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]

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."

[worthallthis]

Winter can't exactly contradict her, there. Natalia, what little he remembers of her and picked up from Steve and Yelena herself, is absolutely the Avenger he wants the least to do with if possible. Steve would let him go if he made the right argument. Natalia would take him out at the knees. Or the arm. He's pretty sure she's upgraded her little electric discs by now to really take him down.

"So I guess New York it is. Once we've shaken any tails." He puffs out a breath. "Apparently I grew up there. When I was a--" He squashes the first word that he wants to put there. "--smaller person. A century ago."

[musicdied]

She catches that skip in conversation, and can guess at what might have been meant to fill that space, but since he didn't actually say it, she feels no need to run it down. She just gives him a small, crooked smile - slightly strained, though anyone who knows her (or, at least, her several-years-older self) less well than he does might be hard pressed to catch the strain.

"It is probably much bigger now," she says. "So maybe you will still feel small. Even if you are actually a giant."

[worthallthis]

"Should see Steve. He's bigger," Winter says. He doesn't actually know what to do about the strain in her smile, but he did anticipate it, at least. That she hasn't even ditched him yet is, in fact, something of a relief. She still might, in the end. "Have you been to New York before? Or are we relying on my memory and GPS to get us around?"

Yes, he has learned about GPS.

[musicdied]

"I have never been to New York," Yelena replies. "But we could find some maps of the city, probably. To help bridge what you remember, and whatever strange things the GPS tells us to do."

[worthallthis]

"Not sure if they make paper maps anymore," Winter sighs, only about half seriously. "But we can look. It'll take us a bit to get there. I can't fly commercial." He holds up the metal hand briefly in explanation. "I got this far by hiding away on a barge. Might be able to book you passage somewhere, and I can hide away in the luggage, or catch up to you later."

[musicdied]

She reaches out to gently touch his wrist, feeling the cool metal beneath her fingertips. She had, she thinks, done that as a child too, once, fascinated by this difference from all of the other grown-ups.

"We should both book passage on a cruise ship," she says. "It would take a little longer to travel that way, but they're much laxer about security because of all the rich tourists. It would not be too much trouble to alter your appearance enough that no one will recognize you, in that environment. Especially if we keep mostly to ourselves."

[worthallthis]

He keeps his hand up until she pulls hers away, maybe going a little more still, letting her touch it if she wants to. It makes him long, unexpectedly, for her to hug him again. The urge to get that close isn't a common one, but... he's missed her. And she's voluntarily touching him. It's been a while since anyone's done that, here, let alone someone he considers family.

"A cruise ship. I wouldn't have thought of that. I'm still... kind of awkward around people. Back in Glauchester, people were used to me. Here. Not so much. You wouldn't mind? Spending a week in a tiny cruise ship room with me?"

She can go out, maybe. More than him, with his metal arm and flat affect and halting speech. Give her some space. Some good food. A tan.

[musicdied]

Her fingertips trace over a few of the plates before she pulls back. "I wouldn't mind," she says. "I am used to close quarters, and you're already better company than Dreykov's men."

They were never afforded much privacy, between missions. If Dreykov could put them away in little boxes like dolls when they weren't needed without sacrificing their ability to function the way he'd like, she's fairly certain he would have.

[worthallthis]

"That is the lowest bar," he complains good-naturedly, settling his hand down on the gear-shift, within reach but not offered now that she's done with it. "Second-lowest, maybe. HYDRA goons might be a little worse." Maybe. Possibly not, though. "We'll do that, after we hide out for a day or two and make sure we have no immediate pursuit. No one will expect us to be passengers on a cruise ship."

[musicdied]

"I think being the spiritual descendants of Nazis makes HYDRA worse," Yelena allows, nose wrinkling slightly, as though at a foul smell. "But I don't have many points of comparison to put the bar higher yet. My targets were usually not much better than my handlers."

There had been one who'd had a genuine soft spot for children; that had been notable for its rarity.

[worthallthis]

"I didn't usually get close enough to my targets to know anything about them," Winter allows. "I've been told my company isn't terrible. I'm good at staying out of the way. Though. Uh. When I read, and it's not mission data, I usually do it out loud. If that bothers you, I can find somewhere else to do it."

[musicdied]

"I don't think that will bother me," Yelena says. And then hesitates, glancing away at the darkness beyond the car window. "It's been a long time since I've heard anyone read out loud."

[worthallthis]

"Some people find it distracting. Though a lot more than I expected seem to like it." He knows it didn't used to bother her, but this isn't quite his Yelena, and a lot of her affection for it before might well have come from affection for him. He also knows better than to ask when the last time she heard it was: it would surely be upsetting in some fashion for her. "I had several people I met up with just. To read to them. And kids in a library."

He kind of misses that, actually. Those were good kids.

[musicdied]

"You still like little children?" she asks, and though she doesn't look away from the space beyond the windshield, a small smile plays at the corners of her lips.

(She isn't entirely sure that "still" is the right word, that he liked them rather than just having no taste for cruelty, and a gentle streak that had no other outlet. Either way, it had been significant to her. To the few of them who had survived later trials.)