Network

[musicdied]

Who: Yelena Belova
Username: jelica
Warnings: hallucinations, apocalyptic scenarios (please warn more specifically in the subject line if applicable.

[Yelena has never been what anyone would call a good patient. Even aside from the fact that she hates feeling vulnerable, she's never taken well to enforced idleness. She'd escaped medical the second she was able, but it will be a few weeks until she's up for her usual routine, which leaves her in need of something on which to focus her considerable energy.

Fortunately - or unfortunately - there's the flower-marked cellars they'd found in Dogtown the previous month, her investigation of which she'd had to cut shorter than she might have otherwise liked in order to join the excursion to Springfield, to distract her.]

For anyone who entered the cellars in Dogtown, what did you see? And where were you, as close as you can narrow down the location?

Did you explore more than one?

[Comparing apocalypse collections: the cheeriest possible topic of conversation.]

Comments

In person

[worthallthis]

Somebody else is not a great patient. Mostly because he spends the entire time he has to be anywhere near medical either shaking in terror, or completely catatonic.

He escaped sooner than Yelena did, despite arguably being just as damaged.

He doesn't reply via the network, since he's just across the apartment. Instead, he limps out of his room and leans on the wall, left arm still looking like he'd been picking awkwardly at the fried wires inside, to say, "It was the helicarriers. What I saw. What it would have looked like if Steve hadn't stopped them."

No preamble, just jumping right into answering her posted question.

[musicdied]

"What it would look like here?" Yelena asks.

She notes how ragged he looks when she looks up - not that she looks much better herself, not like anyone who fought the circus's avatars look much better - and leans over to pat the end of her bed in invitation, wincing past the tug of vertigo as she shifts positions.

"Or did you see home?"

[worthallthis]

"No, it was here. Smoke and dead bodies and a HYDRA flag rising from the wreckage." He pushes up from the door frame to limp over to where she's indicated, sinking down and pulling his metal hand into his lap, so it doesn't hang uncomfortably. It still works... sort of... but it feels heavier than usual. "I think. If they got what they wanted. They'd never stop at just a couple million specific targets."

[musicdied]

"Even a couple million would have shaken the world," Yelena says grimly. Even one or two could shake the world, if they were the right targets.

"But no. People like that are never satisfied."

She pauses, brow furrowing slightly, to tap out a quick response to someone on her phone.

"--Do you think it was drawing from something you feared? Or picking things that might have happened if the timeline was different?"

[worthallthis]

"Knowing where we are. And what we're dealing with. I'm pretty sure it's the fear thing," Winter says tiredly, and focuses down on his poor damaged arm to try and dig out another of the fried wires. "I don't think they can actually see into other timelines, anyway. If they could they'd pick better people to drag here."

People who would want to be their avatars, not fight against them, he means. Maybe even people who were actually people and who didn't have to figure out how to fake it, like him.

[musicdied]

"Seeing other timelines doesn't mean understanding the people in them."

Yelena plucks fretfully at a loose thread on the bedspread, then scowls slightly as she glances at another notification on her phone.

"They can still feed on us. And I think...most of us have our breaking point. I know if I hadn't found you, or met some of the other people here, I might have been willing to become a monster, if that's what it took to get home."

She pauses, then adds quietly, "If what I saw at the circus the first time had been real, I would have been willing to become a monster, even with that."

[worthallthis]

"Everyone has a breaking point," Winter says quietly, a little flatly. "It's. Better. If you know what yours is, probably."

He leans over a little, reaches for her wrist with his right hand, wraps it up a moment. Brief but warm. At least that hand isn't damaged. "I know I'm not her. But. I'm not going anywhere."

[musicdied]

"Probably," she agrees. "Not knowing my weaknesses has never been one of my...weaknesses."

Her nose wrinkles as she considers the construction of that sentence, then shrugs it off. She's recovering from fighting a fucking evil candle, a little bit of redundant wording can only be expected.

She glances down at his hand, and musters a faint smile. "It's probably good you aren't her. You cause a lot less trouble."

[worthallthis]

"Me? Less trouble?" He looks vaguely skeptical, but maybe not entirely seriously so. He gives her wrist a careful little squeeze, then sits back again, focusing down on the metal arm again. "Tell me about her," he offers. "If you want to."

[musicdied]

"You don't miss." There's a breath of humour there, like she's letting him in on a private joke.

She's silent for a long moment, then says quietly, "She was brave. Fierce. When our first mission ended, and Dreykov's soldiers came to claim us back, she disarmed one of them and held them all at gunpoint. To keep from going back. To protect me. They would have killed her, probably, if Alexei hadn't talked her down, she was only a girl. But they wouldn't all have survived her."

[worthallthis]

Winter nods. He doesn't miss. He can only assume that at some point maybe Natasha did.

He thinks hard. Was she one of the girls he trained? Or did they keep her and Yelena separated? He saw her in the nightmare that tried to strangle Yelena, much younger, had she looked familiar then? "Red hair, right?" A pause, a memory. "I. Think I shot her once. She shorted out my arm."

[musicdied]

"Red hair," Yelena confirms, then adds, "usually."

They'd all been trained in disguise, in disappearing. Colouring their hair is only one small part of that.

She makes a low noise, somewhere between a laugh and a sniffle. "That sounds like her. She was very good with the Widow's Bite when...when I last saw her."

[worthallthis]

"It was a little disc. Thing. I had to pull it off. Reboot the arm." He remembers the swinging motion of it, the hair in his face, the frustration and fear and anger that she'd tricked him.

He's going to have to do that again here, too, he thinks. He's already done it a couple times, but once he fixes a couple more things a reset is going to be necessary.

"She was smart," he continues. "She. Used a voice recording to make me blow up the wrong car. But I still shot her. I would have killed her. I don't remember why I didn't."

[musicdied]

"Operational requirements," Yelena suggests. "She wasn't your target. If she was on a SHIELD mission, she might have interfered."

A pause, and she smiles faintly, crooked and more than a little rueful. "If she wasn't on a SHIELD mission, she might have still interfered. She wanted to atone for what we are."

Natasha, she thinks, would have said what they were. Yelena has no such illusions.

[worthallthis]

He tries to grasp at the rest of the memory, but all he gets is a confused moment of Steve saying that damn name, staring at him in shock and dismay, disconnected from the rest of the mission. He shakes his head, digging into one of his many pockets for his notebook. He ought to write all that down before he forgets.

"Do you want to atone, too?" he asks, looking down at a blank page, not writing yet, though he knows he needs to. Sometimes memories don't stick around long.

[musicdied]

She starts a little at the question, and hisses sharply as the motion tugs at the still-healing burns that lay along her ribcage.

"Fuck," she says. And then, "No. It's a fairy tale. I could spend every day of my life caring for orphans and three-legged puppies, and it won't make any of the people I've killed any less dead. I want to tear down every last inch of Dreykov's network, and then salt the ground so nothing can grow in its place."

The smile that flickers across her face is sharp, and has very little to do with humour. "But probably I'm going to die here fighting monsters, so it doesn't really matter either way."

[worthallthis]

"You're not going to die here fighting monsters," Winter says, looking up at her and frowning. "Not unless I do first."

He never wants to exist in this place without her. If she's going, he's going first, dammit.

[musicdied]

She glances away, almost self-conscious, gesturing to the bandages that deform the lines of her light tank top.

"It's not something I want to do," she assures. "Just...it's the likely outcome. For both of us, probably. We just need to make sure to bring enough explosives to take the horrors with us."

[worthallthis]

She does have a point. He just doesn't like it. He looks briefly conflicted, just a little, before he turns his attention properly to the notebook and starts writing down the memory to the best of his ability.

"I don't want you to die, either," he says after a moment of silence, voice low.

[musicdied]

"I'll try my best not to," she assures, and shoves down a twinge of unaccustomed guilt. She doesn't have a death wish, but if it's the practical choice?

She is never, ever going to tell him exactly how she managed to ensure Dreykov's demise.

"But you have to promise me the same."

[worthallthis]

Good plan, Yelena. He would be upset.

"I have to be here to protect people. And I know you don't want anything to happen to me," he assures her. "Steve doesn't, either. Or Kate or Malcolm or Cortana. Or Martin or Meredith." (Who isn't gone yet at this point.) He frowns down at his notebook, then says, "That's a lot of people."

[musicdied]

"You protect people," Yelena notes. "And you teach them how to use the tools they need to protect themselves. That's going to make people get attached to you."

She leans forward - slowly, carefully, ignoring the tug and throb of her wounds - and smiles at him. "Trust me, I should know."

[worthallthis]

"You are a special case," Winter points out, though not without a little warmth in his voice. For him, that's a lot of warmth. He responds to her lean by reaching up and tapping very gently on her forehead with one finger. "Besides, I haven't protected all those people. Or even most of those people." Winter shakes his head a little. "I think some of them more often wind up trying to help me."

[musicdied]

Her nose crinkles slightly, and she utters a soft huff of laughter - then does her best to mask her wince as it proves to be a little too much motion for her much-abused hide.

"They know you would. But you're not wrong. Some of the people here like very much to think they can fix people." A moment's pause before she allows, "It's not a bad thing to want, in comparison to some things."

[worthallthis]

"At least with me. There's fixing needed," he allows. He's probably a pretty safe place to put feelings like that. Who knows, it might even actually help.

He taps her forehead again, this time a little longer, giving a tiny push. You lay back again, Yelena. He saw that tightening around the eyes that means pain.