Chapter Text
On her first birthday after her mom’s arrest, Kate Bishop takes the day off, puts her phone on airplane mode, and disappears into Bear Mountain State Park with Lucky until the park closes and she has no choice but to leave. When she gets home at night, she ignores every missed call and text, calls Clint, and listens to his boring farm stories until she falls asleep.
On her second birthday after her mom’s arrest, Kate leaves Lucky with Grills and spends the day with Kamala and Cassie. They go out for lunch, catch a movie in the afternoon, and even bust a convenience store robbery before the end of the day. When she and Lucky get home at night, she takes Clint’s call and tells him all about her day before Lila steals the phone from her father to set up a solo visit to New York. They’re long overdue for a girls weekend, she says, and they are not doing it at the farm. When Lila hangs up, Kate takes Laura’s call and spends the next hour reassuring the Barton matriarch that she’s perfectly capable of keeping Lila safe for a couple of days.
On her third birthday after her mom’s arrest, Kate visits her mom at the correctional facility she was sentenced to for the next twenty years. After two and a half years of going back and forth, Eleanor Bishop pleaded guilty to the murder of Armand Duquesne III, reluctantly taking accountability for her actions so that her daughter would finally agree to see her again. Whether or not she would’ve also pleaded guilty to everything else she did, Kate will never know. Wilson Fisk came back from the dead with his eyes set on a fresh start as the mayor of New York City, and with both Bishops under the protection of Nick Fury, he made sure none of Eleanor's final charges could tie her to him.
During her visit they make a bit of small talk, as they’ve done since her first visit after the trial, and then Eleanor says something that stays with Kate for the rest of the day. It’s on her mind through the surprise party her team throws her and through the traditional birthday call with Clint, and it keeps her up at night when she wants nothing more but to fall sleep and forget. Her mom’s words, if said without any ill intentions, send her on a spiral for the rest of the week.
Kate Bishop is now older than her mother was on her wedding day, and she doesn’t know how to deal with the knowledge that she is nowhere near where she was supposed to be by now—and even further from accomplishing even half of what her mother had in the same time.
In the first quarter of a century of her life, Eleanor Bishop finished her education, rose among the socialites in New York, put herself in the spotlight, found the love of her life, and became the most important piece of the Bishop empire—even more so than the Bishop heir himself.
At twenty five, Kate Bishop hasn’t come close to doing any of that.
When she was a kid, Kate dreamt of having every single cool job she learned about. Athlete, firefighter, detective, pilot, EMT… she wanted to do it all, and everyone promised her she could. Then her dad died, and her ambitions changed. Being an Avenger—or at least someone people could count on when they needed to be saved—became her main goal, and she convinced her mom to sign her up for every single activity that could help her achieve it. As she got older and the world around her changed, she started to realize that being an Avenger was more of an illusion than a possibility, and she reluctantly accepted her role as her mother’s successor.
But then Christmas happened, and once again her world changed right in front of her without any way to stop it. She met Clint Barton, became his protegee, survived one too many attacks on her life, and had her own mother arrested. Any prospects of future she’d had were all torn down in a single week, and for the smallest of moments she saw a chance to accomplish her childhood dreams by her hero's side.
But Clint’s retired. And her dreams were just that. Dreams. And reality was always going to catch up to her.
With her mother in provisional jail for the murder of Armand III, Kate graduated college, became the interim CEO of Bishop Security, and promptly spent the next year working tirelessly to uncover every seed of corruption her mother had planted into the company. She single-handedly ran background checks on every single one of her employees, board members and shareholders, promptly firing, blackmailing or buying out with her family’s fortune those who were found to have criminal ties. Keeping up her vigilante activities in her spare time was her only tether to what could have been, but it didn’t feel quite like it should. She was burning out quick, and she was in desperate need for a change.
That change came when she least expected it in the form of an overly-excited teenager who wanted Kate to join her superhero team. Kate was reluctant at first, but the team was backed by S.A.B.E.R.—even if they were supposed to be an Earth-bound team and the agency was focused on aerospace defense—and, with the rumors of Wilson Fisk coming back to New York, Kate accepted the offer. The team was far from the Avengers she’d dreamt of, but being with S.A.B.E.R. gave her—and her mother—some protection against Fisk and, even if the threats they faced would be different from those she was used to—no more Tracksuits and run-of-the-mill bad guys—, it offered her a way to continue to make a difference.
Working for S.A.B.E.R. gave a new spin to her life, and Kate desperately clung onto her role as CEO to keep some resemblance of normalcy in the midst of the chaos everything became. She knew holding on to the company was doing her more harm than good, but Bishop Security was her family’s legacy, and she couldn't let it go. Not until Laura Barton staged a week long intervention to make her see that taking a step back didn’t mean she was ceding her legacy, and that whether she saw it then or not, it was what would eventually be best for everyone—starting with her.
Laura stayed in New York with her for the few weeks it took her to tie up all loose ends, giving Kate the support and encouragement she needed to make the choices she knew were right despite going against every other shareholder’s opinions. She bumped up a position or two as many employees as she could, gave every single one of them a big, deserved raise to reward them for their loyalty and for doing things the right way, and chose a replacement she knew was right for the position of CEO—Emma Price, long-time Bishop executive and one of the few employees who had always been nice to Kate when she visited her mom growing up.
Without the pressure of the company on her shoulders, Kate found herself with a newfound restlessness, a lot of free time, and a paralyzing quarter life crisis, so Laura took her back with her to the farm to give her a chance to decompress and figure out what was next without the always present pressure of the city. Every other Barton welcomed her and Lucky with open arms, and Kate found some clarity in the warmth of the place she’d come to call her second home.
Other than during her vigilante time, the most her she’d felt since her mother’s arrest had been during her months of running background checks on all of her employees, and with Clint and Laura’s blessing she decided to take her investigation skills one step further and became a PI. It was a line of work that was perfectly legal and would allow her to use her skills and knowledge for something more than the few S.A.B.E.R. sanctioned missions they got sent on, and in it she found a passion she didn’t know she could have for her job.
During one of her first solo outings she crossed paths with someone she’d only ever heard rumors about, and it gave her an idea Clint would probably discourage. Luckily for her, Clint wasn’t there to stop her, and by the end of the week she’d managed to convince Jessica Jones to let her become her apprentice for a little while.
Jessica wasn’t exactly thrilled to have a recently-licensed PI asking too many questions and following her every move, but she did appreciate Kate's abilities and her confidence in them—even more so when she saw everything the archer was actually capable of when they helped Daredevil break Jack and all the other missing civilians and vigilantes out of Fisk's dungeons—, and she really, really appreciated having a free babysitter for her daughter, which was a fair price to pay for her expertise.
So, at twenty five, Kate Bishop isn’t anywhere near where her younger self thought she would be. She’s not an Avenger, nor is she her mother’s successor anymore. She’s the heir who abdicated the throne. An amateur PI leading a team of teenagers—and Riri—who struggle to follow basic orders and like to pretend the chore wheel doesn't exist.
She knows making it to where she is hasn’t been easy. She knows the world has changed so much it’s barely recognizable anymore. She knows the hills she’s climbed during the last few years have been the tallest she’s ever faced. She knows she’s doing the best she can, even when it still doesn’t feel like it’s enough. She’s not disappointed in who she is, but she still wishes to be more.
But Kate Bishop is nothing if not persistent, and she won’t stop trying. Maybe she doesn’t have it all figured out at twenty five like her mom did, but there’s still time. There always is.
Maybe she will never be an Avenger like she always wished, but she will make a difference. She will be more than an amateur PI or a fourth class S.A.B.E.R. agent. She will be more than just content with where she is. She will make it somewhere she can look back from and be proud of all she’s done. Of who she is. And everyone else will, too.
Yelena wakes up to a loud argument in hushed whispers happening on the other side of her bedroom door. It’s moments like this that she’s really, really glad for the locks in every bedroom door at the tower.
Unlike the locks at the labs, which are top-tier government tech, the one in her bedroom is just a simple bolt that would give way were the door to be kicked in, but it’s enough to give her a certain sense of privacy when she needs a moment away from the others. She knows that Ava could still phase through if she wanted to, and that it's not nearly enough to keep three super soldiers out if they really wanted to get in, but privacy is something none of them have ever really had, so the locks are the one boundary they all respect.
The whispers turn into groans when someone decides they’ve had enough arguing and knocks, but the voices quickly fall silent as they listen for a response. Yelena stays still and waits. Maybe if she pretends she’s still asleep she can—
Another knock. More hushed whispers. Fuck.
Still lying under the covers, she looks around the room. She has her suit and equipment, so she could probably just jump out of the window and make it down the ninety stories to the street in under a minute without anyone noticing. She could spend the day out and pretend she’d left during the night. She could—
“Yelena? You awake?” Ava calls. She sits up on her bed but doesn’t answer. If they leave in the next minute she can avoid jumping out the window by just hiding in her room all day. “Are we sure she didn’t go out last night?”
Walker and Alexei talk over each other, one saying she did go out and the other saying she didn’t, but another voice comes through clearer than the other two.
“I can hear her moving inside.”
Yelena sighs in defeat. Right. Bob’s enhanced hearing. He can't fly or use his cooler powers too much without risking the Void taking over, but for eavesdropping there’s no problem.
“I’m awake, give me a second,” she calls back to them, getting some more hushed whispers in response. She sighs and rubs the sleep off her eyes. Slowly, dragging the minutes for as long as she can, she gets dressed in some loose jeans and a black shirt. They don’t have any New Avengers commitments today, so she leaves the suit in the closet. She’ll change later if they need to go out. Dreading every second of it, she puts her hand on the doorknob and turns it.
“Happy birthday!” Ava, Bob, Walker and her dad yell the second she opens the door.
They stand in front of her with big smiles and an even bigger cake on Walker’s hands. Bucky’s standing a few steps back, his face tired as he says, “I’m sorry, I tried to to stop them, but”—he gestures vaguely towards the others—“you know.”
Yelena does know. Birthdays are important days to most people. They get to celebrate another year spent on earth, another year lived right. They celebrate getting older and and growing from the dumb kids they once were into the wise adults they’re meant to be. But Yelena's not one of those people. Because for Yelena, time and birthdays stopped mattering a long time ago.
Her childhood lasted all of six years, and of those she remembers only one birthday. Then she was taken to the Red Room, where she spent the next twenty years of her life measuring time in the minutes she had to complete a mission and counting her age by the years left of usefulness her body had. She got out, then, thanks to Oksana, and life was kind enough to give her two years of fake normalcy and even faker birthdays with her sister before she lost it all, along with five more years of her life. She was born thirty nine years ago—that much she found out from the files Natasha took from the Red Room—, but her body is only thirty four, and her mind… it’s both older and younger than it should be.
The people standing in front of her—most of which have probably been coerced into getting out of bed early to do this by Alexei—have no ill intentions with the cake and the badly hidden present behind Bob’s back. They mean well. Yelena knows they do. But her birthday is not her day of birth, and any celebration she’s had of the day Dreykov chose for her—even the two she had while Natasha was still alive—has never been nothing but a way to make Alexei feel better about what he did. He’s trying to do better now, Yelena tries to remind herself, and the candles lit in front of her are proof of it.
Forcing a smile, her eyes find the one person who understands what birthdays mean to her. Bucky, five feet away with his permanent frown on his face, gives her a tight smile and a short nod. His face is stern, but his eyes are as kind as always, a quiet understanding in them.
They have found themselves, once or twice or more, sharing quiet conversations over cold beers out in the tower’s heliport in the middle of the night. The first night they’d spent out there had been one when Yelena couldn’t sleep, her room and the common spaces at the tower feeling too small to exist in and the outside world too big and exposed to face. Tired of tossing and turning, she’d decided to go out to the heliport in hopes the fresh air would help ease her mind without exposing her to the shadows of the streets of New York. She’d found Bucky already standing out there, an unopened beer in each hand, watching Sam Wilson fly away from the tower. Bucky only turned towards her once Sam was completely out of sight, looking like he was holding the weight of the world on his shoulders but still managing a smile when he offered one of the beers to Yelena.
Bucky was not one to talk, and Yelena was not one to ask, so they’d sat in silence on the side of the building, their legs dangling off the edge as they sipped their beers and watched the sleepless city they were meant to protect until the sun poked its head from the horizon, signaling the start of a new day for the leaders of the New Avengers.
The second time it’d happened, it was Bucky who’d found Yelena out in the heliport. She’d been standing on the edge of the building, focusing on the feeling of the cold air against her skin, and Bucky had sat next to her, his quiet company being exactly what she needed to ground herself as her mind refused to let go of the images her nightmares had brought back. She’d sat down with him, eventually, and they’d shared the beers Bucky had brought out as he updated her on what he and Ava had found during their reconnaissance mission.
The situation repeated itself multiple times—one of them walking out to the heliport in the middle of the night to find the other already there. They never talked about their reason for being out there, both understanding that the thoughts and images that plagued their minds could be too much to put into words, but they always stayed until the other felt better or the sun came out—the latter usually coming first.
Most of the conversations they’ve shared out there are devoid of any depth, just discussions of trivial things they’ve encountered, but every once in a while the topic of their pasts has come up, allowing them to share with each other things no one else would quite understand—including the dissonance of disliking birthdays when they should appreciate finally being able to age freely.
Yelena realized early on that she and Bucky share a certain complicity that, no matter how many team building exercises they do, is different from what they share with the rest of the team. They’re two people from two completely different time periods with completely different upbringings, yet their pasts are so similar they could be mistaken for each other’s.
They both were groomed into believing killing for their country was the only way to a better future—Dreykov’s conditioning being not that different from Uncle Sam’s. They became victims of ego-maniacal men who toyed with their minds and bodies until they couldn’t recognize themselves anymore, watching helplessly as their bodies moved without their mind's consent, being nothing but silent spectators to the unspeakable atrocities they committed in the name of supposed progress and the greater good. They had even both been in the Red Room at the same time—Yelena growing up to be the best child assassin the world had ever seen, and Bucky occasionally there as a weapon to train the Widows before subjugation. Widows who showed signs of resistance to the training were made to fight—and lose—against the Winter Soldier, making the mere threat of him coming after them if they rebelled enough to drown any hopes of escaping.
They had been freed, eventually, but their pain hadn’t ended there. They had to learn to live with minds they didn’t know if they could trust, the threat of losing control of themselves much more real than the illusion of ever having it. And then, just as they were coming into themselves, they were blipped. Five more years of their lives taken away, just like that. The cherry on top, though, was that the people they loved the most chose to leave them behind, and they were left to fend for themselves in a world they didn’t know anymore.
Most days Yelena still struggles with making peace with her past, and she’s still not sure of where in the world she belongs, but seeing Bucky come back from his own past gives her hope that she can, too. Bucky has, against all odds, made it somewhere he never imagined he would be, with a team he sometimes likes, a family with the Wilsons, and a clean slate to make his life his own. He has overcome his pain and trauma, and Yelena’s slowly learning that she can, too. Even if the candles on the cake remind her of just how far behind she is.
Because today, Yelena realizes as she watches the wax melting on top of the cake, she celebrates her thirty-fourth year on earth, which would be thirty-nine if she hadn’t blipped—which is one year older than Natasha was when she died. She almost stumbles backwards as the realization dawns on her, but her quick reflexes allow her to pass it off as if she was simply shifting the weight on her feet.
By thirty-eight, Natasha had escaped the Red Room on her own, become a hero, built a family, saved the world twice, defied multiple governments, found Yelena, freed the Widows that remained under subjugation in the Red Room, and found a way to bring half of the universe’s population back into existence.
Yelena hasn’t done any of that.
She thought about escaping the Red Room thousands of times, but she never actually tried to. Oksana saved her, and in return she sent the counter-agent away for someone else to deal with. She did, afterwards, save widows for a couple of years, but she abandoned that mission when she came back from the dead, choosing to go on a pointless quest for revenge instead.
Even if by accident, she’s found a team, and she’s become an Avenger, just like Natasha, but she’s still far from who her sister was. The public thinks the New Avengers are nothing more than government puppets, and they refuse to give them even a single ounce of trust to prove themselves. She knows the people aren’t without reason—the team barely manages to complete a mission without yelling or throwing knives at each other—, but that doesn’t stop the distrust in everyone’s eyes from hurting.
But Yelena’s nothing if not resilient, and now that she’s not drifting aimlessly anymore, now that she knows what she wants, she won’t let anything or anyone stop her from becoming who she’s meant to be. She doesn’t want to be a savior. She doesn’t want to be the killer little girls call hero. She wants to be someone people can look up to and see that, no matter what awful things they’ve done, they can always do better. That even if they can’t make up for all the pain they’ve caused, they can always try. Just like Natasha was.
“Come on, make a wish,” Bob says, the present behind his back more visible than hidden.
She doesn’t know when the path she’s on will end, but she knows who she’ll be when it does. She’ll make it somewhere she, too, can be proud of all she’s overcome, and she will be someone Natasha would be proud to call her sister. Or at least she’ll try until time takes her again.
She blows out the candles.
One would think that, after more than fifteen years of repeated publicly known alien invasions, the US government would be better at cleaning up their messes and finding all of the dangerous alien technology before thugs and smugglers did.
One would be wrong.
The New Avengers have been tasked with retrieving and erasing all traces of a Kree software that’s somehow found its way to the hands of a millionaire that’s using it to hack other millionaires in order to manipulate the stock-market in his own favor. It's a boring mission, but the job is the job, and at dusk Ava and Yelena suit up and make their way through the rooftops of New York to the one closest to the man’s office.
They’re waiting for the few straggling employees to clear out as they let their sensors scan the building to figure out just in which computer the software is stored in when Yelena sees movement out of the corner of her eye. She quickly grabs her binoculars and focuses on the third office to the left on the forty-sixth floor of the building, where a figure in a black and red suit stands in what was previously empty space. The figure plugs a flash drive into the computer’s tower, plugging it back out in less than five seconds and disappearing into thin air.
“What the—” Ava says, cutting herself off as she phases into the office. She comes back a few seconds later, looking around trying to locate the figure that just hijacked their mission. “The computer’s ruined. They took the virus and erased everything.”
Yelena grunts, cursing herself and everyone she’s ever met just as she spots two figures standing six rooftops away from them. She nods in their direction.
“Go.”
Ava’s quick to reach the two figures, phasing there in the blink of an eye, while it takes Yelena a minute to jump over the rooftops. When she reaches them, she finds Ava fighting a familiar figure. A strange sense of deja vu washes over her before the other figure materializes in front of her and knocks her over before disappearing again.
Yelena quickly stands back up, charging up her widow bites as the figure appears once more. This time Yelena manages to avoid the punch, but she also fails to hit back as the figure disappears, reappears behind her, and pushes her to the ground once more. Yelena rolls over and props herself up on one knee, pointing her Widow bites in the general direction of her assailant. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ava kick her opponent on the ribs. Kate Bishop's sunglasses fall off her face when she hits the ground, but she still manages to fire an arrow Ava easily phases through before she pulls out her sword and brings it up to Kate’s chin.
“Non-lethal!” Yelena yells just as her opponent retracts her helmet and panics.
“Wait! Stop, stop! Ava, it’s me, it’s Cassie! Cassie Lang!”
Keeping the sword where it is, Ava retracts her own helmet, revealing the frown on her face. “Cassie Lang? As in Scott’s nine year old daughter?”
“Nineteen, actually.”
Kate uses the distraction to kick the sword from Ava’s hand and stand up, not nocking another arrow just yet but keeping her right hand up by her quiver. Ava glares at her as she collects her sword and turns back towards Cassie.
“Well, you were nine when I…” Ava gestures vaguely, doing the universal 'you know' motion. “Nice suit, by the way.”
Yelena locks a confused glance with Kate for a split second, a silent ‘what the hell?’ passing between them before they both quickly look away.
“Thanks!” Cassie smiles, beaming with pride at the compliment. “It used to be purple, but Kate was very adamant on everybody having their own color, and she almost ripped my head off when I suggested she changed her color, so—”
“So you two know each other?” Yelena interrupts.
“Yeah, Cassie,” Kate says, her eyes jumping between her friend and Yelena. “You never said you knew an Avenger.”
“Well, technically I never met her,” Cassie clarifies. "But she knows my dad."
“It’s a long story,” Ava says right before asking Cassie about her family. Yelena sighs. Tonight was not supposed to go like this.
While Ava and Cassie catch up Yelena powers down her bites and taps a couple of buttons on her wrist before pointing her fist towards Cassie and Kate, the scanner's light interrupting Cassie’s train of thought.
“Dad wrote a book, I don’t know if you’ve seen it around, and Hope—what are you doing?”
Yelena ignores the girl, taking a quick look at the image in the small screen in the interior of her wrist and focusing all of her attention on Kate Bishop.
“Give me the flash drive.”
Kate defensively puts her hand over the exact pocket in which Yelena’s scanner said the drive was. “What? No.”
“You stole and destroyed evidence relevant to a New Avengers mission. You interfered with official government business.” Yelena grimaces internally as she speaks. No wonder the public hates them. “Give us the flash drive and we’ll let you go. Refuse, and we’ll take it anyway.”
“We interfered? You’re the ones who crashed our mission!” Cassie scoffs. “Which is also official, by the way.”
Kate crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m not giving you the drive.”
Yelena meets Ava’s eyes and nods once, signaling for her to phase and take it from Kate’s pocket, but before Ava can move, Kate throws the drive over to Cassie, who quickly puts it in a compartment in her suit and taps her helmet back on. Kate moves swiftly, too, and in a split second she’s nocked two arrows and drawn her bow, aiming one arrow at Yelena and one at Ava.
“You should stop by the house if you’re ever in San Francisco, Ava. I’m sure everyone will be happy to see you,” Cassie speaks from behind her helmet before she disappears in front of them and flies away on an ant—which, what?—, leaving Kate alone with the two Avengers.
“Kate Bishop, put the bow down,” Yelena warns once.
“No.”
“You do know I could just phase and take that bow from you, right?” Ava takes a threatening step forward as she speaks. "Or I can just phase right through the arrow. Again."
“Let's see who's faster,” Kate challenges, her grip on her bow never faltering.
“You won’t shoot us,” Yelena says, confidently stepping up in front of Ava.
“Won’t I?”
“No.”
Yelena raises an eyebrow and takes another tentative step forward, challenging Kate to prove her wrong. An almost imperceptible flash of hesitation passes over the archer’s face before she quickly schools her features. She looks over her shoulder, as if assessing how far Cassie’s made it, before slowly putting her bow down and sliding the arrows back in her quiver.
Kate shrugs. “Cassie’s long gone, anyway.”
Ava looks between them, an eyebrow arched. “I take it you two also know each other?”
“Yes,” Yelena answers at the same time that Kate says, “You could say that.”
“Right.” Ava nods, taking a step back to remove herself from the situation. “Well, since you and Cassie destroyed the computer and took the drive, I don’t have a job anymore, so I’ll go back to the tower to report our failure while you two… catch up.”
Yelena turns her head to tell Ava not to leave her, but she’s already phasing away. Yelena drops her head and sighs. She pinches the bridge of her nose with her thumb and index fingers and takes one long, deep breath. She opens an eye and slightly raises her head when she hears Kate moving in front of her. Yelena takes a moment to observe her as she picks up her discarded purple sunglasses and wipes them on the fabric of her suit in an attempt to clean them.
Similarly to the first time they met, Kate Bishop’s wearing her purple archery suit—now upgraded with padding on her knees and elbows and a compartment on the outside of her left thigh to keep her collapsible bow when she’s not using it. Her face and hands are covered in small scrapes and cuts, and Yelena can imagine her messy bangs cover at least a few more. The half-dried blood on her chin covers the newest one—which was most surely caused by Ava’s sword. Kate, seemingly satisfied with her work, puts the sunglasses on the top of her head and looks over at Yelena, raising an eyebrow when she finds the blonde already staring at her.
“What?”
“You always have to get in the way, don’t you?”
“Me? You’re the one who got in my way!” Kate retorts, fearlessly marching up to Yelena until they’re face to face. “You and your friend are the ones who suddenly showed up to fight Cassie and I, not the other way around!”
“Because you interfered with an official Avengers mission.”
“Avengers,” Kate scoffs, “right.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
Ever since Valentina’s impromptu press conference, Yelena has tried really hard not to let the criticisms get to her. She knows what her goals are and what she needs to do to accomplish them, and the public’s opinion of her won’t change that. She won’t let it. But there’s something about the way Kate brushes her off, about the way the archer shakes her head in dismissal, that sets her insides on fire.
“What, you’re one of those people who think we’re frauds? Who calls us losers and thinks we’re the government’s pets?”
“I didn’t say that,” Kate says, hands raised as a sign of not wanting to fight, but Yelena ignores her. She has been holding it all in, taking every criticism that comes their way without a fight because reacting would only ruin their image further. It would only give those people who are waiting for them to screw up more reasons to say ‘See? We told you so’. She’s had no problem holding back when the comments come from faceless critics but, for some reason, Avengers-loving Kate Bishop being the one to undermine them is what breaks the dam.
“No, but you think it, don’t you? You think we’re a joke. You think we’re defective replacements.” She jabs a finger in Kate’s shoulder, causing the archer to stumble back. “You think it was easy, being thrown in the spotlight like that? You think we wanted it? Because we didn’t! None of us wanted this shit! But we got it anyway, and whether you and everyone else like it or not, we are the Avengers, and you are going to have to deal with it.”
“You think being an Avenger makes you better than the rest of us? Because last time I saw you, you made it pretty clear that it doesn’t.” Kate steps up, going face to face with Yelena once more, her blue eyes suddenly filled with fury. “And yeah, you’re an Avenger and I’m not, but that doesn’t mean what I do is for nothing. It doesn’t mean I am nothing. I’ve spent the last three years working my ass off to prove that I’m something more than a brat with blood money, and I’m not about to let you tell me otherwise just because you’re on a fucking high horse now that you’ve got a shinny title attached to your name.”
Yelena squares her shoulders and lifts her head up, ready for a fight. There’s a hundred arguments on the tip of her tongue, but when her eyes lock with Kate’s every single one of them falls away. What she sees on Kate’s blue eyes is so familiar that she had never seen it anywhere but in the mirror, and it feels like diving head first into ice cold water.
She takes a step back and raises her hands as a sign of peace much like Kate had done a few minutes earlier, choosing to deescalate the situation before Kate draws her bow and she finds out if third time really is the charm.
“You really should’ve just given the flash drive to us,” Yelena says with a tired sigh.
“You should’ve asked nicely.”
Yelena’s eyebrows shoot up, an ironic laugh escaping her mouth. “Are you being serious right now?”
“Are you? Because we both know that software is capable of much more than just causing chaos in Wall Street, and you’re acting like the government isn’t going to turn it into a weapon to militarize against innocent people the second you give it to them.”
“And how do you know whoever you work for won’t do the same? How do you know they won’t do even worse?”
“Because I trust my boss's intentions,” Kate says, matter-of-factly. “Can you say the same about yours?”
Yelena purses her lips. Kate’s not wrong. Messing with millionaires' finances is far from the worst use that could be given to the Kree software, and Yelena’s not nearly naive enough to believe that, if the government ever got their hands on it, they wouldn’t find all of the awful uses it has just to choose the worst one.
She doesn’t trust Valentina or any other politician any more than she trusts a rabid dog, but the New Avengers are still earning the government’s trust, and completing this mission—even if they didn’t want to do it in the first place—is a key element to them gaining some autonomy. Coming back empty handed is going to set them ten steps back, and they’ll be stuck with waiting for Valentina to make their every request go through the proper channels before even being considered—because if she has to do what they say, then she’ll make the process as painfully slow as possible.
“No, I can’t,” she admits. “Which is why I wasn’t going to give it to them.”
Kate blinks. “Come again?”
Yelena runs her hands through her hair, lacing her fingers on the back of her neck as she slowly blows air out through her mouth. She reaches into one of her suit’s many pockets and takes out her own flash drive.
“We had a five hour window between retrieving the software and destroying the computer it was hosted on, and handing it over to the government,” she explains. “Bucky has some friends in Wakanda, and we were going to use that window of time to send them the software for safekeeping in exchange for an exact, non-functioning copy to hand over to the government.”
“You wanted to give them a fake? I know they’re not the brightest, but even they would notice that, wouldn't they?”
“They’re the ones who gave us the virus we were supposed to use to destroy the computer,” Yelena continues, waving the drive in her hand for emphasis. “We were going to pretend that it was their virus that damaged the file and use it as a reason to push them to let us use our own tech.”
“That’s… really smart, actually,” Kate admits, her gaze lost somewhere to Yelena’s right. “You said you had a five hour window? That means that you have, what, until around ten?” Yelena nods. “And the Wakandans are aware of your timeline?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, hold on, give me a second,” Kate says, walking a few steps away from Yelena as she pulls out her phone. Yelena watches attentively as Kate goes to her contacts and dials a number. The person on the other side of the line picks up immediately. “Hey, Riri, is Cassie there yet?” Yelena’s ears perk up at the familiar name. She doesn’t usually eavesdrop on Bucky’s conversations, but when they’re with the princess of Wakanda… well, she can’t be blamed for being curious and remembering the names they mention. “Good, that’s good. Look, I, uh, I need you to do me a favor and call Shuri to tell her there’s been a change of plans and we’ll be the ones to send them the software instead of the New Avengers.” Kate pauses for a few seconds as Riri answers her, her face falling as she listens to the girl’s answer. “Fine, fine, I’ll buy whatever you want. Just—just call Shuri, please? I’ll explain everything when I get back.”
Kate hangs up the phone, and Yelena keeps observing her as the archer starts typing on it, muttering to herself about 'stupid propellers' and 'going to ruin me'. Kate keeps tapping away at her phone, drawing a dry chuckle out of Yelena as her presence just a few feet away has been seemingly all but forgotten by the archer.
“The Wakandans were promised the software,” she says, hoping to draw Kate’s attention back to the subject at hand. “They will want to keep it.”
“Yeah, I guessed as much,” Kate answers, finishing whatever she was doing before locking her phone and putting it back in her pocket. “That’s why I’m hoping Riri will charm Shuri into convincing King M'Baku to give us a copy, too. If we’re lucky, it will be functional, and if it isn’t I’ll steal your excuse of the virus damaging the software.”
“And if the King refuses?”
“Then I’ll have some explaining to do to my very angry boss,” Kate sighs. “Right after I send back the stupid fancy propellers I just bought for Riri.”
“You fund your team?”
“Only when the boss has been refusing to upgrade Riri’s perfectly functional propellers for months and I owe her a favor.”
“...do you want to fund my team?” Kate stares at her blankly, and the dead look in her eyes is enough to crack Yelena up. She shrugs, “It was worth a shot.”
Kate chuckles dryly and rolls her shoulders, shaking away most of the tension she was holding, any traces of her earlier rage now completely gone from her face. “Look, I should go explain everything to my team so I can make sure you get your software delivered to the tower in time, but…” Kate shuffles her weight on her feet. “I moved back into my family’s penthouse, which means we’re kinda neighbors, so… you know.”
Yelena nods. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Cool. Cool. See you around, then,” Kate says, awkwardly pointing behind her with her thumb.
“See you around, Kate Bishop.”
Moving in the direction she’d pointed to, Kate walks towards the east side of the building while Yelena turns around to walk towards the west.
“Are you going to jump off the rooftop to make a dramatic exit again?” Kate calls from where she stands just besides the ledger with a grappling arrow already nocked.
Their eyes meet across the rooftop, and Yelena laughs as she keeps getting closer to the ledge. “Me? No, no, I would never do that.” She presses a button on her belt, causing her grappling hook to launch itself to the rooftop and stick to the cement. “What makes you think that?”
Kate laughs and, before Yelena can jump, she calls, “Wait, Yelena?” The blonde looks up, meeting Kate’s eyes. The archer gives her a small, tight lipped smile. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re a joke. Not by a mile.”
Yelena nods and mirrors the archer’s smile. “I don’t think you’re nothing.”
In fact, she thinks as she lets herself fall into the night, Kate Bishop is quite something.
When she gets to the tower twenty minutes later, she finds Bucky already waiting for her. He nods tiredly at her explanation before going off to call his Wakandan contacts to confirm the plan’s still in motion. True to Kate Bishop’s word, at exactly nine forty-five a Wakandan drone with a flash drive that holds the non-functioning copy of the software lands on the heliport.
That night, as she waits for Bucky and Walker to come back from delivering the faulty software, Yelena walks out into the heliport and observes the buildings that surround them, searching for an address she memorized years ago. She finds it just as the lights inside are switched on, signaling Kate Bishop's safe return. She can’t see the movement inside the penthouse from her position, but her eyes stay trained on it nonetheless until Bucky finds her once he and Walker return. Yelena sits by his side on their usual spot and takes the beer he offers her, basking in their usual silence until Bucky clears his throat.
“So, I know we don’t usually talk about these things, but…” he starts, his voice hesitant. “When Ava told me what you did up on that rooftop, putting yourself in front of a drawn bow without a second thought for your safety… You’re good, Yelena, but you’re not faster than an arrow shot three feet from you.” He stops and remains silent for a few seconds as he struggles to find the right words. “It’s just… If you feel like your approaching that… that void, I need you to tell me, Lena. I don’t want you going down that path again.”
Yelena feels a pang in her chest as she registers the concern in Bucky’s voice. She hates that his mind reached that conclusion in the first place, but she understands where he’s coming from. Bucky’s been there for her bad days, for the days when that void is right in front of her and it feels impossible not to be drawn by it, but those are not the majority of her days. She’s come far enough that, most days, she can keep the void at enough distance to look it in the face and tell it to go fuck itself, and Bucky’s quiet support has been one of the main reasons why.
“Oh, no, Bucky. This wasn’t that,” she’s quick to assure him. “I wasn’t worried about myself because I don’t care. I wasn’t worried because I knew she wouldn’t shoot me.”
“Did you? Because the way Ava said it—”
“Bucky,” Yelena interrupts him. “Anyone else I would have let Ava take care of, I promise. But this wasn’t the first time I've been on the wrong end of Kate Bishop's arrows. I knew she wouldn’t shoot.”
Bucky rubs his eyes with his thumb and index finger, takes a long sip of beer, and breathes deeply. “Please explain.”