain. 

Bob apologizes through a clenched jaw as if he’s hanging onto his sanity by the thinnest of gossamers, but he makes no move to get off of her. His eyes glitter like loose stars, silhouetted. She wonders if this is The Void talking to her, or if it’s The Sentry finally taking what he wants.

“Don’t be sorry,” she tells him, and she reaches up to kiss him. “Just take what you want.”

That makes him groan into her mouth, sending thrilling strikes of energy up her spine. Yelena tips her head back to let her kiss his way up her neck. He’s murmuring against her as he licks and catches the skin of her collarbone between his teeth. While what he’s saying sounds like nonsense to her, Yelena responds with tiny noises. Bob nips at her sternum that juts out from the top of her tank top, hands trailing up along her stomach, circumventing the still tender scar on her ribcage. His skin burns lines into her like he owns her.

He is no doubt leaving marks, but that is an issue for Tomorrow Yelena to deal with. It feels amazing, and she is not used to feeling this way. 

Yelena locks her ankles against the base of his spine and grinds up instinctively, chasing the heat of his body with her own. The noise he makes in return is like an angel’s choir to her ears. Even though they’ve just started, he’s already hard against her, and he makes no move to hide his arousal when he pushes down to meet her hips. It’s the perfect friction, a match rubbing against the side of a matchbox.

“You’re already so hard for me, huh,” she teases, mostly to herself. “So pent up.”

He replies with a whine. “Just for you.” 

Good, she thinks to herself. He is all hers. Nobody else can do this to him. Satisfaction rolls up her spine knowing she’s the one who gets to make him fall apart in this way.

“I’ve wanted to do this for ages,” Bob grits out, breath hot against the skin of her throat. “Wanted you since—hell, since we met I think.

“Really?”

“Yes, yes, you’re like a dream. I must be dreaming. I can’t believe I get to have you.”

His desperation makes her want to laugh out of glee or relief. 

Everything feels elevated in the darkness, as if this moment is contained within a bubble. The wanton movements slowly grow desperate as they accustom themselves to each other’s bodies. Their whispers echo in the empty air around them, and she wants to see his face so badly but will settle for the heat of his skin and the way he burrows her into the couch. If she closes her eyes, she can imagine it clearly. Bob grips her like she’ll evaporate any moment, rolls his clothed cock down against her, and a shock of pleasure hits her like a plume of fire.

She stifles a surprised sound, suddenly becoming aware of where they are. They’re in the living room couch, out in the open where any of their insomniac friends can come across them. That only seems to make her want him more. 

The moment turns frantic very quickly. Yelena fists his hair while kissing him, and Bob swallows her breathy moans like he’s starving for them. She presses up into him. Grunting and whining, he sucks bruises into her chest, where he’s rucked up her tank top. He takes her nipples into his mouth, and Yelena bucks like she’s been shocked. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he grits out between her breasts, struggling against the fabric dividing them. “I knew it from the moment I met you, that I was made for you. So pretty, so kind. Fuck, you’re just so amazing, I can’t even wrap my head around the fact that you want me.”

“I’ve always wanted you,” she whispers out, “all of you.”

“All of me?”

“Yes.”

It becomes dizzying. Savoring and devouring. Two tangled bodies in the dark, indistinguishable from one another. Bob ruts her into the couch like an animal in heat, and she mirrors his fervor.

Her tank top has risen to her armpits, and his shirt is half-pulled off, allowing their bare chests to press together like the perfect mix of need and love. His hands palm her breasts, so large they encompass the entirety of her chest. The press of his callused along her nipples causes little flames to lick up her back and make her squirm up into the feeling. Yelena is suffocated by the heat of him, the drag of the linen across her skin with each push and pull. She wants to devour him in every way possible, leave no space between her self and his. 

There are too many barriers between them—their clothes are disheveled but still on, and that’s a problem—but neither of them can stop long enough to take them off. They’re too far gone from each other, too involved in the moment to stop and get naked.

If there is a next time, she will be sure to take full advantage. 

She claws at his shirt until she’s satisfied with how far she gets it up his body and finds his skin slipping her hands over his stomach. He burns like kindling, muscles tough and pliable like warm clay. They shiver under her. 

She wants to see him. She tells him so.

“I wanna see your face.”

Bob makes a tiny noise, deep in his throat, like a cat crying for its mother, and dips his mouth to her chest again. His lips wrap around her nipple, sucking, lapping at it, distracting her long enough that she forgets what she asked. He returns to kiss her roughly, and she licks into his mouth like she’ll die without the taste of him. 

Yelena wants to bite him, so she does. Her teeth don’t even make a dent in the meat of his shoulder, but he still makes beautiful noises. She could break her jaw trying. The lamp on the coffee table flickers in tandem with Bob’s broken moans.

They shouldn’t be doing this—no fraternization and all that bureaucratic bullshit, even if it wasn’t in their contracts—but she also wouldn’t be able to survive it if they stopped before they finished. Yelena is sure if she had to separate from him now, she’d do so kicking and screaming. Bob doesn't seem to be caring about their public reputation, so she decides not to, either. 

She is quiet, always has been, but she’s pleasantly surprised to learn that he’s talkative when overwhelmed with desire, as if babbling nonsense into her ear is the only thing keeping him from coming early. He talks about everything and nothing, mostly praise for her. Partially pleas. 

God, she now wishes they’d done this on their floor so she could find out just how loud he can get. 

He unlatches a hand from her hip and presses it to the front of her sleep pants. The movement is awkward, with his arm crammed between their chests at what is no doubt an uncomfortable angle, but his fingertips find her clit easily even through her layers of clothing. Briefly, she wonders if he’s slept with many people in his nomadic life, but her thoughts remain untangled for only a brief second. 

“Holy shit, I can—I can feel how wet you are,” he breathes out, almost mesmerized. “Through your clothes, even through mine. Fuck.”

That simple brush along bare nerves is like a shock to her system, slick and hot and perfect. She takes in a sharp breath, any other noise catching in the back of her throat. Bob groans like he’s the one being touched that way. Her body jerks into his palm, understanding what she wants more than her mind does. And she wants him.

His fingers press small, careful circles into her, like he’s afraid of breaking her. Yelena grabs his wrist, and she’s unsure if she wants him to stop or go faster. Just as she figures it out, Bob reads her mind and responds in succession. He quickens his pace, presses harder through her clothes, and she swears her vision whites for several seconds. It burns and it blossoms like a match head being stuck at just the right angle. She has lost complete control over herself now, simply moving and panting and clawing at his tough skin like a mindless beast. 

“You’re going to kill me,” she whispers, her mouth slack against his.

“Do you love me?” he asks.

They say it often to each other, but never in this way. Not with the haze of heat and lust and need hanging over them. But it’s the easiest thing in the world for her to say.

“Yes,” she replies, because she’s always been too honest for her own good. She can never lie to him, especially now, when there is no fear holding her back. “Of course I love you.”

Bob whines. Fully whines, a high-pitched exhale of air like a wounded dog or a lust-drunk man. He ruts against her, his pace stammering for a moment. When he returns to himself, his fingers begin moving so quickly the pleasure comes like she’s racing off a cliff.

“C’mon, Lena,” he urges, dragging his teeth across her jawline. “I need you to do it for me. C’mon, you can do it.”

In a whirl of emotion, she realizes Bob is begging her to cum for him. He’s urging her to that edge, begging for him to hear it, to feel her. The pressure between them rises, rises, rises, and Yelena doesn’t even know how fast it’s coming until it hits her.

Even with the build up, her orgasm catches her by surprise. It’s a quiet untangling of string inside of her, heartbeat white-noise wracking her body. Yelena’s back bows so far she nearly knocks them both off the couch. She opens her mouth, but no sounds escape. Just stuttering breaths, and words she wants to say but can’t. But it’s okay; he moans plenty for the both of them. 

Bob kisses her throughout her orgasm, never stopping his movements against her, murmuring sweet assurances into her ear about how beautiful she looks, even in the dark. Yelena’s hips move of their own accord as he rubs every ounce of pleasure out of her. It rolls over her like the buzzing heat of the perfect summer evening. He doesn’t let up until it becomes too much and she grabs his wrist. 

When she finally returns to herself, her ears are ringing, stars dancing in her eyes. She can’t even catch her breath before Bob is kissing her again, tongue and teeth and tiny noises. His hand slips away from her and reattaches back to her waist. Yelena can feel his fingers still damp with digging into her hip, and that alone would have finished her off.

He starts to retreat, giving her space, but Yelena tightens her legs around him. 

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” she whispers. “We’re not done.”

Bob lets out another pathetic, broken whine as he pressed himself back against her, quivering to hold himself back. His eyes shine like twin stars at midnight, and a well-timed lightning strike reveals how large his pupils are, fucked out and desperate. He presses his face into her hair, gently tugging at the skin of her neck with his teeth. 

Yelena encourages him as he grinds against her in a mindless delirium, quick and rough, chasing his own ecstasy while still maintaining a soft grip on her. Bob pants out mindless words, repeating that he needs her, loves her, has wanted her for so long it’s driven him nearly crazy.

“Can I come?” he asks weakly. “Lena, please, please, let me come.”

Yelena curls her fingers around his neck, encouraging him with a roll of her own hips, and that is enough of an answer for him. It’s like his last tether snaps. A tremor starts from his toes up to his head as he loses himself. She feels him come against her, the heat of his orgasm, the pulsing of him, how he whines and groans like something pathetic. The thought of what he’d feel like inside of her makes her press him even closer. 

Bob bites down on her shoulder to muffle his loud moans as he drags out the remaining threads of pleasure rolling through him. His words come out choked, almost pained, threaded with pleasure. The pain of his bite sparks across her chest like fireworks. Yelena secretly hopes he leaves a mark. 

Afterwards, they both sit quietly in the dark, drinking the wracking aftermath. Bob doesn’t stop kissing her, chaste and lazy kisses like he’s trying to make drink up as much of her as he can. The burn of his stubble rubs her skin raw in a pleasant way.

Differentiating pain and pleasure is easy because Yelena rarely feels pleasure. When she does, she gets lost in it, either because of guilt or because the distraction allows her mind to wander to places she’d normally not go.

That does not mean pain cannot be pleasurable. It is an anchor to a moment, reminding her she’s real within the throes of ecstasy. 

Kate is gentle with her, worshipful. It’s an easy reminder that Yelena’s body can endure more than just sorrow. She is built to be loved, too. 

This was something else entirely. Love, yes, but desperation. A need. Not wrong, but not right. A grayscale of morals, maybe, but there is nothing very moral about them anyways. Love is very rarely something uncomplicated. Simplicity is nice and all, but it should never be expected. 

Bob rubs his palm apologetically over the bit on her shoulder, and she keens into the throbbing touch. 

Finally, he rises off of her, and Yelena lets him. He collapses onto the cushions beside her and wipes the sweat from his forehead. The shadows melted away some time ago, showing off the gaunt hollow of his cheekbones and the quirk of a smile growing across his face. His face is shiny under the moonlight, and a hint of red clings to his ears and cheeks. 

“There you are,” she says gently, nudging him with her foot. “I missed you.”

“I’ve been here the whole time.”

She smiles a bit sadly. “No you haven’t.”

His eyes are still glowing, but it doesn’t bother her anymore. They’re glowing because of her, after all. And she can finally see his pretty face. 

“You smell like shit,” Yelena says.

Bob’s laugh is boisterous. It makes her smile. “I love you too.”

“I know.”

When they walk back to their shared floor, Yelena pauses in front of her bedroom. She watches Bob open his door, shoulders lax, and wills him to turn around.

As much as she wants to ask him to sleep with her tonight, it feels too far. They’ve crossed a line, and although it shouldn’t change much, it could also change everything.

He tells her goodnight without turning to her, and she returns it. 

The moment is over. They don’t talk about it again. 

Chapter Text

“What made you think 350 degrees was the right temperature for a pizza?” Yelena is asking as she smacks the oven door with the end of her hand towel for emphasis. “We’re cooking, not making fucking charcoal.”

“That wasn’t my fault, you’re the one who turned the oven on,” Bob snaps back at her.

“That doesn’t change the fact that you’re trying to burn us alive.”

The blush of frustration crests the edge of his shirt collar, no doubt staining his chest with that bloody color. His movements become twitchy, unpredictable, the way he gets when he’s scared. 

Despite the heat of their cooking and subsequent fighting, he hasn’t rolled up his long sleeves. Hell, he even fixed them when they started to pull up with his movements, and the dread she feels at the thought that he could be hiding something manifests into more frustration.

“It’s 350 Fahrenheit,” he’s telling her, even though she couldn’t give less of a shit about it. “We’re in America, nobody uses fuckin’ Celsius here, are you crazy?”

Yelena retorts with something not even she understands. She’s just babbling. He babbles back, mocking her, and suddenly they’re babbling nonsense at each other, like two babies engaged in an intense argument before they can even form words.

In any other case, this would be hilarious. Maybe tomorrow, when they’ve burnt out all this anger, it will be.

But right now, that anger is the only thing that is stopping her from crying.

Neither of them really know why they’re yelling anymore, or who started this little verbal spat to begin with; all Yelena knows is they’re growing louder and louder and louder, trying to drown out the other until all the loose dishes in the kitchen sink are vibrating viciously with energy. It started with the pizza, she thinks. Or maybe the dishes.

Or maybe it just erupted from them, the accumulation of so many things said and unsaid manifesting like a bloody wound. Their argument is so inconsequential that, when they both walk away from the kitchen to stew in their feelings, neither will remember it the next day.

Hell, they’ve already forgotten it. All that remains is the fury. 

It feels as if Yelena’s entire world is imploding in on itself like a depressurized submarine. She knows once she runs out of breath from shouting, she will collapse into tears, but she needs to drain this tension out of her now. In a fury, she grabs the pizza cutter off the counter and slams it into the sink, causing a loud clatter of cutlery that makes Bob jump.

He stops yelling so suddenly she continues for a long time without noticing, slurring out Russian and gesturing violently towards the burnt bits of pizza sticking to the pan, then to the oven that they have yet to turn off. Bob has a startled look on his face, dark blue eyes wide, brows raised.

The anger that was once there before has evaporated now. He looks almost scared of her. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. 

Whatever walls and dams she’s built in her mind are cracking under the pressure, and unless Yelena releases it right now, it has to be now, it’ll be too late if it’s not now you’re going to ruin everything you love if you don’t get it out now, she’s going to do something far worse than yelling. She presses her knuckles into her eyes until it starts to hurt. Her body is in fight or flight, and she’s always been a fighter. She just doesn't know how to get out of it. 

“What the hell are we even angry about, Yelena?” Bob demands, loud enough to cut through the noise of her mind. He uses her full name. He rarely calls her that anymore. It stuns her long enough for him to add, “We didn’t even burn the pizza that badly. It’s edible, at least.”

“I don’t know!” she snaps, slapping her palms over her eyes to stop herself from crying. She drags her hands down her face, smacks her cheeks a bit. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I just think I need to be angry. I sometimes forget how to be anything else.”

Bob’s breathing is unsteady, verging on unstable, like he’s trying to keep himself from continuing the argument. His eye twitches with nervous energy, and when he rubs it to mask the movement, it only seems to get worse. She catches how his hand trembles. At least one of them has to be mature in this instance, but Yelena doesn’t have room for maturity at the moment.

“I’m sorry too,” he says, because Yelena remembers then that he’s the one who started the fight. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Yes there is. Like, fundamentally there is. You don’t have to say there’s nothing wrong to make me feel better, because we both know the truth. I don’t know why I got so mad over fucking pizza. I feel like I’m… I don’t know.”

She knows what he means. Ever since their training session went wrong, Bob has begun fearing that he’s becoming his father. Violent. Rotten. Cruel. He’s started doing more around the tower even though they’ve reiterated plenty that he doesn’t need to: dishes, laundry, cooking, tasks so domestic it calms him down. He lets Bucky and John knock him down during sparring sessions, and ever since that night on the couch, he’s kept his distance from Yelena at night. 

“You’re not him,” she says, as if repeating it enough will make him believe her. 

Bob scoffs in that way that says he doesn’t believe her, and blinks rapidly towards the ceiling. 

“And you’re not just anger anymore,” he tells her in response. 

The pendulum swings to her, now, to be the support. Yelena swallows, not speaking because if she does, then she will break. They can’t both break. One of them has to keep it together. 

They’re not angry anymore, but they never really were. Not at each other, anyway. Yelena gets angry because getting scared is no longer an option, and for Bob, it’s just what he knows from a lifetime of rage. For them, fear manifests as unprecedented lashing outs, a self-defense mechanism. A protective measure from a lifetime of pain.

They can’t be hurt by someone they love if they hurt them first.

“We’ve never fought like this before,” she mutters. “Makes me feel like an old married couple.”

“Yeah, well, we were bound to butt heads over something like this eventually. We’re not exactly emotionally stable.” Bob gestures to the mess in the kitchen, which isn’t as bad as she thought it was, then back to them. “Let’s just forget about this and just… take it easy for the rest of the day, huh? We can order in, watch a movie or something. How does that sound?”

The intimacy of his words makes her sob dryly, so afraid to stay but dreading leaving. He steps into her space and scoops her face in his warm, trembling hands. 

Except he must have underestimated just how fragile they both are, how much his emotions affect his powers, because Yelena barely feels the brush of his skin against her cheeks before the world melts away into memory. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

“Why did Papa let them take us?” Yelena asks in a whisper, afraid to get the older Widow’s attention.

The truck is so dark she can barely see anything, save a halo of moonlight coming in from their blockaded windows. She and the other girls huddle as far into the back of the truck as they can manage, staving off the seeping cold with each other’s body heat. Natasha has Yelena in her lap, her skinny limbs wrapped around her like a spider.

“It’s what he does,” she replies, kissing the crown of Yelena’s hair. Because they’re no longer in Ohio, her real accent slips out, that Russian lilt that Yelena doesn’t recognize.

“Why?”

“He’s not our real Papa, little light. He’s just the man who pretends to be our dad.”

“Why?”

“Because The Red Room needs soldiers. And we are all they have. Don’t forget that—without us, they are nothing.”

Yelena whimpers in fear and buries her face into Natasha’s neck. She is six and a half years old, having been torn from the only family she’s ever known, and the Red Room will be her new home for the next twenty years. 

“Bob, let me out,” Yelena demands.

She crouches on the opposite side of the truck from her kid self. Bob kneels in the darkness across from the young girls, looking right at her. The shadows cling like water to his face, and he’s watching the scene unfold with a gaunt, terrified expression. 

“I’m so sorry, Lena,” he says, and she can hear it in his voice that he doesn’t mean pulling her into this memory, though she’s sure he’s apologetic for that, too. “I know you’ve talked about Ohio, but you didn’t tell me… I thought he was—”

“He isn’t.”

“Right.”

“Let me out,” Yelena repeats.

“Right, right. Sorry, I don’t know how to—I’ll be able to one day, it’s just with the stress of cooking and our fight, it just—”

“Bob. Let. Me. Out.” 

The truck stops, and the doors slam open, revealing black-clad soldiers with large rifles. They begin to yank the little girls out, grabbing ankles and elbows and hair.

Now, these girls are scared but they are not cowards. Natasha is the first to fight back, shouting in a language Yelena will learn is Russian, their native tongue. She screams Yelena’s name as she’s thrown over a shoulder, reaching for her as Yelena’s head is bagged.

“Don’t forget that!” she’s yelling, fighting off the drugs that they’ve injected her with. “They need us, they’re nothing with… without…”

She slumps, and Yelena’s small head is carelessly slammed with the butt of a rifle.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Yelena pushes Bob away far harsher than she intended. His hips knock into the cabinets behind him, and something clatters to the floor. The unintentional tumble into the memory rooms has been happening more often. Sometimes, when they sleep in the same bed, they share nightmares, but most often, it’s that brush of skin while passing each other in the kitchen or during sparring sessions. 

It’s getting worse. She doesn’t know why, but she’s certainly not making it any better. 

Her heartbeat thrums heavily in her head like an unrelenting war drum, and she’s struggling to breathe. She hasn’t thought of that day in years. Not since Natasha died. Not since she decided that fighting the love she has for a fake family was idiotic.

“You never told me he was the one who sold you out,” Bob says gently, keeping the space between them. “That’s horrible.”

Sweat leaks into the corners of her trembling mouth. She wants to throw up. Yelena shudders in a breath, closes her eyes, and opens them only to find Bob still watching her with a wary, apologetic expression. Every inch of her is shaking like her atoms are falling apart. She wonders if this is what Ava feels like on a daily basis. 

“I didn’t say you could get inside my head,” she hisses, because anger is easier than pain. “I didn’t give you permission this time.”

They both realize too late that she has found something new to argue about. 

There is something untethering in her chest, like the uncoiling of a rattlesnake before they strike, and she’s somehow still yelling, running out of air in her lungs. Just as she’d begun to calm down, her adrenaline rises again, stronger this time. She is almost blind with the mental pain. 

Her words have begun to make little sense even in a different language. She switches easily as she loses herself—Russian, Spanish, German, Portuguese, even some scrambled Tagalog that she picked up in the Philippines. Anything but the real words she wants to say. 

What is even her goal here? Not even Yelena knows. Sometimes self-destruction is as natural of an instinct as dodging a fist. She is destroying the thinking she loves most, and she can’t stop herself because the fear is strong enough to strangle any truth in her. 

Yelena refuses to let Bob get a word in edgewise, but he’s no longer trying to argue with her. He waits for a beat in her breathing to cut in. 

“Look, I don’t know what happened that’s making you so damn mad at me over this,” he says, interrupting her, “and I’m sorry I got into your head like that, I didn’t mean to. But there’s something wrong, I can tell. Something else is bothering you, and it’s not the pizza. Is this about your dad? Or is there some anniversary that’s coming up that I forgot—”

“Leave.”

Bob stops talking. He stares at her. Yelena repeats it when he doesn’t immediately obey.

Taken aback, he chuckles and shakes his head. “No. I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on with you. Or what you need from me.”

Time, she wants to tell him. Yelena needs time and she needs space, but she also needs him, and she can’t have it all, so she just won’t have any of it. 

“We’re gonna talk this out like a normal couple.”

She scoffs. A normal couple. “We are both far from normal.”

“That doesn’t matter. We'll get some takeout, watch a movie, and wait this shit out,” Bob says. “Because like it or not, I’m not going anywhere. I live here too, and you obviously don’t need to be alone right now. I don’t know how to help you, but—”

He steps forward, closing the gap between them again. It is not threatening, not even quick, but it’s enough to trigger her fight or flight. A lightning strike of panic strikes her. Yelena flies back, smacking against the fridge. Her frantic, angry words never stop spilling from her mouth. The thud of her heart rings in her head. 

It’s not him standing there. In her mind, she sees soldiers, clad-black and masked, with lifted rifles in their large hands. She sees middle-aged Widows, raising long whips that create welts across her tiny, pale knuckles when she’s a millisecond behind her best time. 

Yelena has stopped breathing, her throat so tightly closed her next words are barely words at all. 

Bob’s eyes widen, fearful and hurt. When Yelena reminds herself to breathe, the air barely makes it into her lungs before she’s panting again. 

“I know you,” he says, insistent. “You’re hurting and you’re scared. Let me help you.”

“You don’t know shit about me. You’re nothing to me.”

The lie is so sour she almost doesn’t get it out. 

Something dark flashes across his face. Surprise that melts into something hard and unreadable, like molten metal rapidly cooling into a distorted shape.

It’s that same false confidence she remembers from their sleight of training. Bob is The Sentry because The Sentry is just another mask of his, a face he puts on to convince people that he’s the hero he doesn’t even believe he is. He masquerades as this unstoppable man to protect himself. 

No, it’s not a mask. It’s armor.

They both have their own ways to protect themselves, even if it hurts each other. 

“I don’t believe you,” he says calmly, but she sees the nervous jitter in his fingers that he’s clenched into a loose fist.

She was so deluded in thinking they would ever work. 

Yelena almost misses the way the oven’s light flashes on when he asks, “Why the hell did you touch me that night?”

“You kissed me first,” she argues, like it even matters. 

“Oh, but we did more than just kiss that night. That was a line, Yelena, that we both crossed. And it might not change much for you but it’s changed everything for me, because it told me that you trusted me and the things I felt for you just might be reciprocated. Or do you just sleep with all those people you don’t trust? ‘Cause I’m sure the line would be long as hell if you did. And it wouldn’t be me. ”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she snaps.

“I mean you’re the most untrusting, skittish, frustrating, most beautiful woman I’ve ever known in my entire life,” Bob says, growing louder and louder as he goes on, “and I am so in love with you that it drives me crazy sometimes because it’s like you won’t let yourself be happy with me. We’re both still too scared to do anything about it in case something goes wrong, and that makes us fight like this, and all that does is make me want you more.”

A suffocating silence hangs between them, that sword of Damocles swinging, swinging. Threatening to kill them both. This is her fear manifest. 

He loves her. And Yelena loves him. It feels like a fundamental truth she’s always known, but it’s only become concrete now that he’s said it. Any road they take from here on out is impossible to travel alone. While she should be giddy, she isn’t. All she feels is dread.

Yelena stares at him, trying to conjure a lie that will send him running, and Bob stares back, unflinching. No longer afraid.

“Stop,” she whispers.

“I know you’re in love with me too.” His voice is rising, not out of anger but a desperation for her to hear him. “You told me that night. And you’re a very bad liar.”

“I…” She swallows, looking away. There is no way she could deny it, even if she tried. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Let me love you,” he says. “And love me back.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It could be if you stopped being so goddamn stubborn. You need me just as much as I need you, don’t even try and deny it. It’s like I was made to love you, Lena. We complete each other. So please. Stop pushing me away.”

The glow of his eyes escapes his irises, flitting around his face like starlight freckles. They are starting to do that more often even when he’s not using his powers. 

Is this the real him? Someone confident and sarcastic, brutal with his honesty? Someone who knows what he wants and demands it, not begging or pleading? Did Yelena fall for a masquerade?

No, he’d never lie to her. Not on purpose, anyway.

But she can lie to him. It’s what she was made for.

“I don’t need anyone,” Yelena says, mustering every skill she learned in the Red Room to keep her voice steady and cold. “much less you.”

She sees the crack in his facade immediately, the resurgence of the Bob she knows and loves. His stern expression falls. 

“You don’t mean that,” he begs. 

She doesn’t. Those words remind her of that night, the one where she finally let herself love him. The memory trapped in the dark, something for them and them only. Because he’s right, and being right means everything will change, and it will mean she can’t protect him any longer. Things will start to go wrong, and the world could end, and it will be her fault and she will lose someone she loves all over again and she can’t do that she can’t live like this anymore if he gets hurt of worse if he loses control and what if she can’t save him this time—

Yelena aches for him, but she keeps her mouth pinched into a line, trapping all the words she wants to say. She doesn’t speak. If she does, her resolve will falter.

As the only normal, unpowered hero on this team, she can’t do much. Everything she can do, everyone is already trained in, with the added bonus of super strength, super speed, wall-phasing, and whatever the fuck Bob has going on.

“Get out.”

Even with the skills embedded in her from her time as a Widow, she is nothing special. Yelena may be teaching Bob what she knows now, but he will surpass them all in the blink of an eye. And then the last thing she can offer them will be gone. She is the world’s worst last line of defense; if things ever go wrong, she can’t do anything to help them. 

But she can keep her distance. That is what she can do to protect him.

“Get the fuck out!”

She stares Bob down, waiting for him to crumble. He has to. And when he finally does, then maybe she can be at peace knowing she did everything she could to make sure he can reach his full potential without her weighing him down. 

With a soft, defeated nod, Bob backs out of the kitchen, and Yelena doesn’t move until she hears the elevator doors open and close. It’s then and only then, when she’s finally alone, does she allow herself to break apart. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

During their monthly outing of takeout, pigeon-watching, and not-so-secret exchange of superhero information, Yelena confesses her conflicting feelings about Bob to Kate Bishop.

When Kate asks her, Yelena cracks under her gentle gaze and tells her it all: their stupid fights over sleight of hand-training and burning pizza that they didn’t actually burn and accidental memories that ended with her pushing him away. She is unable to omit the fact that they kind of had sex but also didn’t. It just tumbles out with the rest. Kate doesn't even flinch. 

Right now, Yelena finds that there is nothing more complicated than telling the girl she was and still kind of is sleeping with about how she made out her best friend and came without taking off their clothes and how she wasn’t even sure it counted because they didn’t even get their clothes off and now Kate is laughing at her and Yelena can’t stop speaking because she’s still freaking the fuck out over it and it’ll only get worse when she stops talking and Kate is still laughing.

Her words trickle to a stop when she realizes that Yelena is not taking her seriously. Kate is more amused by the dilemma than Yelena is, save for the arguments, and she doesn't like the way she’s laughing at the situation. She laughs so hard, in fact, she falls off the couch, cackling hard enough to rattle Mascot’s cage.

Yelena doesn’t make a move to help her. It’s recompense for laughing. 

“I can’t believe how rude you’re being to me right now, Kate Bishop,” she says, kicking Kate’s foot from across the couches. “This is a serious situation. I’m pouring my heart out to you during an emotional crisis and you’re just sitting here, laughing at me. That’s just mean.”

“I’m not laughing at you,” Kate promises as she pulls herself off the floor.

“You’re literally laughing right now. You’re still laughing. Cука.” 

If it were any other day, maybe they would’ve been in Yelena’s bedroom by now, fucking each other stupid, but Yelena has been less than willing lately, and Kate seems to know why. That’s the only reason she even confessed to it in the first place. 

(“It’s Bob,” Kate said. Yelena denied her a kiss earlier, still having the memory of his touch burning her skin like a brand. “Don’t deny it, Lena, I see it in your eyes. You two finally did something about this thing between you.” Yelena couldn’t even deny it.)

“Sorry, sorry.” Kate wipes the tears from her eyes, barely composing herself before continuing. “I just think it’s funny, like how do you forget he’s a literal sun-destroying beast after he, you know. Turned the entire state of New York into Depression City without any foreplay.”

Yelena rolls her eyes to stop herself from defending The Void’s actions. Kate holds her hand up in a joking manner, and Yelena swats her. 

“Enough about that. It's not my fault he has such a squishy little babyface. You haven't met him yet so you don't understand, but you will. He looks like just any other boy next door, but really he’s a recovered meth head who could kill me with a sideways look.”

Kate was thrown into the Void’s shame rooms even when living across the city, but she’d chalked it up to an ill-timed trauma response until Yelena caught her up on the whole New Avengers bullshit over drinks. That experience put her off from meeting Bob, understandably so, even though Yelena talks about him often. Too often, apparently. It means nothing. 

“And then you slept with him.”

“I still don’t know if it counts. I mean, it was all over the clothes stuff.”

“Oh, it counts.”

“Whatever. Doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Is that why you yelled at him?” Kate asks. “Because you realized he was scary?”

“No, I was…” Yelena can’t use the excuse of protecting them from someone useless when Kate is in the exact same position as her. A human among heroes. “I don’t know.”

“She’s right, y’know,” John says from the kitchen behind them.

The sound of his voice makes them both jump. Yelena hadn’t even seen him enter.

“Bobby’s like one of those big damn mountain dogs that are used to herd cattle,” he continues, oblivious to their surprise. “He looks sweet and fluffy like a stuffed animal, but he could still kill you if provoked.”

“Aren’t you that knockoff Captain America?” Kate asks. 

He scowls at her, twisting his beard. “Nice to meet you too, second-hand Hawkeye. I would like everyone to remember that I was actually the official Captain America as mandated by the United States government. It was televised and everything. Just in case y’all forgot that.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it’s in all caps on your resume. Haha, caps, get it?” Kate looks at Yelena, who doesn't laugh. “C’mon, that was kind of funny.”

“How long have you been there?” Yelena questions. She really hopes he didn’t hear the whole sex-not-sex part of their conversation. 

John gestures with the pan in his hand. He’s wearing an apron and everything, so domestic. So much like a dad. It’s disgusting, really.

“I was already here when you two came in,” he says. Yelena groans and hides her face in the couch pillows. “I was just making lunch, and you two were running your gobs too much to notice me. Didn’t want to interrupt your little gossip session. Next time you wanna sleep with someone, please do it somewhere where I don't regularly sit.”

“I’m going to kill myself and it’ll be your fault, Walker.”

“As long as you clean the couches beforehand. Do you ladies want grilled cheese?”

“Oh, yes please, Cap,” Kate eagerly says. “Your teammates are so cool, Lena.”

Yelena slumps back into the couch cushions and sinks until she can’t go any further down without falling to the floor. “No, we don’t want grilled cheese.”

“I’ll make ‘em anyway. I know you didn’t have breakfast.”

“What do you think, Walker, since you’ve been listening in like a creep?”

“About which part?”

“Any of it. Besides the… couch thing. I could use the advice from an idiotic man such as yourself.”

He huffs out a sarcastic laugh, flipping the toast in his pan. “I think it’s interesting that you’re just now becoming scared by his powers. I dunno if it’s because you’re a lot more emotional than you realize, or if you’re just kinda lovestruck, but the rest of us have been scared of him since day one.”

“How can you be scared of him?” she says with a scoff. “He’s so nice.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sure the sun is pretty nice, too. You don’t see me tryin’ to hug that giant ball of skin-melting radiation while singin’ Kumbaya.”

“I don’t know what Kumbaya is.”

“The point is you’re too close to Bob to see him the way we do. And that’s not exactly a bad thing. You keep him in check.”

The way he says it makes Yelena scowl. “In check? I’m not his babysitter, Walker. Or some sort of animal wrangler. I’m his friend.”

“That’s not what I meant, Yelena, and you know it. And don’t tell me you two are just friends, because we all know better than that.” John turns to her, hand propped on his hip. He has the father stance down obnoxiously well. “We all need something or someone that grounds us when we’re about to lose ourselves. His just happens to be you, and yours is him. It works out for both of you. Don’t let Val get into your pretty little head about it. Everything she says is for her own self interest, nobody else’s. And it’s in her self interest to put a wedge between you two.”

Even if she doesn’t like it, he makes a good point. Yelena grumbles a bit and flops onto her stomach. 

“But why? I’m helping him stabilize. She’s not that stupid.”

“No, but she is reckless. She underestimates Bob the most, which means she thinks his vulnerability is also his weakness, when it’s what makes him so powerful. But don’t tell him I said that. He might get a big head about it.”

“What’s your thing?” Kate asks. “Your ex-wife?”

“Haha,” he says sarcastically. “You’re funny. But yes. Her and my son. They’re the most important thing in the world to me, and even though we’re not together anymore, everything I do is to make sure they get to live a life without any of the struggles I had to endure.”

Kate aw’s and wipes away fake tears. “That’s so sweet.”

“Do you think,” John begins to say, then stops himself.

He doesn’t shy away from harsh truths with anyone except Yelena and Bucky. She thinks it’s because they’re the only ones who can successfully tear his ass a new one. That, or the dad instinct stays strong even when he’s been, unwillingly, away from his son for so long.

Either way, she appreciates his hesitation, even if it’s equally annoying. 

“Don’t be shy now, Walker,” Yelena crows. “Say what’s on your mind.”

She’s going to regret telling him that.

“I think you’re overthinking it on purpose. Maybe you’re looking for a reason to be afraid of Bobby so you can push him away.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Who knows. You’re nuts. Why do you deny my grilled cheese?”

“You could have poisoned it,” she deadpans.

“See what I mean?”

“Well, you did White Fang me,” Kate adds.

Yelena squints accusingly at her. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s a book. A dude becomes besties with a wolf but it’s, like, super complicated, and at the end of the book he scares away the wolf so it can live a free life.”

“Right. And I did that to you?”

“You tried. Remember that night in the Lower East Side? In the Latin club? You got scared about how close we were getting and you tried to make me leave you behind. You stabbed me. In the hand. With a fucking cocktail umbrella. I still have a scar.”

At the sudden onslaught of memory, she groans and hides her face in her elbow. “Don’t remind me. I was so drunk that night.”

“Makes sense,” John says. “You’re too comfortable. Too close. You’re not used to this kind of connection with others because of your past. God knows it took me forever to figure out how to live the civilian life, and I’m still adjusting to it. But I was raised as a team player. You weren’t, and that’s not your fault. You’re subconsciously trying to be alone again.”

“Why would I want to be alone?” she questions. 

“Because to be alone is easier than being vulnerable with people you care about, sweetheart. Or to lose someone you love. Trust me, I would know.”

John plops a plate beside her with a sizzling grilled cheese sandwich and pets her head. Yelena doesn’t lean into his touch, instead swatting him away, and doesn’t seek the comfort a father can give. She doesn’t even thank him before tearing into the food. But she appreciates him nonetheless. 

John settles into Alexei’s armchair with his own sandwich and changes the TV to the reruns of a some seventies sitcom. The conversation ends there as Kate Bishop changes her intentions to interrogating John about his time as the “official Captain America.”

Even when the mood shifts from her dilemma to something less than uncomfortable, Yelena’s mind never stops returning to it.

She doesn’t want to be alone. Her first instinct, when being released from mind control, was seeking comfort. Searching for familiarity. That was the biggest reason she had for going to Natasha in the first place, even if she hid it under the guise of needing the Avengers to help her with releasing the other Widows from the Red Room.

As much as Yelena hates to admit it, John is right. Loneliness is an easier wound to maintain than loving someone. She has lost everyone she’s ever cared about. Natasha. Melina. Even her own father, although Alexei is trying so hard to make up for the sins of his past.

Nobody stays. Everyone leaves in one way or another.

Kate Bishop has her own life to live, she won’t always have time for Yelena’s emotional crash outs. The New Avengers were forced together. She suspects they don’t care for her, and if she was asked at the beginning of their lives together she would’ve said the same.

But Yelena is emotional; her exterior is titanium, but her insides are plush and peach-soft, bruising at the simple press of fingers. Years of the Red Room molding her body into a weapon left her heart vulnerable, an Achilles’ heel easily exploited.

And as much as she is Bob’s weakness, he is hers too. 

She loves Bob. She loves him so much it hurts. All these feelings he creates in her, romantic or sexual, are foreign objects in her body, and they are rejecting.

And perhaps he would do well to live without her. 

Chapter Text

It’s their government mandated movie night, and it's also Yelena's turn to choose what to watch. She’d planned on putting on a horror movie just to fuck with John some more, since he has an absurd fear of marionette dolls, but that was before she apparently decided to ruin her entire life. Tonight is not going how anybody planned. 

Bucky, Yelena, and Bob are all missing in action, although Bucky is the only one who has a good enough excuse to skip out on them. He’s stuck in a fancy dinner that he texted in the group chat was so boring he was contemplating stabbing his eyes out with the tiny fancy forks. He’s the only one out of range of Yelena’s self-destruction. 

The worst part is she feels it coming, the way Bob must feel the creeping cold of shadows pooling around him before The Void’s arrival. It’s like when she was under the Red Room’s control, watching her actions and wanting to follow through with them but knowing when the adrenaline dies away and she’s left with only herself to confront, she will regret it all. There is not a single thing she’s done in her life she doesn’t think she doesn’t regret. 

Yelena has been actively avoiding the others in a form of self-sabotage. She listens for the elevator to ding upon their leaving, sneaking into the fridge when she knows they’re busy, waiting out Bob in their kitchenette so she doesn’t have to look him in the eye after everything she’s said.

Being alone means she can wallow. It means she ferments in the rot in her mind, makes the thoughts of what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if so much worse. Make what she’s going to do the only choice. 

Bob seems to be doing the same as her. Yelena learns through eavesdropping on Ava and Kate’s conversations—she’s only partially jealous that they’re friends outside of her presence, even though that was the goal—that Bob has refused to let anyone into his room, even Val. Even if they lie and say Yelena is worried about him. 

Luckily, the others are busy enough that it’s not until they’re meant to meet for the movie that they realize something is wrong. Ava tries to coax them out of their rooms to no avail, thankfully not phasing through their walls out of politeness, and John is no more successful. Mel, who they’ve started inviting over for movie nights just to get her away from Val, panics before she even knocks. 

Finally, it’s Alexei who comes to check on Yelena. He earns a dagger to the face for his troubles, he catches upon entering her bedroom.

Yelena sits beneath her desk, assembling and disassembling the same pistol over and over just to keep her hands busy while her mind races. It’s a habit she picked up in the Red Room, one she knows she will never break. She stops when Alexei enters, but she doesn’t apologize for throwing that knife at him. The polished metal pieces of her pistol tumble to the carpet. 

“Good throw, malyshka,” he says. 

Yelena must look as shitty as she feels, like someone has hollowed her out with a rusty spoon, because he pauses, eyes widening just a hair, before walking further into her bedroom. Her eyes are heavy and dry, stomach growling in a way that reminds her she hasn’t eaten all day. She’s in sweatpants and a sports bra, but Alexei is lucky she’s wearing anything at all. 

Although she’s technically clean, Yelena feels just as dirty as she did before she showered. Then again, all she did was sit in her tub and let the hot water batter her skin until the sting was unbearable. 

At the sight of her adopted father in her doorway, she subtly presses her fingers into the raised red scar along her rib. The pain is fresh, throbbing like it’s still an open wound. She winces a bit but sighs at the endorphins that rush over her afterwards.

Yelena understands Bob better now, why he seeks out that self-inflicted pain. It doesn’t clear her mind forever, but the temporary forgetting is enough for her to feel a little bit more human.

“What do you want, Alexei?” she asks coldly, hoping to make him leave. 

Yelena doesn’t want to see him. Not right now, when she will say something she regrets. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks softly, closing her bedroom door behind him.

He’s switched to Russian, as if speaking it will make her feel any better. The worst part is it does.

Yelena doesn’t want to feel better. She wants to rot. 

“Nothing. I want to be alone.”

He sets the thrown dagger down on her dresser. “You don’t look very well. Are you sick?”

“Leave me alone.”

“Trouble in paradise?” When she tenses, he must take it as confirmation. “Ah, I remember my first heartbreak. It hurt so much I thought I would die. Do you want me to take care of him for you?”

“No.”

“Do you need Papa to sing you a lullaby?”

Yelena is on a dangerous streak of hurting the people she cares about. She’s on her feet in a flash, stalking up to her father figure with the slide of her pistol pointed at him like a knife. Before she starts speaking, Alexei recoils from her. 

“You’re not my Papa,” Yelena hisses, coiled and tense, with venom on her tongue, “you’re the man who stole me from my real family and then tricked me into thinking that was you. You gave me away like I was trash. Like our time together was nothing but an unwanted little girl you still feel burdened with. And then you let them do horrible things to me. I have been violated, my mind and body torn apart. A little hug won’t fix what you’ve done to me. I’m barely human now because of you.”

He takes a step another away, holding up his hand like he’s trying to coax a hissing snake with platitudes. “Malyshka—”

“I am not your malyshka. I am not your baby girl because I was never yours. I was just a mission to you, a boring task to complete, a quote to fill. Do you think I’ve forgotten you for what you did to me and Natasha just because you’ve decided now, after everything that happened, to love me?”

Her voice grows loud enough that she is sure the others can hear from floors away. She bets they’re listening in from the hall.

“I never stopped loving you—” he begins, but Yelena is not finished.

“All those little girls that Dreykov tore apart… just like he did to me. That is on you. Their blood is all on your hands.” She juts the slide into his chest as if it’s a dagger and he catches her wrist, holding it gently. His eyes are owlish, dark, watering with each word she spits out like acid fire. “I will never forgive you for giving me a family and ripping it away when I needed you most. It’s too late to make up for that. I can barely stand the sight of you without wanting to die because all I see is the man who destroyed my life.” 

Alexei says nothing. He simply looks down, back up—he’s crying now, and Yelena is too angry to feel the guilt immediately—and lets go of her wrist. Yelena’s chest is heaving with the strain to not break apart in front of him. She holds Alexei’s gaze. Whatever he’s searching for in her eyes, he doesn’t find.

“Leave.”

He turns away, head hanging low, and exits her bedroom with a heavy hand. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Kate calls her over and over and over again. She’s worried.

Yelena doesn’t answer.

Ava asks Mel to check on her, since Ava was gone on a mission. The knock is timid. 

Yelena doesn’t answer.

Bucky sends her another, are you alive? text.

Yelena doesn’t answer. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

When Yelena walks in on John and Ava having sex in the kitchen, she wants to pluck her eyes out and burn them in a fire.

“There are so many rooms,” she says, making John scream like a girl, “and yet you’re fucking in the kitchen. Where we cook and eat. This is a communal space, you absolute ingrates.”

Upon hearing her, they both freeze, like deers watching a semi-truck approach. John blushes like he’s sunburnt, and Ava’s eyes are so wide Yelena fears they’re going to pop out of her skull. 

It seems ridiculous, thinking that she and Bob were the only ones struggling keeping their relationship strict and professional when it was never that to begin with. They’ve fought and kissed, slept together and were walking eggshells around each other until they could figure out how to continue.

But they’re not the only ones. This shouldn't be a surprise, and it really isn’t.

That doesn’t mean it’s pleasant to see. 

John has Ava bent against the fridge, where anyone else could walk in on them. They’re mostly dressed, thank God for her already seared vision, but Yelena screams at the scene anyways. None of them move for several silent and uncomfortable seconds. 

“Christ, Belova,” Ava finally shouts, plucking a magnet off the fridge and chucking it at Yelena. “Why are you still standing there?”

“I don’t know! I panicked!”

Yelena slaps a hand over her eyes, and walks backwards out the kitchen. 

John squeaks. “You guys bet on this?”

“I owe Kate ten dollars,” she says, earning another magnet attack. 

“I’m going to kill you, bitch.”

She cracks a peek through her fingers to make sure they’re decent. Before John can even pull out of her, Ava vanishes through the fridge, leaving a ripple of shifting light where she once was. He cowers away from Yelena, readjusting himself.

With his back to her, John mutters an apology.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he begs. “We haven’t… we’re not… we’re figuring it out.”

“I didn’t know we could do this,” Yelena says.

“Have sex?”

She snorts. “Fraternization.”

“There’s no rules against it,” John says carefully, before quickly adding, “Not saying Ava and I are… or anything like that, but you and Bob—”

“We’re not.”

She says it too quickly, too sternly. Hearing him say relationship, or together, or all the things she wants but can’t afford to have, just might break her the rest of the way. 

John doesn’t look her in the eye, no doubt too humiliated to do so, but he briefly sends her a confused look. “Aren’t you?”

“No. I haven’t seen him all week.”

“I know, I just thought it was a lover’s quarrel or something. That’s what Alexei said.”

“It’s not, it’s—”

But that’s exactly what it is, isn’t it? Maybe not in name, but in spirit.

“I think I White Fanged him,” she says.

He sends her a sympathetic look before glancing away again. “I told ya you would.”

“I know.”

“What’re you gonna do now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we fuck in the kitchen where anyone can see.”

His face is so red she’s sure he’s going to burst like a balloon. Yelena laughs so easily before remembering her self-imposed misery. She watches John squirm under her gaze.

“You’re so mean,” he grumbles.

“Guess that filed divorce finally went through, huh?”

She doesn’t even try to dodge the towel when he chucks it at her, laughing as she darts into the living room, already forgetting what she’d gone into the kitchen for in the first place.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Ava must’ve thought that she was doing better after that, because she offers to train with Yelena just to get her out of her room. She agrees, but is so distracted by her own mind that Ava lands a nasty hit to her when she doesn’t block the kick in time. It’s Yelena’s tender side, where the bullet grazed her. 

Yelena doubles over in sharp pain, cradling her ribs. She gasps and weeps like something broke inside of her. Ava falls to her side.

“Jesus, I thought you were going to block it,” she says apologetically, lifting Yelena’s tank top to assess the damage. The pink skin of her scar is a deep red, freckled with broken capillaries just under the surface. “Okay, no blood, that’s good. It looks a little swollen, but I don’t know if it’ll bruise. I’ll get you an ice pack.”

“I’m fine,” Yelena says, finding her breath.

“Yelena, I just kicked the shit out of you where you were shot. You’re not fine.”

“I’m fine,” she repeats, biting.

She stands and returns to her fighting position, though far less confident than when they started. Ava doesn’t move at first, looking at her with an incredulous expression. Her hair is braided out of her way, tangles of her dark hair escaping around her face. Cheeks pink, heavy breathing. Yelena can still keep up, even if it’s with the only one on their team who doesn’t have super strength.

“C’mon,” Yelena urges, curling her shaking hands into fist. The pain pulses from her side like a heartbeat. “I can keep fighting.”

“No. No, we’re gonna take a break,” Ava says, and turns towards the water fountain. “What the hell has been wrong with you lately? It’s like you’re devolving or something. And you’re taking it out on the rest of us, which I don’t fucking care for at all.”

She says it out of concern, even if she says it with attitude, but Yelena’s flooded with anger. Without thinking, she launches at her, grappling Ava until she’s under her. She gets a knee to Ava’s chest, the other planted firmly on the floor, and lifts the practice knife to her throat. It’s plastic, not sharp, but Yelena doesn’t push hard enough. 

“I’m fine.” If she repeats it enough, maybe it’ll come true. “You shouldn’t let your guard down like that. Just because I don’t have powers doesn’t mean I can’t pull my weight.”

Ava glares up at her, surprised but pissed. Her nose scrunches up. “Jesus, Yelena. You smell like a dive bar. Are you drunk?”

“Fuck off.”

Ava pushes Yelena off without much effort. They both lie on the floor, facing each other, breathing slowly to something almost calm.

“Don’t act like you’re superior,” Ava says, “because you were under mind control. You’re not better than me. You’re just as fucked up and broken as the rest of us.”

“Don’t you think I know that? I am well aware how fucking pathetic I am to be on this team.”

A shock of surprise races across Ava’s face. “I didn’t say pathetic.”

“Yeah?” Yelena bites out. “Well, I did.”

The animosity between them turns to vapor in an instant. Yelena is trying so hard to stay angry because it’s what she knows, but she’s not really mad. Sadness is a lot more complicated to deal with, layered with years of torment and fears of the future.

She stares Ava down, like she can will her to run. Ava is not that kind of woman. 

“You two still haven’t talked since your little pizza fight, huh?” she asks softly, like she can see right through Yelena’s facade. “Like it or not, Belova but we’re on the same team now. And I know you. I know how you are when you’re trying to avoid something because it hurts. It’s like watching a detonator in slow motion.”

Yelena bites her cheek. “Fuck you.”

“So, that’s what this is about.”

“It’s not, like, we’ve broken up or…” It’s the first time she’s said anything akin to a relationship between them. Ava watches patiently, urging her to continue. “We’re inseparable. Hip to hip, like a couple of lovestruck puppies.”

“Yeah, we’ve noticed. That’s not a bad thing, though.”

“It will be. You weren’t in Florida. You didn’t see how easily he could’ve lost control. I trust him to control it. I don’t trust myself not to get myself killed out on the field.”

Ava makes a small, understanding sound, then twists around to grab her water bottle where it rests against the wall. “You wanna know what I think?”

“Not really, no.”

“I think you’re right.”

Yelena hadn’t expected that. She blinks, slightly stunned, then says, “Um. Okay.”

“I know what it’s like fearing that you’re going to drag the people you love down,” Ava continues without missing a beat. “But it’s different because I have powers and you don’t. You’re not any more vulnerable than the rest of us because you don’t have any biological upgrades, and you’re not any less valuable either. Trust me, if it was Walker or your father leading us into battle, I would’ve just let myself die in that vault.”

“It’s better this way. Having no ties. Being distant. Once we adjust, then when I…” Yelena catches the way Ava flinches at the idea. “If I get seriously hurt, then Bob can keep himself together.”

“You say that like he wouldn’t get all spooky for the rest of us.”

“Maybe at first. But… I’m well aware of what our relationship is like.”

“You have roots here,” Ava says. “People who love you. Your father, your ex-girlfriend. Us. I have the scientist who tasked me with assassinations and four people in bug suits that I tried to kill. The things you said and did aren’t unfixable. Don’t throw what you have away because you’re scared.” 

Yelena doesn’t know why she keeps seeking her teammates out when all she wants to do is get worse and then maybe drop dead without them caring enough to grieve her. She keeps anticipating—hoping, really—for sympathy of some sort from her teammates, or an aggressive clutching of her shoulders to shake some sense into her.

They give her neither. Instead, it’s just good advice, which is not what she wants. 

But the way she’s going is exhausting. Being miserable is heavy, and it’s not always avoidable. She can change some things, though. If she put in effort.

“How did you fix it?” Yelena asks. “Your relationship with Bill and the Pyms.”

“I haven’t. I’m British, remember? We don’t fix things. We drink. But maybe don’t do that, and just talk to him.”

“I’ll try,” Yelena says, already knowing she’s not going to do anything that Ava told her.

Ava chuckles in a way that tells Yelena that she knows it, too. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Are we?”

“I like to think so. But I get it. Some things you have to deal with on your own. Just don’t take it out on me. You’re already insufferable as you are.”

Without another word, Ava phases through the floor, leaving Yelena kneeling alone on the gym floor, so numb that she doesn’t even feel the tears as they track down her cheeks. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Lust isn’t an innate feature of hers. Yelena never bought vibrators or any other kinds of toys, nor has she ever felt the need to. She didn’t get herself off often, never held in that sort of frustration that could be released with a few fingers and a glass of wine.

Masturbation requires sexual desire, and that desire came to her as rare as Halley’s comet. Twice in her lifetime, already more than she thought, but still rare that she can’t get horny by looking at porn or reading the smutty cowboy romance books that Kate has in her loft. 

Her lack of lust—particularly her not feeling the need to masturbate—surprised Kate when they first started sleeping together. Yelena had already accepted she was asexual and that was it. There were no exceptions, no deviations to what the world saw and labeled under that broad umbrella. She hadn’t known the nuances of herself yet. 

They both learned very quickly that Yelena wants someone, oh how she wants. It’s as if the walls of her mind crash down and flood her with a yearning that can drive her nearly crazy. They didn’t start like that, because want takes a long time to ferment inside of Yelena. 

The first time they slept together was an accident, just like the way it was with Bob. Yelena was drunk, and Kate was drunk, and their first kiss felt like the perfect end to a long and vibrant night of playing pool and throwing darts.

But things kept going, kept escalating, and suddenly Kate was between her legs, devouring her like it was the only way she could keep breathing, and Yelena had never felt like that before. Never wanted, never wanting. She was nearing thirty, and she was having her very first orgasm with a girl that she’d known for less than a year. A girl who brought up feelings she’d never had before and she always thought she never would again. 

Their relationship evolved how hers and Bob’s is now shifting because Yelena is nothing if not painfully predictable. If two was a pattern, anyway. Much of it was implied, developing in the shadows like photographs in a dark room, and quietly understood by the only people who needed to understand. There was no need for large confessions or labeling them as girlfriends or partners or whatever. It didn’t matter, and the ambiguity allowed for an easier moving-on in case either of them didn’t come home from a mission. 

Kate was the only person she’d ever wanted before Bob stumbled into her life like a lost puppy. While she isn’t inexperienced, those experiences were limited because of how limited her desire was when with someone who wasn’t Kate or Bob. Yelena didn’t like people touching her, but she loved holding Kate’s hand. She didn’t really like men, but she loved Bob.

It took her a very long time to differentiate what she didn’t want because of what the Red Room put her through and what she didn’t want because she simply didn’t want it. She still isn’t quite sure why Kate and Bob of all people were the ones that she fell in love with, but love is an unexpectant force of nature that can rarely be fought against.

Yelena still doesn’t feel that average bored horniness that teenagers can’t help but be possessed by until their hormones get into check, the pull in her stomach when Kate made love to her for the first time or when she braved the dark to kiss Bob. 

That doesn’t stop her from slipping a hand down her sweatpants.

It’s a distraction, not a need. She read somewhere that it helps with sleep and floods the brain with oxytocin. And Yelena has not been sleeping well since Bob stopped coming to her room at night. He must be giving her space, or maybe he’s still angry. Either way, she had become so dependent on him to sleep that, well.

Desperate times, desperate measures. 

She tries to think of nothing at all, allowing her body to navigate itself to what feels good. Her legs are trembling. The harder she pushes Bob out of her mind, the more prevalent of a figure he becomes in the back of her eyelids. Yelena opens her eyes, seeing nothing but darkness around her.

It’s late. Maybe midnight, maybe later. She’s been awake for so long. As she presses her fingers into herself, forcing her body as fast as it will allow to reach that edge just so she can try and sleep. It’s not need, but in a way it is. Not the need for a person. Yelena isn’t doing this because she’s horny or needy but because if it will help her sleep, then so be it. 

When she comes, it’s an objectively good experience, filling her mind with a cool fuzziness, a temporary haze of nothing, but the crash is hard. Reality is still waiting for her when she comes down from the small high. Yelena washes her hands in the sink, not bothering to clean herself, and crawls back into her bed. Alone. 

She doesn’t pass out for another half hour after that. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

When Kate walks into Yelena’s bedroom like she lives there and pulls her hands in her lap, it feels like they’re breaking up all over again. 

(“I like you, Lena,” she’d said back then, already crying when she’d barely started speaking. “So much.”

“But it isn’t enough,” Yelena replied coldly. Numbly.

Kate shook her head, then, and that was it. A silent divorce among two silent lovers. It was so easy, it didn’t hurt. Yelena told herself that enough that it had to become true at one point.)

Kate opens her mouth to speak, but stops herself with a curious look on her face. She grabs Yelena’s chin and sniffs into her mouth. Yelena is too startled to stop her. 

“You’re drunk,” is the first thing Kate says when she pulls away. It bursts from her like she hadn’t expected herself to say it, as if she’d derailed what she’d really wanted to talk about. She sounds surprised. “I thought you stopped drinking.”

“I did,” Yelena replies defensively.

“What happened?”

“I stopped… not drinking.”

Not knowing what else to do, and just needing to feel something that isn’t pain, Yelena leans in to kiss her. Kate stops her with a hand over her mouth. 

“We’re broken up, remember?” she says, and Yelena sees the hurt in her eyes. “For a while now.”

“That didn’t stop you from sleeping with me,” Yelena mumbles around her hand. 

“We both know I’m not the one you want. Why are you trying to kiss me?”

“I don’t know,” she replies honestly. 

“Shit, I had this whole speech planned, about how you’re pushing everyone away and self sabotaging like we talked about last week but worse, and blah, blah, blah, but—” Kates sucks in a sharp breath, shakes her head. “Ava told me you’d gotten bad, but I didn’t realize just how bad.”

Yelena pulls her hands from Kate’s lap, recoiling. That’s the only reason she’s here. She didn’t come because she wanted to, but because she felt some sort of duty to her.

“Ava put you up to this?” she says. 

“She was worried about you,” Kate explains gently, “and you know how she is. She’s… icy.”

“She’s a cunt.”

The moment the words leave her mouth, she regrets ever saying them. 

Kate flinches. “Okay, no. You’re—no. Are you… okay?”

Yelena closes her eyes. “Obviously not. There is something wrong with me, like chemically or mentally or emotionally, and I don’t know what. I thought it would help, I thought it would be easy. But instead, I feel like I’ve just broken myself in half.”

“What did you do?”

Through a closing throat, Yelena explains—that day in the lab where she felt afraid of Bob, the subsequent fights, the separation between her and her team. It was deliberate, it was instinct, and it was her way of self destructing. She is well aware of that now, even if she’ll do nothing to stop it. 

Kate listens. She always listens so nicely. At least she doesn’t try to give her advice like Ava, and at least she doesn’t have to blatantly ignore that advice. 

“Why would you do that to yourself?” Kate asks. 

“Because,” Yelena says, pleading for her to understand. Someone has to understand. 

But it’s not Kate.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Yelena learned nothing from her times alone before. Or maybe she doesn’t care anymore. 

The way her mind unravels, her loss of understanding time and days, the overwhelming rise of her senses. She feels that feral state creeping over her mind like a weighted blanket wanting to suffocate her, wipe her mind clean again.

But even moreso, she fears having to witness what she’s done to the most precious of her relationships, the cracks she’s put in the foundation.

That ferality hasn't settled over her yet, it’s only been a day and a half since the last Kate came over, but it’s there. Like she can see the wave of a tsunami long before it crashes over her, but there is still no escape. Either she surfaces or she drowns. 

She drinks, because that at least she can rely on. The numbness. There is an easy bliss found only at the bottom of the bottle that is much more effective than masturbating, how she can see everything that torments her but from a distance. Drinking allows a degree of separation between her and what she is afraid to feel. 

No matter what she does, who she kills or who she loves, people leave. People die. And this isolation was meant to prevent the pain of that loss.

So why is the darkness so much heavier now?

She drinks on the balcony at midnight, sitting idly on the edge, her legs dangling hundreds of feet from the concrete below. It’s cheap stuff from the corner store that for some reason always cards her despite knowing she’s well over twenty-one, shitty and not very strong liquor, but it does the trick when downed on an empty stomach. 

The parachute sits beside her, but she doesn’t put it on. She probably should. One stiff breeze will send her free falling with nothing to save her, and she’s too drunk to be quick enough to grab the railing behind her if she falls. Nobody would find her until the morning. Maybe it wouldn’t even be her team, just some poor passerby with the world’s worst timing. 

Sometimes Yelena wishes she didn’t have the choice to make choices. She hates the Red Room and what it’s made her; she will never truly stop yearning for the life she’ll never have.

But there is a comfort in being told what to do, and doing it. Like the entire world is narrowed to a goal and the journey and that is it. No complicated feelings for boys with pretty eyes, or sex with some strings attached with girls who smell like arrow polish, or searching for a family in the eyes of people who were once her enemies.

Sometimes she wonders who would miss her if she died. Nobody did for five whole years. She was dead to the world. Being dead for real this time wouldn't hurt anybody. Maybe she should just—

No. Yelena stops that train of thought before it leaves the station, sets it on fire and lets it burn.

Her ideal methods are reckless, stupid, an act of desperation masquerading as heroism. Falling off a building while utterly wasted is no way to die. Yelena wants to go out with a flourish. She wants to die in a way that makes Natasha proud. 

Besides.

She knows which one of her fellow teammates will come looking for her first. Which one would just know something was wrong and find her body against the front steps of the Watchtower, splattered like a fly on a windshield. 

And Bob has already endured enough heartbreak for too many lifetimes. Maybe she can find it in herself to stick around a little longer. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Alexei doesn’t come back to check on Yelena again. John doesn’t either, possibly too afraid of what unnecessarily cruel things she would have to say to him. Ava watches her warily, coldly, but doesn’t say anything. Yelena should apologize for what she said and did, but she doesn’t. 

For that long, torturous five days where Yelena and Bob make their issues everyone else’s problem to deal with too, Bob is nowhere to be found. Not even by the others. He only comes out when it’s time for his training session, and Bucky joins him. Yelena overhears that it went well. She knew it would. But she also hears that Bob hasn’t been sleeping. 

Neither has she. 

That should tell her that she’s gone too far in pushing her teammates away, but her mind tells her otherwise. Maybe they have finally gotten sick of her like her false father and mother and sister did decades ago when they gave her away. They’ve realized who the weakest link in their chain of heroes is and are acting accordingly now. It’s only wise that she takes herself out of the equation before she gets someone hurt or killed. Or becomes the burden of being the hurt one again.

She doesn’t know why she still thinks about them when she’s done this to herself. It’s like they’re already a family when she’s done little to bridge those gaps. 

How did Bucky’s latest press junket with the other congressmen go?

Can Ava’s new suit allow her to travel a further distance when dismantled?

Has John had any luck with visitation rights yet?

Does Alexei like the cookies Mel brought from the market? 

She hates it. Hates what she’s made herself into. But she tells herself it’s for everyone else’s safety and not her own.

Her nights are colder without Bob in her bed. He hasn’t come around, either. He has invaded her every waking thought like he’s carved his own little section into the tissue of her brain. Not even when she pushes him away can she escape him. 

Can he sleep without her? Have his powers become stronger, or more unstable? Is he eating well? Does he smile when she’s not around? Does he miss her the way she misses him? Even when they’re only a hallway apart? What the hell was she thinking, tucking herself into her corner of the tower as if she can escape what is already there? 

She doesn’t even know if she’s scared anymore. She’s just lonely.

Yelena sleeps on the floor of her room, the mattress too soft for her war-stiffened body, and she basks in the pain of her own mind.

If she leaves first, then she can't be abandoned.

Chapter Text

In a stroke of luck, or maybe just another cruel joke from the universe condemning her for her own idiocy, Val sends Yelena on a solo mission to the Dominican Republic, her first since being shot. Call it a well deserved vacation, Val tells her, even though most people don’t normally work while on vacation. And they don’t normally kill people as a job, either. 

Coincidentally, it’s the same day that she decides she has to beg Bob on her goddamn hands and knees for forgiveness because the distance is killing her. She can’t stand the distance, and the space she thought would help them grow into separate people only feels like an unnecessary amputation. 

When Kate asked her why, there was no real explanation. Not one that would make sense to the sane or the loving, anyway. She does this to herself because she’s so afraid of something that she can’t deny nor prevent, and she’s willing to endure such a self-induced heartache if it means protecting the one person in the world she loves more than life itself. 

 It may be a fool’s errand, but Yelena never claimed to be anything else.

Despite it all, she finds herself oddly eager to get away from the tower for any given amount of time. Though the distance may hurt, some air will be good for her. 

John questions if she’ll be okay on her own—they’ve all become wary of her and Bob since their fight, with everyone too scared to intervene in case Yelena decides to have another row with them—but she’s not one to deny herself a little adrenaline rush. She insists upon her own sanity, knowing it probably doesn’t exist anymore, and accepts the mission.

Bob comes to find her when she’s packing, standing in the doorway masked by darkness. Yelena feels his presence before seeing him, the pressure changing in the room. 

“How long is it?” he asks softly.

Even when they’re in a fight, he cares enough to seek her out. It’s moments like these when she forgets why she did it in the first place. 

Yelena did this. She ruined them. She considers apologizing now, when she still has a chance, but the words refuse to dislodge from where they’re wound around her heart.

“Just a couple days,” Yelena replies instead, keeping her back to him. “It’s an easy snatch and detonate. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“I know we haven’t—” His voice cracks, and Yelena wishes she could hear what he was thinking. “I wanted to see you before you go. I always do, and I didn’t want to… regret it later.”

She formulates a smile, then turns to thank him. He is made of all shadow, save for those twinkling eyes that steadily hold her gaze. His shoulders slump forward, head lulled to the side. Yelena can almost intuit the gentle pout of his mouth, his twitching hands picking the skin around his thumbs until they’re bloody. Her heart swells with an inherent happiness at the sight of him but it sinks in the moment after. It hurts to look at him in such a state, knowing she’s most likely the cause. 

“You’ve got a shadow,” she says. 

Bob looks down at himself, then shrugs. “Yeah, I’m, um. I’m not doing so hot.”

The apology rattles around her heart, nearly loose. Yelena needs to tell him now, rescind all the pain and idiocy she spewed before it’s too late. She wonders if she makes him worse. Sure, he was unstable beforehand, but maybe he would’ve been better if they’d never met.

They’ll never know now.

“You don’t look much better,” he says.

Yelena swallows around the growing tears and has to look away. “I’m not doing well either.”

He lets out this short, pained laugh. “Yeah, I can tell.”

She should apologize. She needs to. But whether it’s pride or fear stopping her, Yelena stays silent.

“I wish you could come with me,” she says.

“No, you don’t.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

Being far away from him hurts so much more than she ever thought. While she can’t see his face, Yelena knows he understands. Bob makes a small, resigned noise. Through the blanket of self-induced night, she can almost see his face, the sadness permeating from those blue eyes of his. 

“Be safe,” he says. “Please.”

“I will.” 

Yelena has to do it now. What if she doesn’t come back from this mission? She can’t leave with Bob still thinking she’s mad at him when all he did was love her too much.

Taking a deep breath, she’s already saying sorry before she’s done turning. But the long apology dies a pathetic death in her throat.

Bob is already gone. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

The mission is simple: raid one of AIM’s bases, where stolen samples of the Gladiator Project’s were confirmed by Bobbi Morse to be held in, and level the place on her way out. It takes her several hours to rig the place to blow, sweltering under the oppressive sun even in a cut-off tee and shirts. She’s not an explosives expert, but she loves making things explode. Her comms are on the whole time, and it’s just Bucky telling her about a book he’s reading.

It takes her another day to fight her way inside AIM to collect the serums. The fights waiting for her inside the building are frustratingly easy, barely getting her blood pumping. Yelena makes quick work of these half-assed guards. The sun makes her sweat more than these assoles. She double taps them for good measure, then continues. 

Yelena treats this mission as therapy, taking out everything she’s stored inside of her on the scientists who run when they see her coming. She snatches the vials from the cabinet, sneaks out, and watches the one-story building burst and collapse. 

Good riddance. It was a modernist eyesore beside the rest of the beautiful, pastel-colored buildings. 

Once Yelena properly secures the serums in a protective case in her hotel room, her mission is done. She should report back. She doesn’t.

Since this is her first time alone—really alone, not just narrowly avoiding her teammates in the halls because she doesn’t have the energy to make small talk—Yelena decides to spend the rest of her day drinking on the coastal beaches of Monte Cristi and getting as much sun as she can before having to return to the wreckage she left behind. At least the booze is affordable if you know where to look.

Val won’t notice nor care if Yelena delays her check-in for a couple hours, and Bucky went silent over the comms this morning. They don’t have to worry about her. She always completes her missions. 

The sharp-sloped mountains curve around the coast like a wall, blocking out the rest of the world as she totters along the hot sand in her shorts and sports bra, her suit discarded in her hotel room and her shirt forgotten somewhere between the road and the beach walkway. Yelena didn’t get shot this time, thankfully, but she earned a split lip for her troubles that stings when she throws herself off a cliff and into the salty bay below.

Plumes of white seafoam, the soothing embrace of cool, cobalt blue water. Gravity is weaker here, a caress instead of a solid grip. It feels like she’s falling out of the world. A string of bubbled breath escapes her in streams as she exhales. She feels the pressure of deep water grip her like a vice. Her ears grow painful, then pop with relief. Yelena allows herself to plummet further down until her back bumps gently against the ocean floor. 

For a moment, she is suspended between worlds, existing nowhere in that held breath. The earth is not so far below her, decorated with shells and dropped belongings: watches, bottle caps, earrings.

When her lungs start to strain for air, Yelena digs her feet into the sand and starts to kick back towards the surface. Even here, a world away, she can’t help thinking how similar a color the untouched ocean beyond her is to Bob’s eyes. 

Who is she without him? 

The same as she was before, perhaps. The same as she is now and will always be. 

She breaches the surface, swims to the shore, and climbs the cliff to jump again. There’s a line now. 

Yelena has not changed much since Bucharest, or even further back than that. Morocco. She likes to think she’s grown since then, becoming strong and kind like her sister. Maybe she can even be the hero New York needs, the one that Val parades her as on TV and on magazine covers. But everything about her feels like it’s frozen in time to when she was a little girl. All she’s done since is hurt more people, earned more scars, stumbled into the spotlight of heroism. 

This time apart from Bob doesn’t hurt as much as it aches, like stepping into another  room but leaving your heart behind. It beats, pumps blood through arteries and capillaries, but it’s not where it needs to be. But it reminds her she’s alive. 

One day, Yelena is going to wake up, hungover and somehow still drunk, and realize that she doesn’t want to live like this anymore. And it’s going to be too late to change her circumstances. 

Yelena coats her pale skin with cheap sunblock, even though she’s sure she’s going to burn anyway. She buys a fresh coconut from a cart pulled by a local. Despite the egregious price, the sweet, icy liquid is worth it. It’s the first sip of something that wasn’t alcohol since this morning. She buys something called mofongo, a little mountain made of smashed plantains and meat, and devours it. Her wet clothes are cooling against her skin, counteracting the sun’s razing touch.

When her thoughts grow too loud without reprieve, she finds herself missing the Red Room, and that unexpected nostalgia always comes tainted with blood. Yelena knows better than to want to return to that kind of life. Nobody deserves to be subjected to a forced existence of servitude. 

Being a mindless and violent weapon comes with the freedom of being mindless, free. She didn’t have to think about consequences or her future because she could always be dead on the next mission. The thinking was done for her, and all she had to do was follow through with what she was told. 

Autonomy has two sides: the freedom to live a life she wants, and the freedom to ruin that same life simply because she’s scared. 

Yelena doesn’t want to be taken over like that ever again, nor does she want to return to that nightmarish life she already survived, but.

But.

She wonders if a lifetime under Dreykov’s control damaged her beyond recovery. There are pieces of her missing that are unrecoverable, pieces she’s sure she was born with but were surgically removed by decades of chemical exposure rewiring her brain to be nothing but a weapon. Some parts of her can be healed, but emptiness can’t be fixed, only filled. And it’s unfair to fill those gaps with Bob when he has his own shit to figure out. 

Yelena wonders how Bucky did it. She wonders if she, too, can be salvaged. 

The beach is filled with tourists, bumbling through the sand and waves with bubbly glee. Yelena sits alone, watching the sun fall away slowly over the impossibly wide sky. Colors like these just don’t seem to exist beneath the smog of New York. Vibrant oranges, magentas, violets, spreading across the navy sky like opaque paint strokes. The clouds are distant, carrying her troubles away with them. Her mind is delightfully numb. 

The beaches are beautiful as she wanders them in her sneakers, her socks tucked into the back pocket of her shorts. It doesn’t feel like a vacation, though. Vacations usually are spent with loved ones, or not lazily attached to the end of an assigned job.

She dives a few more times, addicted to the way her heart stutters and adrenaline rushes through her right before she plunges into the water. It’s addicting, this controlled adrenaline rush, where she alone decides when her body goes into fight or flight or freeze or fall.

And she always thought that death would come to her in this way: brightly lit and quickly approaching.

When she’s tender and sunburnt and gratifyingly exhausted, she checks in with her team. Yelena confirms the task is done and drinks herself the rest of the way to a dreamless and exhaustive sleep. She buys a shot glass for Alexei, who collects them from every foreign place they visit during their missions. 

When morning comes, Yelena barely makes it back to the quinjet in time. She stumbles in, waving the case with the serum like a prize, and straps herself clumsily into her seat beside Bucky. He must have noticed how hungover she is, can smell the salt and liquor clinging to her like a raincloud, but he says nothing. 

But the look he sends her makes her ashamed.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Their fucking air conditioner is broken.

A sudden New York heatwave meant everyone and their mothers were blasting their AC all at once on the highest settings. Yelena only notices when she wakes up in a pool of sweat. She treks down to the gym to cool down, which was normally chilled, only to be bombarded with a wave of heat. John is already inside, yelling at Val about the issue.

While the city tried to circumvent an outage with controlled brownouts in each block, it was too little too late. Half of the city is in darkness, and the other half suffers from slow internet and unpredictable bouts of power surges. Fortunately, the power comes back in the Watchtower soon enough, but the vents are fucked, and the thermostat is stuck on 75. 

Val tells them she’ll get the aircon fixed when she has the time—meaning she won’t do it until Bucky pitches another fit, like when their microwave exploded and she refused to fix the fire damage, but until then, they’re going to suffer.

That night, Yelena writhes in her sheetless bed for hours before moving to the floor with a pillow and wearing only boxers. She opens her windows to get some semblance of ventilation and sleeps spread out. The heat seems to make the nightmares worse, coating them with this sluggish visage that haunts her when she wakes up every hour and a half with a sob threatening to crawl up her throat.

By the time the sun comes up, she gives up on trying to sleep and instead lies on the floor of her bathroom gathering what is left of her energy to brave the world. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

The night Yelena tries to kill herself, it’s masqueraded as an accident, even to her own mind. She knows what she’s doing, but she also doesn’t. Life is funny that way. An action so simple yet large, a foot forward or back that dictates the rest of your life, and she does it mindlessly. Yelena isn’t aware of anything around her, not the ledge and the earth, not the voice behind her. It all is numb, save for the visage of her sister’s face slipping from her mind’s eye.

A distant aura of the city below illuminates her face in stark shadows. It’s cool tonight, a gentle chill that isn’t quite strong enough to form chicken skin on her arms, or make her shiver. 

Oblivious to the fact that she’s on the roof, Yelena becomes aware of someone speaking to her. A voice drags her halfway out of the deluge of sleep. John has a nice voice; something low like her own but gentler, drenched in that Southern drawl of his that soothes her fears like aloe on a burn. He’s speaking calmly, but there is an edge of fear in his words that must be what wakes her up. 

Yelena often forgets that she’s supposed to hate him, but she’s sure she stopped hating him the moment he dove headfirst into the Void to save her and Bob. 

(And the rest of the world, of course, but she remembers how John guarded him with little regard for what the memories inflicted on him. Like they were precious to him. Like he cared.)

His words come disjointed as her mind awakens just enough to process it.

“—and that’s okay. It doesn’t need to be perfect, so just… just get off the ledge, okay?”

Cool concrete is pressed to the small of her back. Her fingers wrap loosely around the barrier’s railing, barely keeping her from tipping forward. The haze of dream and reality merge as Yelena looks over her shoulder towards his voice. There is no end to one, no beginning of the other. It comes together. She must’ve been talking back, though she’s unsure what she was saying. 

John is right behind her, carefully approaching her with an outstretched hand. He’s still in uniform, hair messed up from an unseen fight, the clasps of his suit half undone, as if he’s just gotten home from a mission and found her there. His blue eyes are turned silver by the city lights below. 

She glances back down to her socked feet, where she stands on the ledge. Her toes stick off the narrow edge of the Watchtower, one foot slightly in front of the other, prepped to jump. Vertigo clutches her gut in a vice as the dizzying plummet below her settles in, and she nearly loses her grip.

The city looks so small from so high up. Quiet. Insignificant. Her mind is coated with a decent layer of drowsy fog, blurring the world around her. Yelena has to look away so she doesn’t lose her balance. 

“Where was I?” she murmurs to herself. “Was it Budapest?”

She can’t quite remember. The memory feels distant. It’s a haze of lights and flashy movements.

“No, no, I was somewhere else.”

Yelena touches her shoulder, where her bullet wound is wound tight with the scraps of Natasha’s sleeve, no longer bleeding. They must’ve gotten away from Taskmaster.

“Where is she?” Yelena asks.

“Who?” John asks back.

“My sister.”

The hitch on his breath devastates her as memory returns. Yelena’s throat bobs with emotion.

That’s right. Natasha is dead. It feels like losing her all over again. 

She wants to dream again, even if it hurts. She wants to see her sister again.

It’s going to be Natasha’s birthday soon. Yelena should throw her a party something themed blue and sparkly, the way she likes it. Maybe they’ll make cookies again. She always loved spending the day baking together. 

“I want it to stop. I need it all to stop.”

Yelena shifts. Forward, not back. John lets out a tiny gasp. His voice comes out strangled, horrified. If she fell now, he probably wouldn’t be fast enough to catch her. 

“Yelena, no.” 

“I’m so tired,” she whispers, closing her eyes. Everything feels so heavy, so warm. “Let me rest for a minute. Just a minute.”

“Wait—”

Her body pitches forward. Yelena lets gravity take hold of her for one precious, weightless second. She feels the plummet in the lowest pit of her stomach, how she always does before free falling from a building. There is no more fear, no more vertigo. Just peace before the dark.

Dying must be like falling asleep. It slips over you like a blanket, and then—

And then nothing.

She thinks she wants that. 

In the next half-second, though, Yelena is jerked away from the edge, and gravity latches back onto her limp body. A strong hand grasps at the fabric around her waist, the other protectively clutching her head as John snatches her from the air. She turns to dead weight in his arms.

To counteract her momentum, he throws them both back onto the rooftop, away from the abyss. Yelena falls on top of him, her body completely slack. The jostling wakes her up the rest of the way, slowly but surely. She can almost feel the web of her dream snap apart in her mind, a densely rooted tree being plucked from dirt. John cradles her in his lap like a wounded baby bird. 

Her eyes are still closed, too heavy to open yet. Yelena can’t find the strength to do anything but breathe and murmur nonsense into John’s chest. There's a hand in her hair, tugging out the little knots tangled near her nape. John is murmuring back to her, something about doors being open and darkness. She doesn’t really understand.

“You’re gonna be okay, sweetheart,” he’s telling her now, his wet cheek pressed to her temple. Is he crying? She thinks he’s crying. She didn’t know he cared enough to cry over her. “You’re gonna be just fine. I’ve gotcha.”

Her mind finally registers where they are and what’s going on. The night’s cool air sinks into her balmy skin. Without the warmth of sleep, the chill finally makes her shiver. Above them, the moon’s eye is half-lidded, partially cloudy.

Yelena blinks, slightly disoriented, and wriggles her fingers as her control returns. Even when she lifts her head to meet his eyes, John still doesn’t let her go. She is so small compared to him, and yet he’s the one who looks fragile. 

“Walker?” Her words are rough from sleep. “What the hell, where are we?”

Relief floods his horrified face at the sound of her voice. John pulls her closer, as if that was possible, and squeezes her hard enough to make her squeak. She doesn’t know whether to hug him back or push away, but something in his expression grants her pause. There is a terror in his voice that she’s never heard, not even when in The Void. His words tremble against her shoulder as he speaks. 

“Jesus, sweetheart, you scared the hell outta me. You go missing for a week, and the next time I see you you’re trying to give me a heart attack. What the fuck were you thinking?”

Yelena blinks, trying to remember where she was before this. She was in bed. No, she’s been sleeping on the floor for the last three days, failing to sleep in the sweltering heat despite the fan she bought, while watching the distant lights of the surrounding buildings blink out as night descended over them. At some point, she must have fallen asleep, though she’s not sure when. Or why it took her here. 

“What’re you talking about?” she asks. 

John starts to roll his eyes, but must remember the predicament they’re in and stops. “Look at where we are. You were going to jump.”

She looks towards the edge, where she’d been standing, and tries to recall her last thoughts before waking up here. Yelena’s sleep schedule has gotten so much worse since her fight with Bob, but she didn’t know it would go this far.

“I think I was sleepwalking,” Yelena says.

He pulls away enough to look her in the eye. “What?”

“I don’t remember how I got here.” She relaxes her jaw, tense from a night of clenching, and cranes her stiff neck around. “I think I slept wrong, too. My back is killing me. What happened?”

“I don’t know. I was coming up here to… to sneak a smoke in before I passed out for the night. I just got back from a mission, too. And you were just… here. Talking to yourself. God, I can’t believe I caught you. What was your dream about?”

“Budapest,” is all she says. All she needs to say for him to understand. “Everything. Nothing. I don’t know. It’s blurry.” 

John squeezes Yelena one more time before hauling them both to their feet. He turns them around, facing the footstop stairs.

“How about you tell me all about that somewhere, y’know. Closer to the ground?”

“Okay.”

He walks her the whole way back to her bedroom, never letting her go. His hands are curled around her arms, gentle but firm, a slight tremble in his muscles. Yelena doesn’t think she’s ever seen him so scared, and the pool of guilt in her gut only deepens. 

When he helps her back into his bed and turns to sleep on his armchair, Yelena clings to his shirt like a little kid who’s scared of the dark and needs her older sibling to fight off the monsters in her closet. She asks him to stay. 

Because it’s not until then did she realize he was on the rooftop, too, and probably not for a very good reason. After all, John is the only one of them who doesn’t smoke. 

It takes some coaxing and her batting her lashes at him incessantly, but he eventually relents to her pleas. John sleeps beside her, keeping enough space between them that they’re not touching but keeping a hand on her wrist the entire night, as if she will disappear if he lets go.

She hasn’t slept so well in weeks. 

Chapter Text

Bob stands at her bedroom, holding two hot drinks in his hands in lieu of a proper apology. Yelena can hear him fumbling around with the doorknob. He doesn’t bother knocking before entry, but he doesn’t need to. There are no boundaries between them anymore, even when they haven’t properly spoken in over a week. 

For several seconds, Yelena listens to him fumbling to turn the knob outside despite his hands full, mumbling to himself and swearing under his breath, before deciding to put him out of his misery and open the door for him. She stands from her sleeping spot on the floor, too tired for the comfort of her too-empty bed, and throws the door open. He jumps a bit at the sudden action, the drinks sloshing but not spilling. Bob looks her up, down, up. His eyes, that dark thalassic blue that she can’t escape, feel warm and soothing against her weary bones.

Yelena is wearing the novelty shirt she was wearing last time they saw each other, but at least she’s done her laundry since then. Her window is open to stave off the uncomfortable heat coming in from the heady summer approaching, because Val still hasn’t fixed the goddamn AC.

Taken aback by her state, he frowns. Bob quickly recovers, though, and smiles sadly as he holds out one of the mugs to her. He looks just as miserable as her, eyes sunken from restless nights and his mouth chewed bloody despite his invulnerability. His hair is greasy and unkempt, like he hasn’t brushed it since waking up.

She missed him so much it hurt .

His nose crinkles, and she knows he can smell the vodka on her breath. Heightened senses are bullshit sometimes, though even if he didn’t have them, her inebriated state would be clear with anyone with a pair of working eyes in their skull. She is so hungover it has circled back into a perpetual drunkenness. 

“John told me what you tried to do yesterday,” he says. 

What an opener. Yelena grimaces a bit.

“It was an accident.”

Bob snorts, like he knows it’s not true. “You’re a terrible liar, Lena. Especially with me.”

The sound of that nickname on his lips feels like a revival.

It took him long enough to come back to her, as though they’re both not known for self-destruction and equally stubborn in their efforts to isolate themselves. Yelena knows it’s selfish and inconsiderate to think that because she’s the one who wedged the space between them, she’s the one who should be groveling at his feet. But she is learning to accept that she is selfish at times, and very idiotic when it comes to keeping around the people she loves.

Whether everyone else stays or leaves, she is doing it for herself.

Yelena stares at the offered drink in his hands. Hot chocolate with a film already beginning to settle on top, a handful of colorful marshmallows and a spoon to stir it. It smells divine. Her stomach growls in response, not giving her any time to tell him that she isn’t hungry. 

She hasn't eaten all day. She wonders if he has.

Bob makes hot chocolate in a certain way that tastes better than any she’s ever had before, with real dark chocolate he can only get from a Mexican supermarket that’s twenty minutes away walking, and with whole milk on a stovetop. Not the “instant cocoa cocaine bullshit” that they sell in stores, his words. He’s very particular about how it’s made.

He’s particular about a lot of things, she’s noticed. Recipes, books, even the way he organized the dishes in the dishwasher.

Bob doesn’t mind if his foods touch on his plate but can’t eat them mixed together in one bite, picking at rice and meat and salad like they’re three separate meals instead of a single dinner. Despite having done drugs for half of his life, he can only take cold medicine in the liquid form because he chokes on the gel pills every time without fail. If things are done a different way than how he was taught, Bob gets anxious, even if he doesn’t say anything. She can always see it in his eyes when he’s about to freak out about the soap not being properly rinsed from a plate when Ava does the dishes. For someone who used to do drugs as his full-time job, the standards he holds for himself are absurdly strict. 

Yelena loves all those things about him. Learning how exactly he sits on the couch versus on the dining chairs, the way he taps drum beats out with his snaps when they’re in the car, how his eyes get when he passes a dog on the street and points to it, saying “dog” like he’s never seen one before. The way he loves her so much that they’re both miserable when apart. 

She has never wanted to know everything about a person until they met, and she has been miserable in her own self-inflicted isolation. It takes all of her remaining willpower not to throw herself into his lap and beg for forgiveness, because Yelena doesn’t beg. Even when she should. 

“I get it now,” she whispers. “Why you let The Void take over. It’s so easy to fall into that dark.”

“It is,” Bob says. “It’s even easier to let it eat you alive.”

Yelena gives him space to walk into her room and closes the door behind him. He sits on his side of the bed—he sleeps here so often he has his own side now that smells like him no matter how often she washes her sheets, though she isn’t complaining—and offers her the hot chocolate again. She perches herself beside him and takes it. They don’t speak for a long time. 

Bob is wearing a shirt with the sleeves cut off and a pair of sweatpants with John’s high school logo on the hip, his skin flushed pink from a recent shower. His hair is still wet and curling at the ends, and he smells like deodorant and her stolen body wash. He hasn’t shaved in a couple of days. The beginning of a beard teases the square edge of his jaw. Yelena wants to scrape her face raw against it like she did before, but he probably wouldn’t let her after what she's said and done. 

“I missed you,” she whispers.

“I missed you too,” he replies. 

That is as close to an apology as either of them will get, but they understand each other well enough to know they’ve both already been forgiven. 

There are new scars on his wrists, she notices. Healed, of course, but new. They are fresher and darker than the rest. Thin pink lashes near the crook of his elbow that she suspects were self-inflicted. She knows all of his scars well, and those were not there the last time they saw each other. Bob sees her looking, but he doesn’t cower away this time. 

“Don’t ask. Please.”

Yelena silently nods. Bob shifts, getting comfortable. “I used to do the same thing, y’know,” he says casually, as if she will intuit what he means. 

She raises her eyebrows, still looking at his scars, but says nothing. His voice is calm but dark with something she can’t quite place. 

“Pushing people away, I mean. Getting angry, saying shit you don’t mean so the people you love will leave you alone. Making it so they don’t care about you. It makes the decision to kill yourself easier too.” Yelena flinches. “I’ve done that dance plenty of times before.”

“I wasn’t going to kill myself,” she says.

“You tried to jump off the roof.”

“I was sleepwalking.”

“And the drinking?”

“I know my limits.”

Bob sniffs the air then scrunches up his nose. “I dunno. Smells like you were one Grey Goose away from doing yourself in.”

“Shut up.” Yelena punches his shoulder weakly and lifts the mug to her lips. “You smell like a chain smoking grandmother.”

“I get it, really. You’re White Fanging us. I just don’t understand why you’re doing it to me.”

The conversation with Kate and John from the past weekend hits her, and Yelena almost chokes on her hot chocolate. She looks up at Bob, trying to decipher from his soft and open expression if the two have been conspiring behind her back. Kate would do something like that. 

“I’m… what?”

Bob chuckles to himself. “Right, of course, you didn’t read White Fang in high school. You didn’t go to high school. It’s this book about—”

“I know what it’s about,” Yelena snaps far harsher than she intended. “Kate Bishop told me.”

“Then you know what I mean. You’re doing this so we leave you.”

“I’m not.” That’s all she can think to say. Even though it’s obviously a lie. 

“I don’t believe you.” He takes a sip from his mug, leaving a thin layer of chocolate on the corner of his mouth. “It did cross my might that maybe this is some kind of fucked up trial Val put you up to to see how I would perform under intense emotional pressure. Which isn’t very nice, by the way, if that’s what this is. Because it’s been so hard for me to give you the space I thought you needed. I can handle a lot of physical pain, but I’m more than a little broken internally. At least, that’s what my therapist says. I apparently also have extreme attachment issues, so there’s that. Soon enough, I’ll have my very own DSM-5 chapter all to myself.” 

It’s a joke but it isn’t funny.

“It wasn’t a test,” Yelena says quietly. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

He nods, relieved. Like he did believe for a second that she would be capable of hurting him in that way. “Okay. Good. I like to think I would’ve passed, though, if it was. I mean, I made the dishes fly but at least I didn’t melt the forks. Again. Well, no, that’s not true. I accidentally melted Walker’s shield again during a sparring match. It’s looking less like a taco and more like one of those shitty pottery a kid makes for school that parents have to keep for sentimental reasons.”

He actually gets a chuckle out of her this time. Bob looks proud.

“So, if it wasn’t a test, then you really were just trying to scare me off,” he says. 

How he can read her mind, she will never know.  She hopes he’s not telepathic, too. “I’m not…”

“Yes, you are,” he says. “I might be emotionally unstable, but I’m not stupid. I know the kinds of tactics people like us use to isolate ourselves when we’re scared that we’re feeling too… exposed. We get paranoid that we’re becoming weak by caring about people, or that we’re dragging others down with us, so we push those people away. We force ourselves to be useless or—or alone. Because that loneliness is easier than having to accept that we care about people. It’s self sabotage.”

Yelena frowns. “You know me too well.”

Bob gets quiet for a moment, looking at his untouched drink. When he looks back up at her, there are tears in his eyes.

“This is about what Val said, isn’t it?”

“You heard her?” she says, startled. 

“Every word.”

Yelena groans and scrubs her free hand down her face. “She was right.”

“About what? You coddling me?” Bob scoffs. “Because I can tell you right now, that’s bullshit. You’re not babying me. If anything, you’re being a hardass. In a good way. Keepin’ me on my toes.”

“It’s not the coddling,” she replies. Not entirely, anyway. 

“Then why did you go all Gordon Ramsey over the Digiorno earlier?”

“I was never scared of you,” Yelena begins, then stops to collect her thoughts. “Not when we met in the vault, not even after I found out what you could do or what you became. Not when you were The Sentry or The Void. Because all I ever saw was you.”

“Are you scared of me now?” Bob asks, childlike.

“I don’t know. And that’s the worst part.”

It’s as if the truth can’t help but spill from her mouth like acid rain, coming down all at once and destroying everything it touches. He nods to himself, his disappointment not aimed at her, but inwards. Towards himself. 

“I think I’m afraid that if you ever get into that manic, Sentry state again, I won’t be enough to save you again,” Yelena continues. “I’m afraid you’re going to outgrow your need for me. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing. But I… I need you. So fucking badly. And that’s what really scares me. I’ve never needed someone the way I need you.”

“Can I tell you something?”

“Of course,” she says.

“I’m scared of me, too.”

She looks at him, really looks at him. Perfectly circular scars of cigarette ends stipple over his shoulder blades. Through the cutouts of his t-shirt, Yelena peeks his abdomen and sees freckles along his ribs, the edge of his appendix scar and another from when he was stabbed by a drug dealer in Tibet who mistook him for a cop despite having a very not-cop baby face. 

He has just as many scars as Yelena does, and she’s a trained killer. Each has a story he remembers and enjoys telling, no matter how high he was when he got it. 

Bob looks away just as their eyes meet. His tears begin to fall like stars loosened from the starry sky, glittering against his shadowed cheeks. He never likes people seeing him cry. It’s a vulnerability he hasn’t grown into yet. Even as they grow closer, he still sometimes shies away from her when in such a state. Yelena reaches out, rests her hand on his knee. Her side twinges with the movement of her arm, but she couldn’t care less.

“The medication helps, but it’s not going to cure me. And that thing you’re afraid of, me getting into that state? I wake up sometimes, terrified of it. Because I know I won’t be able to control myself the same way I did during our training session.”

“That was you controlled?” she asks jokingly.

Neither of them laugh. 

“That’s why I asked you to make me that promise,” he says, and her smile abruptly falls away. “I like having more control over myself than I ever did before. I like being able to go out on missions with you guys and actually do something with my powers rather than stewing in my bedroom, pacing the halls like some poor neglected housewife waiting for her husband to return from war. I like being of use. I like… being close to you. Kissing you. Being with you in that way and any other way I can be with you. It’s like a high I want to chase. I hate to admit just how much I like those big highs when I’m in them. But that doesn’t mean I’m not terrified of what will happen whenever I have another one of those big lows. And they will always come, no matter how hard Val tries to fix me.”

“Can you feel them coming?” she asks.

“Sometimes. I’m more aware of when it’s leading to those highs, at least. Like, right before I go completely under, I can kind of intuit it. Maybe when it happens, it won’t be as bad as before because of the medication, or maybe I can get out of it before I hit the low, but it won’t stop it forever. And it doesn’t help that I’m not good at hiding my weaknesses. Val exploits them. I’m not exactly stone cold and calculating like you guys. I’m strong, but I’m easily taken down.”

Her hot chocolate is the right balance of sweet and bitter, just hot enough to scald the roof of her mouth. Yelena licks the taste from her teeth.

“You can say it’s me,” she says. “We all know I’m your weakness.”

Bob makes a noise. Something small, accusatory. Like a dog whining for the last bite of steak at the dinner table. Then he nods, unable to deny it like she hoped he would.

Yelena has never wanted to be wrong, but she rarely ever is. 

“I, um. Relapsed,” he says, just to avoid that small truth. “The others said I should let you know, because you were bound to find out eventually.”

Her eyes immediately fall back to his wrists. Fresh, red scars. She wants to scream. 

“Not because of you,” Bob quickly adds before she can say anything. “It happened before all of this, even before the training session. I didn’t think it would work, if I’m being honest, but then it did and I—I couldn’t stop. It felt… good’s not the right word. Deserved, I guess. And then after everything that happened, I just… I don’t know.”

“Jesus, you have to tell me when these things happen.” Her voice comes out as an aching rasp. “You promised you’d come to me.”

“Yeah, well, neither of us are good at keepin’ our promises, huh?”

He’s right, and she hates it.

“I was just too scared to tell you,” Bob says, “because I didn’t want you to blame yourself for it. A part of me thought maybe you knew and didn't want anything to do with me anymore. Wouldn’t be the first time, you know. I know I’m a lot to handle.”

“I would never abandon you like that,” Yelena says.

“I know. But you kind of did, didn’t you? Even if you thought it was for a good reason, you did. You make people leave you, or you disappear without a word. You purposefully scare them off, hence: White Fang. Or you leave first before leaving isn’t as hard as being left behind.”

“Bob, this isn’t a ‘I’m so sad, woe is me’ situation. Val was right. I am holding you back, and I make you vulnerable. You don’t need any more of that. You’ve been through enough.”

“Tell me you don’t love me, then,” he says, “and that you don’t want me, and I’ll leave. I want you to say it to my face right now.”

Yelena can’t deny that. She’s tried, she tried so much, and it hurts.

Instead, she says, “You’d be better off without me.”

“Without you, I would’ve killed myself by now. And you know that’s true.”

Bob says it with a straight face, no intonation, as if it is a universal fact rather than a weighted confession. The thought alone makes her dizzy, and Yelena wishes for the first time that she was sober for this conversation. 

“What would you have done in the Everglades if that bullet hadn’t just grazed me?” she asks, trying so hard to make him understand. “What if I was seriously hurt? What if I died? Would you have kept your composure the same way you did?”

The look he gives her tells her enough of what they both already know. He would’ve lost himself if he lost her, and that is exactly what she’s trying to avoid. It’s almost pathetic how much she still wants him even after a week apart, how painful it is to keep her distance despite knowing it’s for the best. Yelena bites down on the inside of her cheek until it hurts.

“The closer we are, the more of a chance there is for you to fall into that darkness if something happens to me,” she says. “And it’ll be all my fault again. I will be the reason The Void comes back. That’s why I’m pushing you so hard. That’s why I need you to be able to rely on your skills, not your powers, and not on me. Because while we’re here for you no matter what, at the end of the day, we’re all alone.”

This is the ultimate truth that even she had been avoiding to reveal to herself. That she remains lonely in a room of people she cares just a modicum about. One that Val must have already known, a factor she could have calculated and taken advantage of but didn’t because of too many variables. Yelena cares about him, she even loves him. Truly, deeply, love him.

But he needs her too, just as much, maybe even more. That makes him dangerous. It tethers the world’s safety with her own, and she is painfully human. That’s not a good thing when on a team of superheroes.

“I won’t let any of that happen,” he promises. “I can control it. Or, I will be able to one day.”

“I believe you,” she replies. “And I trust you so much more than you know. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m the weakest link on this team. Not just because of what I am to you, but because I’m just not special. And for some reason, you care about me so much.”

He turns towards her, alarmed. “Don’t say that.”

“I’ve made peace with that, Bob. In a team of super soldiers and ghosts, I’m so… normal. I have no super strength, no healing factor. I can't walk through walls or melt guns with my eyeballs. It terrifies me to think that I’ll get one of you killed because I can’t keep up.”

She can see the exact moment it clicks for him. “Oh. That’s why you’re White Fanging. You think we’d be better off without you so, if you put distance between us, whenever you get hurt or… or worse, I can keep going.”

Yelena laughs wetly. “It’s selfish, I know. But it’s the only thing I can think of to protect you. I may not be able to stop bullets or walk through walls, but I can do this. I can keep you safe this way.”

Bob sets his mug of hot chocolate down on her nightstand and turns to her. He leans in so close she can smell the sweetness on his breath. His fingers rise up, scraping delicately over her cheekbone before pushing her hair behind her ears.

Yelena sinks into him and closes her eyes, the tension leaving her body from that touch alone. Oh, how she melts under him like a cat in a sunbeam. He is so powerful, so dangerous, yet all these hands know to be are gentle. 

“Can I tell you something else?” he asks.

She nods.

“I would let the world burn for you.” 

Her breath catches in her throat, and Yelena’s eyes snap back open.

He’s closer to her now, breath fanning over her cheek in short and warm puffs, shoulders bumping against shoulders. His hand lowers from to cup her jaw and tilt it upward, thumbing the corner of her chocolate-stained mouth. Her breath is short, stammered, eager. She can feel her heartbeat drumming in her ears. 

There’s that glow in his eyes again, that gold-blue ring of light that permeates his vision like reflective metal. She isn’t afraid this time. 

“I don’t care if you’re weak or strong, a god or human,” he says. “I want you. All of you. In every way you’ll let me have you. I’m scared of so many goddamn things, Yelena, but not this. Not when it comes to you. You make me feel braver than I’ve ever felt. Like I can live a life that’s… well, maybe not normal, but liveable. Content. And I know neither of us are close to perfect, but we don’t need to be to make each other better. Don’t you see that? If being with you means I have to risk the world every single goddamn day I’m lucky enough to wake up next to you, then so be it.”

Yelena smiles for the first time in days. It sounds not unlike a declaration of love. They’ve already said enough to each other. He doesn’t need to say the words again for her to know.

“You can’t mean that,” she says. 

His mouth twitches. “I’ve never meant anything more.”

Her words, thrown back at her. 

“I’m so afraid,” she confesses. “I’ve never felt fear like this before.”

“I have. And I’m scared too.” His lips graze hers. “But at least we can be scared together.”

When Bob properly meets her mouth with his own, something in her comes alive that she thought long dead. He feels so certain, so unafraid. Yelena is eager to reciprocate that feeling, and for a moment the world isn’t so scary. They know what they want and it’s each other and nothing, not even themselves can stop that from happening.

All of her hesitation from the past two weeks is stripped bare and discarded. Warmth bubbles like carbonation in her chest. Yelena nearly drops her mug in her attempt to kiss him back, fingers threading into his shirt and pulling their chests together. 

They’re kissed before. Hell, they’ve done so much more than kissing. But not like this. Nothing so vibrant and sure. He tastes like chocolate, and she does too, with the added hint of vodka on her breath. She licks into his mouth, needing moremoremoremore.

She has already forgotten why on earth she ever considered staying away when he’s the air that fills her lungs, filtering into her blood and pumping her heart. He is ingrained into her very being, and she is equally intertwined with him. 

Her drink ends up tipping into her lap, just warm enough not to be uncomfortable, and she laughs herself hoarse as Bob tries to apologize for making a mess. Even when he tries to convince her to shower and change her now-stained sheets, she can’t stop herself from kissing him long enough to even get her shirt off. She’s making up for all the time she lost by being stupid and scared.

Bob doesn’t make much of an effort to stop her, anyways.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

They don’t discuss it. They don’t need to. Not when they know each other inside and out, the way you still recognize your reflection after a lifetime shying away from mirrors. The shift between them is less of a change and more of a step forward, a unanimous progression in the direction they were already heading. This was always going to happen. 

Bob was right; labels are bullshit sometimes. To define something is to confine it to that word, whittling it to fit what others want to perceive it as. Because Yelena knows what this is between them, and it is nameless and natural as underground rivers evading detection.

Girlfriend and boyfriend feel too immature, and partner feels too professional. There is no single word that can properly define what they are to each other, and that has to be okay. 

Bob helps her shower the sticky hot chocolate, even though she doesn’t need it, and she lets him, needing his hands on her without reservations this time. His kisses burn her shoulders, down her back, praising every curve of her like she is something holy.  He changes her sheets while she’s brushing her teeth, and they fall into bed together like it’s just another night.

As they talk through the entire night, both too exhausted to sleep, the darkness keeps away the fear of the morning for a little while longer. Things have changed between them, but time doesn’t stop for them to adjust. Even at the end of the world, the sun will continue to set, regardless if there’s anyone there to witness it. 

Things aren’t fixed, and they know that, but healing doesn’t mean waiting to get better to move forward. It just means moving forward, even if it still hurts. And God, does it hurt. The fear doesn’t go away now that they understand each other better. She can live with it easier, though, knowing he is just as scared as her. 

It’s not healthy, maybe. And they will most definitely crash and burn when the inevitable comes and The Sentry comes back out to play. But it’s them. If this will be the best thing they can get out of this fucked up life they have, then so be it. Yelena can settle for someone so perfect for her. 

Bob tells her how much he loves her in every meaning of the word, limitless in its definition, and Yelena replies by kissing him harder, as if the words will pour out of her mouth into his. Kissing him every time is a novelty.

Yelena has been lucky enough to love a handful of people before, but it has never been this kind. With Natasha and their fake parents, it was familial, a deep, blood-red thread that bound them together regardless of distance and time. Some of it lingers now, even if Alexei is less of a father figure and more of a friend now. 

Her feelings for Kate Bishop never truly crossed into anything past puppy-dog love territory; it was always a feeling akin to a crush or affection derived from her being the only person Yelena could trust in her life. It took her a very long time to decipher the love of a friend versus the love of a partner, especially when the complication of sex was involved. But Kate is a patient teacher. 

But this defies explanation. It is platonic, and it is romantic, and it is sexual. He has tangled himself into every thread of her heart when she isn't looking. 

Loving people is easy, but it is heavy. It breaks through the protective case of Yelena’s ribs, threatening to crush her heart. She stares at Bob in the darkness of her bedroom, watching the shadowed expansion and dip of his chest, his fingers wound possessively around the meat of her thigh. Like even in his sleep, he can’t bear to be apart from her.

Bob whispers something in his sleep, scrunches up his nose. Yelena touches the hand on her leg, and his frown softens. His breathing remains steady as she kisses the crease between his brows away. She presses herself into his body and closes her eyes.

Love, she decides, is a burden worth carrying.

Chapter Text

In the night, they can brave a chance to be something new. In the mornings, they have to live with their decisions.

Yelena wakes up on her back with Bob’s arm wrapped snugly around her waist to hold him to her, his hand pressed against her belly. The other arm is thrown across his eyes to block out the warm morning light coming in from her raised blinds. His breath is even, tickling her throat, his drooling mouth resting against her shoulder blade.

She turns onto her side to face him and stretches. Her joints satisfyingly pop, and Yelena sinks back into the warmth of the body beside her. Bob shifts. His eyes flutter, then fully open. A cloud of sleep lingers for a moment in his eyes. Then he smiles and leans forward to kiss her.

It comes so naturally to them, to kiss each other good morning. She can’t believe it took them this long to fall into this rhythm. 

“G’morning,” he mumbles against her mouth.

“You’re still here,” she whispers.

“Why would I wanna be anywhere else?”

She smiles and kisses him one more time, unable to get enough of him. They wake up together nearly every night—except for that week and a half, but they don’t need to talk about that right one—but today it feels different. Charged with something new. That bridge they needed to cross is well behind them, and although what lies ahead is uncharted territory for them both, at least they’re together.

When they part, Bob closes his eyes and makes a small, sleepy noise that strikes her warmly in the gut. 

“You still smell like hot chocolate,” he says, tracing the skin around her rib scar with his thumb.

“Is it bad?”

“Not at all. But maybe you should shower again.”

“It might just be your stinky breath.”

“Meanie. You watched me brush my teeth last night.”

Yelena presses them chest to chest, pulling the blanket over their heads to make the morning last a little longer. His legs tangle between hers. She feels him pressing against her thigh, hot and aching and pitifully hard, and she has to laugh again.

With a teasing gentleness, she pushes against his crotch with her thigh. Bob grits his teeth to suppress a groan that still escapes.

“I guess you had a pretty good dream, huh?” she teases. 

“Sorry.” Bob looks at her with bleary but desperate eyes, glassy from sleep and engulfed by his growing pupils. “You’re just so beautiful.”

Yelena sticks her tongue out at the compliment. “You’re only saying that because your boner is poking me in the thigh.”

“Well, maybe it’s because you’re so beautiful. I can’t help it. I need you so badly.”

“I can see that.”

“Shut up,” he murmurs, hips pressing to hips. “Do you want me to leave?”

She shakes her head. “Never. Stay.”

Bob presses his mouth against hers with held back desire, threading one hand through her hair, the other curled against her hip. Yelena parts her lips and lets him in. She traces her fingers along his face, jawline, down his shoulder. He always runs so hot. Her fingers tingle with the feeling of him. The morning warmth blankets them as they kiss, touching and holding, acclimating themselves to this new and quiet shift in their dynamic. 

Yelena reaches between them and gets her hand under his shirt. His skin burns, a sheen of sweat collected from sleep. The muscles of his stomach tense where she touches him. Bob is pretty like this, almost helpless with desire, eyes half-lidded and brows furrowed enough to make him look just that more desperate for her. Each movement makes him shudder.

She slips her touch further down, through the rough hair along his chest and stomach, beneath his boxers, and wraps a confident hand around him. Bob feels much larger than she expected, hot and soft just like the rest of him. Yelena realizes that she still has never seen him fully naked, and that excites her. 

With a surprised and strangled gasp, he jerks forward into her touch. His head drops to her shoulder. She kisses him silent, tasting the sounds he makes like drops of precious ichor on her tongue. He pulses in her hand while she strokes him with a light fist, almost teasing the velvet skin. When she squeezes him, just to see his reaction, Bob swears under his breath and bucks, chasing the feeling. 

“Every part of you is so warm,” Yelena whispers against the messy tendrils of his brown hair, running her thumb over the spongy, slick head of his dick. The sound he makes floods her like a drug. “You’re like a little furnace.”

“You know I run hot.”

“I know. That’s why we work so well. I get to snuggle into you when the weather gets cold.”

“Please.” He squeezes his eyes closed, little flickers of light dancing along his lashes. One hand fists the sheets that surround them, the other wrinkles the front of Yelena’s tank top. “Faster, Lena, please. I need you so much, I need it, please—”

There is no way she can deny him that when he asks so politely. 

His mouth is so open his jaw looks like it’s about to unhinge itself, punchy groans escaping. Yelena is glad they have this whole floor to themselves; when he loses himself, and she will make him lose himself, then he can get as loud as he wants. She runs her thumb along the thrumming vein on his dick, rounding her palm around the head to make the glide smoother.

Pleasure is such a funny thing. Yelena can feel her body responding to his own, like clocks ticking in sync. Heat curls in her gut, low and needy. Next time, she hopes to taste him, memorize every inch of him. Tasting the gasps he let out will have to do for now. 

Bob lets go of her shirt in favor of burrowing his fingers hard into the bones of her hips. She can already feel a delectable array of bruises beginning to form. An ounce stronger and he could break her like she’s made of twigs. That only raises her own urgency, makes her stroke him faster. Yelena can anticipate how close he is by the way his voice grows higher and higher pitched. His movements grow jerky, fingers digging harder into her skin. 

“I’m not gonna…” He’s shaking, hair fanning across her cheek as he tries to hold himself together for just a second longer. “I’m already so close, can I? Please, please, please—”

She loves the way he begs. 

“Go on then.”

Bob latches his teeth onto her shoulder through her shirt, gentle but firm, although it does little to keep him quiet. His hips thrusts once, twice, to meet her fist before he unravels. The loud moans reverberate across her skin like heat rippling off concrete. He’s whining, gasping, pleasure choking him. 

Above them, the lights flicker in time with his little moans. She strokes him through it, keeping a steady grip until he’s begging for her to let go. When she’s satisfied, Yelena pulls her sticky hand out from his boxers and dries it against the front of his shirt.

Through the haze of bliss, Bob makes a face. His cheeks are pink, eyes wet. “Ew.”

“It’s your cum,” she says with a shrug. “I’m not gonna wipe it on me.”

With a roll of his eyes, Bob sits up. He grapples Yelena onto her back with surprising speed, imprisoning her in his arms when he kisses her. The muscles of his thighs are still twitching with the aftermath of his orgasm. She smiles as his mouth trails down her body, and it feels like the easiest thing to do in the world. His eyes glow with sunlight and desire.

Bob pulls her shirt off, and his goes with it. He is so beautiful. 

“My turn.”

Yelena has no time to ask what he means. Bob is already pushing her sleep shorts to the side just enough to slip his fingers along her, dragging them up and around her clit. She gasps, nearly jumping out of her own skin.

“Fuck, I—” Her hips buck into his hand. Bob holds her down by the waist.

“You’re so wet,” he murmurs with an infectious eagerness, “and I haven’t even touched you yet.”

“At least I’m not the one who woke up with a boner.”

“Point taken.”

His fingers tickle the soft insides of her thighs, running featherlight up to her knees and back. Bob’s pupils are so big the blue of his eyes is replaced with a ring of light, like the moon eclipsing the sun. All he’s done so far is graze her, memorize the feeling of her skin along his fingertips, but his touch alone is already enough to drive her crazy.

If looks could kill, Yelena would’ve melted The Sentry down to his bones. “You better touch me properly,” she says through a strangled pant, “or so help me God, I will find a way to kill you.”

Sending her a loose, boyish grin, Bob sinks his fingers into her, and she takes them like they belong there. It feels like something inevitable has finally arrived.

She can’t help but briefly think of Kate then, those long dainty fingers callused by bow strings that moved with the expertise of a woman. Bob clearly has some sort of experience, and it makes Yelena wonder how she keeps ending up with experienced lovers when she’s fresh to this world. Jealousy starts to form, but not enough to root itself in her mind as Bob grinds his palm against her clit.

His fingers are rough from a lifetime of work and struggle, but they curl inside of her, filling her in a strange way and curving up at just the right angle. His palm rolls over her clit in strong, slow circles. Groaning like the pleasure he’s milking from her is his own, he buries his face into her neck and works her to the edge so effortlessly it feels as if they’ve been doing this for a lifetime. 

Bob licks and bites and sucks and breathes her skin, seeking out every inch of her torso like a man starved as he travels down her body. He grazes his mouth along her nipples—she remembers that first night, the way he sucked on her chest like a man starved, how he does it now with equal fervor—and bruises the soft slope of her stomach with his teeth. There will no doubt be marks that she will be asked to explain later, and she will refuse to do so.

When his mouth finally reaches where she needs him, swiping at the sensitive peak of her clit with his tongue. That single drag of his tongue sends sparks up her spine. Her reaction is involuntary and violent. Yelena nearly kicks Bob off the bed. 

“Sorry,” he says, but he looks far from sorry when he does it again.

He starts off languid, tasting. The pleasure builds in tiny waves, piling and pulling. Yelena pants and whines in a way she’s never heard herself sound before, coming undone quicker than she thought was possible. Bob pulls back from her to nuzzle her thighs, fingers still working at her, and presses messy, wet kisses on her skin.

“You wanna know what you taste like?” he murmurs, looking up at her with large doe eyes. 

She is too far gone to respond properly. Bob grins and pulls his fingers out, replacing them with his tongue before Yelena can even protest about the lack of contact. His nose bumps into her clit just enough to drive her insane. He lets out an obscene groan that reverberates up her entire body. 

It must be the dredges of sleep, or the heat of his tongue lapping perfectly at her clit, his fingers curled inside of her, but she’s already almost there. His breath hits her wet skin in cool bursts, accentuating the sparks of need rolling through her. Yelena warns him, barely able to verbalize her mushed thoughts, and all he does is quicken his pace. He laps at her like a dying man kneeling at the edge of an oasis, drinking like she’s the first drops of water he’s had in years.

The heating coils of pleasure burn alive in her, growing and growing and growing and she understands lust now, she thinks deliriously, the way it drives people insane. She could die in this moment, and she would go happily. 

Her thighs clamp down around his head. Unlike Bob, she is quiet when she comes, head thrown so far back it will no doubt leave a crick in her neck later. Electric pleasure blooms out of her like she’s a loose powerline, sparking and flailing and chasing that feeling against his mouth.

His fingers keep moving, lips sucking her clit into his mouth. Bob wringes her out the same way she did to him, his nose resting on the dip of her belly while watching her face reverently. As if he will never get another chance to see her this way. Even when she thinks it’s over, it isn’t. He keeps going. 

“Bob,” Yelena warns.

When he looks up at her with wide, watery eyes, pausing his movements with an edge of caution, she realizes she doesn’t want him to stop. She touches his cheeks, then fists his hair. It must be painful, even if she hadn’t meant it to be, but he moans against her stomach and fucks his fingers into her harder. Her second orgasm is an echo of the first, as her body had no time to recover.

Yelena hovers in that place as Bob builds upon the rippling aftershocks of pleasure. He noisily laps at her when he’s not sinking his teeth into her thighs, his fingers slipping out of her every now and then to focus solely on her clit. She hadn’t expected him to be so into biting. His eyes stay on her, watching the shifts in her face.

“One more for me,” he urges gently.

She comes so hard she’s sure she’s died. Her vision darkens with a vignette as the orgasm blooms from her and spreads like wildfire beneath her skin. Yelena’s breath escapes in choked gasps, the closest she gets to being loud. It lasts long enough that, when she returns to herself, muscles still twitching, Bob has yet to pull himself from her.

The pleasure had begun to tip into overstimulation. She gives him a generous tug.

“Enough,” she pleads. “You’re going to kill me, Bob.”

Bob finally resurfaces from between her legs, gasping for air like he’d been drowning in her. His chin and neck are soaked with her. It drips down his chest. Yelena dizzily recalls how ridiculous scuba divers look coming out of the water. She giggles at the thought and collapses back onto the bed, reminding herself how to breathe.

“Is it normal for your ears to ring after having an orgasm?” she asks, and Bob laughs. “Sorry, two orgasms.”

Obscenely, he raises his hand to his mouth and licks the dampness from his soaked hand, moaning like he’s getting off at the taste alone. 

She wants to groan and push him away, but she can’t find it in herself to be disgusted. Especially when she glances down and sees the tented wet cloth of his boxers. Her brows rise. Maybe he is getting off at the taste. 

With a heavy blush crawling down his chest, Bob leans back on his knees, still catching his breath. 

“Super soldier serum?” she guesses.

Bob shrugs. “Probably. I mean, I wasn’t exactly testing out my endurance.”

“Not even before the Sentry Project?”

“Sadly, there weren’t pretty Russian assassins lining up to sleep with the methed out guy in the chicken costume.”

“Well, they’re missing out.”

Bob hesitates for a moment before a moment, then sits back on his legs. His dick bobs a bit when he does, and that makes her laugh. 

“I can just wait it out,” he says. “We don’t need to—I mean, you don’t have to—”

“What, and waste another opportunity? Pass.” 

Yelena hums thoughtfully and hooks her ankle behind Bob’s knee, pulling him closer. His hands grip her waist like they belong there, which they do, and massages the pliant flesh where he left bruises. He leans over to kiss her and slides his hands up to wander over her chest again. She cradles his face, tasting herself coating his tongue. 

A tiny whimper escapes him as Bob brushes his dick across her hip. He ruts against her lazily, mouthing along her jaw like he’s trying to taste all of her. The way his voice cracks when he whispers her name plucks a chord deep in her gut. Yelena lifts her hips enough to meet his, and the friction makes him quiver. Bob slips his hand under her shorts to knead her ass, pushing them even closer. 

“Please.” He settles his weight between her parted legs, rubbing himself along her, eyes wide and glossy with need. “Please. At least the tip?”

“You’re so pathetic, angel,” she whispers with a loose grin. “You can have it all.”

The nickname draws out a throaty sound that surprises him more than her. He makes quick work of his boxers, and Yelena discards her own shorts to the floor.

They’ve seen each other naked, but this context is new. He is lean but soft, the thick muscles of his thighs are pale from being untouched by the sun. Sadness plucks at her heart at the sight of so many wide, eye-shaped scars staring at her from the outside of his hips and his inner thighs. A thin sheen of sweat makes him glow in the morning light. Bob looks at her like she’s statuesque, drawing the outline of her hips and chest with his fingers. 

She has the absurd urge to sink her teeth into his ass. When she tells him this, he laughs. 

“You’re so weird,” he says.

 His dick is just like the rest of him, flushed dark and shiny with cum. Bob squeezes himself to stave off the pressure, letting out a harsh hiss of breath. 

“Last chance to back out,” he says, and she just rolls her eyes at him. 

Bob pulls Yelena’s thigh apart just enough to settle between them and presses the head of his dick against her folds, chewing on his lip so hard she’s surprised he hasn’t bitten a hole through it yet. He has one hand planted beside Yelena’s head for leverage. She realizes that he’s shaking.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

He nods, then looks away. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

Yelena reaches up and cups his cheek. He presses into it.

“That’s irrelevant. Do you want it?”

“Yes. God, yes.”

“Good.” She smiles. “Then do something to deserve it and fuck me already.”

His eyes flash with something dangerous, and that nervous twist of his mouth unfolds into a wicked soft smile. “I love you.”

When he finally pushes into her, there’s a twinge of pain that runs through her. His fingers were a teaser for what was to come, because despite their prep, he is still a stretch. Yelena grimaces, but the pain vanishes as quickly as it appears. 

“Are you okay?” Bob asks, sensing her temporary discomfort and yet barely holding himself back. He’s still shaking like a purse dog. He looks ready to come from this alone. He just might. 

Yelena nods, breathing slowly. “Yeah, yeah. Just need a second. I’ve never… I mean, Kate and I have done things, but she’s not exactly built like you.”

Bob groans. The sound travels through their bodies like a string is connecting them. “Are you seriously thinking about her right now?”

“Are you seriously jealous of her when your dick is inside of me?” she retorts coyly.

“Maybe a little,” he confesses. The conversation acts as a good distraction while she adjusts to the stretch of him. “I’m just—I know I shouldn’t be jealous. She knew you before I did, and she’s good for her. I guess I’m still surprised that you… you chose me.”

“Of course I did. Why wouldn’t I?”

Something flashes in his eyes again. Desire, yes, but something else too.

Bob continues to push inside of her—“Can I go in more?” he asks, and of course she eagerly agrees—and the stretch is not uncomfortable, just bizarre. New. Welcomed. Nothing that she’s ever felt before. He gasps for air as his hips meet hers, trembling with pleasure.

“You feel so fucking good, Lena.” His voice cracks. “God, you’re amazing.”

This feels like a new piece of her heart slotting perfectly with the rest, revealing more of herself that she hadn’t known was there. A new person she trusts, another she wants.

This, she realizes, is what it means to be in love. 

Her chest is fit to burst. He loves her. She loves him. Yelena never thought she would ever think that and not question its validity. 

Like he can hear her inner monologue, Bob says, “I love you.” He folds himself over her, chest to chest, and whispers it again into her ear.

She wants to say it back, but she’s never been good at saying what she means when she wants to, so she says it with her eyes, with her mouth. He makes a tiny, understanding noise and bites her lip. 

“I know,” he whispers.

He fucks her like she’ll disappear any second, hands wandering over her body, babbling about how he’s going to never let her go. Their hips meet in quick slaps of skin. It’s rough enough to scratch that itch inside of her, soft enough that she’s certain it’s still Bob, all of him. They only stop kissing because their coordination is becoming less and less accurate the loser they both get. Yelena wraps her legs around him, needing him as close as possible. 

“You’re not allowed to leave me,” he says, and if anyone else had said it, Yelena would’ve kicked their ass, but he says it as if he’s begging her. “I don't think my heart could take it again.”

“I promise, I promise,” she lets out, gasping between the sharp, heavy thrust.

Her fingers are knotted in his hair, pulling him into her mouth, devouring him. Bob has one arm wrapped around her back, the other tight around her thigh to pull her partially in the air. He holds her like she weighs nothing, only interested in the way the new angle makes them feel. The minor display of his strength sends a shiver through her. 

When he gets close and tries to pull out, she keeps him inside of her, locking them together like two pieces of metal welded into one by the heat of their bodies. The look he gives her is heated, almost apologetic. There is nothing for him to be sorry about. She wants him. All of him. 

When Bob readjusts his grip on her, he starts in on her in a way that makes her cry out, her entire body turns to bare wire. He shudders, losing himself deep inside of her, filling Yelena with heat. Before the last ropes of pleasure are strung out of him, he thumbs her clit and makes her join him again. It is a smaller orgasm, rolling through her like gentle tidal waves. 

Her mind turns fuzzy, and greedily she thinks minemineminemine. 

Through the haze of bliss, Yelena is sure she feels him come one more time in quick succession, whimpering like he’s going to fall apart a fourth time. Bob remains seated deep inside of her, barely holding himself upright. He’s gasping for air, so red he just might burst into flames. 

“God, you’ve been holding out on me,” Yelena says, struggling to regain her bearings.

Bob chuckles breathlessly. “I thought you being ace meant you wouldn’t want me in this way. Or anyone, really, besides Kate.”

“I thought so, too. I’m still figuring myself out as we go along. And like I said before, I’ve only ever felt this for two people.”

“Guess I was number two.”

She playfully smacks his chest. “No shit.”

“And even after I figured it out…” Bob continues, “I was still scared of what it meant. I’m still scared, if I’m honest. This is new to me. Feeling love like this.”

“I am too. But we can do it. Right?”

“Yeah, I… I think so.”

“Good. Because you’re mine.”

The noise he makes is pitiful, and he weakly rolls his hips. “If you keep talking like that, we’re not leaving this room until you can’t walk.”

That sounds good to her. Yelena pecks his cheek. 

“We’re making up for lost time,” she says.

He groans again. She can feel him growing hard again, like his dick is magic.

“You’re going to kill me,” Bob says, and kisses her again. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

When they go again, after a lunch break and a detour to put their clothes in the washing machine, Yelena gets on top. Her movements are slow, rolling her hips and grinding into him with no time to lose, no longer desperate but simply wanting to be close.

Both of them are still so sensitive, but there is no limit to their desire. They leave no space between each other, kissing and touching and whispering to each other silly things as if she’s not slowly riding him into oblivion. They’re making up for lost time. Yelena allows herself to float in the distant build of bliss as he recounts a story from when he was hitchhiking through the midwest and was stuck in Missouri. 

“Florida doesn’t really have winter, so when I got trapped in the motel by the snowstorm, I thought the world was ending,” he says, his voice surprisingly steady. 

She chuckles, her head thrown back, hands tracing his chest. “Let me guess—molly.”

“Adderall, actually. And maybe a little acid, I don’t really remember. But I do remember when this nice priest dragged me out of the snowy parking lot when I was in nothing but my briefs, making a snow angel and definitely suffering from hypothermia. I was lucky he found me when he did.”

“Lucky for me too,” she teases. “Is that how you got these?”

Yelena touches his cheeks, the rounded frostbite scar on his nose, and Bob presses into her palm.

“No, these were from New York. I got these, though.”

Bob sits up and takes one hand from where it’s wrapped possessively around her breasts. He holds it up for her to see. Dotted, red splotches of skin adorn his knuckles and each joint of his fingers, similar to the ones on his cheeks. The tips of his middle and ring finger feel tougher than the rest of his skin, scars pale enough to blend in with the rest of his hand. 

“Dunno if they were frostbite or just from all the other shit I had goin’ on,” he continues as she taps each raised, tender scar.

“I’ve never gotten frostbite,” she says, “but I did get heat stroke when in Myanmar.”

“Oh, that’s pretty common in the south. Someone on my high school’s football team keeled over during the regional game because of it.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, Florida’s as wild as they say.”

“Fuck, you feel so good, Lena.” Bob pushes her hair from her face and touches the crescent-shaped scar between her ear and jaw. “What happened here?”

“Bombing in Ottawa. My team couldn’t defuse it in time. Got some shrapnel for my trouble.”

“You’re so fascinating.”

She rolls her eyes, gasping a bit when his hips raise to meet hers in slow, deep thrusts. “Says the guy who hitchhiked with a guy who was definitely a serial killer.”

“He might’ve been, we still don’t know for sure,” he corrects. “He didn’t kill me.”

“Because you’re not a pretty blond.”

“I thought I made a pretty good blond.” He pouts playfully. “Maybe it’d have been better if I had it done professionally. Or if I’d gotten a balayage.” 

“How do you know what a balayage is?”

“Tik Tok.”

Yelena barks out a laugh and bites at his ear. “The blond was okay, but I prefer you like this.”

“Brunet?”

“Mine.”

She can’t stop saying it, like she’s learned a new word that she needs to repeat until it settles into her bones. Bob lowers his scarred hand to where their bodies meet, touching her delicately, almost worshipful. 

“Yeah. I’m yours,” he says. “And you’re mine.”

“Always have been.”

Kissing him is still so new, but it feels as if she’s been doing it her entire life. This love for him feels like something she has always had, even before she knew him. It is all encompassing, overwhelming like the swell of a tsunami before its descent. She is consumed by thoughts of him, by the feeling of him around her. Yelena has never wanted someone or something as badly as she needs him.

Even the connection of sex isn’t enough for her. No, she needs to crawl inside of him, spread his ribs apart and make a home around his heart so she can never leave. 

Yelena claws at his back as she starts to fuck herself harder, faster. It’s enough to knock the headboard into the wall. His sweaty forehead presses into her cheek, ragged breath tickling her skin as he lifts himself to meet her.

She wants to leave marks on him, wants to stake her claim. Maybe if she scratches hard enough, she succeeds. Bob’s sounds are encouraging her greatly. 

“I love you,” she finally conjures. “I love you, I love you.” 

Bob has one hand against her clit, rubbing it like he’s daring her to fall apart again, the other resting on her stomach to hold her in place. She can feel him pressing where his dick brushes along her insides, and for those precious few seconds, all she knows is him. 

“Can I come again?” he begs into her ear. “I’ve been so good, please let me come, please please please—”

“Yes, yes, do it.”

Just as Yelena begins to feel herself begin to unravel, she squeezes tightly around him. Bob opens his mouth as wide as he can and buries his teeth into the meat of her shoulder. She lets out a moan that nearly shocks her out of her orgasm. 

He continues to bite down harder, harder, so hard his jaw must hurt. Her skin puts up a fight before it splits like paper. A blissful blossom of iron-flavored adrenaline fills her mouth as the pain folds over the pleasure, increasing the heat between them and making her whine and gasp against him. 

Bob lets out a noise so unholy she swears her vision goes black. If she wasn’t already coming, that sound would’ve thrown her over the edge. 

Every muscle on her tightens to a vice, then slacks all at once. The lights above them burst, sending sparks across the ceiling, but they are too enthralled with each other to care. Yelena comes so hard she thinks she must’ve actually died for a moment. Her body twists, pushing back into Bob while scrambling for something solid to hold onto. The world melts away, leaving him and her and nothing else between them. 

Bob holds her, chest to sweaty chest, kissing around the wound he’s made until they both stop trembling. The light in his eyes dims, then fades away completely. She collapses on top of him with a satisfied grunt. Once he returns to himself, Bob sits back and wipes his mouth against the back of his hand. He looks like a vampire.

There’s blood all over her shoulder, red and sticky and running down her back, no doubt staining her sheets. Again. Despite their minds being fogged over with trickling lust buzzing through their veins, the taste of her blood must sober him enough to start apologizing. 

“Fuck, I—”

“Don’t.” Yelena slaps a hand over his mouth. “Don’t apologize.”

“I bit you,” he mumbles pitifully against her palm. She can feel him pouting. “Human bites are deadly, Lena. Because of the bacteria in our mouths and shit. I learned that the hard way. I got bit by a junkie in Miami.”

“You’re not a chihuahua, angel. I’m sure Sentry bites will be just fine.”

Yelena pulls her hand back, and he doesn’t argue any more, but he does kiss the bite apologetically. She lifts herself off of him, both wincing with oversensitivity, and collapses back onto the sheets.

“I think you killed me,” she says.

“The feeling is mutual. How are you going to explain it?” he asks.

Yelena shrugs, eyes fluttering closed. The sunlight rests on her softly. She wants to live in this moment forever. “I probably won't.”

“They’re going to think you were mauled.”

“Well, I kind of was.”

The embarrassed groan he lets out makes her laugh. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I didn’t hurt you too bad, did I?” he asks.

“If I wanted you to stop, I would’ve made you,” she says reassuringly. “Trust me.”

“I tried to hold back. I still don’t know my strength.”

“You did hold back. I’m intact. Mostly.”

Bob thumbs the bite, and while he still looks regretful, a smile tugs at his red-tinted lips.

“One of these days, I’m going to make you snap,” she murmurs, mostly for herself, “and it’s going to be amazing.”

“I’ll clean it up for you, then we should probably take a shower,” he says. Yelena sends him a coy face, and he frantically adds, “a real shower, with soap and water and no other fluids, you absolute freak. No more, please. You’re going to break my dick.”

As he wobbles to her bathroom, like he’s the one who was just fucked into oblivion, she laughs, calling after him.

“I don’t think I could, but I can try if you want.”

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry.”

Yelena has been saying that a lot lately to a lot of different people, all of those who deserve the apology from her, but it doesn’t get any easier. The guilt, the fear that she will be turned down the way she deserves to be. She knows burning bridges might’ve been to protect her friends, but all it’s done was hurt them. The least she could do was prove that she was trying to get better. Her first step is apologizing, and the next is proving she’s changed. 

Saying sorry hurts, but she says it anyway. She has to. She has done so much intentional damage that it is the least she can do to prove she won’t do it again. 

Lying low in his armchair, Alexei drinks straight from the vodka bottle while staring at footage from their latest press junket, his hand clenched around the remote control like it’s going to run away from him. He’s been growing his hair out, and Yelena is glad. The bald wasn’t a good look on him. It just made him look far older than he already was.

His brows are permanently furrowed together, beard twisted in a deep, exaggerated frown of brown and grey hair. He looks like he hasn’t moved from that spot in days. Even from across the living room, Yelena can smell the liquor wafting off of him. 

They haven’t spoken to each other since the night she shouted at him. Their meetings have been brief, eye contact all but nonexistent. As much as Yelena wanted to apologize for what she said in a moment of weakness, she hasn’t had the time. The day after she and Bob resolved their lover’s quarrel, Yelena was sent to Tokyo with Ava for several days hunting down someone who’d stolen Pym particles and was illegally manufacturing a copy with disastrous side effects. 

Alexei pays her no mind when they cross paths, but not in a way that tells her he’s angry. There’s sadness in his eyes, a pain so deep she will never forgive herself for hurting him so. It’s as if merely looking at her wounds him. 

He looks up at her now with that same injured look, as if he’s surprised she’s speaking to him, and looks around the room for someone else. They’re alone. Except, of course, for Bob, who is hiding in the stairwell in case she needs backup. She can’t believe she’s getting schooled on emotional maturity from the guy whose bipolar disorder manifests as a supervillain. 

When Alexei’s eyes return to her, Yelena braves a step closer.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, far less confident now but still determined. Her heart is ready to leap out of her throat. “For what I said to you. I didn’t mean it.”

He lets out a chest-deep grumble in disagreement, brings the vodka bottle back to his lips. It dribbles down his beard. “Doesn’t mean it’s not truth.”

Yelena hesitantly glances over her shoulder to the stairwell door. Bob gives her an encouraging thumbs up through the window. He looks more nervous than she is, which feels impossible. Hands behind her back, she clenches her fist around her prepared notecards. 

“I was angry. And I was just trying to push you away.” She recites what she’d written from so, too nervous that she had to write down what she wanted to tell him. “I understand if you can’t forgive me, but I thought I’d tell you how sorry I am. Because I still love you.”

His head drops to his chest. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t lie. It is not good look on you.”

She scoffs a bit. “I’m not lying, Alexei.”

“No? Then why do you say you didn’t mean it when all you said were the things that I did to you?”

When Alexei looks back up at her, his eyes are furious, but not towards her. Himself. The pain clings to him like black shadows. He lifts his large body from his chair with an unsteady grip on the armrests, but he’s so drunk that he immediately loses his balance and lands on his ass. His head cracks back against the floor. Yelena darts forward to help, but he stops her with a raised hand. 

There’s no blood, that’s good. But Alexei doesn’t immediately stand. 

“Are you okay?” she asks, but he doesn’t respond. 

“I did so much evil,” he moans in anguish. “I’ve hurt so many people without ever thinking about what the Red Room was doing to them. And for what? Glory? Pssht. None of that glory was worth losing you and Natasha. I could spend lifetime trying to make up for it, but it would not change what I did to so many little girls. To you, the light of my life.”

He covers his face with his hand as he begins to weep. His shoulders shake, and Yelena doesn’t know what to do. Helplessly, she looks back at Bob, who merely gestures for her to get closer. She does.

“How can you stand to look at me?” Alexei groans through trembling fingers. “My own reflection is disappointment. I see who I was, that monster doing Dreykov’s bidding without exception, and what I did. There is no glory in what I was. Who was I kidding? The Red Guardian is big joke. I am just as bad as Dreykov. You are right to hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” Yelena says, kneeling in front of him. His body is seized by his sobs, wound up like a notched arrow. “What you did—it was horrible. But I could never hate you.”

“Why not? I deserve it.”

Call it Stockholm’s Syndrome, or call it Yelena’s need to cling to a life she only had briefly decades ago, but she cannot look at Alexei and not see the man who raised her. Ohio may have been curated with a purpose, but that was still her home for those formative years. Before she was subjugated, she would cling to that photostrip Natasha snuck her, hoping that if she dreamt of that small one-story house enough, she would wake up in her bed and the Red Room would be just a distant nightmare. Except that never happened, and that nightmare became her reality. 

But sometimes.

Sometimes, Yelena looks at Alexei and she sees the father figure who would hold her ankles when she struggled to do a handstand on her. He taught her to swim and drove her to every soccer practice, even if it meant being late to meetings with Dreykov. Alexei and Melina never missed a single game. They talked Natasha through her first—and her last—period and that summer, they bought their fake daughters real presents after their elongated photoshoots because Yelena wouldn’t stop crying about the boxes being empty. 

Yelena really did love him. She still might. She’s unsure.

Despite it all, Alexei was trying; he cooks her Russian dishes that she misses but never learned to make herself, joins her in karaoke when nobody else will, talks her up to the media when asked about the team. Gives her space when she needs it, annoys her the way a dad does. He has shown her time and time and time again that he is trying to do better. 

That doesn’t mean he’s wrong. 

Yelena looks at him and sees two warring images—her father, and her kidnapper. Maybe it will always be that way. Maybe it’s wrong of her to not quite forgive him yet, but to set it aside to forge something new. She can’t help but love him anyway.

She takes the hand from his face and puts it to her cheek. He is warm and solid, and she is so very afraid of what it means to love him. His eyes are squinted with tears, cheeks blotted red.

“Do you know what your name means?” Alexei asks. When she shakes her head, he says, “It means shining. Bright. And that’s what you are. You’re starlight in the dark, bringing love and light with you wherever you go. That’s what I love most about you.”

And now she’s crying, too. 

“My beautiful little starlight,” Alexei whispers, stroking her hair. “Not a day goes by that I regret ever letting them take you away. But look how wonderfully you’ve grown. After all you’ve been through, all they did to you, and you still shine. I’m so sorry.”

“I know you are. I’m sorry too.”

“I love you, Yelena,” he says. “I wish I could have been a better father to you.”

“It’s not too late. You can start now,” she says.

He nods, and shakes her hand like it’s a business agreement. “Starting now.”

Alexei hugs her tenderly, his body encompassing her like a bear. One large hand cradles the back of her head, the other wound protectively around her back. She sinks into him and buries her face in his chest. The air of liquor is so strong that she has to prematurely pull away. 

“Papa, you smell like shit,” she murmurs, earning a hearty laugh from him. 

“I think I should shower,” he says.

“I think so too.”

With tears in his eyes, happy tears now, he kisses her forehead. “I can’t change what I did, malyshka, but I will spend the rest of my life making up for it. I can promise you that much.”

She smiles at him, knowing in her heart that he’s being honest. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Progress is, unfortunately, less of a diagonal rise and more like a mountain ridge. They get better, worse, better, worse. Things are always happening, never a dull day in the Watchtower. 

John returns home from a mission, carrying a half-phased Ava over his back. She’d snuck into a lab to steal a sample of the black market Pym Particle for Bill Foster to examine, but someone had disrupted her phasing with a targeted sonic blast. There was nowhere for her to go, nowhere to resolidify safely. When John finally got to her and dragged her out of the building, her atoms were like liquid, barely holding shape.

Upon returning, Ava is put into a medical coma when the pain becomes too much and is sealed in her quantum chamber for recovery. Bill Foster, who treats her like a daughter, refuses to work on the Pym Particle until she wakes up. Although Val doesn’t take it well, she allows it. He is her own tie to Hank Pym, after all, and she is all about fickle alliances with people she wants to take advantage of.

Every time Yelena enters the laboratory—and a med bay designed specifically for Ava’s abilities—she finds him standing over Ava’s chamber with a haunted look on his face. He looks like he’s the one who’s been scattered into a thousand pieces. 

“She’s going to be fine,” Yelena tells him. 

“I was going to take her out for dinner,” he replies, his voice wavering. “That new Italian place that she wouldn’t shut up about. It was going to be a proper date. No more sneaking around.”

“You’ll still do it. Ava’s stronger than even she knows.” Yelena grabs his shoulder, squeezes it, unsure how else to reassure him. “And she always comes back.”

John doesn’t budge an inch. He stands guard for three days, waiting for her to wake up. Bob brings him food and sits with him to make sure he actually eats. They’re not sure if he’s sleeping. 

Yelena wants to make fun of him for how pathetic he looks, curled up at Ava’s side like a lost puppy, but she can’t without sounding hypocritical. Because, when Bob was self-isolated in the basement those first two weeks, she was in this exact same state. Seeing someone you love in such a state where you’re useless to help is as painful as a physical wound. It festers, it bleeds.

The last thing John needs right now is to be alone. So, Yelena decides to sit with him. Not to distract him or to convince him to leave. Just to keep him company. 

John doesn’t say anything at first when she pulls up a chair beside his, barely acknowledging her presence, but he does eventually ask about the book she’s reading. She hides her smile. 

“It’s about vampires, I think. Haven’t seen any vampires yet, though. Bob bought it for me.”

“You and your scary shit,” John grumbles.

“It’s a good book,” she says defensively, cradling her copy of Salem’s Lot to her chest. “You’re just a coward.”

“Whatever.”

A long thread of silence pulls between them as Yelena keeps reading and Ava keeps breathing.

Then, John asks her to read to him. She does.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Ava wakes up on the fourth day, aching but intact. She eats like a fiend, mostly Bob’s eccentric meals that he made in preparation for her waking up, and then subsequently throws it all up. John hugs her like she’s going to fall away again.

When they kiss, unafraid and in front of the rest of the team, something clicks in Yelena’s mind. While she and Bob haven’t been hiding—it’s hard to when he’s in constant need of touching her at any given moment—they haven’t told anyone. She hadn’t felt the need to. 

But they could show them. They don’t need to be afraid.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

It is very easy to mistake mania as excitement or irritability. Bob is still learning his own tells to help himself when nobody is around to calm him down, while still Yelena battles this rose-colored view of him she’s made for herself.

Schizoaffective bipolar disorder, he’s told during his last therapy session, and while he already knew that from a previous psychiatric visit, he’s not exactly giddy about it. This diagnosis isn’t perfect, nor properly confirmed, but it is a stepping point. He’s getting better, anyway. 

Until he stops taking his medication without telling anyone and makes Yelena bed in breakfast. 

On any other day, it would be a sweet gesture, but it isn’t just eggs and toast and maybe a glass of orange juice. It’s an omelet, bacon, french toast, sliced fruits, pancakes. There must be more, but he couldn’t fit it onto her plate. Bob comes back with more—coffee, water, orange juice he proudly squeezed himself. His movements never stop, even when he’s standing in place. He looks like a bottle rocket fizzling, waiting to burst and fly away. Yelena takes the overfilled plate, grateful but confused. 

“I can’t eat all of this,” she says softly.

Bob looks like he hasn’t slept all night, and he’s twitchy again. “Oh, that’s fine. I made enough for the, um, the others, too.”

“Can I ask why you made all this?”

“I dunno, I couldn’t sleep and really wanted to do something for you. As a thanks, I guess. Or an apology. Maybe both.”

He speaks quickly and nervously, words blending into a blur of sound. Yelena can’t stop the frown forming across her face, and Bob stops.

“Is something wrong?” he asks.

She doesn’t want to ask. She fears the answer. But she asks anyway.

“Have you been taking your meds?”

His own smile drops. “What the fuck kinda question is that?”

“I know how it sounds, but you’re very, um. Energized right now.”

“God forbid I do something for my girlfriend,” Bob says sarcastically.

Yelena’s shoulders heighten. “When did you stop?”

“I didn’t say I did.”

“I know you. And I know how you get when you’re not medicated. You’re like the human version of the Battery Rabbit.”

He pauses for a moment, staring. “You mean the Energizer Bunny?”

“My point still stands.”

“I don’t need them, I’m fine,” he says, which is the dreadful confirmation she needs. “I actually have energy for the first time in a while, and I don’t feel so numb anymore.”

“When did you stop them?” she asks.

Bob hesitates then, and he looks at his feet. “After I um. After the last time I passed out during my—my sessions with Val, she suggested I… ween off to see the effect it has on me.”

The last few weeks flash like a slideshow behind Yelena’s eyes. Their fights. The lust. The Void. It all makes sense now. They were getting worse at the same time without even realizing it. And he still doesn’t realize it.

“The thing is, it—it worked,” Bob continues, too positive for his own good while she’s freaking the fuck out, and Ye;ena realizes then that she hasn’t heard him stutter like this since moving into the tower. “The medication, it—it blurs everything. Makes me feel distant from my own feelings. And it’s as bad as it was before I got off lexapro, but still. I wanted to feel everything with you. The good and the bad. And I—I am. I feel so much more now.”

He looks like he wants to say more but doesn’t. Yelena props the plate of breakfast foods onto her nightstand and sits up further.

“That’s why you relapsed,” she murmurs, not meant for him to hear.

It seems, however, enough to snap him out of this self-made trance. His defensive smile drops. 

“Oh, shit,” he says with realization. “It’s happening again. I didn’t even—oh, shit. I’m gonna get all Sentry again. Fucking—and here I thought I was just excited to make my girlfriend breakfast.”

“It’s a sweet gesture,” Yelena reassures. “But…”

“I know, I know. It’s a sign. A bad sign. God, why the fuck did I even listen to her?”

“Is there a way to, I don’t know, reverse it?” 

“Maybe. I don’t know. I mean, I’ve never really been aware of it coming before I’m in it. Or maybe I’m in it right now, I can’t tell. But if I start taking the meds again…”

He starts pacing, chewing on his thumb. The lamp light on her nightstand buzzes for a moment before returning to normal.

Yelena remembers how he was when they first met in the vault, twitchy and frantic and weird and off. Bob had felt off to her. Not dangerous, not scary. But the way the body shifts and adjusts to the change in air pressure when on a plane. Something has changed, and while it doesn’t hurt, it’s still unsettling. 

“How about you try and get some sleep,” she suggests.

Bob presses his knuckle into his eye and nods. “Yeah, yeah. Sleep will help.”

She gives him room on the bed and makes a point to pick around the plate to show her appreciation. It is a beautiful gesture, and delicious. The others come in later asking about the abundance of breakfast in the messy kitchen, and Yelena lies, saying Bob wanted to use up the food before it went bad. Nobody bats an eye. 

Bob doesn’t fall asleep for several hours, tossing and fidgeting the rest of the energy out until he exhausts himself, but at least he’s not pacing a hole into their bedroom carpet. 

He decides the next morning to get back on his meds. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

While Kate is not exactly jealous that Bob stole Yelena from her, she does seem surprised.

“I mean, I knew it was coming, but still,” she says, stirring her paper straw around the rim of her iced coffee. “Not so fast, especially after your little White Fang episode. I was expecting you two to dance around each other until the end of time.”

Yelena flicks a piece of whipped cream at her. “Okay, first of all, fuck you.”

“Oh, you’ve done that plenty.”

That just earns her another flick. “Second, I didn’t expect it to happen either. It just came naturally to me. Kind of like us.”

It’s odd for her to look back at a painful memory without hurting. 

“You really love him, huh.” Kate licks the whipped cream from her knuckles. “I’m happy for you. I haven’t seen you smile like that for a while now.”

“I’m sorry,” Yelena says, because she doesn’t know what else to say.

“For what?”

“All of it. Hurting you because I was scared. Still sleeping with you when I had… feelings for someone else. I don’t know, there’s probably more. But I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m the one who broke up with you in the first place.”

“You’re not mad?”

Kate looks at her incredulously. “Why the hell would I be mad? I’m happy for you. You’re my best friend, Lena, before you’re anything else. And all I want is for you to be happy. Yeah, I’ll admit, I’m going to miss what we had, but it’s not like I’m going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.”

People never stay. Yelena came to this cafe with her fully prepared to leave alone. But the way Kate says it with such confidence makes her want to believe it. 

“I need to ask a favor,” Kate says, suddenly sounding serious. 

Yelena’s attention flickers to her, and she nods.“Go for it.”

“Do you remember that girl I told you about? Ms. Marvel. Well, I haven’t seen her in a minute. And I’m getting nervous about it. We were supposed to meet up with that kid I told you about, the one with the magic helmet, and she never showed. She’s not like that.”

“Maybe she’s on a mission.”

“She’s seventeen.”

“Oh, shit.”

Kate looks away, sucking air through her teeth. She is trying not to look worried, but Yelena can see it in the wrinkles between her brows, her pinched mouth.

“She’s strong and smart and can handle herself, but she’s still just a kid. And she loves being a hero, which means putting herself in stupid fucking positions.”

“Like hunting cartels with a bow and arrow?” Yelena teases.

It’s her turn to be pelted with whipped cream.

“I’ll keep an eye out,” she promises through laughter. “We’re busy this week with taking down a smuggler but after that, you have all of my attention.”

Kate smiles, then groans dramatically, draping herself over the booth table. “God, just remembered I can’t kiss you anymore or else Bobby’s gonna send me into the fucking Upside Down.”

“What the hell is the Upside Down?”

“Oh, right, I forgot the Russian assassin is too good for a Netflix subscription.”

Yelena feigns offense. “Says you, the one who’s still using your ex’s account from before the blip.”

“In my defense, she really should've noticed by now.”

Chapter Text

The gala isn’t a gala, per say, but a very public trap for an ex-soldier turned smuggler who works under the codename Goliath and had been hired to steal a Chitauri artifact from Val’s collection. It’s the same man Yelena and Ava discovered stole an older version of the Pym Particles on the black market, but he hadn’t resurfaced until recently. It was closer to Yellow Jacket’s recreation rather than the original. Bill Foster confirmed that the particles were defective, which was why there were so many reports of extreme side effects—self-implosions, pocket sized bears and bear-sized ants—and no new croppings of super-powered villains. 

Not yet, anyway.

While they don’t know Goliath’s true identity, nor who he’s working for, it’s rumored to have something to do with AIM again, who Val has had her eye on for months now. Yelena thinks it’s hypocritical of her to target a science group trying to make a new superhuman when that’s the only reason she’s not rotting in prison, but she’s still kind of pissed about being shot. 

Their exposure to the public for the first time since their induction is just a bonus for Val. Because all PR for her is good PR. At least they get to dress up. 

Mel promised the team that this guy probably wouldn’t even show, as the helmet wasn’t particularly rare or valuable, so they agreed to dress up for the faux gala mostly out of fun. Their outfits, while formal, were altered for practicality and threaded with a new lightweight armor using technology Yelena is smart enough to understand but couldn't care less about. 

Bucky is wearing the same boring suit he wears in front of Congress. It might be the only fancy thing he owns. Because he’s going to be guarding Val in case it runs out to be an assassinatin attempt—which Yelena secretly wouldn’t be too mad about—he has several weapons hidden in his suit jacket. His hair is slicked back, beard gone and giving him. If it weren’t for the cavernous tear troughs beneath his eyes, he would have an intense baby face. He really needs a haircut.

Alexei’s suit is red, because of course it is, though he says it’s a tactical decision so enemies don’t see him bleed. Val insisted he trim his beard because, according to her, “You look like we have a homeless guy on the team as a diversity hire.”

Offensive, yes, but sadly accurate. 

Yelena is in a satin emerald dress, off the shoulders for an easy outfit change if she needs it, and a slit up the thigh for easy access to the butterfly knife holstered in her garter. Her stiletto heels—she hates them, and the straps dig into her ankle bones, but she has to make up for how short she is—are useful weapons if it comes to that. And she’s always wanted to stab someone with a stiletto.

Thank God for practical jewelry, because Val’s engineers crafted her Widow Bites that look like any other silver bracelet, with little chains that attach to her rings for added range and control. 

Bob wears something less formal than the rest of them, just a simple button down, a very well fitting pair of slacks, and a belt with the golden Sentry S as the buckle. It’s a dark colored suit that looks blue in the right lighting. He tries to put on a tie but can’t figure out how to do it and he refuses to let anyone else knot it for him. Yelena likes him better without it, anyway. This slight informality fits him. There’s a pistol hidden in his waistband that he triple-checked to make sure the safety was on.

“I don’t wanna blow off my dick,” he says when John teases him about it.

“You’re bulletproof,” John responds. “Your dick would probably, like, reflect it.”

“But then I would just have a loose bullet in my pants and that doesn’t sound any more comfortable.”

Because she hates dresses and not even Val can force her into one, Ava’s in a long-sleeved jumpsuit, all black and dipping so low in the front Yelena can almost see her belly button. Her hair has been straightened, her makeup light and gothic. The thin fabric is lined with a material to allow her to phase easily. At least she, too, gets to suffer with Yelena in heels. 

John is wearing an all black suit, no doubt meant to match with Ava, and a tiny American flag pinned to his breast pocket. He looks just about ready to pounce on Ava when she walks into the second floor, the last of them to gather before the gala. She swears his eyes don’t lift from her chest the whole time. 

They go over their plan. It’s another tag and track, easy work for a group of assassins like them. Their intel says Goliath will be on his own, but they can’t be certain. He’s notoriously good at cleaning his tracks, and nobody they’ve interrogated seems to know his true identity. Because of this, John assumes he has a history of military service, or at least some sort of training. Unfortunately, this also means they’re stepping blindly into this mission. 

Not even Val knows if he’s enhanced, and if he is, they don’t know how. Their best guess is the typical type of enhancements—strength, stamina, speed—but they can’t be certain. He could be invisible, for all they know, and he could just walk in and out without them catching a glimpse of him. 

“Ava, you’re on lookout,” Bucky instructs, assigning her to mingle towards the front of the doors. “If you see anyone matching his description or anyone shady, find me first. We need to avoid suspicion until we can slip him a tracker and follow him to whoever the broker is.”

“I’m on drinks,” Alexei says.

“No, you’re on defense. You’ll be positioned at the front doors. In case anything goes wrong, you’re in charge of getting everyone out safely. Meanwhile, Walker, you’ll be guarding the artifact. Do not let it out of your sight. I’ll, unfortunately, be mingling and protecting Val.”

“And what about us?” Bob asks, glancing at Yelena.

She hooks her arm with his. “We’re putting your skills to the test.”

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

The first floor of the Watchtower has been completely redecorated for the gala, and while there is no definitive theme, it might as well be patriotism. Whoever was in charge of decor decided a dozen hanging American flags was not enough. It’s not even a holiday on the day they’re hosting, but everything down to the drinks are themed by the flag’s colors. There is so red and white and blue food coloring in the h'ordeuvres and cocktails that every attendant will no doubt be shitting lavender for the foreseeable future. 

The white and black colored tiles have been buffered into mirrors, so shiny Yelena fears she’s going to slip and break her neck. Val, being as obnoxiously extravagant as she is, even had a wide, diamond-shaped chandelier installed in the ceiling, and it drapes low, grazing the tall glass box containing the Chitauri helmet. It’s almost like an arrow pointing down, enticing anyone stupid enough to try and steal the artifact.

A dozen or so tables of varying heights and their tucked-in chairs line the outer walls, leaving a large space for entry and a miniature dance floor beside the band. There’s a bar on the end beside the elevator doors, a clothed table adorned with flowers and thin-stemmed glasses filled with water for the sober folks. Soldiers disguised as waiters float around the space with metal plates of tiny desserts that are nowhere near filling. 

Every inch of the floor is swathed by the bodies of politicians and their arm candy, chatting about their summer houses in Barcelona and sidestepping the real things they want to say in the way only political figureheads can. There are no boundaries with these people, even though they're the so-called leaders of the free world. One very drunk mayor of a town none of them had heard of tried to flirt with Ava, but she just started cussing him out in Spanish until he scurried away. 

Yelena is about three glasses of chardonnay deep, barely feeling a buzz because of how high her adrenaline is racing. Despite this mission being so simple, she can’t shake this feeling that there is something missing from their supposedly airtight plan. A ghost in the machine, a flaw in code. There are too many unknown variables. They don’t know enough about this man to properly plan for his arrival. Anything could happen, he could have any set of powers. While this team is well known for doing well under pressure and in extenuating circumstances, Yelena can’t help but feel like they are woefully unprepared for whatever is coming. 

Fuck it, she needs these drinks to keep herself steady. She can go sober tomorrow. 

Bob is right behind her in drinks, though he’s only drinking to keep his hands busy. There’s not even a flush in his cheeks yet. While he isn’t as manic as he was before, he appears far more nervous than Yelena and still twitchy, though less so since she was accosted by a Senator and he ‘accidentally’ melted the man’s Rolex off his wrist. It was funny, and not even Bucky could chastise them properly without chuckling to himself. 

They’re standing at a chest-high table decorated with little flags and patriotic napkins, pretending to chat about nothing at all while looking around for their target. His hand rests possessively along the small of her back. The heat is a comfort to her. Yelena readjusts the ear piece attached to her hooped earrings as Alexei alerts them of someone arriving who wasn’t on the guest list. 

“He checked in under fake name. Looks like he’s alone. Caucasian man, red hair. Red suit too. Who the hell dressed this guy? He looks like walking stoplight.”

“I see him,” Ava responds. “Widow, Sentry, the target is headed your way.”

Yelena spots him easily; he really does like walking a stoplight. Carnation-red slacks, a matching suit jacket smoothed over a golden-brown button down. His tie is an eyesore of floral patterns. Cropped ginger hair, military style, light eyes that carefully dart from face to face. He is tense, meticulous in his movements, a man on a mission. 

Goliath leans over the bar, waving one of the bartenders down for a drink. As soon as his back is to them, Yelena downs the rest of her wine and sets it on the plate of a passing waitress. 

“Remember what I taught you, Bob,” she says, eyes scanning the crowd for any other interested parties who might be with Goliath. “Silent approach, feather touch, silent exit. Order a drink to avoid suspicion. If you need me to come and save you, I’ll drag you away to dance.”

He nods, then whispers, “This is just like the fourth Mission Impossible.”

“Focus, Sentry,” Bucky warns through their earpieces.

Bob’s mouth quirks a bit at the name. “Right. Sorry.”

He twists around the signet ring on his index finger and pops the tracker out of the emblem. It falls into the center of his palm. This tracker is smaller than what they’ve used in the past for practice, but has a longer range to track. Yelena trusts that he can do it. Bob pecks her cheek and walks away with shaky confidence. His ass looks very good in those pants.

Yelena keeps him in her periphery as she walks up to Mel, greeting her like they didn’t see each other an hour ago. She asks about her and Kate’s date, to which Mel’s face blooms a very embarrassed red. 

“Don’t gossip without me,” Ava teases. 

“You two are so mean,” Mel says. 

“I’m just making conversation,” Yelena says. “Where'd you guys go?”

Mel nervously glances at Val, who’s too invested in a conversation with one of Bucky’s fellow Congressman, and leans in. She has such a cheesy smile on.

“We went to this drive-in in Albany. She walked me back to my apartment and kissed me goodnight. It was nice.”

Yelena squeals like a little girl. “I knew you two would be cute together.”

“How did you even know I was…” Mel flicks her wrist.

Bucky pipes up. “Queers recognize queers.”

“I don’t think you can say that anymore, Buck,” John replies. “It’s not the forties anymore.”

“I had sex with the original Captain America. Look at me one more time and try to tell me I’m straight.”

“Point taken.”

Yelena chews on her cheek to stop herself from laughing and returns her focus to the task at hand. As Bob approaches the man, he leans over the bar in a similar manner to ask for a drink. He looks very normal and unrecognizable, the only one of them not forced into the public eye. Goliath doesn’t even look his way. She watches Bob’s fingers slip the tracker into his pocket without alerting him, and she smiles to herself.

“Target is marked,” she murmurs under her breath, unable to hide her proud smile.

She knew he could do it. 

“Good job,” Bucky says, and Yelena catches how Bob’s shoulders push back with the praise. 

He gratefully takes the pina colada made by the bartender, but in the half-second he takes his eyes away from the glass to look back at Yelena for approval, something falls into it. A trick of the light, maybe, because it’s gone the next moment she blinks. The liquid is just opaque enough that whatever it is disappears. Nobody in the bar moved, but she swears that Goliath wasn’t leaning like that a second ago. His eyes are trained on Bob now. 

Superspeed. 

Feeling her gaze, Goliath glances over his shoulder and makes brief eye contact with Yelena, holding it for a moment before he nods politely and looks away. Bringing his beer bottle up to cover his face, he watches Bob raise his own glass to his lips. He only seems satisfied when Bob starts to drink. Yelena’s skin prickles.

That bad feeling returns, stronger this time. 

Yelena strides across the room, but Bob has already downed half of the pina colada before she even reaches him. She swoops to Bob’s side, curling her fingers around the cool glass and asking him to dance with her. He smiles, as if forgetting the mission the moment he looks at her. Over his shoulder, she feels Goliath watching them but purposely avoids meeting his eyes. Keeping a smile on, she takes the drink from his hand and pulls him towards the center of the floor. 

Once they’re out of Goliath’s sight, her smile drops. She sets the glass on a random table as they pass it and wraps her arms around his neck, tugging him close. His hands easily find her hips. 

“He drugged your drink,” she whispers in his ear.

“What?” Bob furrows his brows. “But I was watching him the whole time.”

“I think he has enhanced speed.”

He goes a bit green at the gills, eyes bulging. His eyes dart to Goliath, who’s quick to look away, then back down to Yelena. “Shit. Should I go throw it up?”

“It might just be a roofie, which won’t do much because of your metabolism,” Bucky mutters through the ear piece, “but that means that he knows we’re onto him. Ghost, join Walker by the artifact and don’t let it out of your sight.”

“On it.”

Yelena and Bob sway to the jazz band playing in the corner, their circular movements allowing them a 360 view of the gala. The man is still at the bar, not having moved an inch, and nobody else has come in that they don’t recognize.

What the hell is Goliath waiting for? Either he has to leave the gala empty-handed or try and fail to steal the artifact. There is no other option left for him. It feels like he’s waiting for some sort of signal, and that doesn’t quell the fear brewing in Yelena’s gut that there is something wrong with this painted picture. She hopes that he will see the security, chicken out, and they can just follow him back to whoever he’s reporting to. 

“How’re you feeling over there?” Yelena asks Bob to distract herself from the feeling that something is about to go horribly wrong. 

With an unsteady chuckle, he replies, “Like I need to give my ninety day chip back.”

She pouts. She hadn’t thought about what this meant for his sobriety. 

“Why the hell would he try to drug me?” Bob asks aloud. “I’m a nobody.”

Yelena shrugs, tapping her fingers nervously along the nape of his neck. “Maybe you weren’t as sly as you thought.”

“Bullshit. We’ve been practicing that move so much I can do it in my sleep.”

“Maybe he’s not here for the artifact,” John says. 

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Yelena mutters. “Because if he isn’t, what else is there to steal?”

They all know. Their eyes all come to rest on their most valuable possession: Bob. 

“Nobody knows about the Sentry yet,” Bob replies. “Val said she wasn’t going to announce it until I was stable enough, and I’m still pretty far from stable.”

“Do you really believe the things Val says?”

“You got me there.”

Yelena glances back towards the bar, then does a double take to the empty beer bottle sitting in front of an empty stool. He’s not there anymore. There is no sign of where he’s gone. She mutters a swear to herself and swivels around, taking Bob with her. Bob catches on immediately, his eyes floating from person to person. 

“Does anyone have an eye on Goliath?” she asks. 

After a beat of waiting for a response, Yelena repeats the question. John begins to speak in response, but his words turn to temporary static just as the lights die all at once, plunging them into an unsteady dark. The crowd murmurs in confusion and mild fear. Fortunately, there is just enough light coming in from the lamp posts outside, thin threads of moonlight and the wavering candles sitting on the scattered tables casting a gloomy aura around the room. Yelena can see outlines of people around her, shuffling around in the dark for something solid to orient themselves with.

She keeps a tight grip on Bob’s wrist. His fingers bunch up the fabric along her waist. The candlelight catches his face and casts dark, fearful shadows along the flat edge of his cheek. He’s scared, trembling where he holds her.

Bucky calls for everyone to check in that they’re all still alive. With each confirmation, the vice around Yelena’s heart loosens, but she still can’t help feeling like they’re missing something obvious. Val and Mel are surrounded by governors, with Bucky planted at their sides as a bodyguard. Alexei’s closing the doors, sealing everyone in. Ava and John are still beside the untouched artifact. 

“Lena,” Bob breathes out, voice pitched up with fear.

“I’m here, angel,” she replies quickly. “I’m here.”

With everyone accounted for, they wait in the darkness for something to happen. There’s not much else they can do without jeopardizing the lives of D.C.’s most controversial bureaucrats. 

“Nobody has come in or out,” Alexei says. “The front doors are closed.”

“What the hell is this guy waiting for?” John grumbles. 

“I’m starting to think he’s not here for the artifact,” Yelena says, though what he could be here for, she’s still unsure. Val, maybe. Or the black market particles they stole. “He hasn’t made a move for them, and I think he’s still watching me and Bob.”

Bob grunts in affirmation. “I feel his eyes on us.”

“I’m going to check the breaker,” Ava says. “Be right back.”

Just as she phases out of sight, a high-pitched ring fills their comms. Yelena and Bob flinch away from each other. The others groan in sympathy at the painful squeal in their ears.

Someone’s interfering with their frequency.

Yelena grabs in the dark for Bob, but all she hears is him make a noise of discomfort. Bob’s silhouette doubles over in front of her, eyes flashing gold and silver like morse code. The air around him glows in pulses, fluctuating between hot and cold like the spinning dial of a thermostat. She reaches for him again, but his skin burns; she can’t help but pull back.

His powers are fraying, frantic, like he’s trying to keep control. 

“There’s something's wrong with Bob,” Yelena says. 

“My head, it’s… fuck,” Bob says with a pained moan. “Whatever he put in the drink is—”

A hush of air crosses behind her, and Yelena is just a hair too late to turn around before someone punches her in the gut, sending her crashing into a nearby table. She bites back a groan of pain. That’s going to leave a bruise.

“Super strength,” she grunts into her ear piece as she sits up, brushing broken glass and frosting off her shoulders. “He’s got fucking super strength.”

Before Bob can so much as widen his eyes when Yelena goes airborne, Goliath steps in front of him and backhands him. Bob is flung like a doll and collides against the bar. A cascade of expensive liquor bottles fall from the shattered glass shelves behind him and crash down on his head. The lights burst to life in a frenzied gasp for life just in time for Yelena to see his eyes roll back into his skull. He goes limp, and the lights go out again. This time, the lamps outside die too. 

Limp. Him. The goddamn Sentry. 

At the sight of the most powerful of the New Avengers being tossed like a ragdoll by this fucking nobody makes Yelena’s blood run cold all the way up to her heart. She pushes herself to her feet, kicks off her heels, and eyes Goliath, whose shadowed form as he stands over Bob. 

Out of all the fears she’d accumulated over Bob during a mission, this was not one of them. She has all of the possibilities written down—the Void returns after a manic-depressive episode and sends them to the shadow realm again, one of them gets hurt and he gets too angry, Val manipulates him back to her side, so many fucking more threats that come with him being on the field—and the chances of each happening. Hell, the entire team even has a betting pool going on about how he would crack first. 

(Bob’s in on it, of course, though he’s the most cynical of them all—he bet that one day he’d just kill himself before ever losing himself again. The team didn’t find it very funny.)

But Yelena never had considered that there would be anyone who could match him. The Sentry Serum seemed overpowered, raising him to godhood overnight. Nobody, not even other super soldiers, even made a dent on his skin. And when he has really good days, though they’re few and far between, he glows like the sun.

Her eyes drop to Bob’s half-drunk pina colada, still sitting on the table, and the realization is an arrow in her gut.

Not just a roofie. A repressor. 

“What the fuck was that?” John says behind her shoulder at the sound of Bob’s crash into the bar. 

“Sentry’s down,” Yelena says, charging her bracelet Widow Bites. “The Widow’s in pursuit.”

“What do you mean he’s down?” Bucky demands. 

She doesn’t respond. Yelena’s already sprinting for Goliath. 

Bob’s eyes flicker with fading light. He’s barely clinging to consciousness, barely strong enough to lift his head up to his assailant. The intact bottles around him float and shiver, exploding against Goliath in a burst of liquor and glass. The man doesn’t even flinch. Not a scratch. 

Super durability, too. It’s looking great for them. 

Goliath pulls a canister from his suit jacket and straps on a gas mask. As he tosses the gas canister backwards, into the crowd, Yelena shifts gears and darts towards it. She kicks the canister across the floor towards John. Without her having to tell him what to do, John lunges forward, swinging his shield from over his shoulder and bringing it down over the canister just as it bursts. Only a sliver of smoke escapes. 

Just as Goliath turns, Yelena leaps at him. She wraps her legs around his midsection and grips the back of his head, using her momentum to send him to the floor. His head cracks against the tiles. Yelena strikes him in the jugular with her Widow Bites, and he spasms in pain. The gas mask flies off his face. Before she can shock him unconscious, he kicks her off, and she skids several feet away. 

He tears off the tiny, sparking dart from his throat. His red hair is wild, grey eyes dangerous in the moonlight.

“Who the hell are you?” he asks, voice choked and gritted from her punch. 

Slightly offended that he doesn’t recognize her, Yelena snaps back, “I’m on TV, asshole, who the hell are you?”

He responds by trying to shoot her. Yelena rolls out of the way. Goliath easily follows her with the barrel—military training, no doubt—but she manages to get close. She grabs his wrist and pushes his arms up just as he fires again. The stray bullet strikes the chandelier, and now everyone around them is losing their minds. Alexei is shouting for them to run to safety, and Bucky’s ushering Val and Mel into the elevator. 

John tackles Goliath off of Yelena. They roll and roll, and John eventually gets the upper hand. He raises a fist, but then he goes deathly still. His eyes grow large and disbelieving.

“Josten?”

Goliath twitches, and his eyes do the same. “Walker?”

Ava appears at their sides in a flash, knocking Goliath out with a beer bottle in the back of his head. The man slumps over John.

“You know this asshole?” she questions, dropping the shattered bottleneck. 

John pushes Goliath off of him and takes Ava’s offered hand, hauling himself to his feet. “Yeah. This is Erik Josten. We served together in Baghdad. I was wondering what happened to him.”

This was easy. Too easy.

Yelena feels as though she is staring at something so obvious but can’t grasp it yet. There’s a missing puzzle piece of the bigger picture that means she can’t see the image yet. If she just had it, she could figure out where this feeling is coming from. 

As John and Ava drag the unconscious man away in handcuffs, she hops over the destroyed bar, running to Bob’s side. She fears seeing what the hell that man did to him, if maybe he accidentally sent him into a spiral that they’re ill-prepared to handle. Or maybe it was just a strong roofie. Too many variables, too much they still don’t know. 

Yelena freezes.

He isn’t there.

The only person she finds hiding behind the bar is the young bartender, drenched in alcohol and shaking with fear. Yelena helps her up, checks her for injuries before sending her off, but she doesn't stop looking around for Bob. She presses her comms, asks him to check in.

Silence.

“What happened with the lights?” John is asking Ava behind her.

“Someone cut the wires,” Ava replies. “He wasn’t working alone after all, but I didn’t see anyone else.”

Yelena looks back towards the entrance, a revolving door and the double doors. They’re all closed, locked. Alexei wouldn’t have allowed anyone to get past him if they tried. That’s why he’s defense.

Except Alexei’s not guarding the doors right now—he’s helping the son of a governor who was injured by some broken glass, delicately picking the shards from his leg and telling him a story to act as a distraction. 

“Huh,” Bucky says, his tone giving nothing away of what he must be thinking, but Yelena’s stomach drops further. “The helmet is still here.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” John asks. 

“Yeah, but—” Bucky doesn’t say anything else. He feels it too. Something’s wrong. 

There’s no other exits. No other way out. 

Yelena stumbles towards the front, made of all glass and metal framing, and she runs her hands along the wall. And she finds where one of the panels has been shattered and scattered against the sidewalk outside, like someone was breaking out instead of in. The hole is enough for someone to drag an unconscious person through without having to unlock the front doors. 

“Bob?” The blood in Yelena’s veins is turning to ice. “Bob, check in.”

Her world stops spinning. She can’t hear, can’t breath, can barely see a few inches in front of her. The lights still haven’t come back on. 

Bucky meets Yelena’s eyes from afar. “What’s wrong?”

“Bob, he’s—”

She gulps at the air, choking on her own realization. That’s it. That was the something wrong. The Chitauri helmet was far from the most valuable thing here tonight. And whoever Goliath was working for had a history of being interested in super soldiers. They hired Ted Sallis and Bobbi Morse for a reason. They had the plans from Project Gladiator. And maybe, just maybe, whoever fed Valentina this intel knew about the Sentry Project.

“Oh, god.” Yelena wants to throw up. “This wasn’t a heist.”

With a grim expression, Bucky finishes her thoughts. “It was a kidnapping.”

Chapter Text

Bucky can barely hold Yelena back as she storms through the tower to the floor where Val and Mel are hiding. She is blind with rage, a vignette forming over her vision until all she can see is her, it was her, she fucking did this and now he’s gone and he could be dead or hurt or—

“Belova, slow down. It wasn’t her.”

“I don’t care.”

“This isn’t going to help with—”

“I don’t fucking care.”

Someone behind her is barking orders for her to stop, but she can’t. 

Yelena stalks up to Val and pins her against the front wall of their impromptu meeting room, pushing her so hard the glass wavers in its frame. It’s the same room where they had their first glimpse of The Sentry, their first fight as a very shitty team. The contractors have renovated it since, reinforced the glass so nobody could be blasted through it again, but Yelena can test its strength. She so badly wants to.

She likens herself to being cool headed in most situations. It’s why these new Avengers look to her during missions, even though Bucky is the leader on paper. Yelena is cunning, she’s smart, and she doesn’t let her very strong emotions get the best of her. 

But this is about Bob, and they all know he is her weakness just as much as she is his. 

“You fucking lied,” Yelena hisses, priming her Widow Bite bracelet and pressing it into Val’s chest. If she aims it correctly, maybe she can induce a heart attack. “You lied to us about convincing him to get off his meds just to see what would happened, and you lied about this. You had to have known he was the real target and you didn’t warn us.”

“Why on earth would I lie about that?” Val rolls her eyes, unfazed by Yelena’s anger. “Robert is my greatest asset, I would never jeopardize his safety.”

“You mean you’d never want your ultimate bargaining chip in someone else’s hands.”

“Same thing.”

Yelena raises a fist, intent on knocking those perfect veneers out of that stupid fucking mouth of hers and making her swallow the pieces, but Bucky catches her wrist before she can properly dispose of Val out the window. He is doing a much better job of quelling his rage, even though she can still see it simmering behind his eyes like a bonfire glow. 

“Not now,” he says, all gravel, rough-and-tumble mutterings. “Not until we find him.”

She can’t help but listen. Reluctantly, Yelena pulls away from Val, her jaw clicking as she grinds her teeth together. Bucky doesn’t immediately let her go. His cool metal flesh bites into her skin, grounds her. Right now, it’s the only thing keeping her together. 

“I’m going to kill you one of these days, Valentina,” Yelena hisses. “You won’t even see it coming.”

“Maybe,” Val says. “But not today.”

Then, Yelena’s rage targets John. He takes a step away.

“You. You know him.”

“We deployed together, but,” is all he gets out before Yelena pulls herself away from Bucky and swings.

If she can’t hurt Val, then she will have to settle for him.

John shields himself from her fist, shouting at her to knock it off. Yelena strikes him with her Widow Bite, but he deflects it easily. She’s not thinking, just moving, her vision blurred by unshed tears. Heat presses in on her mind from all sides. 

John finally grabs Yelena by the back of her dress like a wet cat and holds her away from him until she’s seething but no longer trying to hit him.

“Are you ready to talk now?” he chastises when she goes limp in his grip. John sets her back down on her feet. “Yes, I know him, before I was even Captain America. But I haven’t seen him in years, so don’t go and try to blame me for this shit.”

Yelena growls, but she doesn’t try to attack him again. “I need to hit something.”

“I get it, but why the hell is it me?”

“You have a hittable face.”

Bucky refocuses their attention back onto the task at hand. “Was Josten special forces?”

“Not that I know,” John says, keeping a careful eye on Yelena. “He wasn’t anything special, but most of us soldiers aren’t. For every Steve Rogers, there’s a thousand of me.”

“When did you see him last?” Bucky asks. 

“Maybe six months before the blip? We were stationed together in Djibouti to help fend off the coast from pirates. We were friendly, but not exactly friends. Olivia was close with his wife, though. Then I was deployed somewhere else with my battalion, and we didn’t keep in contact. Then again, I haven’t spoken to many people since the whole ‘killing someone on live television’ debacle.”

“So, he just, what, showed up out of nowhere to kidnap the most powerful of us?” Yelena says.

“I heard from Olivia that he went AWOL somewhere in the South Pacific. I just thought he got snapped. Guess I was wrong.”

“What is it with you soldiers and going AWOL,” Ava mutters behind them.

John defensively says, “You say that like you weren’t in his position just six months ago. He’s not a bad man. At least, he wasn’t when I knew him.”

“Yeah, but now he’s a smuggler who just took one of our own. Or at least he’s working for the people who kidnapped him.”

They all look at the man they have handcuffed to the spiral staircase. His hair stands up on the ends from when he was shocked by Yelena’s Widow Bites, and he’s still wearing that ugly red and yellow suit. There are no bruises from any of their attacks.

He’s starting to stir back to consciousness, groaning and blinking. His head barely lifts off his chest when Yelena raises her fist and shocks him again. She keeps her Bites pressed against his carotid artery until he passes out. Nobody tries to stop her.

The only reason she doesn’t collapse to the floor as soon as she steps back is because John catches her. 

“Well, he’s definitely enhanced,” Yelena says, lowering her fist. “Super speed, super strength. Y'know, the usual.”

“His durability is weird,” Alexei says. “We can take hits, but super soldier serum doesn’t make us invincible. We still bruise. We still bleed. But him…”

Bucky turns to Val, who’s poured herself a hefty glass of bourbon. “Were there any other survivors of the Sentry project?”

She shakes her head, tossing back the drink before pouring herself another. “We didn’t even know that Bob had survived, he was pronounced dead with the rest of the subjects.”

“How did Bob—” Yelena’s voice cracks around his name.

“Overdose,” Val says, like she’s commenting on the color of the walls. “We’d asked if he was sober before administering the serum. He lied. I think he just wanted to die.”

Yelena digs her nails into her ribs to stop herself from stabbing Val through the heart. The pain is sharp, throbbing, and it grounds her. Bucky’s hand rests on her shoulder, and she tenses.

“All the others just burned up from the inside out,” Val continues conversationally. “And the scientists that weren’t killed by The Void still work here. So if we have a leak, I will deal with them. Harshly.” 

“His drink is still downstairs,” Yelena says as it occurs to her. “The one Josten drugged. It wasn’t just a roofie, it did something to him. It repressed his powers, or at least made it so he couldn't control them. Whatever’s in there, maybe we can figure out who made it and track them that way.”

Ava says, “I’ll grab it, take it to Bill for testing.”

“Good idea,” John says, still holding onto Yelena like she’s going to float away. He leans into her and whispers, “We’re going to find him.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Once this guy wakes up, Walker, I want you to interrogate him,” Bucky says. “He might be receptive to a familiar face. Val, you need to tell us who the hell your source is, because they’ve been dropping the ball a hell of a lot lately, and it’s putting us in danger.”

She squawks like a flighty bird, finally showing an emotion. Of course, it’s only because her pride has been struck.

“Might I remind you I’m the reason you’re still a Congressman,” she says, but Bucky cuts her off.

“Who is your source?”

Val pauses, looks at Mel, who busies herself with something on her turned-off tablet to avoid her gaze. 

“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “They will be dealt with.”

Yelena steps forward, but Bucky stops her with a raised hand. 

“I’ll take Josten to the basement,” he tells them, though his eyes remained trained on Yelena the whole time. “When he wakes up, we’ll figure out what he knows and where Bob is. Until then, get changed and cleaned up. We’re going to have a hell of a night.”

They slowly, reluctantly disperse to their rooms, each member of the team sending Yelena a concerned look before disappearing into the elevator. She remains standing, breathing heavily. Every nerve in her body buzzes like her heart has been replaced with a hornet’s nest, and her blood is stinging the inside of her veins as it travels through her. 

Bucky looks at her with pity and understanding. “You too, sunshine.”

“Buck,” she whispers, so close to breaking. Bob is missing, and if she breaks now, then she won’t be able to find him. “He just got back on his meds. He’s borderline manic. He’s going to be a danger to himself, if not other people. Someone’s going to get hurt, and I know him. Bob would rather kill himself than hurt anyone else again. We need to find him, we need to—”

“I’m not going to let anything else happen to us, okay?” he tells her.

The way he says us feels weighted, like they’re not just a team. As if they’re something more. 

“I can’t go through this again. I can’t lose someone else, especially him. If we don’t find him, I don’t know if I can—”

“We’ll find him.”

“But how do you know?”

“Because we love him. And that has to be enough.”

Yelena sighs deeply, not any closer to calm but at least docile.

“It has to be enough,” she repeats to herself.

Bucky cups her chin with his metal hand, and the cold is welcome on her burning skin.

“Go,” he urges her gently. “Cry and scream and let yourself fall apart. Get it all out of your system now. When you come back, come back battle-ready.”

She closes her eyes for a moment, then nods. Her tears begin to fall, tracking burning lines down her cheeks like the sharp edge of a knife. 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

It takes her another ten seconds to actually leave after she’s told to, but Bucky doesn’t rush her. When Yelena finally departs, her movements are molasses slow, feet heavy with terror. She goes to her and Bob’s shared floor, and her steps echo. 

When she turns the shower on, her frail composure snaps. Yelena swipes anything not nailed down off her bathroom counters, off her dresser and desk, off the window sill that’s just wide enough for her to sit on during the sunnier days. She kicks at the bathroom cabinet, sobbing so loud it shakes the world around her, and she yanks the shower curtain down, the rod clanging against the tub porcelain. 

If she’s screaming, her ears are ringing so loudly for her to hear, but her throat hurts. Yelena throws off the dress like it offends her, smudging her immaculate makeup, which has somehow withstood the fight and her onslaught of tears. 

Her Widow bracelets drop to the floor, along with the rest of her jewelry, her knife-holster garter, the gun she had hidden on the small of her back. She wants to destroy something. No, she needs to. There is too much building up inside her, threatening to burst.

Bob wanted to take her to a rage room for a date. He said she had a lot more rage in her than anyone could know what to do with. And he was right. 

When the pain and anger and grief and fear and everything else that comes with loving someone as hard as she does becomes too much, Yelena slams the side of her fist into her mirror; it cracks but doesn’t shatter. Her skin stings where the tiny shards stick. Before she can hit it again, a hand phases through the sink and grabs her wrist. Ava, wearing shorts and a hoodie and her makeup half-washed away, steps out from her wall.

“Your ear piece is still on,” she says gently. 

All of the strength in her wary muscles disappears, as if someone took a pair of shears and cut her puppet strings. Yelena collapses to the floor, writhing like she’s been killed. Some vile, sadistic entity has taken a scalpel to her chest, cut out a piece of her soul and discarded it like trash. Ava pulls her close, solid and cold like ice, and Yelena digs her fingers into the worn fabric of her hoodie. Her sobs soften against her chest.

“I promised him, Ava,” she wails, “I promised him that if I had to I’d be the one to—and now he’s gone and he’s probably so scared. I don’t—I can’t—”

“It hurts,” Ava says. “I know. I know.”

“I can’t lose anybody else, I can’t. I can’t keep failing the people I love.”

“You didn’t fail him. We’re going to get him back in one piece. And he’s tougher than he knows. He’s going to be fine.”

“You can’t be sure.”

“No, but I can hope. And that’s all we have right now.” 

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

When Erik Josten wakes up a couple hours later, Yelena has paced herself a proper pathway into the concrete. Ava had taken a tweezer to her injured hand and wrapped it in gauze, but it still stings.

Good. She needs something to focus on that isn’t the dread in her gut. 

John is inside the containment pod with Josten, making small talk with the man to get him comfortable. Her eyes never waver from the redheaded man’s face. Yelena scratches at the gauze-covered cuts like if she does it hard enough her fears will go away. She walks the outside of the containment pod just like she had during Bob’s self-quarantine.

The rest of her team and Mel watches her, unable to do anything but watch. They know what Bob is to her. If they were in her position, they would be just as unhinged, and they all know better than to try and stop her from moving. 

Over the speaker, Josten says, “Is this because of the helmet? ‘Cause I didn’t even get close to it.”

“That’s not what we’re here for,” John says, and Yelena notices the way his voice hardens. He sets a picture of Bob down on the table between them, spins it around for Josten to get a good look. “Why did you drug him?”

“Because he was my target.”

“Why?”

“I was told he was the strong one. If I took him out, stealing the helmet would be a piece of cake.”

John scoffs. “Really? You’re still sticking with that story?”

“Look, if you’re going to arrest me, then just do it already.”

“Oh, we will. For attempted robbery and kidnapping.”

Josten’s eyebrows rise to his hairline. “Kidnapping? What the hell are you talking about? I’m just the courier, man.”

“Bullshit,” Yelena grumbles to herself.

He looks down at the photo, then back up at John. Something shifts in his expression, and he drops his head into his hands.

“Aw, shit. It was a fucking ploy. No wonder their price was so high. That fuckin’ helmet isn’t worth that much.” 

“Whose price?” John demands.

“The folks who hired me,” Josten replies. “This fuckin’ science cult. I was told to drug him because he made the biggest threat and, when the power went off, I was gonna gas the place and snatch the helmet. It was supposed to be easy, I’ve done jobs harder than this with bigger targets. But what they were paying, I should’ve known they’d go behind my back.”

“Science cult?” Ava repeats. “Is he talking about AIM?”

Mel shrugs. “I hope not. I feel like they’re the next Hydra: annoying as hell and everywhere.”

Yelena has stopped pacing. John and Josten are still speaking, but she’s tuned them out completely, staring at the photo of Bob on the table. Her skin itches. She turns away and heads for the elevator.

“I’m going to get some air,” she says when Bucky sends her a concerned look. 

She doesn’t wait for him to acknowledge her before she’s punching in the button for the top floor. 

Grief is a heavy thing with fangs and claws. It grows from the inside out, digs its way out from her gut and threatens to mangle her upon exit. She feels it like a beast. She wants to feed it, and she can’t. 

Bob still needs her. After he’s back, after he’s safe, after she has him in her arms, then.

Then.

She doesn’t know. 

When she showers and changes, she dresses herself all in Bob’s clothing. Yelena needed to feel him close to her, like a piece of him remains behind for him to come back to. Bob never does well when apart from her, always crawling into her bed when he gets lonely or asking for her the moment she gets back from a mission, but she hadn’t realized just how dependent she became on him in turn.

Without him, she either feels hollowed out and numb, or like she’s one bad thought away from losing complete control. It’s a balancing act. 

The balcony is shrouded in equal blankets of shadow and light. Yelena sits with her legs dangling over the edge and fishes out the carton of Bob’s Pall Malls, the same brand his father used to smoke and put out on his shoulder blades like his own personal ashtray. When he first told her that story, he laughed with a bitterness she rarely heard from him. She hadn’t.

Yelena flicks her zippo to life and waits for the cigarette end to glow. 

As soon as the smoke hits her lungs she wants to cough. Yelena holds it in until the harsh tickle makes her double over, wheezing. She doesn’t smoke often, as she doesn’t particularly care for the smell, though she always says yes when Bob offers her a cigarette during their morning routine of drinking coffee on the balcony. He does it haphazardly, just out of politeness. But she can never say no to him. 

“Got enough air, sweetheart?”

Yelena glances at John over her shoulder, and she can’t help but be reminded that night he stopped her from jumping from this exact spot just a few weeks ago. He’s the only one she allows to call him sweetheart. It makes her feel small in a good way, like she can be vulnerable with him. She never thought he’d be that to her. 

“Why do you call me that?” she asks. “I’m not your kid.”

He folds his arms over his chest. “Now, I know you’re only sayin’ that because of what’s happening, so I’m not gonna take any offense, but still. Ouch.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I have a little sister, did I ever tell you that?”

She shakes her head. 

“Her name’s Heather. She’s about your age.”

“We’re not that far in age, Walker,” Yelena crows. “I’m only, like, five years younger.”

“So is she. She’s got an engineering degree and everything. But I practically raised her. And I still see her as that little kid I used to chase around the yard. I see you that way, too, I guess. If it really bothers you, though, I’ll stop.”

She is quiet for a long moment, then says, “I don’t want you to.”

“Okay. Then I won’t.”

She lifts the cigarette back to her mouth, and she inhales the bitter smoke. It makes her dizzy. 

Even though he isn’t there, Bob overwhelms every single one of her senses. His crewneck sweatshirt is loose around her shivering torso, but it smells like him: that ocean-themed Old Spice deodorant and her own body wash that she’s begun to think of as theirs. Yelena licks her teeth, lined with the taste of him, and drops the cigarette bud into his ashtray.

Maybe if she closes her eyes hard enough, she can see an afterimage in her mind.

“I didn’t think it would be this bad,” Yelena whimpers. “I knew we were too close, that we needed each other too much, but not like this. I feel like I’m drowning without him.”

“That’s what loving someone is. It breaks you open, makes you hurt.”

“I don’t like it. I want it to stop. I need it all to… to stop.”

John grimaces, and Yelena wonders if he remembers all the nonsense she said that night on the roof. He sits beside her, giving her space.

“You can’t. Not unless you wanna stop loving him.”

“What did Josten say?” she asks, because she needs this conversation to end right now. 

“It’s probably another splinter group of AIM,” he replies, shifting to her new chosen topic. “Josten claims he didn’t know they wanted Bob or why, but he was told to report back to an abandoned apartment complex in Barbuda.”

That name is familiar. She looks up at John, too tired to hide that she’s been crying. “That’s where Andrew Forson was rumored to be.”

The same man she was meant to tag in Florida and earned a bullet for in the process. 

“Yup.” He pops the p. 

“Fuck. I didn’t fulfill my mission, and now he might—he could be hurting Bob. Maybe that’s how he found out about him. That mission. Someone must’ve survived who knew. Do you think someone could’ve—”

“Don’t do that. Don’t blame yourself.”

Yelena sends him a bitter smile. “What else am I supposed to do?”

John shrugs. “Try to sleep. Then, in the morning, we hunt this sonovabitch down. I hope you have some good summer clothes, ‘cause we’re leaving at dawn.”

She watches him as he stands with a geriatric grunt. He wraps his head around her neck and pulls her in to kiss her temple. It’s too sweet, too gentle. Yelena wants to scream. 

After a moment of listening for him to leave, Yelena looks over his shoulder where he’s still standing at the door, waiting for her. 

“You know I’m not leaving here without you, sweetheart. Not after last time.”

With a short, cold laugh, Yelena stands up. He closes the rooftop door behind her. 

She doesn’t go to her floor, though.

After saying goodnight to John, she seeks her father out. Yelena knows he’s not her true father, that he stole her and sold her to be a weapon, but she is still a little girl when it comes to him. She has outgrown her need for a father, but God does she need one right now. 

Alexei is in his bedroom, packing a duffel bag of guns and snacks, the newest rendition of his suit set out on the bed like he’s a kid eager to attend a field trip in the morning. His movements are slow and careful. Yelena wonders if he’s just as terrified as she is. 

He looks up at her when she enters, and he doesn’t bother trying to smile and make her feel better. His face is fallen, serious. Deadly in a way she hasn’t seen in years. The Red Guardian makes his return.

Her father sets down the Bowie knife he’d been cleaning and sighs softly.

“Oh, my baby girl,” Alexei murmurs softly, pitifully.   

“Daddy, I’m so scared,” is all Yelena can say before she crumbles.

He catches her.