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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Even with two years in Gloucester behind him, Winter is still not exactly an infiltrator. He can act like a normal person for a few hours at a time, and he can be invisible if he needs to be, but he can't really pretend to be someone else. So he's not pretending to be someone else: he's just waiting for his chance, and he's playing to his strengths.

He has two rifles, on the opposite building's roof, and he's made himself a little nest. One rifle has bullets. The second has a tranq.

It's taken him the three months since his return to put down a few HYDRA bases, leave Steve some little gifts and send him postcards and notes, and get used to having his serum active again. The clarity of his senses, the way a rifle takes no effort at all to heft, the abrupt lessening of pain... he almost didn't trust it, too used to the cost it would take. But he hasn't had to scare anyone to use it, so hopefully-- hopefully, it's fine.

The Red Room is not perfect. The Red Room has gotten, perhaps, a little lax in its opsec. The Red Room hasn't had anyone hunting them in too long. He has a clear shot in the handler, through one window; he just needs another clear shot through the other window for Yelena. With luck, he can tranq her first, then take out the handler without ever alerting her to his presence.

It is, perhaps, more accurate to say that they haven't had anyone hunting them who has an assassin's skills - with SHIELD believing Dreykov dead, the worst the Widows have had to deal with are local law enforcement, easier by far to evade, and not nearly aware enough of what they're dealing with.

Then, too, there is the fact that while they're valuable tools, they're also considered disposable. A Widow who has been caught is typically a dead Widow, unless she's cut off from all communication with the Red Room before she has a chance to act.

Dropping Yelena first is a good idea, for more reason than one.

Still, it takes some time before an opportunity presents itself. There's no good angle on the space she uses for her work - she's several floors up, but that's no excuse for leaving any documents where a casual glance through a window might spot them, even when they're carefully stowed away while she's not actively working.

Eventually, though, the noise from the laugh track in the living room grows annoying. Yelena shoves away from her desk, and crosses the room towards the nightstand where she's left her ipod. It isn't a long window of exposure, just enough for her to pass by the window, there and back, but given his skill, it's certainly enough.

That is more than enough time. The silenced rifle fires, the dart aimed for her shoulder. He trusts his aim not to hit a major vein in her neck in a still target, but he doesn't trust her not to move in the split second after the dart punches through the window and ruin his aim. Shoulder is safer. It'll take a few seconds longer to take effect, but it'll be worth it not to have to do any first aid.

He is not afraid of the handler in the slightest.

As soon as the dart has hit its mark, he immediately grabs the rifle with bullets and sights on the handler. Even if the man vaults over his chair if Yelena calls for him or he hears the dart break the glass, that's plenty of time to get a bullet in his brain.

Yelena's head whips around at the sound of breaking glass, and one hand snaps up to her shoulder. Her eyes widen as she finds the dart. She pulls it free in a small arc of blood - too late, given the hot pain that radiates out from the small wound as the drug disperses through muscle, seeping into her bloodstream.

Her handler doesn't hear the window break. He does hear her call out a warning, even as she stumbles against the wall, fighting to keep upright, to keep conscious. He doesn't vault his chair to go to her aid. He drops instead, throwing himself to the floor, to safety.

He isn't nearly fast enough.

He falls, all right, with a bullet through the temple. Winter doesn't rush, from there. He puts his rifles away in their cases, climbs down the fire escape, tucks the gun cases into his car, and then heads into Yelena's building to climb the stairs and kick in her apartment door.

Picking it would result in a nasty shock, he knows. And kicking it in blows the trap wire before it could do any damage.

He ignores the handler's body and prowls directly to Yelena's, half-expecting her to have left some kind of trap on her own body in her last breaths of consciousness, but sure he can handle it.

She'd made it to the desk before the tranquilizers had taken her and she'd fallen, curled around her laptop like it's some sort of security blanket. That's what she'd trapped, and not herself, wiring it to her Widow's Bite so that moving it will create a surge that fries it beyond repair.

Destroy the evidence. She'd fallen unconscious before the second part of that order came, the one to end her own life so that nothing can be learned from her. It crackles over the earpiece she wears, faint and tinny and only audible thanks to Winter's enhanced hearing.

Winter crouches beside her, tilting his head at her set-up. Making sure the zap won't hurt her if he triggers it. And plucking that earpiece out to tuck safely away in a special pocket meant to block transmissions. He doesn't want to smash it, since it's possible they can use it to trace where the orders came from, but she's not going to need it anymore after this.

He pulls her arm away from the laptop-- lets it fry; he doesn't give a shit about that data, anything on it will be in Yelena's head anyhow-- then rolls her over so he can find a vein. It's the work of seconds to inject the antidote, though he doesn't know how long it will take to actually work, and then he slings her gently over his shoulder to carry away.

When she comes to, she's in the passenger seat of a beat up sedan, safely buckled in and otherwise unrestrained but relieved of all her weapons, with a strangely familiar face pulling them off the highway and into a motel parking lot. He doesn't look at her, but she can clearly tell he knows she's awake.

When she comes to, the first thing she notices, even before the feeling of movement as the car turns down the off ramp, is pain. Her head aches abominably, and it's not just the side effects of the tranquilizer, though she recognizes that in the dull, throbbing stiffness of her muscles and the dryness in her mouth, as though she'd swallowed a whole bag of cotton balls. It feels like something's gone after her cerebral cortex with a tiny hatchet, like some grim biological rendition of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The light, when she manages to crack her eyes open, feels like an assault, and she can only just make out the shape of the man beside her.

"You know, there are easier ways to get a girlfriend," she quips, her voice a rusty croak, covering her desperate struggle to recall anything between feeling her legs begin to buckle and this, here, the strange car and the strange man.

Or is he? There's something naggingly familiar as her eyes adjust - grudgingly - to things like input and light again.

There's a snort that's probably amused. "Gross, Yelena. You know I don't like touching that much."

Well, she doesn't know, probably. She might have picked it up from when she was small and his touches to position her were always brief and feather-light. But that was years ago, for her, and he had been one of many instructors, and she'd been a frightened child. He knows this isn't his Yelena, knows she doesn't know him like that.

It doesn't matter. He's still her Winter, and he got her out. They'll work it out. "The Red Room's control of you should be nullified," he says, voice more like she'd remember it: soft and flat.

That isn't the name she'd been using, and she jolts upright at the sound of it, quick enough that the seatbelt catches hard against her chest, and she expels a breath in a short little oof of surprise.

"How do you know me?" she asks.

And then the rest of his words process, and they are - somehow, impossibly - true. She knows it because the only urgency to escape she feels is that of a young woman who's been drugged and carted off by a man who isn't as much a stranger as he should be, because there's no compulsion to return as soon as she can to her handlers, or to take her own life if prevented.

"How?" she asks, more quietly this time, something raw in her voice. And then, "A knife. I need a knife."

He pulls into a parking space in the motel, puts the car into park, and immediately produces a small combat blade, flipping it in his hand to offer to her hilt-first. Because this is not America and the car's steering wheel is on the right, that hand is the left, metal one.

"For a tracker. Right? I didn't know where it was, but I knew you probably had one. There is a signal jammer active in my bag, so you can wait until we get inside to take it out, if you want."

None of that is an explanation. He'll get to that, but first he needs her to know the basics, and to feel safe. Well, safer.

She takes the knife, fingers brushing the chilly metal of his hand, and it's then that she recognizes him, remembers the feel of articulate metal guiding her.

"You taught me..." she murmurs, mostly to herself, and gives her head a sharp shake. And regrets it immediately as stars burst behind her eyes and she struggles to keep her expression even.

"I'll wait. Untile we're inside." And she's sure her hands will be steady, and that there will be clean towels to soak up the blood if she cuts too deep.

Or if she doesn't. The chip's shallowly embedded, but there will still be blood.

He watches her face a moment, looking for whatever signs she gives of her feelings, then smiles faintly and nods. "Okay. I'm going to go pay for a room. If you really want to run for it while I'm in there, you can, but. I would rather you didn't."

He undoes his own seat belt and climbs out of the car, heading into the motel lobby.

At the very least, it'll give her a minute to make sure she's composed. And he won't stop her if she runs... but he hopes to hell she doesn't.

In the end, she doesn't run. Maybe later, once she's cut the tracker from her leg and slipped it into the trunk of some poor fellow guest, the better to throw anyone looking off her scent. Maybe once she has answers about how he'd broken Dreykov's control, something that might be - she doesn't let herself think beyond that. Answers first, then a plan to follow.

She slips out of the car, paces a circle around it, then prowls down the parking lot to peer at the other license plates. She can guess how far they must have driven based on the time she'd glimpsed on the dashboard, but that doesn't tell her in which direction. The plates, at least, give her something of an idea.

They've driven far enough north and west that they're now in France, though not far in, as there are still a few Swiss license plates. The car her former teacher drove in has German license plates, though there are new ones in the trunk to change to in the morning.

He comes back out and goes still at the sight of the empty car, until he spots her still standing not far off down the lot. His shoulders slump with relief, and he continues to the car to collect his things. Their things, since he has a few changes of clothes for her in his duffel, too.

He waits there for her to come to him, rather than calling out or following after her.

France. It's not, in the grand scheme of things, that far from where she'd fallen unconscious. At the same time, it's a world, a lifetime, a universe away. She shudders slightly, wrapping her arms tightly around herself to ward off a chill that's entirely internal, and remains where she is, back to him and to the car for a long moment.

Once she's rallied her control - clinging to it by her fingertips - she finally turns back, stride brisk and businesslike as she moves to join him.

"What happened to Sasha?" she asks quietly. Her handler, presumably, late and unlamented.

"Bullet to the head," Winter says without apology. "Come on, I got our room. Second floor, this corner." Good sight lines and two potential escape routes (three, if they blow out the wall). Also close to where he's parked. There's a staircase to swing down right there.

He turns to climb said staircase, duffel in one hand and the other, gloved, on the rail. "I'll explain when we're inside. I promise." He glances back at her. "How much do you remember. About me."

"Too bad." There's a slight, vicious twist to her voice that indicates the part she regrets is that she wasn't the one to supply the bullet.

He had not been the worst of Dreykov's monsters. He'd still been one of them.

She follows him up the steps, gaze roving restlessly, though she keeps her steps measured and nerves in check. He'd said he had a signal jammer to mute her tracker. She still half-expects a kill team to pop out of the shadows at any moment. She's long since learned to have little trust in any equipment she hasn't prepared for herself.

She's silent for a long moment, trying to ignore the throbbing in her skull as she sifts through her memories. "You were patient," she says finally. "Gentle. I remember thinking you seemed sad sometimes. You never beat me for making a mistake. And then you were gone."

Because the girls were too fond of him? Because he'd been reassigned to something more important that training tiny murderers? She's not sure, and asking questions had been heavily discouraged.

He takes that in, adds it to his own recollections of that time. "I remember mixing up your names sometimes, but not why they reassigned me," he admits, coming to the top of the stairs and unlocking the door. He sets the duffel down just inside and prowls the room, checking all the corners, behind and under the furniture, and especially the windows.

"You can take your tracker out in the bathroom," he adds as he does so. "I'll be done in a minute and bring in some first aid supplies."

She watches him check the room, and some measure of tension seeps slowly from her posture. She doesn't quite trust him - not yet, not really - but he's thorough, and that means whatever else might come, they are not likely to be captured by her masters tonight.

She heads for the bathroom, the knife a comforting weight that more than balances out the anticipation of pain. "Just knock before you come in. I have to take my pants off to cut it out, so it might be awkward if you don't."

"You're not going to be putting them back on before I bring you the first aid kit," he says, from where he's running metal fingers around the window frame, but also: "I'll knock."

He takes the time to lock and lightly trap the door and windows before he does knock, though.

"I know where they've been," she says, and there's a hint of brittle humour there, the nascent version of the deflective shield he must be used to seeing her older self deploy against those she's not willing to trust with her deeper feelings.

She disappears behind the bathroom door. There is the brief sound of running water - and then silence. When he knocks, her voice is carefully controlled as she replies, "You can come in."

'In' smells like blood, not thick enough to suggest she's done herself undue harm, but thick enough to, perhaps, be a little disconcerting. Her clothes are folded neatly on the counter - pants, yes, but shirt as well - and she's seated in the bathtub where the blood will be the easiest to clean up after, face tight with pain as she pries the small metal capsule holding her tracker from the gash in her thigh.

He settles down on the toilet seat, holding the first aid kit on his knee until she's ready for it.

And he holds out the metal hand for the capsule once she has it removed. "I have spare clothes for you, when you're done," he says. "We'll get you some more tomorrow. And tonight I'll answer any question you have." He pauses, then adds, "You might not like all the answers, though." He's already decided he's going to tell the truth, no matter how fantastical it is. He's no good at lying.

She sucks in a sharp breath as the capsule comes free, and leans over to place it in his waiting palm. It's small, no longer than the nail on her pinky finger and less than half the width, and streaked with blood.

"If you only gave me answers I like," she says, voice a little rough, "I would know you were lying."

She holds a hand out for the kit, studying him closely. After a moment, she asks, "Why?"

He closes his hand, plates whirring, and crushes the device. The remains he drops into the trash. While leading the Red Room astray has its merits, he'd rather not subject some poor ordinary person to their scrutiny.

Then he hands over the kit, it's small but complete with antibiotic spread, surgical thread, and plenty of small bandage strips. "Because for two years, in another world. You were my family. And when I came back to this world, I couldn't leave my family with the Red Room."

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Early release - for worthallthis

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