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It looked like the picture on the front of a Christmas card. An untouched field of white snow stretching as far as she could see; broken only by the odd tree with bare branches reaching up to the grey sky, and the long line of split rail fencing running across it, marking out one person’s ownership of the piece of land. Behind the fence sat a white painted farm house, with dark green shutters on the windows. To the right of the house was a faded red stable and further back a large barn, both with wide overhanging roofs. The porch of the house was decorated with strings of lights and green garlands wrapped around the railings. There were even two small Christmas trees placed either side of the front door.
Yelena felt a soft buzz against her leg, her phone’s notification of a new text message. She reached into the thigh pocket of her pants and took it out. Another message had been added to the tally of unread texts she’d received over the past couple of months from Melina, Alexei, Antonia and a number of the other Widows. She unlocked the phone with a swipe of her thumb but didn’t open the text messages. Instead Yelena pressed the phone icon and scrolled through the list of numbers, all marked as Unknown Caller, until she found the one she wanted.
After two rings the line picked up but Yelena didn’t say anything.
“Yelena?”
Melina might like to keep her emotions all wrapped up tight but Yelena could still hear worry in the woman’s voice, even with only one word. Her mother paused, waiting for an answer, but Yelena’s throat had closed up too tight to get any response out.
Calm and clear Melina began to speak again. Yelena didn’t have any comforting childhood memories of her mother speaking in Russian (teaching her how to tie her shoe laces, or reading bedtime stories) but in the months after their strange family reunion she’d found hearing Melina speak in her native tongue particularly soothing. She’d perch on a stool in the corner of Melina’s greenhouse to hear her talking to the plants as she watered them; or sit on the couch with her hands wrapped around a mug of hot sweet tea listening in on her daddy being teased in the kitchen.
Carrying on the entirely one-sided conversation, Melina told Yelena all about the Widows’ recent missions (all about their successes at least). And of Alexei’s progress in expanding one of the farm’s outbuildings to house the girls they’d freed, while Antonia constructed new identities for them or uncovered their original ones. It was such a normal conversation, by their family’s standards at least. Yelena wondered how long Melina could continue without a single mention of Yelena having disappeared from her mother’s life, again, adding almost a whole other year to the five that she’d been nothing more than dust and memory.
Eventually running out of word’s that would let her dance around the ones she was trying not to say, Melina sighed.
“We didn’t know where you were, little one.”
“Mama.”
She’d wanted to sound more confident, to brush off her mother’s concerns with a touch of the petulant teenager she’d never gotten to be; the capable young woman exasperated at being treated like a child. Maybe if she’d said ‘mom’ it might have sounded different, but instead the word came out small. Mama was just for Yelena, the person that was all hers. As painful as it was, Yelena had had to let go of all the regrets and never to be ’s she’d hoped for with Natasha; but that had made her all the more desperate to grab for any chance she had to make things right with her mother.
“Where are you? I’ll come to you.” Melina didn’t even try to mask the worry in her voice now.
How could she tell her mother where she was? Explain why she’d come here? Yelena wasn’t even sure she knew herself. She’d spent so long following Barton, hunting down a truth she hoped would give her a place to put all of her pain and anger. It had become the only thing that kept her getting up in the morning and moving through the day. Then, after the moment she’d stood out on the ice in front of Barton and finally let go of the hate and rage, an emptiness had begun to creep into her heart in its place. And the dark she’d been trying to push away couldn’t be held back any longer.
Yelena collapsed to her knees, arms falling limp at her side. She wanted to lay down and curl up into a small ball, just like she had when she’d been lost in the snow as a child. Her mother had found her then; picked her up and held her close.
But Mama had slipped through Yelena’s fingers this time.
She’d lost her grip on the phone and it had landed beside her knee. She should pick it up again but all she could do was stare down at the powdery soft snow, where Melina’s muffled voice continued to come through the speaker.
Someone had found Yelena though.
A warm hand touched her cold cheek and tilted her face up. It was Barton. Not Clint, the wife Laura. And she wasn’t alone; her dutiful superhero husband was standing behind her and Kate Bishop was hovering at his shoulder. All three wore knitted sweaters and cardigans, but no coats or jackets despite the freezing wind. Yelena’s mama would not approve.
Laura Barton was speaking, asking Yelena something. She watched the woman’s lips moving, blinking slowly in the hopes she could focus enough to make out the sounds they were making. But all she could hear was her mother calling for her from so far away, as the rest of the world started to sound muted and distant. It felt as though Yelena, and not her phone, was being buried beneath the snow.
One of the people standing over her (or maybe all three) pulled Yelena back to her feet. Still limp, she complied without a fight. She’d pretty much given up on fighting anything anymore. Her right arm was lifted up over Kate Bishop’s shoulder, the left hooked over Laura Barton’s, and then they began to slowly make their way towards the house; Yelena supposed Clint was too tall for the task of supporting her. When she stumbled a little, feet numb inside her boots, a steadying hand gripped her waist while she regained her footing. Yelena looked ahead to Barton still leading the way and noticed his own careful treads in the snow and awkward gait compensating for pain; maybe she’d broken more of his ribs than she thought.
There were a few more stumbles on the porch steps but eventually they were all inside the house where the air was thick with the scent of peppermint, cinnamon and pine. It was so much warmer than outside that Yelena could immediately feel the damp patches that had formed on her pants when she’d knelt in the snow, and the fabric starting to prickle uncomfortably against her skin.
Still a couple of steps ahead of Yelena, Clint Barton made a gesture toward the fire-lit lounge with his hand. At his bidding the three kids, all standing up from the plush couch, edged further back into the room. The eldest boy put a hand on the littler one’s shoulder but it was the girl who placed herself between the both of them and the stranger entering their home. Smart kid.
The group of adults (adults-ish; Kate Bishop seemed to be a perpetual teenager lacking in tableware) continued through the kitchen, passing by a dining table with a few covered dishes still laid out amongst the debris of Christmas crackers. There were piles of plates and dishes and bowls and pots all stacked up on the counter beside the sink. Yelena supposed you didn’t need a dishwasher when you had three kids to keep busy with chores.
At the top of the stairs after a slow climb, Kate ducked out from under Yelena’s arm and Laura steered her into the nearest room and over to a black open-frame bed. The bed was already made up with what definitely smelt like fresh linens and a patchwork quilt, but there were no signs of personal trinkets or kids toys giving away whose room it was. Maybe the Barton kids were too old for toys. Yelena definitely was.
A guest room, Yelena finally decided when she saw a stack of storage boxes and a folded ironing board in the corner of the room beside a dresser.
“Can you grab the first aid box?”
Laura Barton’s eyes hadn’t left Yelena’s face but the question was clearly meant for someone else. Behind them heavy footsteps left the room and the pad of boots on thick carpet faded off down the hall.
“Kate, can you give me a hand?”
Exactly what Laura Barton needed help with became clear once she’d finished freeing Yelena of her heavy slate-grey peacoat and was nudging her fingers under Yelena’s upper arms, trying to get her to raise them above her head.
It felt too familiar. It felt like her mother getting little Lena undressed for bed in Ohio.
Yelena resisted the tug of that memory and clamped her arms to her side, scrunching her eyes shut. She wasn’t a child. She definitely was not that child
“You’re as stubborn as Nat,” Laura said softly and Yelena went weak again.
Without protesting she lifted her arms up as directed and Laura pulled the forest green Henley shirt off of her. Yelena’s face, numb with cold, suddenly felt warm. Not burning warm like a blush; she only cared she was down to a sports bra because it made her skin prick in the chill bedroom. No, this was trails of warm carving down her cheeks, not blossoming heat.
Tears.
She was crying; and whether it was for Natasha or for herself, Yelena wasn’t sure anymore.
She couldn’t bite back the whimper that came with the crying either.
Her daddy had always said it was okay to cry, and Lena had cried readily over scraped knees and dropped ice creams, always expecting him to make things better. At the farm Yelena had heard him telling her mama the same thing, as Melina sat glassy eyed at the dining table, clutching a bottle of vodka in her hand. After Yelena had blinked away five years of her life, and after her frantic phone calls to Nat had gone unanswered, she’d had gone to them. Had gone home. And found their parents as shattered as she was. Only after the bottle of vodka was empty and they’d finally lit a candle for Natasha, did Yelena see her mother cry for the first time.
Yelena hadn’t been able to let it out herself until she’d been on the ice with Barton at her feet. And now it felt like she’d never be able to hold any of it in again.
A thumb brushed lightly over her cheek, wiping away a single tear track that was quickly replaced by another. Yelena expected it to be Laura Barton, doing what Mama would do. But when she blinked away the misty sheen over her vision, Yelena saw that Laura had moved off to the side and it was Kate Bishop kneeling on the soft carpet in front of her.
Yelena looked down to the floor between them and saw one of her boots already undone. The other boot had been abandoned, a loose knot still tying the laces together, in favour of brushing away tears.
When Laura Barton nudged Kate gently aside she finished removing the boots herself and then put the kid to work again, helping to get Yelena out of her tight fitting jeans. The first aid kit Laura had asked for was on the bedside cabinet now and the woman set to work cleaning the cuts on Yelena’s face and hands with stinging antiseptic. Most of her injuries were internal though, waiting to blossom on her skin in vivid bruises the next morning. Finally satisfied, Laura got Yelena to lift her arms a final time for a baggy high school football team jersey to be dropped over her head. Yelena recognised the High School name from the information she’d gathered during her reconnaissance. The file she’d put together on the family included a photograph of a grinning Cooper Barton on game day; a football helmet tucked under his arm and a black streak of grease under each eye. The bright banners and spectators in the stands behind him had all been emblazoned with the team’s name and mascot.
“Here.” Laura held out her hand and two nondescript cylindrical white pills sat on her palm. “Take these.”
Apparently Laura Barton felt no need to provide Yelena with any details of the medication she was offering. Yelena suspected the woman knew enough about her life (or at least Natasha’s) to know strong painkillers would be a familiar sight. Yelena didn’t need them; she wanted them, but she didn’t need them. How easy would it be if she could just take a pill to make all of her pain go away? And that was the thought that kept her lips firmly sealed. She didn’t want it all to slip away. She had to hold on to what little she had left of Natasha no matter how much it hurt.
“Yelena.” After moving aside for Laura, Kate had settled on the blanket box at the foot of the bed. Yelena turned her head to look at her. “Take the damn pills.”
“Suka,” Yelena mumbled.
“I know what that means now,” Kate responded, clearly not intimidated by being called names.
Yelena scowled back at her but took the pills from Laura’s hand and swallowed them dry. Kate was still giving her a hard stare, with her nose scrunched up a little and eyes narrowed. Was that meant to be her intimidating look? Yelena tipped her head to one side and opened her mouth to show Kate she’d swallowed the medication, making sure to poke her tongue out at the girl afterwards for good measure.
Now Yelena was a bratty little sister without a big sister to annoy the gesture wasn’t as fun as it used to be.
Laura pulled back layers of blankets on the bed and motioned for Yelena to get under them. The patch of mattress where she’d been sitting was warm but the rest of the sheets were cold against her bare legs. She let Laura flip the covers back over her then tug them up close to her chin. Snug as a bug, just how mommy used to tuck her in to bed at night.
Oh no, her mother. Her mother didn’t know where she was.
“My mama.” Yelena tried pathetically to sit up in the bed but Laura Barton’s hand against her chest, and whatever crazy shit the ex-SHIELD agent had managed to pull off when tucking in the blankets like restraints, kept her in place.
“It’s okay,” Clint Barton said. He was standing in the doorway of the bedroom and held up his hand to wave the encrypted satellite phone Yelena had dropped in the snow. “I spoke to her. She knows you’re safe.”
Mama wouldn’t think her safe until she was home, but knowing where Yelena was would have to do for tonight. She was far too tired to even think about going back out into the snow again and her eyes were already closing as the shuffling of feet and hushing of voices faded to nothing.
Yelena woke early. Too early. The room was pitch dark and the painkillers she’d taken (that had definitely been needed) were now wearing off. After a few seconds her eyes adjusted to the dark and she could see a little orange plastic pill bottle on the cabinet beside the bed and a capped sports bottle filled with what she hoped would be water. Yelena uncapped the bottle with a pop and shook a few pills out onto her palm. She tossed six into her mouth, held them there as she took a sip from the bottle, then swallowed in one go. It was probably more pills than she should take, but far less than her body could easily handle so she wasn’t concerned.
She lay back on the pillow, staring up at the blank ceiling for a full minute before she realised she wasn’t alone in the room, or the bed.
Kate Bishop was next to her. When Yelena laid back down a pajama clad leg had wrapped over hers and the girl shuffled a little closer across the pillows, all in her sleep. Okay, not a girl, Yelena reminded herself as she noticed the enticing dip of cleavage revealed by Kate’s tight fitting tank top.
Suddenly too restless to stay still in bed, and not wanting to wake Kate, Yelena applied all her stealth abilities to the task of slipping out from under Kate’s leg and began to pace. The chill patch of air by the window caused her to pause and Yelena looked out past the partially drawn curtains onto the fields of white below. When her resumed pacing brought her closer to the packing boxes she’d noticed earlier, Yelena could see that each box had one of the kids’ names written on them, with ‘loft’ or ‘goodwill’ scrawled underneath. One of the boxes had ‘Natasha’ on it in neat handwriting, but there was nothing written beneath her sister’s name. Yelena felt a slither of satisfaction that the Bartons didn’t know what to do with Natasha’s memory any more than she did.
The pills were starting to kick in now, making the edges of her vision a little darker and the words she was trying to read a little blurred, but Yelena would need to be feeling the effects a lot more before she braved the shared bed again. Her fingers brushed over one of the boxes with Lila’s name on them. The things inside were marked to go to goodwill so it didn’t feel like she was intruding on anything private by taking a look inside. Gathering Intel (snooping) wasn’t usually something Yelena would give a second thought to, but she wasn’t sure how Natasha would have felt about it under these specific circumstances.
Quietly she sifted through old but well cared for books and board games, teddy bears and doll furniture. When she reached a box within the box Yelena pulled it out and lifted the lid cautiously. Inside she found the best treasure.
Yelena took the smaller box over to the rug beside the bed. The middle of the rug was lit by a streak of moonlight breaking through the gap she’d left in the curtains, the silver-light bleaching the thick woven wool of colour. She placed the box in the centre of the rug, lifted the lid again and began to unpack and lay out its contents. A teapot, sugar bowl, milk jug. Little spoons. Two cups, each sitting on their saucer.
Nat had never really liked attending Lena’s tea parties. Usually Lena had had to make do with her teddies for guests, maybe Mommy or Daddy if they weren’t busy. But sometimes Nat would play with her and those were always the best tea parties.
“Hi.”
At the sudden greeting Yelena twisted around to look behind her. In the bed Kate was propped up on an elbow, the plush duvet and patchwork blanket bunched under her armpit.
“Hi.”
Kate smiled, sleepily. “Bit late for a tea party don’t ya think?”
Yelena looked to the glowing red digits of the clock on the bedside cabinet. It looked like something from the eighties. Her daddy had one just like it on his side of her parents’ bed now, but he didn’t know how to set it. He wouldn’t let her mother touch it either; so it just flashed four eights and drove Melina crazy. Yelena would watch them bicker about it over breakfast every morning, until Mama was won over by Alexei’s strong coffee and kisses. And they’d do it all again the next morning.
This clock read: zero, four, two, seven.
“Is early, not late.”
Kate stretched her body across the empty space Yelena had left in the bed. Her face screwed tight as she tried to focus on the same numbers with blurry, sleep filled eyes; then she groaned and collapsed face first into the mattress. A cute, muffled growl came from the bed.
Yelena turned back to her task of setting out all the pieces of china, ensuring that even if Kate did lift her head she wouldn’t catch Yelena smiling.
“Tea for two huh?”
Yelena turned again. Kate was now lying flat on mattress, with a pillow pulled under her chin so that she could watch Yelena.
Holding up a tiny spoon in each hand, their china handles painted with delicate flowers, Yelena confirmed, “For two.”
Then she stared hard at the place setting across from her own. The empty space at her imaginary table.
For a long time she’d clung to the picture in her head of that last family dinner in Ohio, her family together and all where they were all meant to be. Then, years later, she’d sat in her exact same spot at Melina’s table and closed her eyes a moment, shutting out the ridiculous noises coming from the bathroom and Natasha and Melina sniping at each other in the kitchen. They’d all been back where they were meant to be, but everything had felt so wrong.
Yelena had thought (had hoped) that that reunion had been their worst moment together; that nothing could ever hurt more. But then her family had sat at a table without Natasha. The first dinner back at her mother’s farm house after Nat was gone. After a meal any of them barely touched they’d lit a candle, and then Yelena had left.
“Yelena?”
She turned her head to Kate but kept her eyes fixed on the edge of the mattress. The fitted sheet had been pulled up with all of Kate’s wriggling.
“Come back to bed.”
Yelena stood, swaying a little as a wave of dizziness from the pills swept over her. She left the tea set where it was and returned to the bed.
When Kate shuffled back to make room for Yelena she winced in pain. Definitely feeling fuzzy now, Yelena squinted at Kate, trying to assess her injuries. The black tank top had ridden up and bruising almost as dark in colour covered Kate’s side. Gently Yelena reached her hand out and brushed two fingers just above Kate’s ribs.
“I don’t think that one was you.”
Yelena found that oddly reassuring.
Kate relinquished Yelena’s pillow to return to her own and Yelena laid her head down. Face to face, Yelena reached out again; first to the cut above Kate’s eye, then brushing down her nose and briefly touching Kate’s barely parted lips before reaching the cut on her chin. Yelena felt a stab of pain for every mark she’d left. How could softness hurt her so much, Yelena thought; then she realised every softness in her life had come to hurt her eventually.
Leaning closer Yelena pressed her lips to Kate's forehead, over the bandage strip holding the wound above her eyebrow closed so it could heal. She didn’t pull back far when she was done, just enough to be able to lock eyes with Kate.
“Wha… what was that?” Kate whispered.
“Kissing it better.”
Yelena felt her own lazy smile, and saw its effect when Kate dropped her eyes briefly and swallowed hard.
When she looked back up, Kate laughed a little. “You really gotta stop making me like you.”
Then Kate Bishop surprised Yelena by leaning in for a kiss of her own. This kiss was sunlight dripping through green leaves and snow on the tip of her tongue, the smell of warm bread and coffee in the morning. It was familiar and new, enticing and comforting. It promised to be too much and still never enough.
When Kate and Yelena came apart, slowly, both of them were a little breathless.
“I missed Christmas?” Yelena finally asked.
Kate looked confused, again; which was too cute. Finally she said, “Yeah. Sorry. Plenty of left overs though. That’s really the best bit.”
“Not the best.” Yelena’s tired grin turned into a yawn. Either the drugs were really kicking in now, or the fact that she’d barely slept in months.
“Go to sleep,” Kate told her.
It was a very bossy demand and Yelena should have told Kate so. She also wanted to make clear that her eyes were already closing, not that she was doing what Kate was telling her to do. But Yelena was too tired to argue with pretty girls.
Voice hushed, Yelena asked, “You’ll be here when I wake up?”
“Yeah,” Kate whispered back, “I’m not going anywhere.”