Chapter Text
Spring’s quite cold in New York. April drags on in its “like a lion” phase. The harsh winds almost make her miss the brand new billboard on her walk into the subway.
Almost.
Kate Bishop does a double-take, stopping in the middle of foot-traffic suddenly enough to get shoved. The fella says, “‘scuse me” with a native slight in his accent. Her fault of course, but she doesn’t apologize. She stumbles to an unoccupied corner for a better view.
Yelena’s face, ten feet tall, dominates the opposing wall across the tracks. A bright yellow background highlights black font that reads, THE NEW AVENGERS! She scowls at the airbrushed quality of golden skin. Photoshopped, obviously.
Giant, green irises gaze upward; supposedly towards a bright future, yet the location makes it look like Yelena’s staring at ceiling tiles in awe. Dark roots have been touched-up to look just as platinum as the rest of a short haircut. There’s even some blue in the eyeliner. Her eyes squint in concentration.
… Is this photoshopped?
Years have passed since the two of them last spoke, let alone saw one another. Several, actually. A lot can happen in that kind of time. Maybe Yelena changed opinions on teamwork, or maintaining close relationships with others…
Kate snaps a slackened jaw shut. Something swells and ruptures in her chest. Blood becomes molten. Iron sears veins as it seeps through flesh. There’s a loud roaring that causes bones to shake–
Oh, wait… that last part’s just the G Train.
She focuses on breath while moving throughout bodies. In and out. Out and in. Weak hands find the metal of an upright pole. At last, the machine departs Court Square.
It feels like both decades and days ago that she had watched the Breaking News segment with everyone else. She was in a bar that immediately started concocting a new shot to celebrate the occasion. At the time, it struck her as bittersweet. A burning sensation lingered in her bones that she assumed was just jealousy (well… that and the Goldschlager-based beverage). Days later, however, embers continue to smolder.
Like how the smell of burnt paint gives her anxiety. Or hearing someone speak Russian makes her do a double-take. It’s not quite trauma-based, but it does put her in a specific mood. Is she angry? Disappointed? Lonely?
And for what?
Despite having the power to do so, Yelena never visited. Numbers were never exchanged. Drinks, obviously, never happened. Whatever she might’ve wanted to exist between them, didn’t. Period.
Which is fine. She can handle rejection, she’s an adult. The uncomfortable truth, however, is that she isn’t being denied; she just isn’t thought about at all.
Kate cranks the volume in earbuds. As she does, Clint tries to call. Again. She sends it to voicemail, then texts to let him know that she’s alive but busy. Because she isn’t really in the mood to be comforted, confronted, or even conscious in any way.
So what?
So what if you don’t
If you don’t
Love me?
So what?
Yelena’s sporting a graffiti-ed unibrow when she takes the Green Line a day later. Within a week, the advertisement is almost unrecognizable. Multiple dicks are drawn alongside teardrop tattoos. Cigarette burns gather upon a neckline until the paper tears and droops. Blue is substituted for black circles, then covered with red Xs.
She swallows magma before it bubbles past her esophagus.
The poster is eventually replaced… except it’s still an Avengers promo starring the White Widow. This new one features Yelena high-kicking at the camera, and Kate wonders if the photographer was a real casualty. Clint sends video links in his text, which she leaves on read.
It starts to get grating. The more she passes the poster, the more it rubs her the wrong way. Self-esteem sheers as she tries to shrug it off. She wonders which is worse; the envy, or the shame.
There’s no good reason for her to be so bitter. Belova deserves kindness, and family, and friends. Wishing for someone else to suffer so that she feels less alone is pathetic. Not to mention very anti-heroish. So she’s happy for Yelena.
She is.
And if she keeps telling herself that, she’ll eventually believe it.
And it’s the same thing.
You’re repeating yourself
And it’s the same girl
Who’s been giving you hell.
And it’s the same face
You’re heart keeps breaking
In the same place.
Something has to change…
To her surprise, this particular promotion seems to stand the test of time. May rolls around, and the Widow remains untouched. Kate gathers that the Prada poster next to it got all the vandalism. A male model’s bare chest has proven to be the more enticing canvas.
Innards have transformed in their biology. She’s no longer made of tangible material, but of gaseous chemicals constantly reacting violently to each other. Jupiter’s giant fucking pimple.
Her wireless earbuds aren’t playing music today; they’re just props. The past month of extra work has finally paid off, leading her to this very moment where she’s following a lead in one of her more important investigations. She pretends to look at her phone while side-eyeing a man nearby.
Clint calls when the suspect exits at Bowling Street Station, which is odd because it’s way past his bedtime. The device goes on Airplane Mode as she tails her target. They walk several blocks before he enters a local corner bar. She takes a deep breath.
The front door, annoyingly enough, is locked. She knocks, shoves with her shoulder, and tries to listen in (which yields no result). Kate huffs, then heads for the back alley. A kitchen door is left ajar, allowing her access. Staff, however, is eerily absent. Multiple meals begin to burn atop a lit stove.
She turns off appliances, gut growling from more than a lack of nutrition.
Someone busts through the saloon doors leading into the diner, sprinting straight past her. Another man stumbles in, backs up against a station stacked high with pots, and causes cookware to clang onto the floor. As he slowly falls, blood-stained hands slip from his neck.
Her atmosphere transforms to ice.
She doesn’t have her bow and arrows because she was trying to be inconspicuous. So she pulls a steel cylinder from her pocket, and presses a release button. The tube springs into a six-foot-staff just as a third person runs in. Her breath catches at the familiarity of bright eyes.
Red Guardian shouts Russian at her.
Kate points to the egress, and the hero races off. Gunshots ring out from the next room. A glass by her hand shatters. This successfully throws her into go-mode.
She enters the dining area only to find multiple dead bodies, and two Avengers fighting, like, a dozen more dudes. One of the unnamed men is her target, while one of the aforementioned Avengers has blonde hair that nearly causes her to become a corpse. Bullets bury into drywall behind her.
“What the FUCK!” she yells, and all eyes turn to her.
Barnes goes back to fighting, but Yelena… well, she doesn’t get to see past a gaped jawline because her suspect is almost shot. She snaps Bucky’s pistol out of the way at the last second, baton barely reaching his metallic arm. He glares, and goes to grab the stick.
Wrongly assuming she’s on his side, the target kicks at Barnes. Kate slams the weapon onto his foot before whacking his chest.
“No!” she reprimands. “Down!”
A knife swats close to her cheek. Yelena’s arm wraps around his neck, and Kate has to intervene lest the bones break. She knees at a pair of balls, and (without choice), pokes at pretty green eyes.
The Widow reels back, pissed. “Что это, блять, было!”
“Whose side are you on, lady!” Bucky barks.
Kate’s too busy with more enemies beelining towards a now-blind Belova. She whirls a wide arch, smashing one’s face, then dislocating another’s shoulder. A third man catches her staff mid-swing. She spends a minute exchanging hits until he’s subdued with a roundhouse heel to the nose.
She hasn’t seen this kind of combat in a while, yet her body knows it well. Muscle memory? Adrenaline maybe? Perhaps a bit of both. Definitely not her trying to show off or anything.
There’s a moment where Yelena is inches from pulling the trigger on Kate’s target, and her staff gets caught in the blonde’s free hand.
“Don’t,” Belova warns.
The briefest of flashbacks gives her goosebumps. “You can’t kill that one.”
Yelena looks offended. “А почему, чёрт возьми, нет!”
“He’s mine!” She says, not thinking.
“Yours?” Brows furrow. Oh god, there is blue eyeliner.
“Yours?” the suspect asks sarcastically.
She blushes. “You stole from my client, Carl Bellinger!”
Both incredulously exclaim, “What?!”
“You want Этот ублюдок spared because of money?”
“Bitch, stealing is what I do!”
“Hey.” Belova hits his head with the end of Kate’s staff. “Watch your mouth.”
“Well, unless you wanna die–” Kate explains to Carl. “–You’ll give it all back.”
“You’re outta your fuckin’ mind thinking I have that cash!”
She doubles down, and retracts her weapon. “Yelena, as you were.”
“Спасибо.”
“WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!” Bellinger puts up both hands, suddenly scared. Especially because none of his allies are left standing. “I-I-I can still help you out! I can take you to Dave!”
Belova seems unimpressed. “Does Dave have money?”
“Y-yes! He's not the boss, but he’s his right-hand-man! He can get you anything, anytime, anywhere!”
Yelena, surprisingly enough, meets Kate’s gaze. As if, for once, trusting her judgement. She makes a motion that Belova disapproves of.
“Seriously, Kate Bishop?”
“Yes. It’s not that complicated, but it is confidential.”
“How much are we talking? Like. A few thousand?”
She scoffs. “His numbers are way higher than that.”
“Can we not just take his credit card?” Yelena whines.
“Uh, no, we can’t really draw two million dollars out of the ATM.”
“Million?”
Carl scowls. “Bishop? Aren’t you, like, fuckin’ loaded?”
“It’s for my client.”
“Yelena!” Red Guardian returns wearing a bit more blood than she remembers. “Is this a friend of yours?”
“Что? Нет. Ну... Я её знаю, но мы не близки…”
Kate reassesses the situation, gradually growing more attuned to the bruises on her body. Something in her jaw clicks. A few knuckles are split; she hadn’t thought to don protective gloves. Her arms ache, her lip’s busted, and her head hurts. But she’s ok.
Nine out of fifteen mob men lie dead. Five are unconscious. The last is Bellinger, who looks paler by the minute. She cuffs his hands behind his back.
“Don’t I get a lawyer, or something?” he asks.
“I’m not a cop,” she replies. “So no.”
She shuffles to the shattered fridge by the bar, finds an in-tact can, and holds it to the sore spot on her chin. Barnes, meanwhile, stares at her. She provides a half-hearted wave.
“Hi. Uh. Sorry about the confusion.”
“Aren’t you Clint’s sidekick?” he asks, somewhat annoyed.
“No,” she says, joined by Belova.
“Clint has not heard from her in weeks.” Yelena eyes Kate.
She blinks, blistering inside. “... You talk to Clint?”
“Ew. Нет. He called me to complain. You are making him worry.”
“I’ve been busy.” She gestures to Carl.
A brow quirks. “Swimming with sharks?”
“Wha–?” She takes a minute to unravel the translation. “This has nothing to do with loan sharks. It’s for my client. Besides, what are The New Avengers doing here?”
All three exchange suspicious glances.
“It’s… unrelated business,” Bucky says.
“Confidential,” Yelena adds, and Kate feels the sting of it between her ribs.
“Fine.” She stands, angrily chucking aluminum aside. “Fuck you guys too, I guess.”
Red Guardian is the only person to appear apologetic. He steps forward. “Can we not make introductions, at least? Hi. Hello. I am Alexi.”
“I’m Hawkeye–” The beer bursts, and bounces about. She watches foam settle into dents on the floor. “... Private Investigator.”
“Что?” Belova balks. “Since when?”
“You said you knew her!” Alexi retorts.
“Since, like, a year ago,” she mumbles, distracted. Some of the dents look almost linear.
Yelena asserts, “Hawkeye is a superhero. Not a detective.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well, being a superhero doesn’t pay my rent, or fix my washing machine, or put food in my stomach.”
Bucky asks, “Does Clint know about this?”
“Clint isn’t my dad,” she claps back. “And yes, he knows.”
“Kid, listen…” Barnes actually seems sympathetic. “If you need money, we can help.”
She doesn’t bother to repeat herself, and walks to where suds sink into the ground. “Carl. Does Dave live nearby?”
“Y-yeah! Right around the corner!”
“Not in this building? Like in a basement somewhere?”
Bellinger looks confused. “This place doesn’t have a basement.”
She can’t spot handles, so she wedges a discarded knife into one of the invisible lines. A tile pops up, sliding over to reveal an old, iron latch embedded into wood. Suddenly, everyone is paying attention.
Yelena asks, “How did you see that?”
Bucky says, “A basement wasn’t in the blueprints.”
Red Guardian goes, “Ohhh! I get it! Hawk Eye! Private I! Ha! You are a clever girl!”
Kate opens the door, only to find a large, dark cylinder waiting for her.
The big barrel-end of a massive fucking gun.
“Holy shi–”
Tinnitus makes sense now.
Silence isn’t quiet, it’s a cacophony.
The suffocating weight of every sound all at once.
Like the Green Line running routes that go directly through her eardrums.
Screeching brakes curdle into screams.
Atoms crack under pressure.
She’s got, she’s got a way.
She’s got a way.
She’s got a way.
She got, she got away.
She got away.
She got away…
Kate has experienced many blackouts before. Once from drinking, more often from pain or injuries sustained on the job. This is the first time she sees white. She remembers reading somewhere that whiteouts are less bad than blackouts, but it doesn’t feel better in any capacity.
It’s like that time she tried boogey-boarding in the Atlantic, and got her ass absolutely handed to her. A mean, monster wave whacked her down, ripped the board from her wrist, and had her tumbling head over heels all the way back to shore. What was probably a few seconds stretched on for hours.
Then, all of a sudden, oxygen returned. Time went back to normal. No one on the beach had noticed, not even the lifeguard. So she pretended it never happened. She told a lie to her mom about giving the board away. She got a new one later that day, but didn’t try again for a few years.
She re-enters her current body much in the same way as before. After years that took up minutes, which means it was technically no time at all. Her inhale is filled with ash, ears ringing…
No. Wait… that’s just the fire alarm going off.
Kate sneezes, coughs, and groans at a mass on her chest. As soon as she registers the pressure, it disappears. Eyes focus on a flash of gold. A cloud of drywall dust. The combustion of flammable material. Someone shouts gibberish in her ear.
She can’t comprehend what she’s seeing fast enough. The bar is burning down, that much she understands. How she manages to move forward while hanging sideways is a mystery. Until she figures out that she’s being carried. Muffled voices begin to take shape.
“Осторожно! Береги её голову!”
“I got her, I got her!”
“Do we keep the Carl?”
Her ‘yes’ sounds more like a strangled grunt.
“Ugh, fine!” That’s Yelena. “You owe me, Kate Bishop!”
She wonders what kind of favors a Widow would call in. Probably best not to think about it.
Smoke pricks at pupils, blinding and hot. After a tense minute, cool air washes over her. The Green Line slows along its metaphorical track until the noises sound more recognizable. A breeze blows in off the river, and a moderate rain falls. Thunder rumbles in the distance. Sirens wail.
Alexi growls, “Now what!”
“Underground!” Yelena yells.
“Ah, shit, for real?” That would be Bellinger. “OW! Jesus! Ok, ok!”
Kate can’t find the strength to lift her head, so it’s just glimpses of pavement. Well, that and the lower half of Bucky’s legs. There’s a lot of greys that blend together. At some point, she’s set down on concrete.
Belova then kneels in front of her, bathed in a faint glow emanating from within. Lights in the suit, probably. She’s distracted by flickering dots flying around her vision.
“Посмотри на меня, прекрасный. Keep your eyes open.”
“I am,” she tries to say, only for it to come out as a slurred, “Ayyam.”
Yelena shoves something under her nose that makes Kate dry-heave back into full consciousness. Ammonium sticks to her throat, and seeps beneath skull sockets. Shock fades into throbbing pain. Vertigo causes colors to swirl and pulsate. Yellow and white. Black and blue. Red and peach.
“Sorry,” Belova says in a tone that almost resembles concern. “I need you to stay awake. You are hurt.”
Barnes lands next, followed by Carl, then Alexi. Before she can be properly grossed out by the sewers, Yelena wraps cloth around her arm, and ties it into a makeshift sling behind her neck. She’s surprised to catch a whiff of perfume.
“Chanel?” she asks.
“... Don’t judge,” the blonde grumbles.
She tries to breathe, concentrating on words. “How bad?”
The tiniest smile tugs at chapped lips. “I’ve seen worse.”
Bucky butts in, “You’re pretty beat up, actually.”
Belova glares at him. “She’ll be fine.”
“Broken ulna, bruised ribs, first degree burns, and grade three concussion.” Red Guardian shrugs, despite the list. “Not bad for tanking a psionic beam. You are tough cookies, Hawkeye!”
Kate reflexively smiles, then scowls. “... A what?”
“We’ll explain later,” Yelena says, standing. “Вверх, вверх!”
She’s carefully hoisted into Red Guardian’s large arms. Bucky leads the way as Belova guards the rear. Bellinger mopes in the middle. At some point, Alexi says,
“Don’t worry, Detective. You are in good hands.”
She does her best to mimic language correctly. “Um. Spa-see-ba, sir.”
“HA!” His laughter echoes in the wide chambers. “Как прелесть! I see why my daughter likes you, Hawkeye.”
Between the dark outfit and platinum hair, she spies a patch of pink.
“I never said such things,” Belova asserts, feigning irritation. “Also. Shut up.”
They journey on in semi-silence. Occasionally, Alexi asks her questions to make sure she’s still awake. More often, he’ll ramble about his time in the Soviet Union, or “the old times” when Yelena was little. It strikes Kate as incredibly surreal and hard to comprehend.
It’s not just the tragic backstory of Widows and secret government programs, but the entire current situation. Like. Why was her suspect also the target of an Avengers investigation? Why are the heroes evading local authorities? Where are they even going? Most importantly; what the hell just happened?
“Someone’s making machines to kill supers,” Yelena says, borderline bored. “Same old, same old.”
It’s much more complicated than that, obviously. There are rumors of different hidden labs, new enemies popping up, identifying remains of bio-weapons vs nanotech shrapnel. Interdimensions. Time travel maybe.
This particular prototype originates from a different realm, and its operator is unknown. Belova believes that it’s a complex conspiracy involving sleeper agents. Bucky thinks the threat originates locally.
All of this is to say that she just withstood a shot from one of those weapons in transit to a wealthy buyer. The fire was a result of said weapon being recklessly dismantled. So now the heroes have no evidence, leads, or witnesses. Well… except for Carl, who claims to know nothing. Judging by the piss stains in his pants, she’s willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Kate craves the relative simplicity of her own case, even though it seems silly in comparison. Looking at the gigantic cosmos of possibilities can make this world seem so inconsequential. Which is why she opened her agency in the first place.
A long time ago, she was inspired to do good because of a man with a bow and trick arrows. It didn’t matter that literal gods and aliens were among her because there was still a mortal who wanted other people to live; and to have something worth living for.
This world is the only one regular humans have, and she’s going to leave it nicer than how she found it goddamnit.
She asks Carl if Dave is even real. Of course the name isn’t, but Bellinger’s status in whatever bullshit company he works for is. So he has a boss. Maybe even a boss’s boss. Carl confesses to being a Closer, but not much else.
“That’s the nature of this gig, man,” he says. “I pretend to be someone official from outside of the company, I scare them, then I get paid. I’m in the finishing branch, not feeding.”
“Alexi,” she says sweetly. “Please punch that man.”
“Конечно, дорогой.”
Bellinger’s nose breaks, blood spurting with a baffled, “FACK!”
“This is not a good time for interrogations,” Yelena huffs. “We should continue this later.”
“I’m not babysitting,” Bucky states.
“He can stay with Bob,” Red Guardian argues. “Our friend is injured and needs medical attention.”
She scrunches her face as tears slide freely down cheeks. “I have to feed my dog.”
Alexi looks at his daughter. “Easy peas, right?”
Belova spends a long minute quietly staring before muttering, "I don't know where you moved."
Kate's not sure if this's worse than Yelena knowing exactly how to sneak into her old apartment. She hands over a key and address, trying not to look too pathetic while crying and completely broken. A gloved hand lingers on her busted knuckles. Her skin prickles at the touch. Then, more Russian is uttered, and the blonde disappears into the tunnels.
Alexi exhales a soft "huh" like he just realized something obvious.
"What?" she asks.
"She said to call as soon as you get in the goo-tube."
"... the what?"