One of the many positives of living at the Avengers Compound in Vallo during this particular point in time was that it was one of very few places that could be considered pretty safe. It was off on the far east side of the island, settled along the coast, and most fights tended to stay more toward the middle of the forest, the more populated areas. The Compound itself was still full to the brim with creature comforts that were becoming harder and harder to find, and they could even go outside without much fear of attack.
That didn’t mean things weren’t grim out there. Communications throughout Vallo were down; Interitus’ forces had taken down MageNet and the last remnants of functional technology they had left back in April. It seemed like there were new skirmishes every other day, and maybe it was selfish, to be content in a time of such horror. But Kate was clinging hard to whatever good she could find with a white-knuckled grip.
Dinner prep was taken in shifts these days. Most of them were versed enough to handle putting together a meal everyone would enjoy, and with their stockpile of supplies, they were still lucky enough to have some variety in their diets. Kate had never been the most adept in the kitchen, but she’d gotten better over years of trying her sisters’ and her wife’s patience. Eventually, she could confidently claim some culinary independence.
But it was always more fun when she could get one of them into the mess with her, and this time she’d wrangled Natasha. Cooking for their group usually meant doubling or tripling recipes so having a second pair of hands was always useful. Tonight was taco night – which included making tortillas from scratch, a task she’d mostly taken on herself.
“What do you think?” she asked, stepping back from the chunk of dough she’d been kneading on the kitchen counter. Her hands were covered with sticky flour, which she promptly wiped on the Iron Man apron she wore. “Does it look smooth enough?”
Always handy with a knife, Natasha was currently on dicing duty; tomatoes and onions. They hadn’t been able to get ahold of peppers for awhile now, but they could make up the difference with seasonings. As Kate’s voice broke through her concentration, Natasha glanced up to bestow her opinion on the dough. “It looks very nice, Betty Crocker.”
“Shut up,” Kate huffed, blowing some hair out of her eyes. She leaned forward and pressed the heels of her palms over the dough one more time, which really just re-smoothed it unnecessarily, before pulling back and assessing the situation again. “Okay, yeah, that’s good.” Now she just had to let it sit for a few minutes, which meant shifting gears to get the beef going on the stove.
“We’re probably going to need to do a few Taco Tuesdays in a row to use up the ground beef before it goes bad,” she noted. They’d bought and frozen quite a bit before Interitus had purged the city, but even repackaged and packed airtight, expiration was inevitable.
“I think we both know that I will never shut up.” Natasha gave her knife a twirling flourish before she went back to dicing the onion. “I learned it from you.” She gave Kate an affectionate hip check as her sister patted the dough.
She reveled in these moments whenever she could. The world outside often felt like it was ending, and Natasha being Natasha, was first in line to do whatever she could to help out and take care of others. So it was these quiet moments where she could relax some of the tension in her shoulders and tease her loved ones that truly meant everything to her. They were what helped keep her going when things felt more dire by the day. “I’ll take multiple Taco Tuesdays over what happened when the fish started to go.”
The little moments of normalcy like this made Kate ache a bit. She was glad for them, especially when she thought about how much they had lost. They had been lucky, but some of the people they loved most had disappeared, Yelena had been resurrected; it definitely wasn’t all happiness and bliss anymore, and she was acutely aware of that.
Her nose immediately wrinkled when she remembered the fish situation. “Yeah, that was hellish,” she agreed. Mercury poisoning was no one’s friend, and it was a damn good thing they had enough big brains around here for medical intervention. “Fresh fish only from here on out. Tell Steve to get his fisherman cap out. We’ll send Yelena out with him.”
After rinsing the flour off her hands in the sink, she dug out a good-sized pan and stuck it on the stove, turning the burner on to get the heat going for the beef.
“You’re kidding, right? Steve’s a city-boy through and through. Despite the old-man energy, he’d be more hopeless with a fishing pole than you would be.”
Natasha finished up the onions and dumped them into a bowl. Once Kate had cleared the sink, Nat moved to fill the space to rinse off her knife. The two of them seemed to move past and around one another seamlessly. Grace born of years of shared living spaces, and just knowing one another so well. Natasha set the knife on a drying rack and dried her hands off on the dish towel she had draped over her shoulder.
While Kate focused on the pan, Natasha went to the spice cupboard to see what she could find in the way of seasonings. Salt, pepper, paprika, and garlic powder. If they were careful with them, they should be able to stretch them through the next few Taco Tuesdays. She grabbed the containers and brought them over to the stove. That task completed, she hopped up to sit on the counter so she and Kate could still chat while the beef was cooking.
“I take offense to that,” Kate huffed. “For all you know, I’m a world-class fisherwoman.” She absolutely was not, although she’d made an attempt to shoot fish with her bow a couple of times. It had not gone well, and Natasha had been there to witness it, so – actually, she did know. She knew Kate through and through after all these years, and there was no huffing and puffing around it.
She raised an eyebrow when Nat hopped up onto the counter, poking at the beef with a spatula as it browned. “Don’t get comfortable up there, I’ve got more tortillas to make in a few minutes here, then this is on you.”
Natasha’s response to that was a soft snort. “Yeah, you’re a regular Captain Ahab.” She pulled one of her legs up onto the counter and tucked her foot against her other leg. The foot still hanging down swung idly.
While Kate bent her head down to poke at the browning beef, Natasha leaned over to peer at her. “You’re getting gray hairs.”
Kate’s free hand immediately snapped upward, covering the spot at her temples Natasha seemed to be examining. “Don’t be a bully, Tasha, my hair’s fine.” Still, she found herself pulling a few strands forward to squint at like she might spot a hint of gray.
She didn’t. Phew.
“You’re mean,” she whined, glaring up at her indignantly but heatlessly. “Not everyone’s some sort of ageless, non-graying wonder, okay? What is that, a ginger thing?” She hadn’t seen a single gray hair on Natasha in the past five years whereas she had, far too recently, had Emily pull a strand or two of silver off her head.
Natasha couldn’t help the chuckle, deep in her chest at Kate’s response. What was a little bullying between siblings? “No, no. It makes you look very distinguished.” She dodged as Kate swatted a hand in her direction. “Don’t be so sensitive.”
“I’m not exactly going for distinguished at twenty-nine!” Kate protested, swatting at Natasha again and landing one on her shoulder this time. “Jerk,” she grumbled, but she was smiling a little bit. “Why do I even put up with you?”
Natasha grinned as she spotted that smile Kate was trying to hide. “Because you love me.” She hopped back down to the ground, and held her hand out expectantly for the spatula. “I’ve got it from here. You go get started on the tortillas.”
Taking the position in front of the flying pan, Natasha began adding a bit of seasoning to the cooking meat. “Want to help me convince the others to have a game night tonight?”
Kate couldn’t argue with that, wouldn’t even make the attempt. She handed over the spatula, pausing only for a minute to plant a kiss on Natasha’s cheek, before returning to her resting tortilla dough. She snagged a butter knife off the counter and began dividing it up into proper-sized portions.
“Sure, I’m down,” she agreed. “No more Twister, though, that just ends in tragedy for everyone but you and Lena.” She was flexible herself, but she’d gotten her shoulder jostled a little too hard in a recent battle and wasn’t really feeling up to contorting into a pretzel at the moment.
“Fiiiiine.” It was true that no one else in the compound had a chance at beating either of the Widows at Twister. It just played to too many of their strengths. “No Monopoly either. Carol sulked for like a week last time we played. Jenga?”
Kate chuckled. “Okay, but then Tony’s gonna sulk if someone beats him at Jenga,” she pointed out. “Maybe Charades? We’ve got enough pairs around here to make that work. Oh, or Apples to Apples? Those are always good for keeping the mood up.”
“Everyone in this damn compound is so high maintenance,” Natasha laughed in response. She added some extra garlic powder to the beef and placed a lid over the pan to let the whole thing simmer. “Let’s go with Apples to Apples, you’re right, that’s always a good one for making everyone laugh.”
She watched Kate section out the dough and moved to grab a large pot to place alongside the pan on the stove top. That done, she slipped over to the other counter and began picking up the smaller pieces of dough to roll them into balls. They worked in silence for a moment, each focused on the task in front of them, before Natasha spoke up again. “Check-in time. How’ve you been feeling lately?”
Kate flashed Natasha an appreciative smile as she stepped in to help. She’d probably have to make one more batch of dough to be sure they had enough – there were some big appetites accompanying the big feelings around here – but she took the moment to just enjoy how in sync they’d become over the years.
Her smile faded into something a little more distant when she was prompted to check-in. She wasn’t doing badly, but it was always tough really taking into account the state of Vallo outside of their relatively calm Compound bubble.
“I’m okay,” she said, and there was enough sincerity in her expression and her tone that it was easy enough to tell she meant it. “I miss James a lot lately,” she admitted, but she didn’t linger on that sentiment long. She knocked her shoulder against Natasha’s gently. “What about you, сестра?”
Natasha’s chest constricted tightly at the mention of James. She missed him constantly, but consoled herself by imagining him, Torunn, and Francis off in some other world getting into trouble and looking after one another. She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment and nodded. “I miss him too. You just know he’d come up with the best cards in Apples to Apples.”
She kept her eyes trained on her hands as they spoke. “I’m okay too. Things like group dinners and game nights help.”
Kate nodded, lining up her little dough balls in a careful line on the counter, before her gaze turned back to her sister. She was right about James, and Kate was right there with her when they all gathered to spend time together. Having that with so many people who had become her family was enough to stave off the bad feelings when they came.
She wiped her hands on her apron again before she looped her arms around Natasha’s shoulders and pulled her in close. “It makes it easier,” she agreed, giving Natasha a squeeze. “But I’m here for all the bad thoughts, even the ones you don’t want to tell Steve.”
Natasha leaned back into Kate’s embrace and leaned their heads together. “I know you are, воробей. And I will let you know when I have them. Today I’m good, though.” She used the palm of her hand to begin squishing the dough balls into the flat circles of tortillas. “I want to ride that feeling for as long as I possibly can.” She chuckled darkly. Something else always came along to disrupt it.
“You got it. Я тебя люблю.” Kate knew very well how quickly the good times could fade these days, and she didn’t want to push Natasha in that direction any faster than it would happen naturally. But they’d been through hell together in the last few years, even the near-loss of Yelena, and she was more determined than ever to make sure Natasha knew she was there, whenever she needed, whatever she needed.
She pulled gently away and turned back to the task at hand, following in her sister’s example and beginning to flatten the tightly packed little dough balls with her palms.
“Maybe we can eat dinner outside?” she suggested. “It’s nice out right now, and we can burn off some energy with Marley after we eat. Think Carol and Emme would be willing?”
Natasha ran through a list of potential dangers that could come with eating outside. The Compound was luckily far enough away from the main action, and their security provided them with an additional layer of protection, but there was always risk. However, she knew better than most that sometimes the risks were necessary. They all needed moments of normalcy to keep going. Even if that normalcy was just eating tacos outside and Kate and Marley Nerf battling on the lawn. She smiled and gave Kate a nod. “Yeah, I think that’s a great idea. You leave Carol and Emme to me.”
Kate grinned widely. She was always happy to run around with Marley; it made her miss Morgan and little Francis, but Marley was a wild kid all on her own, definitely her mother’s child. Even not-quite-four, she was fearless in the face of a Nerf battle. And by the time evening fell, she should be worn out enough to go to bed easily.
“Will do,” she agreed. Nat was the obvious best choice for the convincing-the-parents leg of this mission. “Everyone’s required to join in the Nerf battle, though, even you.”
“I mean, if you want to lose, sure.” Natasha arched an eyebrow at Kate even as she continued to flatten the dough with her palms.
“I’m used to losing to you,” Kate scoffed, unperturbed. “And it’s fun to dramatically fake-die when Marley gets a hit in. Francis used to love that.” Her smile softened wistfully, passing over the last of the flattened dough before reaching for the mixing bowl to start a new batch.
Natasha snorted softly again. It was true that no one was better at dramatically fake-dying than Kate. “At least you’ve become slightly more gracious about losing to me over the years.” Slightly. “I’ll send Steve down to the Nerf Armory for us.”
“Well, it helps that I actually win against you sometimes now,” Kate replied, scooping another cup of flour out of the bag to add to the mixing bowl. Still not frequently, but she’d grown more patient over the years, less worried about being impressive to Natasha and more focused on keeping her skills sharp. There were few people better suited to keep her in shape than her big sister.
But yeah, she could occasionally still get a little butthurt. She wouldn’t deny that. She liked to win, and coming to Vallo to face-off consistently with Natasha Romanoff had humbled her real quick.
“You don’t help, getting all smirky and smug like you do.”
“I like to think of my smirking as inspirational. You know, just inspiring you to do better the next time so you can smirk instead.”
While Kate worked on the next batch of dough, Nat grabbed some oil and began heating it up in the pot so she could work on frying the first batch of tortillas. “Remember when Yelena set the curtains on fire trying to fry homemade doughnuts?”
Kate’s eyes lit up and she laughed. “God, yeah. The smoke alarm started going off, and Mango started screeching, and that got all the other animals going. The neighbors probably thought we were being attacked.” She reached out to the bowl close to her stomach on the counter, grabbing a whisk to stir the tortilla mix. “She tried to blame it on the curtains being made of the wrong material, didn’t she?”
“If they were flame retardant this wouldn’t have happened.” Natasha echoed in a near perfect imitation of their sister. “The house reeked like burnt polyester for a month, and Licorice wouldn’t come near the kitchen for weeks.” She laughed and shook her head. “Thankfully for the Compound we’ve all gotten better with our culinary abilities.”
That imitation only served to make Kate snort her amusement as she reached for a little bit of oil to stir into the bowl. She could close her eyes and remember how indignant Yelena had been when Nat had teased her, how she’d come back home with a stack of the ugliest flame retardant curtains Kate had ever seen and had to be stopped from replacing them in every room.
She missed those days, just the three of them (four, later, when Emily had left Stark Tower to move into the house, knowing Kate couldn’t bear to be parted from her sisters) with their menagerie of animals and the ridiculousness that happened under that roof. Sometimes, she wished they could go back, but at least they were all still together. Losing any of these people on top of those who had disappeared would create a hole in Kate’s heart. But Natasha, Yelena, Emily? She’d be absolutely broken.
“I think the Compound could take a curtain fire if it came down to it,” she commented. “We might be in for a downpour from the emergency sprinklers, but hey, maybe we could fill up the pool again.”
With the oil finally hot enough, Natasha began to carefully drop the tortilla dough into the pot. It sizzled and crackled and soon enough the kitchen began to smell wonderful. It soothed some of those jagged emotional edges they all seemed to have nowadays.
“Oh I’m absolutely positive that Pepper made sure the biggest and best fire precautions were put into place here. I feel like that just has to be standard at this point for any place that Tony spends time.” She grabbed a plate and covered it with an extra towel to soak up excess oil, then began the process of moving the tortillas to the plate. “We can get Yelena to cook tomorrow and really test them.”
“You can talk her into that,” Kate chuckled. She doubted their sister would refuse a challenge like that. She’d probably purposely burn another curtain just to see what would happen. “Just don’t let her burn the food we’re supposed to eat to test it out. She’s too good a cook for that kind of waste.”
Natasha dropped more dough into the oil and moved her head as a few rogue spatters of the oil came torpedoing in her direction. “She might just set the curtains on fire directly, no need to involve the food at all. I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Who is setting fire to what now?” Emily had poked her head into the kitchen and was giving the sisters an amusedly puzzled look at their conversation. Her long dark hair was pulled up in a messy bun, and she had a stray streak of green marker on her cheek from coloring with Marley. Being one of the few “regular” people in a home full of literal superheroes, Em often tried to make herself useful in other ways, like helping keep the toddler happy and safe. Today, though, Carol and Emmeline had absconded her for bathtime before dinner and left Emily free to check in on Natasha and Kate. She crossed the kitchen and gave her wife a small squeeze hello. “Do you two need any help?”
Kate smiled when Emily came in, leaning into her embrace and turning her head to give her wife a proper kiss hello. “We were just remembering when Yelena set the curtains on fire back home,” she explained with a chuckle. “Figured she could do the same to test the fire safety around here.”
She considered the state of the food and realization lit her face. “We have… literally no side dishes, if you want to pick something? We got consumed with tortilla-making, I guess.”
Emily smiled happily into that kiss. Despite the hell happening outside their door, she would always be grateful to have Kate who had saved her in so many ways since they’d first met.
She nodded at Kate’s request for side dishes, and pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. “You’ve got it, boss.” She headed over to the pantry to look at available options. They still had plenty of rice and beans, both easy and appropriate sides for tacos. While she would have loved to make both, she also knew that they still needed to be mindful of using too much. After a moment or two of deliberation, Emily decided on black beans and moved over to the sink to wash her hands.
Natasha watched their interactions with a contented smile. She’d liked Emily from Day One and was pleased that they still were so solid together. “Kate has volunteered us all for an after dinner Nerf Battle, if you’re up for it.”
Emily laughed as she dried her hands and set to work on cooking the beans for them. “I’m pretty sure I can be convinced. Even if I’m likely to be the first one out.”
“Someone has to be first and you’re really good at it, babe,” Kate teased her, smoothing out the new batch of tortilla dough and stepping back to give it the proper resting time again. The Iron Man apron was smeared with the pasty residue at this point, but she rubbed her hands into it again before circling back to Emily and snagging her by the waist, pressing close.
“Besides, we all know who the last one standing against the baby always is.” She knocked her foot against her sister’s leg and grinned at her. “Black Widow: the ultimate baby boss level.”
Emily threw her head back in laughter at that. Genuine and light, it filled the kitchen up. “I am really good at it. I’ll take that mantle proudly.” Though she knew the sticky remnants of dough on Kate’s apron were likely getting all smushed into her clothes, Emily didn’t move away from the embrace. She just smiled happily and leaned into it.
“That’s what I used to call her when she started training me too.”
That commentary triggered Natasha’s own laughter and she shook her head. “You are both absolutely ridiculous.”
“Takes one to know one,” Kate retorted, sticking her tongue out at Natasha. She would happily admit to being the embodiment of chaos and ridiculous on most occasions – maybe less so these days, but the energy was still there. Her sisters, however, were no less ridiculous; Natasha, particularly, just possessed more composure.
“It’ll be a good night,” she went on, tucking her chin over Emily’s shoulder. “Summer heat hasn’t kicked in yet, so I figured it would be safe and comfy to do dinner outside. You good with that, babe?”
Emily moved her hand from what she was doing to wrap around Kate and give her a soft squeeze. “Sounds like a great night. I’m in.”
An extra loud POP of oil coming from the pan on the stove snapped all three women to attention and Natasha looked over slightly guiltily. She’d let her focus stray away from it for a little too long. “Whoops. We’re fine, everything’s fine. No need to test the fire protocols yet.”
Well, that was unexpected, but after the initial surprise, Kate just chuckled. “Good thing I didn’t have my fire extinguisher prepared,” she teased her sister, slipping away from Emily with a quick kiss to the cheek – followed closely by one on Natasha’s cheek as well. She was with her two most favorite people and in an affectionate mood, sue her.
“Let’s get this done,” she declared, returning to her next batch of dough. “Before the wild child comes running.”