y. belova (doesnotpose) wrote in momadness_log, @ 2021-09-06 18:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | marvel: bucky barnes, ~inactive: yelena belova |
Who: Bucky Barnes and Yelena Belova
What: Bonding…?
When: Late at night, recently
Where: the Garage
Warning/Rating: Low/None - talk of the Red Room… completed via Gdoc
It was late, and Bucky was having the same trouble he’d been having for the past month or two- the dreams were getting worse. More blood. More death. Always a woman who he couldn’t identify. And then, pain. The pain was what woke him up- a throbbing headache which hit him hard and caused him to sit up and seek relief. Which usually came in the form of waiting it out and distractions.
Tonight, he was in the garage. The car didn’t need to be polished, but it was a mindless task he could do. The radio was playing, blaring an old Frank Sinatra tune and the soldier was singing it under his breath as he worked in what appeared to be his pajamas- a t-shirt and sweatpants. He was so distracted by the music, he wouldn’t have heard anyone approaching if they did, though he would eventually spot them in the shine, freezing for a moment before turning around.
“Иисус, ты действительно окаменелость.” Yelena was practically on top of him by the time he turned to look over at her, and she raised an eyebrow at him. “And you have gone soft.” Though, there was no hardness, no malice behind her voice. She was teasing more than anything, though with her chilly sarcasm, it might not have come across as warm in the slightest.
“What are you working on?” She added, moving over to hop up onto the hood of one of the very expensive cars. She wasn’t heavy enough to do any real damage.
Blue eyes narrowed on her as she called him a fossil but he didn’t respond to that. He just shook his head and got back to work, grunting and muttering. “If you scratch the paint, you have to buff it out.” His comment about her sitting on the car.
He worked quietly for a second, not really wanting to give her the satisfaction of answering right away. Why? He didn’t know. He was just in a mood.
“I’m waxing the Porsche- what does it look like?” He looked up at her before sighing. His shoulders were tense- his whole body was tense. “Couldn’t sleep.” There it was. “Why are you awake, anyway?”
Yelena ignored the comment about the paint. She didn’t give a shit about the paint. And she looked over at what he was doing, then shrugged her shoulders, leaning back on the windshield. “I have never spent quality time with a Porsche before.” That was her explanation for not knowing what he was doing with the car. And she didn’t give a shit about car maintenance, either.
“Not spending much time sleeping myself,” she responded softly. One hand came up to tug absent-mindedly at the fringy thing at the bottom of her cast.
Bucky grimaced a little as he watched her sit on the hood of the vehicle. Great. Don’t throw her off. She’s your girlfriend’s sister- Natasha would be mad.. He eyed her for a moment before shaking his head.
Yeah, he wasn’t going to escape this, was he?
“Why not? Bad dreams?”
C’mon, a little thing like Yelena in pajamas wasn’t going to do any damage to the car. She was wearing flannel--maybe she’d buff the hood. You’re welcome, Bucky.
“всегда плохие сны после красной комнаты” She was pointedly not looking at him. Not meeting his eye. Surely he knew enough to know not to push that topic of conversation.
“And you? What’s keeping the sandman from your door?” Yelena asked, wishing she had a sip of vodka to lubricate this conversation.
“Yeah…” He knew something about that. A grimace, in fact, as he thought back to his own memories about the room- or his more recent memories. Did she know? There was an awkward pause as she met his gaze and he realized she might be referring to…
No. No, she didn’t know. Did she?
“Same thing,” he muttered. There was a moment’s pause before he took a breath to explain. “I think. I don’t know.”
“There have been nights when I could not sleep, when the demons were waiting outside my door. Those nights I turned to vodka to slide me into unconsciousness. But I always regretted it in the morning.” Yelena gave a shrug, looking over at him. “I could do that here, too. There is nothing to stop me from self-medicating.”
“Nothing except your sister. And your...mom?” He made a face at the notion then shook his head. Picking up the rag, he started to polish again. “What was it like? The Red Room?”
Was he opening a can of worms? Probably. But he also needed to know- were his dreams made up in his own mind or did they have some truth behind them? He wanted answers, and asking Natasha felt wrong. Yelena, however, might be forthcoming. She seemed to like the sound of her own voice.
Yelena smirked, and might have responded about her mother. But then he asked about the Red Room. She went quiet, any happiness leaching from her features. She sat up a little and folded her arms in her lap. One of them was still clad in a plaster cast from her fingertips to half-way down her forearm. There were purple flowers drawn all over it, and the words “Clint + Yelena = BFFs” along with a little heart. It was ridiculous, and probably Yelena’s favorite thing in the world.
“What do you really want to know?” She asked, peering up and over at him.
“That,” he answered plainly, studying her. Did he say it? He took a breath. “I’m having dreams- I can’t figure out where they are but...I think I’m training Widows in them.” He bit the side of his tongue, hoping that the pain might help him concentrate- sometimes it worked.
“They’re all girls. It was back when I was the Soldier. But it’s fuzzy- I can remember everything else from those days, but for some reason those parts are foggy. I want to know if I’m just making them up or if there’s any chance they were real.”
Yelena took a deep breath and ran her hand over her face. “Иисус гребаный Христос.” She shook her head a little and finally brought her eyes up to look at him. “I wondered how you didn’t know me. It has been a very, very long time, солдат.”
That caught his attention and his eyes snapped up to stare at her. Recognize her? “Why would I recognize you?” He already knew why. Shit. Shit the dreams were real? He took a breath, almost dropping the rag in his hand, but standing straight now.
“What do you remember?”
“I remember all of it.” Yelena wasn’t sure that was entirely true. There were a lot of emotional moments that she’d blocked out, a lot of nights crying silently, hoping she wouldn’t get in trouble, praying she wouldn’t get caught. She had inherited a lot of her sister’s spunk, but most of it had been beaten out of her quickly.
“You came to the Red Room quite frequently actually,” she said, turning her eyes down to the cast in her lap once more. “A most valued guest. You worked with the older girls. I recognized you because of the…” she motioned that cast toward her opposite shoulder. “We did not get to see those every day.”
It was confirmation that his dreams weren’t just made up in his head. He’d been at the Red Room. Yelena knew him. Which raised more questions. “I worked with the older girls.” He muttered and looked down at the car, trying to piece it together.
Yelena knew him. And if Yelena knew, then so did Natasha. It made sense, right? Unless she was gone by then, but no. The timeline wasn’t right for that. Why hadn’t she said anything?
“Was your sister there?” It was a blunt question. He wasn’t sure Yelena would even know.
The way he said it made Yelena pause. Had she said too much? She figured that he knew all of this already, but then… why was he asking? Was there something preventing him from accessing those memories? She’d heard about the Winter Soldier, about how he was under mind control the same way she had been.
“They separated us.” Yelena said softly, staring at him and trying to put all the pieces together in her mind. She took a long moment to consider before adding, “have you tried talking with her about all of this?”
Right. That made sense. He paused and considered how to answer that. “A little. I haven’t asked her if she was there- I didn’t even think- I should have…” He sighed. She would have mentioned it, right? Why would she have not mentioned it if she’d been there with him? They were dating! It would have come up. Right?
There was a dull ache behind his eyes and he winced. Looking back at Yelena, Bucky nodded. “It’s complicated. When uh...when Shuri helped me out, she had to dig around. I think maybe there were some memories locked away or something. They’d wipe me clean, reset me before each mission. It made me easier to control.”
It made sense. They hadn’t perfected the process when they’d started with him, had they? It’d taken a very long time. And it wasn’t until Yelena’s generation that they really had control under… well… control. She finally met his eyes again, coming to a decision that she’d tell him whatever he wanted to know, if she knew it to tell. “You were there. You trained girls at the Red Room. I was… too young. I worked with other trainers, but I never worked with you. I don’t know if you worked with my sister. I’m sorry.”
He let a long moment of silence pass between them, mulling over what it meant and considering whether or not he should believe her. He decided he should- she had no reason to lie to him about this. Then, the question was, what did he ask next?
“How many of them had red hair? The girls you remember.”
Yelena stopped to think on that for a moment. It was obvious why he was asking--trying to figure out if his memories were true, if she was in any of them. Yelena had been separated from Natasha before they’d been returned, and the pair were trained separately. They hadn’t had contact for a long, long time before reuniting and taking down the Red Room. She couldn’t remember seeing Nat working with this Winter Soldier, but her view was limited.
“I don’t recall.” She said after the pause. “Some. Red hair wasn’t popular, but there were some. I think it stands out too much. I think they were more likely to recruit blondes or brunettes.”
It wasn’t common. But it wasn’t impossible. He knew that. But it helped to hear Yelena admit it. So it was still possible it wasn’t her- even if that nagging feeling stayed in the back of his mind. “Yeah. Right.” He paused then nodded to her. “Thanks…”
Did he tell her more? What was the point? It was something he’d have to ask Natasha the next time they were alone- which might be awhile, considering how busy they both were these days.
“So...you gonna help or what?” He was changing the subject. Trying to pick something more lighthearted to do together. He picked up a clean rag and tossed it her way. “Here.”
Yelena gave a gentle, “добро пожаловать,” then shrugged her shoulders. She knew there was more to the story than he was letting through, but she wasn’t going to push it. It wasn’t Yelena he should be talking to. It was Natasha. She wasn’t going to push for that, either. It was their relationship, their business.
The rag hit Yelena in the face and landed in her lap. She picked it up with her left hand and raised an eyebrow. “Is this like The Karate Kid? Wax on, Wax off?” She climbed up off the car’s hood (no scuff marks at all) and moved beside him. “Show me, Sensei.”
He looked at her confused at the reference, then realized it was on the list of films he was supposed to see someday. Right. “Uh, right. Here.” He smirked and started to show her the different buckets with the wax and wash. It was a nice distraction, and nicer to teach someone something non-violent for once.