Hugh & Yelena share things about their past, Yelena about the Red Room, and Hugh about that really stupid mistake he made once, that maybe someone died because of. It's
Pillow Talk, but pretty heavy content.
âš Discussion of child grooming, Drink Spiking & murder.
The Christmas lights had been a good touch. Hugh had found them in one corner of the costume room and he had no idea where they'd come from or why they were there, but he'd stolen them, and figured out a way to tape them up to the ceiling in the classroom and now, with the overhead fluorescents off and just the glow of those twinkle lights above them, it felt almost for half a moment like he was someplace nice. A feeling that was only increased by the feeling of Yelena's skin soft under his fingers, and he whispered her name as he pressed his lips against her neck, to the pulse point just under her jaw, and after a rapid heartbeat or two, he pulled off, settling in next to her, sweaty, satisfied, and exhausted, and determinedly not thinking about how transient this whole experience was.
It felt steady, after all. He could still feel the beat of her pulse under his fingers, and her skin was warm, and the mattress might not win any accolades, but it wasn't the floor, and there was enough space for both of them, and even enough space for Shadow to creep up at the bottom and try to wrestle space from either of their feet.
"It's a good thing I don't have to move now," he told her, settling in against the pillow, but not so far away that he didn't have a leg looped over one of hers still. "You good?" A check-in. One the relaxed and sleepy state was threatening his ability to make, but he always did, and also it did matter.
With one hand still clutching Hugh’s shoulder, Yelena’s other hand slid up over the back of his neck and into his hair, her fingers flexing into the curls to keep him close until it became obvious that he was pulling back. She let him go without more protest than a sigh that was more boneless, relaxed contentment than anything, her arm still outstretched just enough so that her fingertips never left some kind of contact with him while he settled next to her. After a second or two of laying still, trying to catch her breath with her eyes closed and a faint smile repeatedly tugging at the corners of her mouth, she heaved another sigh and let her eyes pop open. The Christmas lights were a good touch.
She rolled lazily to her side to face him, pushing up onto an elbow only far enough and long enough to gather the pillow under her head more comfortably before she sank back down to lay comfortably. “I’m good,” she answered, the combination of the words being drawn out long and her trying to be quiet so as not to completely shatter the quiet of the room making the usual low gravel in her voice sound like it was catching in her throat. She breathed a mostly soundless laugh at it, then wobbled her way a few inches across the mattress on her shoulder and hip until it was even less of a reach to bring her fingertips to his cheek.
There was nothing but silence in the wake of her touch while she traced the tips of her fingers from his forehead around to his temple and then along his cheekbone, a smirk surfacing as she tapped her index finger to the tip of his nose before pressing her palm to his jaw to let her thumb sweep an idle arc over his cheek. The whole time her gaze followed the path of her touch, but once she’d stilled she finally let her focus dart back up to his eyes instead. “Are you?” She hadn’t let one of his check-ins go unanswered yet and she wasn’t about to start, even though she could tell a few things just by looking at him. “I should probably be letting you sleep. Maybe I pretend it doesn’t wake me up when you come in next time so we can’t get all… “ She grinned, and shrugged one shoulder, her hand slipping along his jaw so the next sweep of her thumb traced along his bottom lip. “Distracted?”
Hugh wasn't about to complain as Yelena's fingers stayed touching him. Part of him realized that he'd shifted in his wants at some point. At some point he'd have been worried about feelings and whether they both wanted the same things, and he suspected at least partially because that sort of longevity didn't even feel possible in this place, he just wasn't spending much time thinking about it. He sighed content at her question and closed his eyes. "I'm great, and you're perfect," he told her with a tilt up of his lips. "But I'll know you're pretending, because I don't think it's even possible for me to sneak in here without waking you up. Is that like, I don't know, something from your previous job?"
Shadow seemed to have decided that the humans weren't moving too much, and he heard her rouse from the floor, step gingerly onto the mattress, and ultimately curl up as much at Yelena's feet as at Hugh's, after turning around once and settling down.
"Besides, I'm not complaining," he told her softly. "I know I need sleep, but I can sleep next week. Or, I mean, worst case scenario I can't sleep next week, but I'll still reset at the start of it, so it's not like I can really dig up a proper sleep deficit, and maybe I'm not twenty-two anymore, but I think I can manage six hours of sleep for a few days."
Yelena found herself wanting to sigh in relief at Shadow’s timing in deciding it was an opportune moment to relocate herself; the fact that her attention darted briefly to the lab currently making herself comfortable at their feet made for a solid excuse to dodge answering the question about her previous job. Not that she wasn’t willing to talk about it - she’d promised, after all - but giving herself some time to mentally steel herself for talking about it was preferable to diving in unprepared.
So she skipped to the next thing, wrinkling her nose at his apparent disdain for sleeping when part of her was selfishly pleased by it at the same time. “I don’t tell you what to do, obviously, but if we get to the party after the play goes really great and you’re so sleepy you can’t even keep your eyes open? I still get to say I told you so.” She finally drew her hand back from his cheek to tuck it under the pillow beneath her head instead, letting the quiet lull between them for a few moments before she sighed and turned her head to press her face halfway into the pillow. She was relaxed enough to sleep, and she’d just finished telling him to… but before the quiet could go on too long, she breathed a controlled breath outward and situated herself again so she was able to look directly at him.
“It is, though.” The words came quietly, her brow furrowing a little at the bridge of her nose like she still wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to be saying them. “Something from my old life, I mean. Job. Whatever.” She hid a shrug in a move to pull a handful of the sheet up to her chest like some sort of a shield, then gave him a tight-lipped smile. “It makes a really bad spy if you sleep so deep just anybody can sneak up on you, you know? So they teach us never to sleep very easy. Loud noises in the middle of the nights to teach us young to not jump up afraid, then once you learn it turns into older girls trying to sneak up and take you. I never wanted to wake up with a - “ Another frown as she stopped herself short of a full description, her gaze darting away as she shrunk back away a little. “I didn’t know what happened to the girls who failed. So I never wanted to be one.”
Hugh let out a huff of laughter, he'd already told her that he'd accept I told you so, and he suspected that any sort of relationship with Yelena meant the possibility of it whenever he did something ridiculous. He didn't think he really minded though. It never felt mean-spirited, and truthfully, he never minded having someone in his life that could check his bullshit when needed. It was occurring to him that maybe he even looked for someone like that.
He listened, slipping a hand against hers, feeling the space suddenly between them, but not allowing it to become absolute either. He'd told Eliot once, a long time ago, that Derleth was improv, and it was how he'd been able to just accept gods and magic, and maybe that was part of this too, because it felt unreal to him, like something that shouldn't be, even if it felt a little closer to home in other ways. Training girls to be spies, didn't feel unlike something that could happen in his own world, maybe even did but he just didn't know about it.
"So you weren't one," he filled in, shifting, maybe on pretense of reaching a hand down to pat Shadow's fur, but it let him slip in a little closer to her. "I want to say that you can sleep here, you don't have to wake up, and especially with Shadow, you know she'd alert us if anything tried to sneak in, but also it's Derleth and it might not be the worst skill here." He paused.
There was a very real part of him that wanted to start in with 'you don't have to do that here, I'm here', and something else that belonged in a romcom or a scene from Outlander, or something, but he also knew that it wasn't true. Of the two of them, she'd protect him more easily than he'd protect her, and at any rate, something that had been trained that early? It would become muscle memory, instinct. It wasn't something you could just undo, he suspected, so instead he squeezed her hand. "Anyway, I don't want you to have to pretend you're still sleeping. Or pretend at all. Not with me. If I'm really tired, I'll just tell you."
Yelena wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting out of him as she created that space between them. Hugh knew at least the basics of who she was and what she did, so it obviously wasn’t going to come as much of a surprise. This one little shred of what her life had been like wasn’t anything horrifying, either; weird, maybe, if nothing like it had ever happened to you, but relatively tame in the grand scheme of what her training had been like. So maybe the space was for her more than him - she’d spoken so infrequently about how the Red Room had affected her that speaking it out loud felt like poking at an already raw wound.
The squeeze to her hand at least made her smile and return it, her grip just on the edge of too tight for a moment in the hopes that it’d convey her thanks in a way she wasn’t going to put into words. “Okay,” was what she finally settled on saying out loud, still quiet but with a warmth that gave credence to that small smile of hers actually being genuine and not forced. “No pretending. Besides, Shadow does such a bad job of taking up your spot because she gets happy you’re here. Nobody can sleep getting smacked with that tail.”
She breathed a laugh and kicked forward very gently until her foot nudged up against Shadow, finding herself still just relaxed enough to not want to bother sitting up to ruffle the dog’s fur. After a moment she freed her hand from Hugh’s only to inch herself closer and drape that arm around him, turning her head to kiss his shoulder before dropping back down to the pillow with a quiet sigh. “You better just tell me. Don’t get me wrong, this - “ She lifted her arm to gesture vaguely in a way that encompassed the whole bed - “is really awesome and I complain zero percent about it even if I didn’t always wake up anyway. But if you come back and only want to sleep, I… “ The grin that had appeared moments before faded almost as quickly as she trailed off, her brain catching up with her words halfway through the thought.
After a pause to try reconciling the two, she cleared her throat quietly and shifted to lean back slightly, unwinding her arm around him to ruffle her fingers through her hair in an attempt to make a shift from seriousness to nonchalance. “I don’t mind. Just - you know, to say it out loud in case you weren’t sure of that already.”
Shadow perked her head up for an instant, and then deciding that she wasn't actually involved in the conversation, she put her head back down for sleeping, and Hugh figured at some point they should follow the labrador's lead, but for now, he shifted his attention back to Yelena.
Things. Lives before and lives here. Hugh wasn't spending as much time thinking about either as maybe he should be and he could feel it. He'd set himself on some sort of autopilot to get the play done, and this was the natural outcome of having carved out a tiny space where it was just the two of them.
He offered a smile, and he nodded. "If I want to sleep, I promise I'll tell you. And eventually I might, but right now. I'm - a physical person. And I like this, even if it does keep me from sleeping quite so soon. Besides, I think we promised each other some talks, right, so I can't just run away from those because I'm a fancy director and all of that stuff."
There were talks, Yelena reasoned to herself, and then there was talking. The former was mutual. Asked for. The latter was one-sided and not necessarily an invited thing, and she suddenly felt hit with a wave of concern that she’d been indulging in the latter. Her next breath in was a long, slow inhale into her holding it while she smoothed over that spike of anxiety inside herself and tried to decide what to do now. “We did promise talks,” she confirmed, a lilt to her voice like she was allowing that he’d scored some sort of a point between them by making his.
After a few seconds she rolled to her back with an almost soundless chuckle, her own disbelief at the jumble of her thoughts so thorough that she couldn’t help but let a little bit of it escape her. She continued playing with her hair, winding one blonde lock around her index and middle fingers repeatedly before reversing the motion, while her other arm stayed bent between them so she could keep her fingertips touched to his shoulder.
Focusing on the Christmas lights strung above the makeshift bed helped settle her a little more, so it wasn’t long before she turned her head again to study him. “You could try running away from them if you wanted, fancy director.” Her tone was teasing, but the smile that should have accompanied it wasn’t much more than a brief tick at the corner of her mouth. “We never say when we have them, so it can be now. Or it can be later. I know you said there were things you wanted to lay in the dark and say, and I of course want to hear those if you want to tell me. But I’m not going to be so mean as to wait for you to be tired and try making you say them. I could,” she added breezily, tapping her fingertips against his shoulder gently once or twice, “But I wouldn’t.”
Hugh considered this, the smile on his lips as close as he was going to get to the amusement that her words had created overall, and for a half moment his thoughts tangentially went out to the play and the directing and whether or not he was going to pull it together - and he hadn't done it, certainly not since university. But he shook his head and shook off the work-related thoughts.
"I know you wouldn't. But I don't know - maybe now is as good a time as any? Like, I realize we're kind of in this, but also, I don't know. With Marce I didn't talk about things at all. Well, that's not entirely true, I think when I did talk about them, it was badly. Like, 'it's just sex right'? That conversation didn't go over great," he shook his head with a self-deprecating laugh. "But maybe I figure…" His thumb ran against the curve of her hip without any real intent attached to it other than to be touching her.
"Maybe I shouldn't do that again? Although there is definitely a part of me that is like 'this place is completely unstable and you can't build anything remotely stable in it, so why not just live in the moment. But also, I don't know. I guess, if this is something different maybe try something different? And I've never, like - never been good at conversations. But hey we already had one of the big ones. And the other one is… well the truth is…" he stopped, considering words and he laid back, staring at the ceiling. "There's a reason why I'm publicly engaged, but we got married at the courthouse earlier than the planned public wedding. Spousal immunity seemed like a good plan under the circumstances."
Yelena met his example of a more or less failed effort to talk with a quiet snort of laughter that threatened to become more until she looked at him and realized that it wasn’t an exaggeration or a joke. Even then, trying to school her features wasn’t entirely successful - she kept having to fight a smile until finally she gave into it and shook her head by rolling it side to side on the pillow, her eyes squeezed closed for a second until she spoke. “To be fair to both of you I think that conversation seems like it never can go well unless you both agree on the answer to the question. But you don’t know if you don’t ask it, right? Maybe I don’t know what I talk about, though.” With that moment of (accidental) levity passed, she settled in for what she figured would be a more serious shift in tone. Correctly figured, it turned out.
There was a lot laid out to address in a relatively short amount of time. The pause where he laid back gave her an opening to jump in, but it was one she didn’t take; the trailing words were more than enough for her to know there was a much bigger something else happening, but the shift away from her to look at the ceiling instead was an exclamation mark on that. Tempted as she was to follow him in order to stay close, she stayed where she was to give him the space to find the words. And when he did, the last sentence had her cutting a look sharply in his direction without her moving her head.
After a beat, Yelena rolled to her side and propped her head up on her hand so she could study him better, her other hand coming to rest on his chest half to help keep herself steady and half as a gesture meant to steady him. “You’re pretty good at conversations with me,” she began, deciding to lead with the lighter material before wading into the potentially darker stuff. “Or maybe I’m just really shit at them too and it means we both are, but hey. Level playing field, you know?” She quirked a half smile, then tensed her top shoulder enough to bring it closer to her ear in the best shrug she could manage in her position. “And this place isn’t stable, but that doesn’t mean the people aren’t. I mean… like mentally maybe that’s kind of hit or miss but you know what I mean. Living in the moment is good. It’s great, it’s like my favorite way to do things. If the same people are always with you in those moments, though - kind of complicated. That’s what here is. Always complicated.”
Her smile managed to hold on another second or two before it faded. She cast a look around the room to see if any part of the string of lights was close enough to yank free of the plug without actually getting up, but returned her attention to him before making any decisions about whether or not it was worth it. “You learn some things being a spy, you know.” Her tone was still deliberately light, but she lowered her speaking volume like she was telling him a secret. “Like what kinds of things somebody might want spousal immunity for. What happened?”
It was, in fact, not an exaggeration and at this point in his life Hugh realised that the laughter was well deserved, and Yelena was right. He answered with a smile of his own, one that agreed with everything she was saying. "Also it was like five years ago? I should have known that by then, but." He hadn't. He did like to think maybe he'd gotten a little better at communication since. Which maybe Yelena confirmed. The instability of the place forced him to rethink what was important. And Eliot had been right - it was a small group of people. Which was why Hugh wouldn't have gone looking for a consistent relationship, but then fate had conspired to give him an Empire City hook-up that had actually been a Derleth one? Well, Derleth was kind of shaping his decision making process differently.
"I don't think you're shit at conversations," he told her, turning over, so that he was on his side, and propping his head up on his hand. "I think I've probably just gotten better. You're right about the moment. It's like a weird tension between living in the moment, and what comes next week with this person," he wrinkled up his nose. "Which, I mean, I guess I just described life. Complicated."
It could be darker, and for a half instant he wished for Eliot's magic, because probably Eliot could make it darker with a snap of his fingers or something. But it would have been awkward to turn off the lights now, and besides, Hugh realised that was his own shame talking. Maybe it had been a mistake to bring it up. There were exactly two people who knew the whole story, Henry's lawyer - well, his lawyer really, because his biological father had put his on-retainer lawyer's number into his phone - and Marceline. And the courthouse marriage had been to protect him. The reality of that was something that still sat sourly in his throat. All of it did. Really. Thinking about it brought up the same feelings of disgust with himself and panic that had risen when Rhett had been arrested in the coffee shop that morning. And he didn't have to bring it up. No one in Derleth knew, but it was also kind of past that point now.
He let out a breath. "My lawyer says that accessory to manslaughter would be a hard charge to convict, aiding and abetting would be even more challenging, but none of the above would be outside of the realm of possibility. The actions could be in line with, although they'd have to prove intention."
Derleth had a way of making weeks feel longer, but here in the middle of a week where next to nothing was happening except existing Yelena was coming to the slow realization that as much as it felt like she’d known Hugh for ages? It was only ages in Derleth time, and the reality was that it had only been weeks. While she knew you could learn a lot about a person during times of stress - and the last few weeks had definitely been stressful - there was literally an entire world of things she had no idea about. She’d had glimpses, but none of them had done much to properly prepare her for the view of things she was being shown now.
She didn’t move much in the space between Hugh’s last words and that breath that signaled the continuation of confession time. Not even when her fingers kind of started to tingle a little from having had her head propped up like this for so long in her hand. She just watched, her expression mostly impassive. Which wasn’t to say there was nothing to read on it; she certainly looked interested in a subdued kind of way, but even with the barest hint of detail she didn’t look particularly inclined to judge him for it. What he’d said or whatever he was about to say - she was already fairly certain she’d done worse, after all.
Even though she had, the words coming from him - about him, a real but still very nebulous thing that was a chapter of his past - were startling. Her only reaction at first was a slight lift of her eyebrows, followed by her finally giving up on lounging like she was at the expense of her entire arm falling asleep. So she collapsed down and rolled onto her back, flexing her hand idly as she shimmied closer to him on the bed until her head was half pillowed against his bicep where his arm was curled to support his head. It made it easy for her to look up at him but a little more difficult for him to look down at her, which she figured might suit him well enough for now.
After another few quiet moments of study, her voice finally broke through the silence. Still low, still like they were telling secrets in a more crowded room, but it seemed louder here in the space they’d created. “So could they?” There was no judgment in her voice as she folded her hands loosely over her stomach and watched him. “Prove intent, I mean. It’s hard for me to believe these things you say are things you would ever do on purpose knowing about it.” But maybe I don’t know you that well, she almost added before she stopped the words with a faint sigh. “What happened? I promise nobody else finds out. Russian spies, we’re the best at keeping secrets, you don’t even know.”
Hugh was having a similar realization. It had only been a few weeks since Empire City, hadn’t it? That other life that had been so similar to his own. There were layers, the one where he had to think of himself as someone naive (& ambitious) enough to have believed the director without question, the layer where he had to accept an action he had taken had likely contributed to a woman’s death, the possibility of that knowledge becoming public - a door that hadn’t been fully closed in an open murder trial - and the way he wanted to scream he wasn’t that person: he wouldn’t do things that would cause people harm. But he was and he had. And now he was sitting here telling Yelena. Why? A confession? Too much happiness and contentment leading him to think he had to change her mind. Would she?
He somehow doubted it was the worst thing that anyone here had done. Warriors and gods and superheroes and vampires. Derleth was full of morally ambiguous people, people who likely had blood on their hands too - for good reasons or bad. And maybe that was why he was here and nobody else he knew was.
And Yelena's question lingered. She knew what he was saying. And her question was clear enough: what kind of man was he?
“No,” his throat felt dry and he wished for a drink but she was curled up against him and he didn’t want to risk moving her away just then. “I never considered someone dying. Nothing like that was supposed to happen. I was just foolish. And ambitious. But mostly foolish.”
The story tumbled out between dry lips with a pounding heart. Maybe it was a confession. It was the one he’d made to Marce, but she’d known him for years. Yelena didn't. Still he told her about the way Cecelia, the director, had approached him, told him about Rhett’s desire to be Ed March during the party, but his squeamishness about actually taking the drugs, and could he help Rhett out? There was a good connection in it for him. He told her how it matched Rhett's Acting style just enough - the man was known for doing all his own stunts, for living in his roles - that Hugh didn’t question it. And when Moira turned up dead that night, it didn't really occur to him that Rhett might have been involved. It was only later when Rhett was talking about blacking out, and how he didn't do drugs, that he'd realized Cecelia had lied to him about the drugs for some reason. And how when Rhett was arrested, and knowing that if something happened that night, Hugh was impossibly involved.
“I was so foolish to trust her. I got the impression if I said no there would be consequences, but I should have taken them. I wasn't comfortable with it. But I still don't know why the director asked me to, if not because Rhett wanted it?" Hugh sighed. "Rhett drank a lot that night too. I've played so many what if's, but if he killed Moira, I don’t think he did it while in his right mind. And I know he was drugged, because I did it. And that could carry its own charges if they could prove I did it. I’m entangled. Enough there could be legal charges if someone pulled me in. But even if there aren’t…” the sentence sat unspoken. He had to live with the choice he'd made, the consequences of that.
Yelena listened to the whole story with the same look on her face as she’d had when it began - calm and without judgment, even during the big twists. It wasn’t that they weren’t surprising, because they very much were... she didn’t think any amount of getting to know Hugh would have prepared her for this particular look into his past, which meant there was an even slimmer chance that she ever would have guessed at it. And for someone like him, someone who hadn’t grown up with the messed up distinction of being very good at killing people, it was a lot to carry around. Even more to never let it show. Which would have been impressive if it didn’t also make her so sad for him.
In the end, realizing he didn’t have anything more to say for the moment, she pushed herself up onto an elbow just enough to allow for her to kiss him. It barely lingered, landing just off the corner of his mouth before she settled back to lay again. “You don’t know that he did it at all,” she finally ventured, already knowing this wasn’t the point at all but unwilling to do anything but spiral around to it. “I mean, the blacking out defense is never a very good one, let’s be honest, but… you don’t know.”
Not only was it not the point, it also wasn’t very helpful. Knowing what she wanted to say was directly at odds with her own feelings, however; she’d done far worse to more people than she could even remember to count and never felt a scrap of regret about it until she’d been freed from the Red Room’s control. Even then, the things she’d done before had felt like at best distant memories and at worst things someone else had done. It simply wasn’t the same for Hugh, so she pushed down her own tangential internal conflict to focus on the one he’d just confessed to her.
“I’m sorry.” Sincerity caused a crack in her voice that she hadn’t quite been expecting, so she paused just long enough to find his hand with hers and give it a firm squeeze. “She knew you would trust her and that even if you didn’t she had enough power over you to make you feel like you had to do it anyway. I know what that’s like and it really… really sucks. There was no way for you to know she lied.” She paused long enough to pull in a long breath that she released on an equally lengthy sigh. “You didn’t make him drink, though. And you didn’t make him do anything he maybe did that he can’t remember. Making mistakes doesn’t make you bad, you know.” Coming from her it felt hypocritical, but once again she locked her own thoughts away in favor of giving his hand a tug to encourage him to lay down properly with her.
At her words, Hugh laughed, short, nervous, it wasn't exactly an appropriate response considering the heaviness of the conversation, but there was a strange relief that flushed through when she gave it to him. "You're not wrong," he told her softly. "And if you don't think that I've gone through possibilities a hundred times at night." His voice caught before he could really explain the ways he had. The nights he'd stayed up watching the Seattle skyline, even though in theory staying at Henry's Seattle apartment felt further away and 'safer'. It had kept him up, kept him from really focusing on the play, and it had been some sort of sheer willpower and determination and realization that he could throw everything into the character of Bluntschli, and that it was a safe place to do so that had finally pushed him forward. And got him some of the best reviews of his life, ironically.
He followed her down so that he could wrap his arms around her. Her kiss and the words that followed the evidence of why he'd ended up in this particular conversation even if good sense might have suggested he shouldn't. And the reminder that she knew what it was like to feel as if you had to do something - there weren't other options - brought his attention back to her.
"Some mistakes just feel weightier," he sighed against her hair. "And maybe I'm not a bad person. I don't think I am. I don't think…" he paused. "I mean, I can be selfish and ambitious and shallow sometimes. I can definitely be a workaholic. I'm a flirt. And maybe I just don't want people to dislike me, but also I don't really want to cause harm either. Intentionally or not. And maybe I don't know exactly what happened that night, but I did still drug him, and that wasn't great."
There was a beat, and with it the quiet awareness that he'd told her, and she wasn't running away from him.
"I'm sorry you've ever been in a place where you didn't feel like you had choices too. And I have this sense that your consequences were possibly much worse if you didn't," this was soft. Like maybe if he said it softly enough it would make it less likely to be true. But what she'd told him before, about sleeping lightly, it all but guaranteed that it was: she hadn't wanted to know what happened to the girls who failed.
Nothing was particularly funny, but Yelena couldn’t help the dry, quiet bark of laughter that escaped her in the wake of Hugh listing off all the qualities that might disqualify him as good. She felt an instant twinge of guilt as soon as the sound was in the room, but she didn’t bother with explaining herself until after she’d gotten her arms around him, one hand finding its way back up to let her start combing her fingers gently through his hair. “I think everybody wants people to like them, even the bad guys. And all of the rest of it just being a person, right? Some people are lazy, some people are super selfless… I don’t know. None of that makes you bad. I don’t think you’re bad.”
She wasn’t sure how much weight her opinion should carry given her own past, but she rationalized it by figuring that someone like her with enough self-awareness to acknowledge the ambiguity of her moral compass was maybe one of the best ones to know where someone else stood. Especially if it was somewhere in the gray area where she seemed to live. “Maybe what matters is how you feel about it,” she finally concluded, tightening her hold on him in order to pull herself even a fraction of an inch closer. “Bad people don’t feel bad about mistakes. A lot of the bad people I’ve known don’t even think they can make them, they think they’re aaaaalways the right one. I don’t know. Maybe I’m still figuring this kind of stuff out too.”
His final whispered words made her frown faintly. It wasn’t that she disliked the words themselves - he wasn’t wrong, and the fact that he felt sympathy for her about it was kind - but that was the problem, in a way. She still wasn’t entirely sure she deserved that much kindness. Sighing, she ducked her chin to keep her head down and burrowed a little bit deeper under the sheets while she struggled to get comfortable again; a futile effort, given that she was definitely comfortable bodily, just less so in her mind.
“They were killed,” she murmured, seemingly operating under the same idea he had been - if she said it quietly enough, it didn’t need to be real. “The girls who failed the trainings, they were killed. Maybe one out of twenty of us made it all the way through.” She paused to swallow in order to work some moisture back into her mouth, finding it suddenly dry. This was easier to talk about with Natasha, who knew what went on to an extent. “And then I had no choice at all, because the man in charge of it all figured out mind control. Like real mind control, not just brainwashings and that kind of thing. I couldn’t say no.” It was certainly the quick summary, and she hadn’t quite gotten to the end of it, but she stopped and held him tighter again anyhow like she thought he might try to go. “But I promise you one of my things for one of yours, so there we go, right?” Her voice was suddenly lighter in an attempt to gloss over everything else she’d just said. “It sucks we both know how this kind of thing feels. But I’m glad I know? You shouldn’t have to hold on to something like that alone.”
It was something and he smiled at her statement, and he'd accept it. Maybe it didn't matter exactly. If he'd learned one thing about himself in the past year it was that sometimes he could make foolish choices that might cause harm - even if he didn't mean for them to - and that it was something he'd have to carry with him from here on out. He wasn't the same man who had pulled into Fall City with the hopes of proposing to a girl, and a film career that was on the cusp of breaking through. "I do remind myself all the time that I know I messed up, and maybe that it matters that I know. That I can try to do better next time."
And somehow hearing that from Yelena, knowing what she'd been pushed up against, the type of people that had caused harm to her and other girls, it did mean that it mattered.
Because even if maybe he'd guessed about the disappearance, he hadn't wanted to guess the reality. How old had she been? How old had any of them been? Girls brought into something they should never have been a part of, and discarded when they weren't enough. And it made him angry, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. Not here. Not now. He reached his arms up and around her, reinforcing the way she'd tucked into him, and slipped fingers up against his hair. "Derleth is bad enough," he sighed. "Without us having to carry our pasts without anyone to talk to about them. I'm not sure what to say exactly, except that I'm glad you're here, that you're you. That you get to make your choices now."
Maybe it weirdly made it matter even more that she was here, that she hadn't run off, and that they could share secrets. Because she was here because she wanted to be? He leaned in and pressed his lips to her forehead.
To Yelena’s silent distress, the moment Hugh made the deliberate effort to keep her held close she started feeling the telltale tightness in her throat that meant she was teetering dangerously on the brink of getting ready to cry. Which was stupid, she chided herself, because there wasn’t really anything even wrong. Sure, the subject matter was heavy on both sides of the conversation, but the aftermath wasn’t turning out to be nearly as bad as she’d worried it might be. It was actually nice, in its own strange way given the circumstances, having someone to hold onto who held onto her right back.
Maybe that was where it was all coming from. It was one thing to think she’d made some kind of peace with her past. It was another to say it out loud to someone who had no idea about it only to realize she perhaps wasn’t so settled with it as she thought. And for that someone to not only accept her past without thinking differently of her, but to also understand that it followed her like a shadow. One that sometimes threatened to loom large enough to consume her. He understood it because he felt it too, and that was… not nice, obviously. But comforting.
She closed her eyes and pulled in a breath, holding it long enough that she could feel that constriction in her throat start to lose its grip. Once she knew she could let the breath out without it shaking, she did that on a long exhale of a sigh that took the tension out of her body enough that she leaned more heavily into him. Suddenly she felt exhausted and realized it must be even worse for Hugh.
“I’m glad you’re here too,” she finally whispered. Not a confession now, or at least not one he didn’t already know, but quiet because she wasn’t sure if he’d fallen asleep already and wasn’t willing to move to see if he had. “Just the way you are. And we both get to make our own choices now.”