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 huffs a quiet little laugh, and nudges him back, cautiously, as though testing the water. She's come to accept, over the days since he'd pulled her out of her mission and snapped the chains that had been stifling her for years, that he does care for her, even if she's only a shadow of his Yelena. That he doesn't want to do her harm.

She's still not entirely certain of her own physical boundaries, where they need to be, and who she's willing to let in beneath them.

"Explosives are a good first step."

Lucky for her, she's with someone who still has some physical contact issues, himself. He's worlds better than he was, but... he knows how to keep it slow and careful, for both their sakes. Which is why she gets shoulder bumps and not arms tossed around her shoulders.

He nods more firmly at that. "Yeah. They are." And he's done thinking about Adam now, he thinks. He pops the last of his pastry into his mouth and crumples up the bad. "C'mon, it's going to be boarding time soon. We should get going."

She swings around on the bench and hops to her feet, brushing a few entirely imaginary crumbs from her shirt, then fixes him with a bright smile that's half genuine excitement, and half trepidation. This is it - they haven't been tracked down, surrounded. After this, it will be much, much harder for the Red Room to find them.

She still doesn't quite know what to do with that.

"We have all of our travel documents?" she asks, triple-checking, though they'd both made sure of that well in advance.

"Yes. They're in the car with the luggage." The sparse luggage, but it will be enough to get them across the ocean, even without laundry on board. There's probably laundry on board, anyway. "We can check again when we get to the dock," he promises, and motions for her to head that way.

Getting on board is refreshingly easy. There's no metal detector, thank god, or they'd be in trouble, but that's one reason he'd chosen this particular cruise line: it didn't advertise it's obsessive security measures. Their documents pass muster, and Winter manages to act like a completely normal human being, a middle aged father bringing his mostly-grown daughter on a cruise to celebrate her graduating college. It's not even as hard as he'd expected it to be.

Though it's still a relief to get to their cabin where he can drop the smile and his ass onto one of the twin beds.

Yelena remains standing, quickly surveying the cabin in a manner that is absolutely familiar, one of the things she unquestionably shares with the Yelena he knows.

Only one entrance. Not a lot of cover, but they could barricade if necessary, and she makes a note to collect supplies over the next few days, just in case something goes catastrophically wrong.

"Do you need to rest?" she asks. "I can keep watch." It may not be necessary, but it will make her feel better. Will make both of them feel better, she thinks, at least until they learn the rhythm of the ship, which sounds and shifts can be ignored as background noise, and which need to be paid attention to.

"I need to not have to fake being a normal social person," Winter says, a little dryly. "I doubt I could sleep right now, though I should. We should, so we can case the boat after dark." There will still be people about, but there will be fewer people, and easier to avoid.

"We would not be noticed poking around even in daylight, I think," Yelena says, but the patterns of obedience are still ingrained enough that she drops onto the other bed, not laying down, but stretching out with her back against the wall.

"Tourists are supposed to be annoying, and get into everything."

"Maybe I can manage to act annoyingly concerned about my daughter's safety, and ask very stupid questions about security and locks on the doors," Winter suggests, not particularly seriously, reaching over to touch her outstretched foot and give the tip of her shoe a joking little wiggle before letting his hand fall. He's trying small, careful, fully-telegraphed touches like that fairly often, trying to get her accustomed without making her uncomfortable.

Her nose scrunches a little when he wiggles her foot, amusement not even veiled by a pretense of annoyance.

"You'll have to glare at stupid boys if they come to bother me," she says. "For verisimilitude." She's only mostly joking. She can take care of unwanted attention herself, without any difficulty. But a part of her thinks it might be nice not to have to.

"I can do that," Winter says with a mostly-joking earnestness. "I am very good at that. My glare is very fierce." Probably too fierce for even a protective father. He'd tone it down to more normal levels of glaring.

Then he settles back a little against the wall, which the bed is up against. Both beds butt up against the wall, with space at the foot of his for clothes storage, and space at the foot of hers to lead into the bathroom. "There are two different dinners. The fancy one and the regular one. I thought we'd start with the regular one. Might be easier to sneak food out of that one."

"You might be surprised," Yelena says. She twists briefly to prop the pillow on her bed between her back and the wall, then toes her shoes off and pulls herself into a crosslegged position.

"Fancy people can get away with a lot of shit, just by being accepted as fancy people. Everyone assumes that of course they won't be stealing food, so they don't look for it. But the regular people dinner will probably be less annoying. Rich people are terrible."

Most people are terrible, in her experience. But the wealthy are invariably worse.

"I haven't spent a lot of time with rich people," Winter admits. "Not in a. Social setting." He's pretty sure some of the HYDRA higher-ups were rich, and they'd been terrible, but they were also HYDRA higher-ups. He hadn't thought about whether all rich people were terrible. He wouldn't be surprised, though. The rich people he'd known about in Gloucester had all been Avatars, so.

He shakes his head a little, and adds, "The fancy dinner we'd all have to sit at a table and be served, is all. The regular dinner has a buffet."

Yelena gives him a little smile, nose scrunching in what appears to be genuine, if muted, amusement. "You haven't missed much."

She glances at the small clock fastened to the table between the two beds. "We have a few hours, then, to relax and learn where things are." The small smile edges just a little bit wider. "I want to find the pool."

"Are you gonna swim?" Winter asks with half a smile, imagining her splashing around. Well. Probably she wouldn't splash much, knowing her, but still. "I will have to leave that bit of fun to you. I can't even sunbathe." He says it a little regretfully. The metal arm means long sleeves and gloves, even in the sunshine.

"Yes," Yelena says. She hesitates for a long moment, before finally admitting, "I love swimming. It's a little bit like flying, I think. Though I have only ever flown a helicopter or a plane."

Given all the strangeness their world has to offer, it merits clarification. She has no superpowers at all, just training. A lot of training.

She considers him briefly before suggesting, "Maybe after we have saved the world from aliens, we can find a private beach to take over. Then you can sunbathe all you want."

Even with his own superpowers, as they are, he can't fly, either. His smile gets bigger at her suggestion. "Usually I just find a roof if I really want to bask. Just not a lot of roofs that are safe on a ship like this. But that sounds like fun. Bet we can find one some HYDRA asshole owns and kill him for it."

Yelena's head cants slightly as she turns this over in her mind, and then she grins, quick and bright enough that, for a moment, she very much resembles the woman he'd known in a moment of mischief.

"I like this plan," she says. "I like it a lot."

Winter chuckles, expression shading fond. Yeah, he knows that look, and it's nice to see her look less careful. "We'll do it, then. We'll see if a supersoldier can get sunburned." He thumps his head back against the wall. "So explore now, or rest now and explore after dinner?"

Yelena considers for a long moment, then ventures, "I can scout now, while you take a break. That way, we know a little more about the lay of the land, but you don't have to deal with the social bullshit for a while."

She could use the little stretch of time alone to process - and there's a part of her that wants to test her new leash, see if he's willing to give her that freedom, and trust her not to jump overboard or stab anyone in a fit of panic.

He wouldn't blame her if she went over the side and swam for shore before they got too far out. They've only just started retracting the anchor, from what he can hear from this cabin, so it'd be an easy swim. "Solid plan," he says with a nod, and sits up more fully to dig into his duffel for a book. "Think I'll read for a bit while you do that."

She swings around on the bed and comes to her feet, popping up like she's on springs. But she pauses before heading for the door, head canting slightly as she considers for a moment, then asks, "What are you reading?"

She's never had the opportunity to read for fun. One could say it's a novel idea.

Winter pulls the book out to show her the cover. It's an older fantasy-sci-fi thing he picked up out of a used book bin at one of their stops on the way here, called The Darkangel. The picture on the front of a multi-winged vampire carrying away a young woman had caught his attention, reminded him of old horror movie posters. "I haven't started this one yet, but it looks interesting."

He has three more books in his bag, but this is the only one he hasn't read yet. He's hoping one of the on-board shops has books to add to his collection.

Yelena suppresses a shiver of unease at the image of the monster stealing away a girl. It's just a story, she tells herself. In stories, monsters can be vanquished.

"You will have to tell me if it's any good," she says, then turns toward the door, posture shifting to something open, relaxed - a young woman having fun exploring the cruise ship.

Considering he's likely to wind up reading parts of it aloud now and then, she'll probably find out for herself. He waves her off, settling back on the bed to start his book.

They spend a couple days being boring normal people by day, prowling the ship by night, and snitching food from the buffet dinner to hoard in their cabin. Winter does watch over her in the pool one afternoon, though he doesn't stay out long because the sunlight on his two layers of long sleeved shirt are uncomfortably warm. He buys six more books, though three of them look really dumb. He also buys a couple decks of cards, which he imagines they can play with or he can make towers with, whichever.

Around midnight a few nights in, before either of them are ready to actually turn in but after he's done a night prowl, he gives Yelena a little nudge with his boot when he comes back into the cabin. "Come on. Wanna show you something."

Yelena's borrowed one of the books he's already finished, and is sprawled out on her stomach on her bed when he comes in, chin propped in one hand, reading through it. She glances up when the door opens, and blinks at the nudge before marking her place with a brochure she'd swiped from the gift shop solely for the map inside.

She rolls to her feet before bending to pull her own boots on, sliding a short knife into the sheath in the left as she does - not out of concern that this is the world's most convoluted assassination attempt as out of long habit. She may never feel comfortable unarmed. If she does, it won't be for many years.

"Okay," she says. "Lead the way."

Early release - for worthallthis

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