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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"Then I will shoot them first," Yelena decides, and the clear resolve in her voice is, at least, familiar. "Even if I have to shoot you or run after, at least they'll be dead. It's the least that I owe you."

She glances down, gaze focusing on his hand and the square of gauze. "I don't think people like us have any luck except for the bad kind."

Despite the subject, he has to smile a bit at her, for that. That's the Yelena he knows and loves, all right. She might not love him yet-- she might never. But even if she never does, he won't stop.

"You don't owe me anything," he promises her. "I decided to try to be a person, because of you. I'm just glad I could get you free. That's enough like luck, for me."

He tapes the last edge of the gauze down. "I have a change of clothes for you. I'll get them."

"That wasn't me," she says quietly. Foolish, perhaps, to feel envious of herself - but for some other her to be able to inspire that much loyalty when she feels like little more than a broken, string-cut doll aches in ways she doesn't have any words for.

She keeps her gaze averted, counting the threads in the gauze and tucking her hands beneath her thighs so he can't see them shaking. Belatedly, she adds, "Thank you."

For the clothes. For patching her up. She isn't entirely certain herself.

"You're still you," Winter says with absolute faith. Even if this version of Yelena hadn't done those things, he trusts that she would, given the same choices in the same situation. She's already gotten her back up over his own treatment, and she's only known him as he is now for an hour.

He packs up the first aid kit and gets up. "You're welcome. You're welcome to anything I have and can do, or to make your own way if you'd rather do that. But I've got a lot of potential plans, and I think we could do well working together."

"I'll listen to your plans," she says. There's a long moment's hesitation before she admits, "I don't know how I would even start making my own way. Not walking away in the parking lot is the first choice I've really made for myself since I was six years old."

She'd figure it out - she's sure of that much - but the enormity of possibility is daunting enough to shorten her breath. It still pricks her pride a little to admit to it, but if anyone would understand...

... it would certainly be this guy. He nods, then heads out of the room to collect her clothes. He keeps talking, as he does. "I used to lock up when picking out a meal. In the cafeteria. I still have trouble, sometimes, with choices aren't in the middle of a fight, or aren't tied to something I've already decided. But it's easier than it was."

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.

Early release - for worthallthis

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