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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"That must have been a lot of fun," she says, with a wistful little smile over her shoulder. "I think the only thing I ever saw in the theater was The Lion King."

A brief pause, and she adds, "For movies. There were a couple of live shows."

"It was amazing," he says with a bit of a smile. "We had a couple color pictures before it came out, but going from black and white to color was a real treat. And of course I'd read the books to my sisters, so I knew the stories, or some of them." He sounds a bit more animated, there, as he closed the motel door behind them, slipping a bit more Brooklyn in accent even, though it only lasts that long and no longer, until he pokes at his memory again. "Apparently I went to the movies a lot. Not as many live shows. Those were. More expensive? Unless they were bawdy shows."

Her smile turns more of a grin, and definitely teasing. "Did you go to a lot of bawdy shows?" she asks.

It beats admitting that the live theatre she attended was very much in the realm of work-related expense, even if it was typically the non-lethal branch of her work. She's only ever assassinated one target at the opera, and then only because the person who'd commissioned the murder had wanted the induced heart attack to be very public.

"I don't know," Winter admits, and gives her a gentle, hopefully-also-teasing elbow to the arm. Flesh elbow. Metal one would be mean. "Do I seem like the kinda guy who'd go to a bawdy show?"

Not that he knows. The knowledge of how much shows cost just kind of fell into his brain without context.

Yelena's nose crinkles a little in amusement as she studies him.

"Yes," she decides. "If you know how much they cost, that means you probably went enough for it to make an impression." That little grin widens. "Maybe we should track down a burlesque show. For old time's sake."

Winter looks hangdog at her, again about half in jest. "I will probably either be confused or embarrassed. Or both." He does knot what embarrassment feels like, these days.

He also thinks that this will not be a deterrent for Yelena. It might be an encouragement.

There's momentary flicker of something that's downright impish in her eyes. "It will be fun," she says. "I promise not to drag you to anything too risque."

For both their comfort, really. Teasing him a little is fun. Genuinely making him uncomfortable wouldn't be.

"After the sorcerers," Winter says, hoping a little-- probably entirely in vain-- that she'll forget about it in the wake of dealing with magic people. Magic people are surely going to be distracting.

He knows where they're going, at least. He's had that particular street map of New York in his head since he started planning this all out, so he could mark out all the potential escape routes if things went badly. It's an older part of town, and the building in question is old stone, very fancy, almost annoyingly so. Winter pauses to look up at it dubiously.

Yelena rocks back on her heels as she considers the building herself, slipping her hands into her pockets and letting out a low whistle.

"I am guessing there's some kind of magical alarm bullshit on the giant skylight," she says. It's a little bit rueful - if there weren't, then one of them might be able to get in that way, if the sorcerers prove to be less than cooperative.

"Probably. We would be very obvious trying to climb up to it, too," Winter says regretfully. He already feels uncomfortably exposed, coming straight up to a building rather than sneaking around it, casing it for at least a night, then finding a secret way inside. That won't work, this time.

He squares his shoulders. All right, they have a job to do. No more stalling. He starts up the stairs to the front door and bangs the extremely heavy knocker a few times.

It takes a long moment for someone to answer.

She follows him up the stairs, sidestepping so she's not quite in line with him, so they both have freedom to move and act if the wizards turn out to be less friendly than anticipated.

Which means she also gets a clear look at the fact that there's no on actually near the door - the robed figure inside stands several yards away. Well, so far, at least the wizards have a bit of showmanship to them.

Winter hesitates at the sight of their welcome wagon, who does not look particularly welcome. It's a middle-aged woman with a shaved head, yellow robes, and a stern expression.

"You should not be here," she says, without preamble or even asking them what they're doing.

Winter looks between her and Yelena, briefly, then says, "It's a free country."

Which isn't entirely true and they probably all know it, but the faint snark comes out anyway.

"This isn't a frivolous visit," Yelena says, though from the way the people on the street seemed to skip past the building like it wasn't there, she suspects there are rarely frivolous visits. "We can help each other."

"Hmm," the woman says, looking between the two of them with a serious expression. "And how can you help me? You have already changed the flow of time in this universe once. I do not see how changing it again will help anyone at all."

Winter opens his mouth, shuts it, glances at Yelena, then says, almost accusing, "You are not Doctor Strange."

"Doctor Strange is currently practicing surgery several boroughs away," the woman says. "He will not come to this house for another year."

Incomplete intel. Yelena suppresses a wince as she meets Winter's gaze, though her attention shifts back to the woman as she retorts.

He will not come to this house for another year.

"You are his predecessor?" she asks. Hopefully she is, and isn't just the house seer or...however the sorcerers structure their ranks.

"I am," the woman says, inclining her head gracefully at them. "You may call me the Ancient One."

Winter's skepticism is only mostly kept off his face. It's a testament to just how far he's come from his asset days that he can't quite keep from making an expression. What kind of a name is that. The Ancient One smiles, as if amused by his annoyance at her name.

He shakes himself a little. All right, find, they don't convince Doctor Strange, they convince this person. "There will be a worse interruption in time later," he says. "We know how to stop it."

"You are supposed to stop abuses of magic, yes?" Yelena says; it's a guess, but not one without some evidence behind it. This is an organization, with its own strongholds, and while she may be personally predisposed toward thinking such things held their own power above all else in importance, keeping order is certainly the story they tend to tell themselves.

"We are supposed to protect the flow of time," the Ancient One corrects. "Our oath is not against specific transgressions on the material plane, but to protect time itself."

That sounds almost as dumb as her name being Ancient One.

"There's going to be a ton more timeline messes in the future," he says. "We're trying to prevent a real bad one. Where someone takes that stone you're wearing--" Because he can see it now, her necklace, the same as what Strange had. "--and uses it to destroy half of all life in the whole universe."

She does look a little taken aback by that. Apparently she doesn't know everything. That's satisfying, at least.

Yelena's head cants, very slightly. "You can see the solution, yes? They need all of the stones for this - and if one of them is to be kept from him, the best candidate is the one that might let him go back and choose his time to take the others."

"What do you want me to do? Lock it in a box?" the Ancient one says, sounding skeptical, maybe even amusedly so.

"We want it destroyed," Winter says flatly, which seems to horrify her even more than the idea of half the universe being destroyed. She puts both hands to the pendant, as if he might grab it and try to crush it then and there. He might, if he thought he could, but he doubts it would be that easy.

"That would irreparably damage the timeline," she says. "And leave us defenseless."

"The purple alien destroys all of them when he's done with his thing," Winter shrugs. "The universe will survive. And I have faith you can protect the universe without it."

"What is the threat you're so worried about, that's worse than that?" Yelena asks, quiet and even and not at all like she wants to grab the woman and shake her until something like sense falls out. It won't make their argument, and would probably just result in being turned into a newt. Or perhaps, this being New York, into a rat.

"Cruel deities," the Ancient One begins. "Other dimensions. Devils. Dark magic. Evils you probably cannot even imagine."

"No, I can imagine them very well," Winter says. "I belonged to one of them for a while. Entities that fed on fear, and changed the people they chose to better suit that fear. We fought them without any fancy magic rocks." Maybe they didn't win in the same way as one would win in a regular war, but they beat them back enough to calm that world, for a while.

That does seem to make her pause, eying him warily. "I knew you had disrupted the timeline," she admits. "I had not known how or why."

"I can give you the whole story if you really want," Winter shrugs. "If it will convince you I know what I'm talking about."

The Ancient One looks back to Yelena. "And you believe everything this man says?"

"He isn't lying," Yelena says, meeting the strange woman's eyes squarely. "And he isn't crazy. And you would not be asking me this question if there wasn't a part of you that also believed."

Or was afraid to believe and clinging tight to what she knew and could control. Given her own experience with the powerful of the world, she's willing to bet that control is a not-insignificant part of the equation.

"I have been trying to understand this ripple in the timeline," the Ancient One admits, "with little success. How and why time suddenly changed around this one man, and how that was expanding into the rest of the timeline. Hearing that... explains many things."

She does look troubled. Winter looks between her and the amulet still in her hands.

"We've got some time," he offers. "A couple years before the purple alien shows up. If you need to, I don't know, think about it. Or prepare."

"I will need to think about it," the Ancient One says dryly. "And prepare. And consult with my fellows. How long will you wait in this city for my answer?"

Winter glances at Yelena, brows up. They have a few months before they need to be in Europe, but he knows Yelena in particular has no desire to linger here, so close to the Avengers. (Neither does he, really.)

"A week," Yelena says, which is longer than she's comfortable with, but just long enough that she doesn't think the woman will balk and say no out of sheer stubborn pride over being rushed. "We will have to move on, after that. Do sorcerers use cell phones?"

It's a genuine question. She doesn't know how magic works. She hadn't known, until Winter found her, that magic was even real.

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worthallthis - 2025-06-21 05:55 (UTC) - Expand

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