NOV 26 & DEC 12 | San Francisco, multiple | MID warnings violence, emotional crap
Yelena left a note for Julie; she had a responsibility to the girl and she needed to know enough about Yelena’s whereabouts to know where to go in case of an emergency. In this case: go to one of the boys and their guardians. She was stepping out.
Natasha was gone. Yelena’s descent into chaotic violence had happened while her sister was there and while the blonde was afraid of losing her. Now? She had lost her. Again. Natasha was gone and there was nothing she could do about it. Maybe Natasha would come waltzing in the next day like before. Yelena hated ‘maybe’ and needed reality. But the reality of her situation sucked and she wasn’t the type to sit and drink and numb the pain.
No, Yelena needed to replace the pain. She needed to shove other things into the places that pain was carving out within her and all she had at her disposal just then was her rage. And rage needed an outlet.
By the time Yelena had found what she needed, the sky had darkened and a crowd filled a previously-empty space with boisterous noise and jeers. It was like a Fight Club on steroids. Literally, in many cases. Sure, she could have found something productive. Sure, she could have asked Coulson if he had any last minute leads. Yelena just wanted a fight and that meant walking into a circle of shouting witnesses while in her civilian clothes. She didn’t bother to wrap and protect her fists. She also didn’t bother with any kind of mask or anything to hide her identity. It didn’t matter.
Green eyes watched her opponent before taking in the crowd and the way money was getting passed around. She would have been offended at people not betting on her if she’d actually been there for any kind of fun. Didn’t people bet on the smaller fighter anymore? She huffed a sigh and shrugged her jacket off to set it aside when she was motioned forward. Yelena stared up at the man who sneered down at her - and then her expression changed, minutely, as the go-ahead signal was given. Game on.
Yelena was toying with him. She knew it. She was almost certain he knew it. Every single button that could be pressed, she was jabbing at it to make him more and more angry as the crowd went crazy. Feral. And then, because this was turning out to be unsatisfying, Yelena let him get a hit in. Jaw. And then another. Left side though she didn’t let him in at an angle that would break a rib. She needed those. Three returned hits later and Yelena’s knuckles had split open against the man’s chin. It had snapped his head backward and he went over like a felled tree. Out, not dead.
There was a shift in the crowd’s energy and Yelena turned, danger injecting itself into the air as she heard someone repeat a shouted complaint: she was a super, she was cheating. Yelena shouted back in Russian, her gestures universally translated. And then she was outnumbered. This was what she’d been looking for.
It didn't matter how Matt got there, at the end of the day. It didn't matter that he only waded into the fray when it got really bad, when it was evident that Yelena was holding back, but not expecting others to do the same. He got a few fists in some very soft parts for his trouble. Nothing that gave. Nothing that broke. He didn't care. All that mattered was making his way through the mass of bodies to get to the only person he was there for.
His hand found her upper arm, and he tugged hard—mostly to get her attention, but also to pull her out of the path of a particularly vicious roundhouse. It wouldn't have landed if she didn't want it to. However, at this point Matt wasn't sure she didn't want it to. Not after Natasha. Not again. "Let's go!"
The hand around her arm wasn't shrugged off, even as she was pulled. A foot swiped past her face, so close it blew a wisp of hair across her forehead, and Yelena didn't so much as flinch. The voice cut through the noise of the crowd and Yelena's turned to glare, immediately disappointed that Matt couldn't get the full effect.
She snapped something, again in Russian, that was uncomplimentary but Yelena didn't strike out at Matt. He hadn't done anything to earn a fight. Well, other than wade into the one that had broken out. She might have been the initial target of some but a feral crowd was easily turning into a brawl. Pent up energy with nowhere else to go. Yelena felt a momentary pang of guilt as she stepped around Matt--putting him in the path of someone else because his focus was going to end up there instead of on her and then she could pull free. She wasn't ready to leave. Yelena was out for blood and she didn't care whose, including her own.
In the throng of bodies and sounds, Matt was having a harder and harder time picking up on what was coming from where. He had no time to stop. No time to center himself, especially when he was worried about Yelena. So he was utterly unprepared when she turned him. He had just enough warning to throw up an arm to ward off something flying at his face. It was barely enough.
The bone broke with an audible snap. Matt couldn't even scream. He smashed his foot into someone's leg and heard them go down, then cradled his arm. "Stop," he implored, low, tired, clearly in shock and uncertain if she was even around anymore. "Please stop."
Yelena froze for the half-second it took to realize what had--and hadn't--happened. And then she was moving and their entire dynamic shifted; Matt was her charge and she maneuvered him with one hand fisted into his jacket. All he had to do was trust her. It was nearly literal, fighting with one hand tied behind her back, but she'd done more with worse before and this was an untrained crowd. Brawlers. People who were angry and hungry for violence.
She accepted certain attacks because it allowed her to step under defenses to then put the person out of the running for coming out on top of the chaotic brawl. All the while, Yelena aimed them unerringly toward an exit--as long as he kept trusting her. It wasn't a straight path and maybe she needed to look into personal bodyguard work... if only people took her smaller frame seriously. Yelena remained mostly-quiet up until a fist landed in her gut and forced the air out of her lungs in a rather painful way. It wasn't that she'd missed the incoming attack, it was that she'd assessed rapidly that it was worth accepting because the owner of said fist had a gun that she'd caught sight of. As Yelena doubled over, she gave a gentle push and released her hold on Matt only to slide up against her attacker before her body could scream its demand for air. Black Widows were put through worse, after all. In a smooth motion, Yelena slipped the gun out and swung her arm across the man's head to drop him like a stone. Then she gasped for air and doubled over. Two shots fired into the air and though screams and shouting were the immediate result, the crush of the crowd moved away.
There was no apology as she backed up toward Matt. They were near enough to the exit. "Two steps left. Turn around. Walk. I have your back," Yelena said, too-calm. And if he suddenly couldn't walk? She'd carry him.
The throbbing of his nerve endings was more than enough to keep him in Yelena's wake. He could barely focus on much else, only keeping himself upright and dodging weakly around directionless limbs thrown in his path while he breathed through the pain. More violence—how easy it seemed, how distant—and then gunshots loud enough to send his senses reeling all the more. It would have been nice to be impressed by it all, but he was staggering toward the unseasonably sweltering air.
No wonder people are cranky, came a ridiculous thought from the back of his mind. He almost laughed; he wasn't sure he'd stop if he did. Fortunately, no one physically stopped him, and the noise died down immediately once he was past the concrete walls. "Will you take me home?" He trusted she was there, but still couldn't quite tell for sure. "Or am I taking the world's most exorbitant ride share home?"
Yelena emptied the gun of the clip and confirmed the chamber was empty before pocketing said clip and scrubbing the gun with the hem of her tank top before tossing the gun entirely into a heap of garbage.
Her breathing was too measured and Yelena stopped with narrowed eyes as she realized Matt was having trouble tracking her. "You're an idiot," she said, in Russian. A simple phrase and one that had, unbeknownst to her, been taught to Matt. But the words let him pinpoint her and that had been half the reason she'd said them; the other half being that they were the truth. Anger flushed through her and it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him to get his own ride home but he was actively-injured and it had gotten loud. Yelena might have been feeling reckless but she wasn't going to put Matt in danger on purpose. Not in that way. For a moment, she wondered if he'd allowed himself to get hurt so that he could prey on her feelings for him. Yelena had wanted to get hurt, physically, so that it would override the other kind of hurt she was feeling. Emotions couldn't be stitched and bandaged. A bead of sweat dripped down the back of her neck and between her shoulder blades; it was too hot to stay outside and consider options.
"Let me see your arm," she finally said, tone level. She was pissed. And with Matt injured in such a way, Yelena couldn't even begin to attempt to use him as an outlet instead.
No argument there, since in this moment Matt completely agreed with her. Between Yelena's comments and Phil's instruction, he was picking up more and more of what Yelena muttered and griped about.
The air outside could have been a blast furnace, and it made his arm throb to the point where his stomach roiled, but he still turned so she could examine it. He didn't have to see it to know the ugly bruise and noticeable dent was right there on his forearm. The din behind him was quieting as the violent eruption petered out of its own accord. He didn't think the same could be said about Yelena. Her stillness spoke volumes; it worried him, almost more than the present state of his injury. "This is where I tell you it's fine, and then you call me an idiot again."
Yelena ground her teeth together when she saw the damage and the fury could have radiated off her if she didn't have such a tight lid on her emotions and everything else. "You have two sets of options, Matthew," she said, voice too-even. "I can set it or you can wait. We can go to the emergency room or we can see the healing girl."
She knew very well what Rapunzel's name was. That wasn't the point just then. "Choose. I'll call a car."
"That seems like three choices," he pointed out, although even as he said it, he knew it was ill advised. "Or possibly four, depending on how you look at it." Yeah, he was almost being goading. Was it conscious? Matt couldn't have said. Hers was a wire pulled so taut it would either snap or play the most tragic note ever heard. Yet there he was, playing it like it wasn't the most dangerous thing he could be doing—and that included wading into an all-out brawl. He grimaced and flexed his fingers. They were starting to get numb at the ends. "I'll wait for Rapunzel. I should probably set aside a gift basket for her this year. A big one. You, of course, are getting premium vodka and cases of sriracha and boxed mac'n'cheese."
"Two sets," Yelena said and there should have been a snap in her voice but it was missing. Her eyes narrowed at the way he flexed his fingers. "And you lose one of those now," she continued and moved in closer to him, sliding her fingers along his arm as the only warning and paused just long enough for him to stop her.
But if his fingers were starting to go numb, he needed help sooner than they would get back to the blonde who might not have even been at the Station just then. Yelena braced herself against Matt so that he was practically along her back and pulled. It was a maneuver she'd done in the field before when time was more important and a kill switch was mere seconds away. It wasn't pleasant but it would do the job and Yelena was numb to the reaction it got every time. And if he needed to pass out from the pain, he could do so and all she needed to do was take the weight along her back. If he needed to vomit, she wouldn't even give him a hard time about it. And maybe all of that meant she was no longer getting the cases of sriracha and boxed macaroni and cheese. She’d hold him to the vodka; the Station always needed to be stocked with vodka.
Matt didn't struggle when she moved him into position. Truth was, he wasn't quite sure what she was trying to do until his arm was extended. When it finally dawned, he started to say her name, to tell her she didn't have to, but then it was happening. The bone slid back into place like a puzzle piece surrounded by muscle and connective tissue. Not that Matt was thinking about it on an anatomical level; he was far too busy letting out a garbled cry as the pain fuzzed his senses. Pulse roaring in his ears, the red shadows of his near-vision went momentarily gray. His throat worked, and he swallowed bile.
After a moment, the world shifted on to a much more stable axis, and he was able to lean away under his own power. "Your bedside manner is nonexistent, but thanks. For that." Of course the pain wasn't gone entirely, but he could think a little more clearly now. "Is there any way I can convince you to come back to mine and drink about this instead of throwing yourself into another near-death situation? Because you have to know I'm going to follow you into whatever it is again."
Yelena shrugged her shoulders, the sound of material shifting being the clue to the gesture. But then he kept speaking and the blonde pursed her lips. The slow inhale and exhale through her nose was just a little too loud, the only indication that she was sliding into annoyed rather than the quiet rage. Yelena held her breath and went very still as her eyes closed. And then it was released in an annoyed huff because he would follow her, even with the broken arm.
"Fine," Yelena said, too evenly. "But I don't want to talk about it." About her, she meant. They both knew it. Natasha was going to be an off-limits topic for a while as Yelena drowned in suppressed emotion and attempted to come up for air again. Without waiting for Matt to agree, to complain, or do anything else, Yelena had gone for his phone and unlocked it with his passcode. She called for a rideshare. "Eight minutes," Yelena said a moment later but kept hold of his device.
She started walking, staying on his injured side though he needed to catch up. Though she made sure to stay on the protective side, making sure his injury was covered, Yelena was still just inches out of reach and she stayed that way.
He didn't remark about her knowing his code as he pocketed his phone again. He didn't remark about ruining her self-destructive plans. There didn't seem to be much of a point. He merely followed beside her as she led them further away. The fact that she hadn't gotten this out of her system weighed heavily on him, but he wasn't currently in a position to make a very good punching bag. It wasn't like he'd pushed through the crowd with anything in mind but trying to keep her from doing anything more reckless—and permanent. Even his arm would be fine.
Natasha was gone. And there was nothing Matt could do about it.
Natasha was back. And, surprising no one, there was nothing Matt could do about it.
He rolled up a block away from the place Yelena had sent him. Judging by the vague concern in the driver's voice and his personal awareness of the neighborhood they were in, it was the right place. He spun some loose fabrication about having relatives in the area, then waited for the car to be gone around the corner before making his way to Yelena’s location.
When Matt had obliterated her ability to be self-destructive when Natasha had disappeared, Yelena had made a space where she could at least be destructive–self or otherwise. It was easy to drop money in someone's lap and tell them she was using the space for her own means. It had probably been a studio of some kind at one time. Maybe a small office, maybe a defunct travel agency where the space had gone unused for so long that it was too much of a money sink in a bad neighborhood for anyone to even want to invest. But until the block as a whole could be razed, it sat unused.
Which suited her just fine.
It meant she could set up targets for her rage because Yelena needed a safe outlet. Natasha had been returned and taken from her too many times and small fissures were beginning to form with the pressure. She was fracturing at a faster pace than she could repair. And she wasn't so enamored with the small number she counted as friends (or the one who amounted to a 'platonic soulmate') that she felt she could dump the pieces in their collective lap. She might as well have handed someone a knife to hold to her throat.
The chill in the air outside wasn't enough to keep Yelena from sweating. She'd gotten an early start before she had texted Matt; it was either text him and see if he could slap some duct tape around her broken pieces or risk him looking for her. Her knuckles split against the heavy bag and she didn't care, even knowing Matt would catch the scent of blood on vinyl. Blonde hair was up in a ponytail to keep it off her neck and wisps were plastered to her face. She stopped when she heard Matt enter the space and panted lightly. Anger made her too-quiet; this was pain. "She messaged me," Yelena said. She strode to the folding chair that held her bottle of water. In one fluid motion, she picked the bottle up with one hand and caught the chair with the other to fling it across the space. "Я больше не знаю, что делать," Yelena continued, regressing into what was comfortable: Russian.
Even with the absence of people, Matt knew the current situation was just as dangerous. Not for Matt himself, but doubly so for Yelena. He didn't wince at the sudden clatter of sound, being well out of the chair's path. With the barest movement of his foot, he stopped its forward movement, then kicked it upright and set it against the nearby wall. "You've lost her too many times. It's okay if you don't know what to do."
A lucky guess.
It took her a long enough moment to parse the response back into English that she remembered to stay in one shared language. "She died. She was here when I got here. She left, to go back and die. She walked in the door to my apartment. She left. To go back and die. Again." Her voice broke on the last word and Yelena tipped her head back while she struggled to swallow down the emotion that wanted to crest over her and leave her to drown. "She is here. And it isn't her fault." Yelena's words were thick; she was back into English but the accent was heavy.
And then she went still, controlling her breathing and slowing her heartbeat with far too much skill than was healthy. The slow, quiet exhale was the most dangerous as she turned and walked away from Matt but only to run her fingers along a rack of weapons. "Take off your jacket," Yelena said quietly. "You're the only one who can keep up right now and I don't feel like breaking my hands." The restless sort of anger, mixed with pain, meant she needed to move or she was going to do something stupid.
His throat squeezed tight. Not being able to find the right words was the worst, but Matt wasn't convinced there were any right ones in this instance. And he knew without using a single one of his senses that attempting to hug her would only result in getting something sprained or fractured. So he took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and squared up with her.
It didn't take long to get lost in the physicality of it all. As always, they both gave as good as they got. Every fight was one he learned from, but even then she could surprise him. And this time the surprise was bad.
She wasn't holding back, but she was holding in. Matt knocked away a flurry of blows, then made a decision: he stepped in under her defense and put his arms around her, pulling her in tight. "Yelena, stop. Just for a second, stop."
Instinct screamed about how to handle those arms. Muscle memory nearly threw him so she could immediately chase his form and do damage. But ever since that first real night on the roof where neither of them had been sparring or playing, Yelena was attuned to his voice when Matt was forming words and not just noise as the result of giving or receiving attacks. When she stopped cold, Yelena was rigid and she shook just a little with the effort of burying decades worth of training so that she could do as he asked: stop.
She'd automatically gotten a hand up between them so Yelena couldn't get truly trapped and it turned, fisting into Matt's shirt. Matt might not have been able to see the wild-eyed expression she wore but he could likely guess. Yelena started to shake harder until it was a full body trembling and she pressed her face into his shoulder. Silent. Her other hand fell limp at her side as she gave in for the moment.
His hand went up to the back of her head, just loosely cradling it, same with the arm looped around the small of her back. A beat after she'd gone still, his grip had slacked so he was barely holding her in place. Giving her a hug wouldn't magically fix anything. Matt wasn't that naive. He wasn't even sure this was any more effective than a butterfly bandage over a gaping knife wound. (Funny thing, he didn't need a recent memory to be able to visualize that very thing. He'd bandaged up his old man plenty way back when.) Yet getting whaled on and doing the whaling didn't seem to be cutting it, at least not this time. "I'm sorry, Yelena. I'm so sorry."
Nothing could fix the turmoil. There was no fix. Natasha was starting from scratch again, there, and Yelena knew that she should have been grateful for yet another chance. Rather than throwing what amounted to a tantrum like an angry, sleep-deprived (or maybe hungry?) toddler. Yelena had the strangest, most vague thought then: she wanted his hold on her to tighten. A therapist might have told her that she was looking for the physical anchor while her emotions threw her like she was on the North Sea. Yelena hadn't yet seen a therapist; her stories would scar them and she wasn't that brutal.
Yelena stepped further into Matt's space and her free hand wound around his side to press desperately into his back. "She'll leave again. And I don't know what I'll do." And maybe that scared her a little bit. Not that Yelena would ever admit to such a thing. Yelena had tried the nice way. The Good Way. It hadn't worked.
All it took was her initiative, and his arm pulled her closer, the other now winding around her shoulders. While not tacit permission—because that would have been too much like literal saying a thing out loud—this was as close as they got. Matt brushed his lips along her hairline, and then just breathed against her temple for a moment. He could open and close a case like no one's business. Now, however? Everything felt pithy and utterly unequal to the task. All the words he cycled through turned to ash. "You'll put one foot in front of the other. Because that's who you are. It'll suck if it happens again, but you won't be alone. You won't."
Her throat went tight at the certainty in Matt's voice. Yelena's eyes closed but she didn't otherwise move. He was right, she knew, because it was who she was. It was who she'd been molded into and shaped into within the Red Room. But so many years ago, less in her estimation than others knew, Yelena had allowed herself to care again. When she had stopped feeling betrayed by her sister having left her in the Red Room, Yelena had grasped at the feeling that had flooded into that emotional hole: hope.
Yelena's next exhale was only slightly louder, even though still muffled against Matt's shoulder, but there was a sense of release on the end of it. "James. Lila. They get put through it, too," Yelena said quietly. She felt the guilt clawing at her but it had been easy to ignore because she didn't trust herself around them. Now? With the rage fading into that same sort of helplessness that she tried so hard to beat down with fists and whatever other blunt weapon she might have gotten her hands on... Yelena felt guilty for leaving them to flounder in Natasha's return. "I suck as an aunt."
"You're her sister. They'll understand." He'd never had siblings, but Foggy sometimes felt like he could have been family. Karen, too, in a way he wouldn't examine too closely, considering they were almost romantically entangled. Okay, so maybe not her so much. Matt was so far off base, he wasn't sure he was still on the same planet. Yelena was as close to family as he'd had in a long while, so her constant wave of emotional trauma was the kind of pain he felt ill-equipped to handle but did so anyway, because that's what family did. "And when you've got a better headspace going on up there, you'll go right back to being a great aunt."
She let herself stand there for a few more seconds, soaking in the steadfast resolve that Matt gave. He believed in her in so many ways and not just the expectation that she would get the job done. Her grip on the front of his shirt was the first thing she released and then Yelena was stepping back. She still remained just within what someone would consider their personal-space bubble which spoke volumes: she wasn't going to run away from this.
Yelena did, however, look away and let herself sigh. The first sigh was resignation. The second was annoyance and Yelena grimaced as she brought a hand up to touch a sore spot on her cheek, just at her jaw, where Matt had gotten a good hit in. That probably needed ice. Her cheeks puffed out (because like Hell she was going to let a little pain slow her down in the least and this was nothing) and Yelena let out a breath like a slowly deflating balloon. "Fine," she said, like she was agreeing to something. "You win. You can be right this time. Don't let it go to your head." Matt probably couldn’t appreciate the full effect of her airily waved hand in dismissal.
Matt chuckled and let his arms fall casually back to his sides. His elbow twinged, but all it needed was a good stretch. Any assorted bruises would blossom and fade in just a couple of days. More doorways, walls, and pedestrian mishaps. The emotional storm may have dissipated, but the clouds weren't gone completely. They likely wouldn't for a long while, unless and until this version of Natasha showed more staying power than the other two. For now, however, he smiled faintly and nudged her shoulder lightly. "Even if I did, I know you'd come up behind me with a giant needle for it anyway. No big head or inflated ego for me. Do you want to stick around for a little while longer and break some things, or…?"
The snort that sounded at the 'needle' comment was at least amused. She gave the question some consideration and it was maybe a few too many beats before she moved away. "We can go," Yelena said quietly. "It's not fair to Julie if I stay away too long this time."
She paused at a card table that she'd set up which held her belongings and definitely wouldn't hold someone's weight if they tried to sit on. Hell, she wasn't sure a couple plates of food wouldn't make it fold. "Can I ask something serious?" Yelena asked, turning halfway back toward Matt to look at him. "Would wearing a motorcycle helmet do the whole-" the sound of motion with her hands "-fully blind thing to you? If I got a motorcycle, I mean. And you could ride passenger. Or is that a bad idea?" Even though the hand motions had been a little silly, her questions were earnest.
He smiled faintly, there and gone again from one moment to the next. The crisis was averted, but the feelings were still there. Matt just hoped Yelena might have a better chance to grapple with them. If she needed more of this, he would be there for it. Anything she needed; he'd resolved that for a long time now.
He went to retrieve his jacket, since that's the direction they were headed anyway. It gave him the few seconds he needed to think about her offer. When he straightened, his head was tilted consideringly. Curiosity won out over any initial misgivings he had. "My original Daredevil helmet fit over my ears. I got used to using it fairly quickly. But I've never actually been on a motorcycle. That much noise? It'd probably make me useless for navigation or general direction. I'd be up for trying it out at least, just to see if it's something I could do."
Her smile was amused as it appeared and Yelena was certain he could hear it in her voice as she replied. "I wouldn't need you for navigation or general direction, Matthew," she teased. "But..." and here, she paused, taking in a slow breath through her nose as she considered her words. "It sometimes can help clear my head. If you wanted to try, you would just need to trust me and hold on."
And maybe she was asking for a little more than that, the trust without it simply being related to holding on for dear life on the back of a motorcycle.
Crossing over to where she stood, he then touched her shoulder and leaned down to kiss her forehead. This was a no brainer. "I do. I do trust you. I'll hold on no matter what."