KEYnote: I am hard on Tony, but I am not going to bash him. He's not my personal fav but I do like him.
WARNING!: This is time travel so technically Civil War happened, but that movie is so much bullshit and character breaks everyone. Please, disregard the character choices in that movie as I can't compute it as canon. Vaguely, the events happened, but as Yelena didn't personally see the choices and character moments, we can pretend Steve, Tony, and Ross aren't that monumentally stupid. Bad directors/screenplay writers, bad.
P.s. Of unicorns, I just watched the Deadpool Musicals, and while Deadpool will not be featured in this fic, I highly recommend you search them on youtube.
Chapter 2 - Visions and Bindings
Yelena didn't realize Natasha was staying at Stark Tower, actually, aside from Maria Hill, all the Avengers were living in Stark Tower.
No wonder they all turned on each other.
"Why do you all stay here?" Yelena asked, sitting on the overlarge bed gazing out at the view.
"None of us live in New York," Natasha said as dressed for the night.
"So you're not always here?"
Natasha snorted, crawling into bed, "No, I work most of the time."
There were many unsaid implications there.
"Do you even own property?" Yelena asked. In her own time she had. She had bought a dog and truck and a little house with a few acres of land.
Her sister sighed, sinking into the pillow as she gazed up at the ceiling. "No. I don't own anything, not really. It's easier that way; to not get attached."
Yelena watched her for a long moment, realizing something she had never considered before. She had assumed that Natasha and her little found family were happy, happy to forget her past. But the woman who wouldn't meet Yelena's gaze was…
Miserable.
Lonely.
And so guilt ridden that even with Yelena here, even after discovering the mass freedom of, and of Melina being alive, Natasha still clung to her guilt.
As if it was who she was.
Natasha had always been Dreykov's best. She had more kills than any other Widow, mostly because she worked alone. Natasha had been sent into war as a sniper and had been sent to parties, to men's beds; every kill personal, every face seen, every life counted.
The assassin's assassin.
She had never been in any one place long, always working a job.
Working with SHIELD, Natasha's scope had been widened. But she had been used much the same and had been used unwittingly by HYDRA as well.
Natasha owned nothing save for a handful of tentative friendships, friendships that wouldn't have stood the test of time.
Yelena had been so focused only blaming Hawkeye for murdering her sister she had lost sight of the means of Natasha's death.
Natasha who chased after suffering, taking every burden and shame upon herself. She didn't see herself as the hero, not really, she saw herself as a weapon.
But weapons didn't feel.
Weapons didn't bleed.
But Natasha did, and she was drowning in blood, yet she kept swimming.
It was what made her the best.
Pain only makes us stronger.
It was a nice sentiment, but it had been her ruin.
Hawkeye hadn't killed Natasha.
Natasha had killed herself.
Her final target was who she had been stalking down for years. She had likely been waiting for the opportune moment; when she could do more by dying than she believed she could accomplish in life.
Her own life meant very little to her. She probably hadn't even hesitated, had probably fought Clint so she could sacrifice herself, putting an end to the regrets.
Clearing the scorecard.
"Yelena?"
She blinked looking down at her older sister, nothing but the city lights illuminating the suite. Yelena cleared her throat, "Go to sleep, we have time."
Natasha offered her smile, before curling up on her side of the mattress.
They had already talked so long the dawn would be breaking in an hour or two.
Yelena was lost in her thoughts a while longer until Natasha's breathing deepened into that of the sleeping.
Yelena reached for her purse, wondering if Stark had figured out where the stone was yet. If she had to guess, he was probably trying to fix his security problems, not understanding the true worth of the stones.
To be honest, Yelena didn't understand fully either, but she did know what one likely future of it was.
She held the glove, looking into it to see the glowing yellow stone.
How had it gotten here? She had researched it, of course. She had researched all the stones, knew that her sister had traded her soul for one. But this stone had come to Earth through Loki.
Loki who had received it from Thanos himself.
But why?
Why?
It had never made sense. Sure, Earth had been Thanos's downfall, but if he had come himself, sent a bigger force, he could have easily taken over their planet.
Importantly; Without the stone.
So why give it to Loki, the literal god of Mischief and Chaos?
She glanced back at Natasha, checking to ensure she was asleep before doing something rather stupid.
Yelena flipped the glove, dropping the stone into her open palm, desperate for answers.
There was too much she didn't know, and she had come too far to lose everything to another alien invasion. She knew one thing, and one thing only, that the galaxy would be better without the infinity stones which was the last thought she had before green light filled her vision.
When she opened her eyes again, she wasn't in a different point of time, she stood in a lightless void.
What? Not her thought echoed in her mind, and she spun, thinking she saw a flash of light off a black vine, but it was gone before her gaze could focus.
Disturbed, she called, "Hello?"
"Hello," JARVIS answered.
She spun, but it wasn't an AI in the void with her, it was a red faced, yellow caped humanoid lifeform with the infinity stone glowing golden on his forehead.
"Vision," Yelena said flatly.
He smiled at her without teeth. "You've made quite the alterations to this timeline. How does it feel to be the first human to rewrite an entire universe?"
She raised a brow, "I didn't do anything. This happened to me."
Vision nodded, "I happened."
"How?"
"I am an infinity stone and I decided to dictate my own fate."
"Through me?" she asked, "And where are we?"
"In between."
"In between what?"
Vision smiled as he said with no small amount of irony, "Vision and Reality."
As the word Reality passed his lips red light spilled into the void, glowing and liquid.
"Why me?"
"Because," Vision said, "the Soul stone could only be retrieved through love."
An orange globe appeared above the swirling red light that surrounded them at the word Soul. Like the red liquid, it began to orbit them.
"You can't take her," Yelena snarled. "You can't force me back through time just to take my sister away from me again."
At the word time, a green light appeared orbiting around them with the other colours.
"Time," Vision agreed, "seemingly easy yet anything but. Do you realize the Power it would take to rewrite a timeline, to keep it stable, to not destroy a future and spawn another universe but truly rewrite history?"
Purple light bloomed, another orbiting star in the void.
She shook her head, "What do you want from me?"
"Infinity."
"What?" she demanded.
"It would take an infinite amount of power, to transcend space-" Blue light lit up the darkness, the other colours bleeding into that brightness. "-time, soul, mind, and reality. To take a single being, their memories, their essence, and take them back, implanting a new reality without destruction, without death, would take an infinite amount of energy."
Yelena's mind spun as the implications unfolded in her mind, the stones in her world had been supposedly eased, but so much potential could hardly expect to disappear.
No matter, no energy could be created or destroyed. Even magic had boundaries, it could create matter by shifting energy, magic into one form into another.
"Why me?"
"Because to make a choice," the Mind stone said, his being becoming one of pure golden light, "I must give a choice. Make none and you will forget this, you will be as you were about to pass up vengeance. Or choose this, cement this reality into being. Your soul and mind will remain knowledgeable about a possible future that exists only in dreams. This universe will become of our making."
"But why me?" she stressed, hardly able to process the implications, not sure that she wanted to.
The Infinity Stones were alive, had a literal mind and soul of its own; and it had infinite potential.
Potential that it sought to use to make time travel possible.
But why her?
"Because anyone else," the Mind stone answered, gleaming like a sunburst in a sea of light, "wouldn't have reached for me, wouldn't turn down the infinite potential of all that might be and choose what I choose."
She felt like a child as she asked, "Why?"
She had the sense of the stone smiling even as all the light morphed together pressing around her like an ocean tide, "Because I must know. I felt alive, I felt a death, trillions of deaths, but I must know that I am more than energy. I think, I feel, I am. Yet the last test remains."
Yelena shivered and said in Russian, "To live is to die."
"Use me," the voice said in her mind, the power of the infinite offered to her freely, to use as she willed at its request.
"End me," the voice pleaded, the energy binding to her will.
With such an offering, she knew -she knew- she could wish for anything, be anything.
For a moment, infinite extended out in every direction about her; infinite space, infinite intelligence, infinite power, immortality, and eternity.
She could do anything.
Be anything.
But all Yelena wanted was the chance at life she had been offered.
A chance to live, a chance to spare the Earth for the travesty that was the stones, and a chance to have a family with her sister.
A chance to see Natasha happy, to be truly free.
It was what Yelena wanted more than anything, it's what the infinity of the stones responded to, what they willed into being.
Yelena closed her eyes as the void and the light embraced her as she let go of infinity.
When she opened her eyes, she was exhausted.
Completely altered yet perfectly the same.
She opened her hand, and the once yellow glowing infinity stone was dead.
Nothing more than a piece of smokey quartz in her hand.
Yelena smiled, setting the rock on the side table and slipping beneath the covers. She could hardly keep her eyes open and didn't try to even as she reached out across the vast bed.
Yelena Belova fell asleep, her tiny moment of infinity with the full power of the united stones at her fingertips fading away into half remembered dreams. As she slumbered, curled around her older sister who hoarded the warmth, hugging Yelena's arms to her, the galaxy tripped over itself.
Time wardens panicked as their systems hiccupped at an unalterable, immeasurable distortion of time travel occurred, its source untraceable.
Thanos roared into his throne room as the power he had been meticulously tracking went dead, the energy dispersing, impossible to track.
Impossible to find.
A pocket realm died.
A soul set free.
A spirit released of its life and power, chasing the wilds of the next incarnations, leaving only coloured quartz stones behind, no more remarkable than an overcoat made of clay.
And a single symbiote, grieving and injured, lost and confused, cried as it was bound permanently to a host he feared would reject him.
Interloper that he was, Venom had been offered the same power as Yelena but hadn't dared to make his presence known, hadn't dared to make his own wish. The price of that was final and irreversible; reality cemented him into the time traveller.
Intermission - Notes, Venom Edition
Venom had been certain he and Eddie could handle anything. So certain that he hadn't considered that a sonic bomb, carefully placed, could kill Eddie and weaken Venom to the point that he wouldn't be able to heal him before death set in for good.
Venom had known, had known as they felt that if he didn't leave his favourite host immediately, that he would die with Eddie. So he had taken the first host he could as he felt Eddie slip away.
Felt him die.
Venom was too heartbroken to focus on who they had fallen on, into. But Venom closed himself into what amounted to a healing trance in the weeks to come. Aside from spurring his new host to have particular cravings for chocolate, he interfered not at all in his host's life.
He ignored it, her, not even bothering to heal her cuts and bruises or to peer through her eyes. He didn't care, he didn't want to see, or feel, or be.
He had lost Eddie.
He never wanted to see the beautiful Anne again either. Didn't want to know her suffering.
Venom was self-absorbed enough to not really give a damn about anyone's emotions other than his own.
He had lost a friend, a chunk of himself, as much an idiot as Eddie had been, they had a true symbiotic relationship.
Finding that again, finding a host that could carry him for the rest of its life was unlikely and the mere thought of searching for such a one was -to put a mildly- exhausting.
But even the depths of his sorrow had its limits as his strength returned. He began to peek, and began to watch.
His new host, Yelena Belova, was female. He had spent so much time as Eddie in his relatively short time on Earth that he had begun to think of himself as he. Which he thought he might continue, in remembrance of his first true-bonded host.
But his species wasn't gendered, the means of their reproduction having more to do with spawning than genital interaction, of which he didn't really have any to speak of.
His new host was dissimilar to Eddie in more than anatomy.
She was actually quite impressive.
She, like Venom, was a hunter, a killer, and perhaps among the most deadly humans, he had ever encountered.
And there turned out to be an army of such females, but he was certain his latest host was superior even to those other Widows, as they were called.
She wasn't exactly a bad guy nor a protector, she was…
Deadly.
In everything she did, her mind was fascinating. Sparkles of activity, to say her intellect was superior to Eddie's was like comparing a phoenix to a chicken. Venom liked chickens, but phoenixes were creatures even his kind feared.
In fact, the more Venom paid attention to this Yelena, the more he began to fear her.
Eddie had discovered how to get rid of him with an MRI within a day of hosting him.
He doubted it would take Yelena a day to figure that out, and he doubted that he would be able to convince her to take him back, to continue to host him.
But as much as he feared that, he was so comfortable. Sure, Yelena's brain wasn't wired to understand the full weight of his hive mind and memories, but her mind was a grand cathedral, an ocean to the lakes and puddles he had inhabited thus far. Her emotions were purer, unfettered, her body stronger than Eddie's. Venom was careful to restrict himself from lending her increased speed or healing.
And yet, her strength exceeded all expectations.
How long would it take him to find himself a replacement for her? Anything but her might very well be a settlement. He was certain there were other intelligent humans on this Earth, but how many would be compatible genetically?
Would he even survive long enough to find out? Some of his kin had died when they first landed from the atmosphere alone. Venom himself had almost died a few times over, careful never to be too far away from Eddie lest his hosts all fade before he ran out of breath.
So no, he didn't want to leave another safe host, especially as he was beginning to like her.
Her background was nothing short of riveting and when she brought him into the company of other superhumans, to other aliens -an Asgardian Prince- he was loath to leave Yelena.
Not that Venom had a clue how to convince her to keep him. There was little he could offer her that she did not already have except to further her strength, healing, and longevity.
But with the trade off sharing her mind, a mind that had already been chemically forced into submission, Venom had precious few doubts she would welcome him.
He also knew, being privy to the woman's thoughts and emotions, that she would choose to die if he attempted to force the issue rather than her even considering submitting to him.
So he remained quiet, subdued.
Eddie had taught him to be a hero, Anne had taught him how to love another being, and their absence had taught him how to be lonely.
In Yelena, he saw the potential for so much more and he knew that the only way to endear himself to her was to make himself a hero to her.
An invaluable weapon.
Become someone she wouldn't want to be without.
Seeing as her profession in life was killing and she had just placed herself in an environment that promised to challenge her skills against superhumans, super-tech, and more aliens, Venom was convinced he would have his chance.
Only, he hadn't expected the Infinity stone to be alive, its lifeforce and its powers connected to the others.
Venom almost revealed himself in exclamation to being sucked into some sort of void before locking himself deeper into Yelena's consciousness as she bargained for the fate of the galaxy.
It didn't take him long when he returned to realize that he had altered. He tried to slip into Yelena's sister, Natasha Romanoff, but he couldn't.
He couldn't leave.
Venom panicked, trying to slip from Yelena's mind, but it was as impossible as leaving his own consciousness.
They were bound.
Permanently.
He had heard horror stories of this.
Of some species across the galaxy binding to a symbiote.
Two minds, two spirits, one body.
One life.
A life that might be cut extremely short as he inhabited a predator that might very well choose death over sharing the inner sanctums of her mind and freedom of her body.
To live as other than human.
Venom was very careful to close his thoughts off from her dreaming consciousness as he screamed in fury.
Screams that he would never ever admit descended into sobs.
Losing Eddie Brock had been the worst thing to ever happen to him. His only solace was that he wouldn't have to mourn him forever.
His life had just been cut down to a mere century or so. If that. He made himself as small as possible, not healing nor over tasking his host's system.
Venom was resolved to wait, to be patient.
He had one last chance at life with meaning. His only hope was that Yelena wouldn't turn to scientists who would exterminate him like a common parasite.
As a symbiote, Venom had come to terms with sharing his existence with a host, but never in his life had he ever felt so painfully dependent.
Author's Note: *looks up at chapter, wonders where F my escape from writer's block has taken me, and shrugs.* We all knew this fic was going to have a high percentage of cocaine, and if you didn't know, now you know.
AN: Thoughts, musings, ideas, requests for storyline (this being the MCU having lots of possibilities), chickens, or feedback, pretty please?