Chapter Text
“I think we both could use a drink.”
Kate quickly turns around and Yelena keeps herself propped up against the window holding a bottle of vodka in her right hand.
Yelena waited until Barton had left to sneak back into the apartment. No need to open that closing wound. She can just go to pretending he doesn’t exist again. Although, now she doesn’t get the other half of the bounty that Kate’s mother had put on his head. Semantics really, she knows that Valentino will pay her for the next job she gets. She has enough saved up between the money mom Melena and dad Alexi had given her (well stolen from somewhere she’s sure) and the other cash that’s come from the contract work she’s been doing. She’s talented enough to get jobs that pay more than the average. She knows she’s better than the others, better at things like killing than the others.
Ever since being released from chemical subjugation, Yelena’s still not sure where she draws the line in the sand. It hadn’t always been mind control that forced her to kill. The chemical subjugation wasn’t until she was older. It was after the graduation ceremony and Yelena had been working long before then.
The greatest child assassin.
Then she had grown up.
And lived in her sister’s shadow.
Now, she feels free but at the worst cost. At the cost of the world not having Natasha Romanoff to compare her to.
“You can’t keep breaking in here,” Kate scolds her like she’s a child and it’s hilarious.
Yelena lets out a puff of laughter before she fully climbs into the apartment. “You already know the answer to that.”
“You didn’t break anything, blah, blah, blah.”
Kate Bishop.
Yelena isn’t sure why she makes her smile so often, but it isn’t something she’s used to having from another human being. She wants to keep her around for that purpose alone.
“You know you should really consider moving, Kate Bishop.”
Kate turns away from her and Yelena walks across the apartment before she looks down and sees another sight that brings a smile onto her face.
“The dog!” Yelena says as she bends over to pat him square on the head. When she looks up, Kate is smiling at her over the counter.
“Lucky,” Kate tells her before she turns back around.
Yelena chuckles to herself before giving the dog another good scratch under the chin and walking into the kitchen. “Please tell me you have more than one glass, Kate Bishop.”
“You don’t have to keep calling me that,” Kate says, but there’s a smile playing on her face as well. “Kate’s just fine. Besides, I don’t even know your last name.”
“Yelena’s just fine,” she mimics back which earns her an eye roll from Kate. “Well, just Kate, don’t break my heart.”
Kate goes into the cabinet and pulls out two glasses. “I’m not a complete savage.”
Yelena made sure to go out and get a good bottle of Vodka. Not the American trash, but proper vodka that makes your eyes swell and the back of your throat burn so deliciously. “I’d say we had a very successful New Years.”
“My mom got arrested.” Yelena grimaces, remembering that Kate actually has real parents, ones that can get arrested.
“Alright, then we drink from sadness.”
It takes around three shots for Kate to really relax and enjoy her drinks.
“I’m going with Clint to Christmas.”
“Ah, yes, Christmas.” Yelena remembers now, taking another drink. Killing Barton was going to be her Christmas present, but alas, she wasn’t going to end up getting anything.
(Yelena will never guess that at this time next year, she will be spending Christmas with Clint, his family and her Kate.)
“Where will you be?” Kate asks. Yelena thinks, her head tilted. There isn’t time to get back home and Fanny’s staying with her, well her alias’s apartment neighbor. She’s kept the last name of one of Natasha’s covers, Longbottom. She rather enjoys hearing people call her that. Even when she’s pretending to be someone else, she still has a part of Natasha close to her.
“Oh, somewhere, anywhere. Might call my parents.”
“You have parents? Like actual parents?”
Yelena thinks for a second, rotating her glass to see the alcohol swish against the sides. “Not true parents, but ones from a mission. The people who raised me until I was six before they gave me back.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t—"
“Your mother hired me to kill people, my mother created an agent for chemical subjugation that was used on me, see we have lots in common Kate Bishop.”
“Alright, no more drinks for you.” Yelena states, looking into Kate’s wide pupils. She pulls the vodka bottle back towards her, knowing that the limit had been drawn. “You look like you need a hug.”
“You know what, I think I do,” Kate ponders before she leans towards Yelena, who quickly pushes her away.
“Not from me.”
There’s hurt in Kate’s eyes, but Yelena pats her shoulder in comfort. “The dog is much better hugger than I am.”
Yelena gives Kate another smile before she presses her hands against the table and stands up. “You were right, I needed a girl’s night.”
“Our definitions of girls night are very different.”
Yelena laughs but walks away from the table. She could just go out the door, but she’s tipsy and it would be way cooler to jump out the window again. Plus it makes Kate look at her like she’s some type of badass.
“Will I see you again?” Kate finally asks and Yelena tilts her head to the side.
Before she entered this apartment, her answer would have been no.
Now, after spending more time, she can’t say that.
“I think so, Kate Bishop. I think so.”
She leaves without another word, throwing a bolt into the floor and falling backwards from the window.
Kate doesn’t hear back from Yelena for months. She goes back to school to finish her degree, but her mind finds its way back to the assassin over and over again. She had tried texting that number back, the one that Yelena used to tell her that her mother had hired her to kill Clint.
She should be embarrassed at the amount of times she’s talked to Clint about the whole situation.
To be fair, it’s not everyday that a trained assassin comes over for a drink.
She doesn’t hear back from her until she graduates. Then she receives a letter in the mail that’s addressed in cursive to Kate Bishop.
She throws the card on the pile of other graduation presents she’s received. If she had known it was from Yelena, she would have opened it right away.
She doesn’t know it’s from Yelena until it’s nearly 1 in the morning and she’s had a little too much wine.
Each card usually has a few hundreds in it, but she doesn’t need that money. Not when she’s got all of her mother’s now that she’s in jail. Serves her mother right if she goes through all of it before she gets out.
This card just has a golden retriever on the outside. It doesn’t look anything like the other expensive cards that she’s received. Just something you could probably get at a gas station.
No money falls out when she opens the card, but there’s a manufactured “congratulations graduate!” on the inside.
“For next time – 744-555-0938.”
She shoots up in the chair.
There’s no other message, no scribble of a name, but she knows it’s from her.
It’s the best graduation present she receives.
Now that Kate has her number, Yelena expects her phone to blow up. And it does. The first few messages are short and she responds when she can. Goes back and forth with the other girl about things such archery and crime and places to go.
She doesn’t expect for Kate to call her though.
“Kate Bishop,” she says with a happy tone, holding her phone between her shoulder and ear as she fluffs Fanny’s head.
“Oh! Hi! I didn’t think you would answer.”
Yelena smiles through the phone, “well I’m not busy, so it seems the perfect time to chat.”
“Something’s happened. I…”
“Ah, Kate Bishop’s finally calls the big scary assassin,” Yelena teases, but she sits up on her couch, hearing the near panic that Kate has in her voice. This isn’t a typical phone call.
“Yelena, I need your help.”
Yelena thinks for a moment, but it’s better to not go down that path. Helping people wasn’t something she was good at. But she couldn’t say that to Kate when she calls her for help. “I don’t work for free.”
“I can pay you, I mean, I have enough money.”
She shouldn’t take money from Kate, someone she thinks of as more of a friend than stranger. She’s not used to friends, not true ones, not ones that aren’t other Widows. Kate Bishop knows nothing about her life before meeting her in New York. Nothing about where she’s come from or what she’s done. Well, she knows enough about it that should cause her to run away.
But Kate Bishop is not the type to run away from danger. It’s one of her best qualities. Probably also one of her worst.
She doesn’t say anything and Kate fills the space.
“Clint’s busy and there’s a kid involved. They took her and I’m not sure what they are going to do to her if we don’t find her. ”
Yelena sighs into the phone because unknowingly Kate has tapped into a softer side. A kid being taken from a home and then given away, it sounds more like an autobiography than she wants. “Clint said you could set us up with some identities and attend this auction, lots of drinks. I’ll even buy that vodka you like.”
“Sounds like a lot of work.”
“Could be fun though,” comes from the other end of the line and Yelena knows she’s done for.
“Alright, tell me everything, Kate.”