clandestinement | Early release

Early release - for worthallthis

They survive, in the end. That much is a miracle in and of itself. They survive, mostly intact, still themselves. And then comes the parting. There is no option to stay, to make a real life - so long as they remain, the connection to the place they came from remains, a flaw in the walls of reality that could be pried open or slipped along, the whole cycle restarted on new ground. There is no option to choose a new world to settle on. It's home, or death.

They promise to find each other on their own worlds, so like one another as to be nearly indistinguishable. It will not be the same. It's the best they can do with the hand they've been dealt. Yelena, the one who had walked two years in another world, who had faced monsters and the awful temptation of power, has the easier task in 2023.

Yelena, the one in his time, is still a tool of the Red Room, still under the thrall of a poison that will not have a certain cure for years. The serum distilled from her older counterpart's blood and cerebral fluid may work. There had been no sure way to test it. "It will take years for the neural pathways to repair themselves, if this doesn't work," the older Yelena had warned. "At least two, probably closer to three."

But even before that comes the problem of tracking her down. There is no intel on where the Red Room is, in his time. It moves, and the Widows are drugged both coming and going, aware only of their entry and extraction sites. The older Yelena can only tell him where she will be. It's nearly three months between his date of return and the date on which a suitable mission will present itself - one on which she will be alone, without the risk of other Widows, victims all of the Red Room's poison, interfering. Without the red dust, there is no guarantee of freeing them, and she's not willing to sacrifice them to secure her own early release.

And so: Bern. Yelena, younger, still the Red Room's plaything, is set up in a small apartment, paid for under the alias of one of her handlers, under the pretense of being a young mistress. One with a minor admin role at a scientific institution that is hosting a large conference, at which - regrettably - one of the speakers will suffer a fatal heart attack tomorrow. Tonight, she is running through the plan one last time, accounting for last-minute scheduling changes - nothing that speaks to any interference. Her target's schedule remains the same. Her exit window will just be a little tighter than she'd prefer.

In the living room, her handler is watching television. He'll have nothing to do tomorrow; it's two days before she'll be extracted, if all goes to plan, time built in to go to ground and take down the trappings of this identity.

No one is expecting any visitors.

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She's quiet for a moment, then asks, almost tentatively, "Did she have trouble too? The Yelena you knew."

She isn't sure she wants the answer. She is sure she needs it, though even if asked, she doesn't think she can articulate why.

"Not that I saw," he admits, "but she'd been free for a few years before I met her, so she might have and I just didn't see her grow past it."

He comes back in with a t-shirt, jeans, underwear, and socks in pretty close to her size, and offers them to her. "And she did seem to... understand. Me. My problems." Enough that he could see her having similar trouble, herself, in the past.

She nods slightly, careful of her still-throbbing head, and reaches out to take the clothing before carefully levering herself to her feet.

"We were trained to understand people," she says thoughtfully. "But not to help them."

She's quiet for a moment before adding, "I'm glad you had each other."

"Me, too." He steps back to let her get changed without his direct attention. It's easier to look away, to be digging into the bag again, when he offers, "And now we can have each other. If that's something you want. If it isn't, I'll still help you take down the Red Room."

She's silent for a moment, but for the rustle of fabric as she dresses, lips pressed tight to keep from wincing when the motion tugs a little at the fresh stitches.

"I don't know how to be the Yelena you know," she finally says. "I'll take your help stopping other little girls from being made into killers. But I'm not the kind or person anyone wants to stick around for."

"I'll leave when you ask me to," Winter says, sounding like this is a fact more than an opinion. He can't think of anything that would make him leave without her deciding she didn't want him around.

Then, a little more wry, "You will find I am very stubborn."

She makes a small sound that might be a choked-off laugh. Certainly her dignity would prefer that they both pretend that's what it is.

"You would have to be," she says. "To have found me, and brought me all this way."

He doesn't challenge her on it, at least. He's made his point. If she wants to have an emotional reaction to it, he'll let her.

What he says instead is: "I am ordering pizza. Because I am tired of protein bars." Which might be what he's been eating since he found her and had to start stalking her and her handler. "What do you want on your half?"

Her nose crinkles a little in sympathy. Stakeout food of the very worst sort - she is intimately familiar, and grateful that the cover she'd been operating under had required her to be able to eat like a normal person.

"Sausage," she says after a moment's silence, spent wrestling her emotions back under control. It isn't just reaction to his words; everything still seems slightly off-kilter, as though the connections in her brain are not quite right, absent the iron hand that had been skewing the scale of her thoughts for the past several years. "And spicy peppers. And black olives."

"Sounds like you're more adventurous than me," Winter comments, sounding maybe a little amused, before there's the sound of dialing on the hotel phone, then ordering in smooth French. He takes the olives on his pizza half, too, but not the sausage or the peppers. Why would she want to torture her tongue like that?

There's also apparently a cinnamon bake with icing dip. He orders that, too. Yum.

Then he drops down onto the edge of one of the beds, the last of his mission energy dropping out of him, at the same time. Yelena's out. She's free. She's, if not safe, at least under his eye, with him. It's a start.

"I like strong flavours," Yelena says, from the bathroom where she's lingered in order to braid her hair up out of her face. "They are..."

She pauses for a moment, grasping for an explanation that might have some hope of making sense.

"They were clearer. The drugs our handlers gave us didn't fog our minds, but they altered some of the neurochemical pathways in ways that made some sensory experiences less immediate."

And didn't mind talking about those side effects in front of their obedient, murderous little dolls.

Winter nods to himself, in understanding. "I can't drink orange juice anymore," he admits. "Or citrus anything. Actually. Not sure if it was all the drugs or the brain-frying but it all tastes like battery acid now." Don't ask how he knows what that tastes like. "So we can get you strong flavors."

He pauses, then adds, another attempt at a joke, "So long as they aren't citrus. Or I don't have to share them."

There's a quiet huff of breath, the barest edge of a laugh. Her sense of humour is, apparently, intact - just muffled by the control she'd been under, and the side effects of breaking it.

"I think we can avoid that," she says. Then pauses, considering, before asking more seriously, "Is it just the flavour, or does the smell bother you?"

"Just the taste. Though lemon-scented cleaning fluid is kind of gross," he says, leaning back a little on the bed and watching the curtained window. "Mostly because it's so strong. I have enhanced senses as well as strength." And that had taken some getting used to again, too.

"All of your senses?" Yelena asks. She peers out through the bathroom door, leaning against the frame and studying him with the critical eye of a cell captain evaluating the state of one of her people.

"You must hate nightclubs."

"I really do," he agrees, catching sight of her out of the corner of his eye and turning just enough to keep her more fully in his field of vision. "I can manage if there's a mission, I can focus past it, but it's not. Comfortable. It's not a place I'd go for fun."

"It can be a good place to lose a tail," she notes, almost absently. "Especially if you can get onto the dance floor."

She emerges finally, step cautious, as though she's not yet entirely certain she's on steady ground. She settles beside him, close, head tilting slightly as she studies him. "How long have you been going?"

"Two years in the other world," Winter answers, resisting the urge to lean over a little and rest their shoulders together. It's the metal one on that side; it'll be cold. Also, he's afraid she'll run away if he tries. "Three months and a few days, back in this one. We were dumped back here in the exact moment we left. Only we got to remember the time that passed."

And thank horrifying fear entities for that. He doesn't ever want to go back to what he was in those early days.

"I meant on this op," she clarifies. "It shows, that you didn't have any backup. But it's good to know the timeline."

Two years. A long time for him to get to know a her that isn't really her. Or isn't really her yet.

"I got into the country four days ago," he says. "I knew the dates you'd be here, and I gave myself enough time to work out your schedule." He shrugs just a little. "And I don't have anyone to be my backup here. Not unless I turn myself in to the Avengers." And he's... not ready for that, yet.

"Which is the same as turning yourself in to whatever is left of SHIELD, which is probably a very bad idea." She eyes him sidelong for a moment, nose crinkling. "I could probably get you out of a secret American prison, but it might involve a lot of explosions."

That makes him smile a bit. "Fun as that would be to see. Let's try to keep from having to go that far. I'm not going to the Avengers yet, unless you want to contact anyone. I have two goals for the next few years, and we don't need the Avengers to complete them, but they probably wouldn't hurt, either."

Yelena tenses slightly, and looks away.

"No," she says, after a long moment of silence, voice gone slightly rough. "There is no one I want to contact."

She pops to her feet, lips thinning slightly as the motion tugs at her stitches. At least the headache is abating slowly - she no longer feels like her skull might rupture if she moves at anything more than a crawl.

"I'm going to find drinks to have with dinner. Do you have any preferences, aside from not citrus?"

"Nothing with bubbles," Winter answers easily enough, letting the idea of the Avengers go without a fight. Someday she'll want to talk to Natasha again, but they have time. "There's a vending machine at the other end of the building and your wallet is in my duffel." Though what she might find without carbonation or lemon in it, he doesn't know. They'll figure something out.

Yelena doesn't last much longer than it takes to eat her couple slices of pizza. Winter finishes off a full half of his, then settles in to doze and keep watch, sitting against the wall with Yelena on the bed, the door, and the window all in his sight lines.

He wakes her again before dawn, if she doesn't wake herself before then, by giving the end of the bed a gentle shake, not touching her. "Time to go," he says once she's at least got her eyes open. "We can have a real rest once we're away from the last tracker site."

She sleeps hard, leaden and unmoving save for the faint rise and fall of her chest as she breathes, and doesn't wake until he jostles the bed. Then she starts upright, gaze darting warily until she remembers where she is, who he is, and his words filter through the clinging edge of headache.

"Did you sleep at all?" she asks, as she searches for her boots - the only thing she'd removed before dropping like a stone. At least that makes it easier to get going.

She'd found apple juice last night, the only thing neither citrus nor fizzy, and bought a couple bottles more than they would need for dinner. She grabs one now, and downs half of it before picking up a piece of cold pizza to shove in her mouth on the way down to the car. It makes her feel a little bit more human, less disjointed.

Early release - for worthallthis

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