Chapter Text
They say you never forget your first.
It was a romantic sentiment Kate Bishop had first overheard between two of her gossiping cousins, when she was too young to catch the gist of the conversation. Nonetheless, it had left its impact, and ever since then she made sure to catalogue any and all firsts.
There was a possibility that this desire to make note of firsts had led Kate to somewhat reckless behavior, especially as she got older and bolder. The desire to chase new experiences wasn't for showing off; it was for trying to explore as many corners of life that she could find, an earnestness to wring joy out of existence's limitless potential for excitement. Her small diary, bound in crimson dyed leather, was filled mostly with scribbles documenting firsts, from the inane to the eyebrow-raising (at least, they had certainly raised her mother's eyebrows when she went snooping one summer. Since then, Kate had decided to refrain from keeping a written record of less innocuous memories. There weren't many, and her mother was easily offended, but still).
Some choice samples:
August 28, 1933: first bull's eye! Dad would be proud. Mom is.
June 9, 1936: first kiss. Not bad. Might try again with someone else.
August 12, 1938: first time smoking a cigarette. Almost choked to death? Must not be doing it right.
April 9, 1939: first time I didn't fall asleep at the opera. Mom was thrilled!
May 21, 1940: first time driving a car! Greer's brother's, a Chevrolet. Greer screamed entire ride despite fact that I only ran two intersections.
May 23, 1940: first time in traffic court. Did not enjoy it.
January 10, 1942: first rum and Coca-Cola! Disgusting!
She had fun reading back the entries from time to time, but her mother, Eleanor, thought it a frivolous exercise. One first that did not need to be recorded to be remembered—October 10, 1943: first time getting suspended from school. First time demolishing entire building with one arrow—further led Eleanor to believe that Kate's unquenchable thirst for newer and wilder firsts was endangering not only her present but her future, as well.
"I know young people think they're invincible, and rich people think they're invincible, and you've always been both," Eleanor had said. "So take it from someone who hasn't: you're not. Someday, this rashness is going to catch up with you."
Eleanor's solution to this problem had been to cut off Kate's finances. Kate had already been working part-time at a shipyard, trying to do her patriotic duty and pick up some skills that might come in handy down the road (September 6, 1943: first time welding something without harming myself or others!). Even expanding to full-time, Kate realized it would behoove her to get another part-time job elsewhere to pick up the slack, and a friend got her in as a waitress at the L&L Automat.
It seemed Eleanor had had a point about her being accustomed to a certain comfortable lifestyle, one Kate barely had time to indulge in now with all this work. But she was young, and the young always have energy for one more late party, one more nickel for the jukebox. Not even wartime restrictions could dampen youth's enthusiasm for a good time: in addition to pooling rides, Kate and her friends would pool rationed food for get-togethers, and made regular trips to the butcher together to drop off their carefully saved cooking fats.
Recruiting posters for women could be seen all over town, and some of Kate's friends at the shipyard had decided to join up with the WAVES, the Navy's unit for women. Apparently, some WAVES had actually come to the shipyard for recruitment, but Kate was never on shift when that happened. She kind of liked the idea of joining up to scandalize her mother more than anything else, but that probably wasn't a great reason to upend her life.
November 9, 1943 came with a series of firsts Kate would never write down and never forget. Some of those firsts, she would not even be able to process or fully understand right away. Others were more basic and comprehensible, such as: this was the first time she met and spoke to a woman in uniform.
Servicemen could be seen everywhere, and certainly made themselves heard whether a girl was in the mood or not. Reliable as clockwork, about halfway through Kate's Sunday shift at the automat, a truck bearing a hearty group of soldiers would stop on their way back to Fort Wadsworth. Some came enough that Kate recognized them, but the only true regular was their driver, Johnny, who would always come bounding into the automat about twenty seconds after the engine cut. Kate would've assumed it was protocol to see all the passengers off first, but Johnny's enthusiasm to see her could not be contained.
On that chilly November evening, several noisy servicemen came spilling into the automat; and though there couldn't have been more than a dozen of them, they somehow seemed to inhabit the entire space. Kate realized the truck's engine had been off over a minute, and yet there'd been no sign of Johnny.
"Hiya, honey!" one of the young men greeted her at the counter. "Got some coffee you could scrounge up for a group of newly enlisted men?"
"How about a kiss?" asked a bolder one, puckering up. "Send us off in style, huh?"
"Let's start with the coffee, maybe," Kate said with a dry chuckle, following them back to their table. "Say, did your driver come in with you?"
"Can you beat that?" laughed a scrawny blonde boy who couldn't have been a day over eighteen. "A diner full of future generals and she wants to know the whereabouts of our driver."
They all howled with laughter, save for the fellow who had first approached her for coffee. "She's outside."
"She?"
He shrugged. "Wartime's a screwy thing, miss."
Kate's friend and mentor on the job, Angie, came over just then with another pot of coffee. Right away she engaged the boys in lively conversation. Talking to strangers and making immediate friends of them was a skill Angie had, and one that Kate wished she could cultivate more easily. Meeting someone one-on-one wasn't so bad, and bigger groups were manageable when there was something to focus on like an archery competition, but a gift for gab in general was lost on Kate. Angie liked to bring patrons all the comforts of home, which meant not just great food and décor but dialogue as well, and Kate couldn't help feeling like her attempts at casual talk were often more forced than friendly.
She'd been back at the counter, refilling salt shakers, when Angie reappeared at her elbow. "Kid, there's someone loitering around outside. I think it may be the new driver. Be a doll and go see if you can't convince her to come in for some joe or a bite, huh?"
Kate dutifully retrieved her coat and stepped out into the brisk autumn air.
To her knowledge, this was the first time the sight of another woman had taken her breath away—calculable, because it was cold enough to see said breath and the moment she saw this striking, striking woman, it took its sweet time becoming visible again.
A hat tipped at a jaunty angle didn't quite cover a halo of blonde braids as the woman sat on the stoop of the automat, smoking. At the sound of the door's bell, she had reflexively glanced up at Kate, her eyes glinting like emeralds. There was a seriousness to her countenance that struck Kate as Spartan, off-setting the softness of her light hair. Green fatigues hung loose on her figure with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, as she was apparently unbothered by the cold. In fact, she seemed to be enjoying it, even as passersby tugged their coats closer around themselves just as the sight of her. This dimly struck Kate as an odd reaction, because while Kate couldn't quite account for it, she was feeling rather warm herself all of a sudden.
"Hello," Kate finally managed. She tried to offer what she hoped was a welcoming smile, as the woman continued to stare, impassive. "Would you like to come in for some coffee? I'm sure it's been a long drive, and you must be cold out here."
The woman shifted, making sure her smoke wasn't blowing in Kate's direction. When she spoke, a strong accent caught Kate off guard: "Must I? That is quite thoughtful of you, but after being stuffed in a truck for so many hours with that gang of hooligans, a breath of fresh air and a moment alone is just what I need."
"Oh, I see. Can I bring you some coffee out here?"
"No, thank you. It would ruin the chill." Her words were polite, but her tone was sharp and impersonal, reminding Kate of how much she detested trying to make small talk. "You know what would be just dandy? A nice, cold glass of lemonade."
Such an unexpected request left Kate with no option but to laugh. "I'm afraid you'd need a time machine for that, to take you back to summer. We haven't got any at the moment." When this failed to get a reaction, Kate waited before taking a large step back towards the automat. A sharp gust of wind tousled her hair, the cold making its presence known to her again, and the frigid reception of the driver wasn't a great incentive to stay out anyway. "Well, I must say I admire your constitution, but I haven't got any Slavic blood myself so I think I'd best head back where it's warm!"
Once indoors, Kate's gaze kept going back to the windows to catch a look at the driver. Her heart jumped into her throat when they made eye contact, and the driver smiled at her over her shoulder. It wasn't just a courteous one, either; the smile reached her large, green eyes, and her nose scrunched up. The friendliness somehow caught Kate off guard even more than the woman's initial brusqueness.
Kate tried to get back to focusing on her work, even more intently when the driver came inside, strode across the floor without acknowledging another soul, and sat down at the barstool directly across from Kate. The woman had walked with a kind of confidence Kate wasn't sure she'd ever seen on anyone besides a man, hands jammed in her pockets, shoulders back, a quick pace; someone who wanted to take up a lot of room, which is why Kate was so surprised to realize she wasn't very tall.
"Russian."
"Black or white?" asked Kate, in something of a daze and forgetting that they didn't sell hard drinks at the automat.
"No, I mean, about your Slavic comment before," the driver said, looking amused. "Not all Slavs come from cold regions, you know. I was being precise."
"Oh. Oh, of course! I didn't mean—I was just… because of the cold, and…"
"Relax, Kate Bishop. I know what you meant, it's fine."
Was this someone Kate had met before? Surely she would remember the voice, if not the face. Or the face if not the voice. "How do you know my name?"
"I know a lot about you," she said, and Kate probably should have found that alarming but something about the way this woman purred it with the same self-assured posture, the same confident tone, was making Kate react with just about anything but concern. "I apologize if I was rude before. I must be hard when dealing with some of the types back there," she said, jabbing her thumb at the soldiers who had crammed three tables together. "Johnny is my friend, and he let slip about you. You're his favorite stop on the route."
"Considering this is the only stop between the depot and the base, I don't find that too surprising," Kate snorted.
"Stop that," the woman said, her tone playful. "You know he has big crush on you, Kate Bishop."
Kate laughed, averting her eyes to the clean counter and mopping at a non-existent smudge with a rag. "Oh, gosh! It isn't nice to tease strangers, you know."
"Well, let us not be strangers, then. Corporal Yelena Belova, Motor Transport Corps." Yelena held out her hand for a shake, and Kate was surprised by the firmness of her grip. "Now that we are introduced, do I have permission to tease more?"
"If you must," Kate said weakly.
Yelena was still holding her hand. "Do not worry that pretty head of yours, Kate Bishop. Johnny will be back on his route soon. He came down with the flu, so I volunteered for covering him. Do you think him a brave boy?"
"Sure. He joined up, didn't he?"
"Does not take bravery to enlist, Kate Bishop. Just a thick head and perhaps death wish to go with it." This struck Kate as an odd thing for someone in uniform to say, but not nearly as odd as what Yelena said next, her thumb caressing the back of Kate's hand. "Takes bravery to kiss a girl you like. I think Johnny would like to kiss you, but maybe, has not done much more than kiss your hand?"
"If those are the stakes for bravery, he's been a big old wimp so far," Kate said.
"Sweet boy," Yelena chuckled. "You have known him long?"
"Not very." Kate felt compelled to keep talking to this woman, an unusual circumstance in the best of times, but wanted to pivot the conversation away from the guy who had such a hopeless crush on her. "Um. Have you been stationed here very long?"
Leaning back, Yelena withdrew her hand from Kate's, lifting her arms for a little pseudo-dance that seemed unbecoming of a Corporal but was nonetheless shockingly adorable. "It's my first time in New York! Got in just last month. I would have liked more time for seeing all the magnificent sights, but so far no weekend pass. At best I can admire the skyscrapers from time to time. This city you have is quite beautiful, Kate Bishop."
"Do you…keep saying my full name just to prove that you know it?"
The answer came with an impish grin: "Yes."
After Johnny, who talked his way around everything to avoid being direct, Yelena's forthcoming nature was an intriguing change of pace. Kate was not even conscious of returning the smile. "Okey doke, Yelena Belova."
"Ha! Oh, you are funny, Kate Bishop. You may address me as Corporal."
Kate jumped when the words "order up!" cut across from the kitchen like a whip. She twisted around to grab a tray of assorted entrees and hurried to unload them at the table of Yelena's passengers. Yelena turned on the stool to watch, glad that none of the boys seemed too raunchy, even if they were a little rowdy. Even so, she wanted to make sure none of them got fresh with that sweet waitress. Kate seemed comfortable enough, until one of the soldiers genially slapped her backside as she made to leave.
Kate's instinct was to turn around and slap the guy right back on the kisser, but she caught Angie widening her eyes at her and shaking her head. One of Angie's first lessons on the job had been to tell Kate to suck it up when she got harassed, because they couldn't afford to insult a potential recurring customer. This was a notion that Kate frankly thought was bullshit, but considering her "bad attitude" had gotten her dropped from three other part-time jobs, and Angie at least seemed sympathetic, she was doing her best to rein it in.
Corporal Belova of the Motor Transport Corps, however, held less antiquated views.
Before Kate could even throw the guy a grimace, Yelena had appeared at his side and grabbed the wrist of the offending hand in a vise grip. "You misplace one of these mitts again, soldier, and I will use it as my ash tray. Do you understand me?"
"Say, what is this?" he griped, looking a little panicked when he couldn't pull himself free.
"This? This is command for you to apologize to this woman for your disrespect." And easily as though he were doll, Yelena yanked him up out of his seat, dragging him to the counter Kate had retreated behind. "And if you cannot take reasonable demands from your driver's substitute, I hate to think how soon you will fold when your drill sergeant calls you out for some screw-up. And you will have plenty of those, I can see already."
The boy's eyes were wide, but he managed to stammer out an apology to Kate. When he hurried back to his table, it was hard to tell whether he or Kate was a darker shade of red.
Yelena had taken her seat again. "Oh, Kate Bishop," she sighed. "Did that little piss ant embarrass you? Did I embarrass you by making him apologize?" And Kate couldn't help noticing the shift in Yelena's tone. It had slid back into one as slow and sweet as molasses, from the clipped bark she had used with the handsy soldier. It came back with a little bit of an edge: "You should not be embarrassed because of something he did."
"I—it's fine, it happens," Kate mumbled. She felt flushed, not embarrassed. "I don't mind."
"Oh? Do you have bridge to sell me, also? Because if you did not mind, truly, your mind should tell your face as much."
Caught, Kate had to laugh a little. There was no need to grin and bear it to a woman, especially one on her side. "You protecting my honor for Johnny's sake? I can do that myself when I've a mind to."
Yelena rose her eyebrows, surprised that such a thought would have even occurred to Kate. "No, this was not for Johnny's sake. Women, we've got to stick together, yes? Men cannot just take whatever they want without asking, and that applies certainly to your ass. If you will excuse my profanity."
"I'll consider it," Kate answered. It was hard to repress a grin, thinking of how her mother might've reacted to hearing a woman say something as crude as ass. "Could you get in trouble for that, though? I mean, the ash tray comment…?"
"I once saw my captain punch a soldier in the face for his disrespect," Yelena replied. "A line I have not yet crossed, so I think so far I am all right, yes? And you know something else? I think I will take some coffee. Even if it is hot, I ought to have something in me for the drive ahead."
"Would you like me to put it in the icebox for a spell?" Kate asked, pouring some for her.
Yelena took the cup with a laugh. "Swell idea, Kate Bishop, but I do not think I should take the time." She wondered why Kate didn't do a lap around the automat with the coffee pot; she was hovering. Or maybe she'd rather let that other waitress make the rounds (Angie kept shooting Kate meaningful looks indicating a desire for help, but Kate had a singular focus and failed to notice). In any event, Yelena figured a pronouncement of some kind was warranted after she took her first sip. She sat a little straighter as the drink slid down her throat, warm and homey. "Mm! Oh, my."
"Do you like it?" Kate asked, a little breathless. It was suddenly very important to impress this woman any way she could. "I add nutmeg to the grounds, just a pinch."
"Very nice," Yelena murmured. Still Kate stood by her, and Yelena felt inclined to make the coffee last as long as possible. "You like to work here, Kate Bishop?"
"Oh, you know. Pays the bills. Well, some of the bills. I also work at the Navy shipyard down at—"
"Shh," Yelena cut her off. "Don't you know what they say about loose lips? They will sink the ships your pretty hands have gotten so rough working on, no doubt."
Kate self-consciously rubbed her hands together, realizing Yelena must have been making a study of the one she had shaken. "Actually, the calluses are from archery. Yeah," she said, pleased that this was the first time Yelena had appeared genuinely impressed with her. "Yeah, I've won a few competitions here and there. Got some medals. Not… here, but I've got 'em. At my place, I mean. Maybe I could have 'em on hand the next time you drive by?"
"Tempting offer," Yelena said. "But I regret to say I will not be back this way again. If Johnny has not recovered by next weekend, someone else will need to be covering for him because I have important date, you see. I have already been asked to recruit at the Stark Expo."
If Kate hadn't seen posters for the Expo all over town for weeks, she would have already known about it because it seemed no one in the city could talk about anything else. The drugstore, the subway, the automat—it was everywhere. Kate gushed about all the incredible things she had heard were going to be demonstrated there, the innovations and the entertainment. The more she talked about it, the less interested Yelena seemed to become, and at some point in her rambling it occurred to Kate that maybe she was being rude by talking up all the other aspects of the Expo.
"I'm sure your booth, or whatever you've got, will be the biggest draw, though," she said, and Yelena could only laugh at that. "My friends and I are planning to go. We'll come by your station! Maybe pick up a pamphlet or two."
"Oh, do not do that, Kate Bishop," Yelena scoffed.
"What d'you mean, why not?"
"You are not Women's Army Corps material," Yelena said, carefully enunciating each word of the organization's title.
Her tone hadn't been rude, per se, but Kate couldn't help being a little insulted. "What's that mean? I'm tough! Archer medalist, remember? And I woulda snapped that guy's hand off earlier if you hadn't beaten me to it."
"I'm sure you are very tough," Yelena said, her tone conciliatory but a tad condescending. "You are very easy study, though, do you know this?"
"An easy study?"
"Yes. Those boys back there?" Yelena said, nodding at the soldiers. "They are children. Most are not drafted. They sign up, eager to go, even when it is not their character to fight. They feel they have something to prove, or it strikes them as glamorous. It is not glamorous, Kate Bishop."
"Golly, you are going to be a terrible recruiter."
Taking her last sip of coffee, Yelena gave Kate a weary smile over the top of the cup. "I am there for showing, not telling," she said, and Kate had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Stand around and look pretty? (She'd certainly be good at that…) "Right now, this kind of aid is necessary. Does not make the work glamorous or something to do for fun. It is work I was built for. You are not built for this. You are not built for pouring coffee, either," she added pointedly. "Unless you would like to keep on with it. A social job, I take it. But I sense there is more for you in life than this. Do not endanger it by enlisting."
"Yeah, but WACs aren't actually in combat, are they? That doesn't sound too dangerous. And hey, what's this got to do with me being a quick study?"
Yelena gave her a long, searching look, one that Kate could feel down to her bones. It felt deeply personal coming from someone she had met barely twenty minutes ago. "You also share this need to prove yourself," Yelena finally said. "But I think you are too cherubic for this."
"Cherubic!" Kate yelled, loudly enough to draw raised eyebrows from around the automat. "That's it. You're going AWOL and coming back to my apartment so I can William Tell an apple off your head, oh ho, and then we shall see!"
"What an odd sentence of words you just said," Yelena observed. "And although I am tempted to find out what it is you meant, it will have to be another time. Don't be so hostile," she added, amused by Kate's frustration. "I have Johnny's schedule to keep. I cannot keep his dates, as well."
"I've never invited him to my apartment," Kate pointed out.
Regarding her with an inscrutable expression, Yelena just said "poor boy" and stood up, tugging manfully at her belt. "Well, Kate Bishop, I enjoyed meeting you at last. Perhaps our paths will cross again one day."
"Oh, you bet your bottom dollar they will. Next weekend, at the Stark Expo. I'll come find you."
"We shall see. If you are wise, you will keep to the exposition's shinier displays of Stark technology and design, far away from my station."
With a cocky head tilt, Kate said, "Well lucky for us, I've been accused of being many things in my life and 'wise' has never been one of them."
It wasn't until the words had left her mouth that it occurred to her this was a strange thing to say with a proud tone of voice. Yelena seemed to be thinking along similar lines, and she waited for Kate to rescind or reword her declaration. But Kate, stubborn and determined, just stuck to the confident pose she had aped from an issue of Wonder Woman, wearing her jauntiest smile.
"What a funny little duck you are," Yelena chuckled. "Be well, Kate Bishop." Without further ado, she marched to the door of the automat and yanked it open with a sharp whistle to get the servicemen's attention. "All right, maggots, double time! Let's go!"
There was a flurry of activity as the boys rushed to collect their jackets and hats, some stuffing last bites into their mouths. "Jeepers, Johnny always gives us a few minutes' heads-up," complained one of them. "Even when he's flirtin' with the wait staff."
"That's 'jeepers, Corporal' to you, Private, and do I look like Johnny? No. Any more back talk from you, and I will ensure you are on sentry duty the next time you are up for leave."
"Sheesh, you give women an inch…"
"I assume you cannot offer much more than that," Yelena said humorlessly. Kate couldn't quite contain a laugh, and the soldier's friends hollered at the joke made at his expense. They sobered up pretty fast when Yelena barked at all of them, reminding them she was not there to be a pal: "What is this?"
All lined up, the men exchanged confused glances until Yelena pointed at the table they were leaving behind. This simple movement was so aggressive that some of them actually flinched, as if worried that she had been about to throw a knife at them. The only daggers were in her eyes, though, as she said: "This mess is inexcusable! You will stack your filthy things and take them to the counter."
The soldiers wasted no time in doing as she said, muttering as they went. Angie made her way over to Yelena to say, "That's very sweet, ma'am, but it isn't necessary. We bus our tables here." She caught Kate's eye and gestured for her to come over.
The girl moved faster than Angie had ever seen. "Yeah, ma'am, no problem," Kate said.
Yelena had grimaced when Angie called her "ma'am" and looked all the more disgruntled by Kate's use of the term. "A: not necessary, perhaps, but I will not allow men on my watch to leave an establishment such a sty. B: it is good for their discipline. C: do not call me ma'am."
"Sir, no sir," Kate said with faux seriousness, saluting her.
Angie appeared rather aghast by this brazen mockery of a servicewoman, and the cutting look on Yelena's face made Kate worry that she had indeed overstepped. She was getting a lesson in real time about what the Corporal had meant in saying she'd been "built for" the service, and wondered if she was about to be carted off to the brig. Almost as suddenly as the harshness in Yelena's expression had turned on Kate, though, an exasperated smile slid into place.
"Horrendous form, Kate." The unexpected use of her first name alone almost left Kate reeling, making her posture even worse. Yelena tipped Kate's elbow, adjusted the angle of her hand, and repositioned the alignment of her thumb. "Stand straight," she said, and her voice wasn't only quiet it was soft, and Kate's throat got very tight. "Chest out. That's it, very nice."
The soldiers had lined up again, and one of them said "yeah, sister, very nice!", following it up with a wolf whistle. Yelena snapped her head to look at them, and they fell silent, but the smirk on the guy standing last in line tipped her off. Yelena told the men to fall out, and had no shame in sticking out her foot to trip up the one who had whistled at Kate.
"At ease," she said, noticing that Kate was still saluting her.
"Yes, sir," and that got a subdued smile out of the Corporal. "See? I can take orders easy."
"Well, that is because I am so charming," Yelena said with enviable nonchalance, like this was an objective fact. "You may not take orders so well from another officer, less cute than myself. This is not to mention, I can be pretty rough on duty, too."
"So I've seen," Kate said, watching as the men filed back into the truck. "I can handle rough."
For all of the archery competitions where dozens and at times hundreds of spectators had been watching her, for all the times Johnny had sat at the counter with a lovelorn stare, this was the most Kate had ever felt keenly aware from head to toe of someone looking at her. Yelena's gaze raked down her body and back up to her eyes, as if committing the view to memory.
"Is that so, Kate Bishop?" she asked. "Well. Let us hope it does not come to that. Good afternoon."
She stuck her cap back on over her elaborate braids, gave Kate a stiff salute, and jogged back to the truck. Kate leaned against the door to watch, waving, but only some of the men were able to see and wave back. Angie had to call her name three times before Kate realized she was being summoned.
"Jesus, kid," Angie said. "I've seen dames go dizzy over uniforms, but not for a broad."
Appearing unbothered, Kate helped her take the stacks of dirty dishes back to the kitchen. "I've just never seen a WAC before."
"Seemed like a real wack, all right."
But Kate wasn't listening. It was about a hell of a lot more than the uniform. Kate considered herself a pretty confident person, uninhibited in a lot of ways that other women weren't, and had been accused of indulging in impropriety quite often by her mother. Still, there was something very different about Yelena Belova—the way she carried herself, the way she had reprimanded those men without even hinting at the tiniest need for feminine courtesy or stoking their egos. She was the first woman Kate had ever seen walk around a place like she owned it without question.
And you never forget your first.