for viuva.

[armeyets]

canon
graveyard meet cute

that au where nat is still alive
midnight texts | aprongate 2k21 | injuries | halloween | new year's eve | holiday party | pre-thunderbolts

other aus
pacific rim

Comments

[viuva]

Hm.

[ yelena hums, contemplative, but it's not quite an answer she finds satisfactory enough. he may not be the winter soldier anymore, but he sure as hell looks a lot like him. she blinks back at the man and watches his face — surveying for the tiniest of cracks to peek through, get an idea of who he is without having to ask a single thing.

only because there are a million of things running through her brain, most of them being questions and wouldn't it be rude to bombard this nice stranger with all of them anyway? or maybe this warrants it. this is her sister's grave after all; she has a right to say whatever the fuck she wants.

except, she doesn't. instead, she treads carefully. well, at least until he moves back and it's instinct for her to mirror his movements, in the event of danger. she needs more room — for him to show her he comes in peace? and that he came here completely empty-handed? rookie move, she thinks.

but yelena did the same, having left her gun and tiny dagger in the glovebox of her pick-up, also like a chump.

she returns the favour, brings her hands up and shakes her sleeves to let him know she's no threat here either. she even opens her coat because she's wearing a lot of pockets, and she would definitely think she'd be hiding something in there if she were him.

natasha hardly divulged any details about her other life to yelena, her better life. the only reason why yelena isn't holding the nearest and sharpest branch to his throat is because she knew he and nat were on the same side — knowledge she'd learned no thanks to her sister, but to the news. ]

Вы, наверное, меня тогда не помните.

[ then in english: ]

Were you friends with her?

[armeyets]

[ even more than the question, it's the first sentence which makes him stop and stare at her long (too long, he has a habit of staring even at the best of times), trying to make the pieces fit. all those years as the winter soldier hadn't been like an empty haze — ignorance is bliss — but instead like watching his own actions through smeared glass, watching as his body went through the motions without him able to stop himself. he remembers. he remembers. i remember all of them.

except. he assesses the stranger: fluent russian, accented english, easy grace in that turn of her heel as she mirrors his movements. ballerina-trained or red room trained or both. probably both.

had he ever seen her at the red room? had he ever trained her? ]

You were one of them, but I— don't recognise you. Sorry.

[ a weird kind of embarrassment. like meeting someone at a party and not remembering their name later, like they were that unmemorable, when that wasn't the case. it had simply been such a rotating series of anonymous girls, all stern-faced and cut from the same mould. and time slipped between each time he was woken up for training, decades passing and making them unrecognisable: blink one day and all those little girls suddenly grew up overnight to be living weapons. he tried to remember if natasha (natalia, back then) had ever hung around a blonde in particular. not that he could recall. the red room had burned out sentiment and personal attachments, too, and she'd been good at hiding her cards.

the next question is comparatively so much easier to answer: ]

We were. She and Steve were close. And after the Sokovian Accords, we were all on the run together for a while.

[ all honest, and maybe he should hesitate to give that away, but whatever. it's there in all the old news articles anyway, all their names listed alongside each other as ross hunted them like a bloodhound. ]