восемнадцать (Eighteen)

Russian Translations:

Боже мой - Oh my God!

Нет - No

"Honey, we're home."

Melina may have looked intimidating and unwelcoming - that is if you ignored the several hairy pigs surrounding her.

Looks like Alexei hadn't been kidding with all the snorting.

"Боже мой!" Sascha immediately knelt down in the mud. "Look at you!" The pigs immediately surrounded her as she reached out to them. "Aw, look at you, so cute!"

Melina led the way inside. "What happened to your face?" she asked.

"Nothing."

"Liar."

Sascha sighed, giving in. "Natalia punched me."

"Oh."

"Don't smile. We had a fight."

"Of course you did. You good?"

"Yeah."

"Let me see-"

"Нет-" She pulled away. "It's fine. You don't have to worry - you're their mother, not mine."

"But I'm not theirs, am I?"

While Nat was doing a survey of the house - who knew what Melina had lying about in way of traps? - Yelena caught up to her again.

"She has long lasting effects from the training and experiments."

"We all do."

"Hers are different-"

"Are we still on this?"

"Yes I want you to understand."

"Look, I understand you defending your girlfriend and that's sweet and all, but I'm not interested in her sob story right now-"

"She sees things, Natasha." Yelena cried. "It scares her and it scares me. We don know what it is or what it means. But it happens often and has been happening for years."

This caught the redhead's attention. "What do you mean she 'sees things'?"

"Visions, many of them, usually the same. Usually she's unshakable and has seen horrors but these visions or whatever shake her to the core. I wanted to come find you, come to you for help. You're the only superhero person I know and who has dealt with these sorts of things-" Nat knew she was speaking of the Widow program as much as she was the unexplainable things. "But you made it very clear that you didn't want anything to do with us."

"You were going to try and find me? Even after everything?"

"I want to help her. To do that I would do anything."

Nat was clearly shocked.

Melina's voice cut into their discussion. "Let's have a drink."

"Oh, good idea!" Sascha plunked herself down at the table and promptly took up a shot glass.

While the ladies gathered at the table, there came much grunting and groaning from the bathroom where Alexei was - very excitedly - changing out of his prison garb and into his beloved Red Guardian uniform.

"More drink anyone?" Melina offered over the sounds.

"Eh hem-" The bathroom door creaked open and Alexei cleared his throat to get their attention from where he was leaning against the door frame. He emerged from the bathroom, all suited up. "AHA! Still fits!" He was so proud.

Melina wolf whistled and applauded while he laughed with glee.

"Oh my God," Yelena muttered.

"Oh, I didn't wash it once. Come and drink," Melina offered while he took a seat at the table.

"Red Guardian, ladies and gentlemen," Sascha announced.

"Ah, family, back together again," Alexei sighed in contentment. "Okay, a reunion then, huh? And I want to say something right off the bat: you haven't aged a day. You're just as beautiful and as supple as the day they staged our marriage," he told Melina.

"You got fat, but still good," she returned.

"I just got out of prison, I uh-" He glanced at their daughter figures before turning back to her. "-I have a lot of energy..."

Sascha promptly spit out her mouthful of vodka.

"Oh!" Melina exclaimed, raising her eyebrows.

"Please don't do that," Nat choked. Then, eager to change and subject and get a move on with their mission, she said, "Okay, here's what's going to happen-"

"Natasha, don't slouch," Melina interrupted.

"I'm not slouching."

"Yes, yes you are."

"I don't slouch."

"You're going to get the back hunch!"

"Listen to your mother," Alexei told her. "Up, up!" He straightened up his posture for emphasis.

"What, oh my God - enough, all of you!"

"I didn't say anything, that's not fair," Yelena protested from across the table.

"Here's what's going to happen!" Nat near-shouted. "You're gonna tell us the location of the Red Room," she demanded of Melina. "Finding Dreykov is not a fantasy," she continued when Melina began to protest. "It's unfinished business."

"You can't defeat a man who commands the very will of others. You never saw the culmination of what we started in America." Melina reached over and retrieved a tablet, pressing the screen and saying, "Come in."

The front door creaked open, followed by much snorting, and a pig waddled into the room.

"Did that pig just open the door?" cried Nat.

"Yes, he did. Good boy, Alexei. Good boy."

Alexei's own expression was priceless. "You named a pig after me?"

"You don't see the resemblance? See he sits just like dog, amazing. Now, now watch - stop breathing-" The pig gave one last snort then fell silent. "We infiltrated the North Institute in Ohio," Melina continued. "It was a front for S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists which were actually H.Y.D.R.A. scientists at the time."

"Nazi bastards," mumbled Sascha, reaching for the vodka.

"In conjunction with the Winter Soldier project they had dissected and reconstructed the human brain to create the first and only cellular blueprint of the basal ganglia. Was the hub for cognition. Voluntary motor movement, procedural learning. We didn't steal weaponry or technology - we stole the key to unlocking free will."

Thump! Alexei - pig Alexei - flopped to the floor.

"What are you doing?" Nat cried.

"I'm explaining that the science is now so exact the subject can be instructed to stop breathing and has no choice but to obey."

"Okay you made your point, that's enough!"

"Yes, all right, but don't worry. Alexei here could have survived eleven more seconds without oxygen." She tapped her tablet once more, ending the pig's obedience. "Good boy, now you go. Good boy, Alexei!" With that, Alexei promptly headed back outside. "The world functions on a higher level when it is controlled."

"Gone are the days of simply gathering those who wish to fight for a common cause," Sascha mumbled. "Gone are my days."

"Dreykov has chemically subjugated agents planted around the globe," Melina explained.

"And do you know who they test it on?" Yelena asked her, suddenly speaking up.

"Hmmm, no that's not my department."

"Ah, come on, come on, don't lie to them," Alexei urged her.

"I'm not lying."

"You're Dreykov's architect."

"Well what were you? If I was his architect you were his partner, his business partner!"

"He sell me ideology!"

"Oh stop with the politics!"

"Shut up! You are an idiot!" Nat told him. "And you're a coward." This was directed at Melina. "You're a coward. And our family was never real, so there's nothing to hold on to-"

"I feel like I should leave for this-" Sascha began sliding out of her chair, vodka in hand.

"Sit your ass back down!"

"Okay..." She slid back into her seat.

"And we're moving on."

"Not family, huh?" Alexei repeated. "I am simple man. And I think that for a couple deep undercover Russian agents, I think we did pretty great job as parents."

"Yes," Melina agreed. "We had our orders and we played our roles to perfection."

"Who cares, it's wasn't real," Nat insisted.

"What?" cried Yelena.

"It wasn't real, who cares?"

"I do! No, don't say that. Please don't say that, it was real. It was real to me! To me, you were everything. You were my sister. You are my sister. And you're my mother, and you're my father. You were my mother," she turned to Melina. "You were my real mother. The closest thing I ever had to one. The best part of my life is fake - and none of you told me. None of you care. And those agents, who you chemically subjugated around the globe, that was me." With that, she grabbed the bottle of vodka and stormed from the room.

Again, thank you to the lovely reader who suggested more about Yelena and Nat's chat about Sascha :)

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed! :)