Early release - for worthallthis

[musicdied]

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.

Comments

[musicdied]

"We will have to kill them if we do," she says as she slides into the passenger's seat, tugging the door shut and fussing with her seatbelt. "Kill or evade."

It hadn't bothered her at the time, watching her fellow Widows die rather than submit to capture. It hadn't been allowed to bother her. Failure meant death; there would always be other girls.

It bothers her now. Better a clean death at the hand of an enemy than forced suicide, ugly and inevitable.

[worthallthis]

"I can do whichever is necessary. I'm aiming for evade for now, though. Since we can't free them yet," he agrees. He'd rather free them. But the remedy he had they were pretty sure would only for for Yelena.

It's okay. He has a plan. They'll get them free eventually. "I am planning on freeing them," he adds as he starts the car up. "That's one of my sets of plans."

[musicdied]

"How many do you have?" she asks. She shifts slightly, so that her shoulder rests against the door and she can study him in the strange, patchy light of the parking lot.

She sounds curious. Evaluating, maybe. The trust isn't there, but he's managed to catch and keep her interest, and for the moment, that's nearly as good.

[worthallthis]

"Three broad ones. I'm still working on the details of two of them. I have the fall of the Red Room pretty well planned out, though, provided I have you to help me. I have backup plans if you aren't interested, but I have the best chance of success with you."

He pulls out of the parking lot and points them towards the highway. "The other two are destroying the remains of HYDRA. And preventing something called the Blip." Yelena's future self wasn't the only person he pummeled for intel before coming back here.

Ironically, rooting out HYDRA is actually his least solid plan right now.

[musicdied]

It's a good incentive to stay. For someone so blunt, she thinks, he's surprisingly good at manipulation. Or perhaps her other self had just told him exactly where to apply leverage to best effect.

(Or maybe, some small and barely-formed part of her whispers, they had just been friends, and he knew what would be important to her.)

"Those are some very ambitious plans," she says. Then, "What the fuck is the Blip?"

[worthallthis]

It is true that he knows stopping the Red Room is important to her, but mostly he'd just being honest. He wants her to stay with him, sure, but he has backup plans for if she doesn't. This is him giving her an out if she feels she needs one.

"In 2018 an alien uses the infinity stones to destroy half of the population of every planet everywhere," Winter explains. "Including you and me. Then five years later, the remaining Avengers gather the infinity stones again to bring them back. I don't know why that call it that. It is a very dumb name."

[musicdied]

"It is the worst name," Yelena agrees, nose wrinkling slightly. It makes it sound trivial, like whoever came up with it was trying to downplay the mass death it apparently refers to.

She can barely wrap her head around the thought of half the planet being suddenly gone, around how many other people must have died, immediately or slowly, as a direct result. Applying that to countless other planets - she retreats from the notion, shuddering slightly.

"Are you planning to blow up the alien?" She could get behind that, possibly.

[worthallthis]

"I am planning to blow up an infinity stone. Maybe two," he answers. "I can't get to the alien from here, and the whole Avengers team couldn't blow him up when he gets here. But there are two infinity stones on Earth right now. Without those, the alien can't do his thing."

[musicdied]

She considers this for a long moment, then nods. "That is a sound idea. I'll help you, if you find them."

It will, a small, distant part of her - a part still only just stirring from having been buried deep in her psyche for the better part of a decade - thinks, be better than causing mass casualties.

[worthallthis]

He flashes her a smile, twitches his hand in her direction like he wants to touch, then reins himself in. "I know where two are. One is with a powerful sorcerer in New York. The other is in a HYDRA base somewhere in Sokovia. We should get the one in the HYDRA base within the next six months, to prevent a few other awful things." The destruction of Sokovia and the creation of Vision, both of which would cause Wanda great pain.

"And we can't hit the Red Room for a while, anyway," he adds, "because I only know where the creator of the cure is for about a week period, and that's not for another year and a half. We could try to hunt her down sooner, but espionage is not my best skill."

[musicdied]

"It is one of mine," she says. "But if we start hunting now, it might bring attention to her before she's ready. They will be on alert, after they find me gone and my handler dead. They'll probably assume it was someone's intelligence agency that found me, but they will still be on alert."

She tips her head to rest against the glass, expression shading thoughtful. "I've never broken into a HYDRA base before. That sounds like it would be the best one to go for first, before trying to approach the sorcerer - is he a friend, or are we going to fight a wizard?"

[worthallthis]

"I'm hoping we can just explain things to the wizard," Winter says dubiously. "I don't know him." Or her, at this point in the timeline. "But we can head to Sokovia next, once we're sure we've lost pursuit, and hunt down that base. There are two enhanced at the base, siblings, or there will be. The best chance of success involves getting one of them to blow up the infinity stone there. I think I can talk to her and convince her."

[musicdied]

"Captives?" she asks. It seems like the most likely explanation - it's difficult to imagine anyone voluntarily involved with HYDRA giving up a powerful tool they could use for control. It's certainly difficult imagining it being a sure enough thing to hinge a plan on.

[worthallthis]

"I think they volunteered." Which, yeah, makes no sense to him at all, but he's long since accepted that some things about people he will never understand. "But then didn't get what they expected out of it, in the end. Steve seemed to trust them," he says. "And I. Met one of them, for a little while, in that other world. Wanda. Even if they believe now, or will then, I think I know the things to say to get her on our side. If she doesn't stop the path she's on, her twin will die."

[musicdied]

Yelena considers that, then nods slowly. "That is a powerful motivator." It's quiet, and her gaze skips away, focusing on nothing in particular in the darkness beyond the windshield.

"Hopefully she doesn't think it's a threat and try to explode you," she adds after a moment.

[worthallthis]

"Hopefully," he agrees, injecting a little dryness into his voice. "I think I can walk that line, though. I know what HYDRA's like. And by then, so will she." He finally gets them off surface streets and onto the highway, and they can pick up speed. "Do you have other questions for me?"

[musicdied]

"What is our window for hitting the base in Sokovia?" Yelena asks. "I am guessing from what you've said that it's probably going to be raided by someone in the not too distant future."

Probably by the Avengers, she thinks. It sounds like the sort of madness they'd take on, and the last thing she wants is to run into them. To Natasha, in particular.

[worthallthis]

"We have almost six months until the Avengers find it and destroy it, and take the mind stone with them," Winter answers, both her spoken and unspoken question. "A lot of really bad things will happen if they take it. So even if we can't blow the stone up immediately, we need to at least take it with us. It's possible even if Wanda won't do blow it up, the sorcerer will have something he can do."

[musicdied]

Yelena turns this over in her head a few times, then nods. "Then we will have plenty of time for reconnaissance and a strike on the facility, even after laying low for a while. Do we need any kind of special equipment to keep the stone contained, if we can't get it destroyed immediately?"

[worthallthis]

"Apparently it's stuck to a staff. That mortals can touch. And I've got a metal hand I can use on it anyway, just in case," he says. "In the future, Tony Stark would use one of his Iron Man gloves to carry it and that seemed safe enough. Getting it overseas if Wanda won't help will be trickier, though."

[musicdied]

"I can forge a manifest to transport dangerous things," Yelena says, nibbling the inside of her lip in thought. "I've done it before. But I am guessing this isn't something that is safe to check. Would you be able to contact the wizard in this time, and have him come meet us on this side of the ocean?"

[worthallthis]

"We can go to him first," Winter nods. "He's in New York. Once we're sure things have cooled off a little, we can go there, before we go overseas." And if New York makes him a little nervous, well, it's probably only to be expected. He hasn't been back there since the 1940s, apparently. He has no idea what it will be like.

[musicdied]

"New York," she repeats, and sighs. "Of course. Well, the Avengers cannot possibly be everywhere in the city."

[worthallthis]

"Most of them aren't there right now," Winter assures her. "Steve and Wilson are looking for me. Barton and Romanova are in Europe looking for the scepter." Really, they mostly only have to worry about Tony and Banner, and they won't be looking places they're likely to go.

Well, okay, nobody's sure where Thor is, but he shouldn't be back on the planet yet according to his Steve's intel.

[musicdied]

"Then we'll have to be careful when we take it," Yelena says grimly, and it's not just the desire to avoid the sister who abandoned her that drives the remark. Natasha was the best in her generation, and Barton was the one who'd convinced her to turn. They are, in her estimation, the most dangerous of the Avengers to run into if they want to keep something from them.

"But that's good. We can work around the ones who are left."