this side of paradise
by Ninazadzia
Earth-616:
Kamar-Taj
Day Ten
"Did I ever tell you why the Soviets went to such lengths to hide their Vibranium?"
"Does this have something to do with the tesseract?" Yelena whispered.
Bucky nodded. "The Vibranium in Kyiv—it's imbued with the power of the Space Stone."
"And if Kang gets his hands on it," Natasha finished, her voice low, "he'll be unstoppable."
Her words hung in the air for a moment, before they heard a loud bang followed by a flash of red light.
"The hell-?"
Bucky's eyes widened. It was hard to tell outside of their bubble, cast by the four runestones—but it looked like Loki and Wanda were levitating a good fifty feet above the ground, engaged in an altercation.
"Shit," Steve muttered under his breath. Him and Natasha exchanged a look, nodded, and then turned back to Bucky and Yelena.
"Listen to me carefully—we're out of time here. Whatever Loki says or does, you don't need to trust him, or us—but you need all hands on deck, in Kyiv."
"The hell we do," Yelena practically spat. She'd bit her tongue for long enough. "Why the fuck should we listen to the two of you?"
"You don't have a choice," Natasha muttered. "This is so much bigger than the four of us. Kang is coming—if you don't believe me, at the very least, believe that."
Yelena glared at her. When she didn't say anything, Natasha added, "You remember what it's like, don't you? To have someone else inside of your head, controlling your every move."
To that, Yelena couldn't help but scoff. "You're kidding me, right?"
"Yelena—"
Whatever Bucky's attempts were at mediating, Yelena didn't want to hear it. "I'm sorry, but that—using mind-control to excuse your actions—that's bullshit."
Her voice rose as she spoke, but she didn't care. She wanted to yell. "Let's just say that your story is true, and Loki enchanted you two in the TVA—what about before? When you tried to poison our variants, and steal our—I mean, their—baby?" She let out a hollow laugh. "Are we going to blame that on mind control, too? Because from what I've heard—and correct me if I'm wrong—your plan to kill the Bucky Barnes and Yelena Barnes in your universe is a textbook case of pre-meditated, first degree murder."
"You're right," Steve responded with a curt nod. "It was. There's no two ways around it." He took Natasha's hand in his. "But we didn't go through with it, did we?"
"Only because Loki stopped you."
"That might be true," Natasha conceded.
"Still though—who knows?" Steve jumped in. "Maybe we would've made amends over dinner—I mean shit, there's a reason we saved the poison for dessert. It's almost like we were looking for a reason to change our minds."
Yelena shook her head. She turned to Natasha.
She thought of the Natasha she knew, the one she grew up with in Ohio, the one she reconnected with right before the Blip. She thought of the conversation they had in Budapest, after she'd found the antidote for Dreykov's mind-control.
"What you experienced was psychological conditioning. I'm talking about chemically altering brain functions, they're two completely different things. You're fully conscious, but you don't know which part is you. I'm still not sure."
Her and Natasha locked eyes for a moment. Yelena had often wondered which one was worse. At the very least, when she came out from the other end of Dreykov's mind control, she knew—on a fundamental level—most of the acts she committed weren't her own. But what Natasha experienced was a completely different matter.
On some level, Natasha Romanoff would always have to live with the Red in her Ledger. And at least in Yelena's universe, her Natasha had the opportunity to wipe the slate clean.
But the version of Natasha in front of her—the one who didn't sacrifice herself for the Soul Stone, because she wasn't sent to Vormir, she was sent to retrieve the Reality Stone from the Red Room—this version brought everyone back from the Blip, only to find out that her Yelena had been alive and well in the United States for the last twenty years, knowing full well about the Red Room and having done nothing to stop it.
And then, another memory rang in Yelena's head. A question she had to ask her sister, when they reunited for the first time in over twenty years.
Where did you think I was, all this time?
Her stomach dropped. She remembered how much of a weigh it was off of her, when the shock on Natasha's face registered, after Yelena told her about the Red Room. In that moment, once Yelena realized that Natasha genuinely thought she'd killed Dreykov, and ended the Black Widow program, all of the resentment—all of the hurt and anger, and feelings of abandonment she'd harbored for years—it all washed away.
And then, she thought of the Natasha Romanoff that stood in front of her.
"It hurt, didn't it?" Yelena whispered. "When you found out my variant was alive, and living in the States?"
Tears welled up in Natasha's eyes. She wiped them away before they could spill onto her cheeks.
"I know the feeling." Yelena took a step closer to her. "In this universe—you got out, almost a decade before me."
Shock registered on Natasha's face. Yelena continued.
"You joined SHIELD, became an Avenger—and I was still in the Red Room. And I remember seeing you on TV, after the Battle of New York, and seeing you with all of your superhero friends—and I was so mad at you." She shook her head. "I was so angry, that you left me behind, and didn't go looking for me."
"I did that?" she whispered.
Yelena nodded, and then shook her head. "No. Not really. We reconnected, years later—you thought you'd killed Dreykov, when you defected to SHIELD. You thought I'd gotten out. And once I realized that it wasn't your fault, that you didn't know—that you couldn't have known where I was, and what I'd gone through—I forgave you."
She swallowed the lump in her throat. "And forgiving you was the best thing I could've done, because after that, I got my sister back. Even if it was only for a couple of years."
Yelena looked back to Bucky. His eyes were glassy. And then, she looked back to Natasha, and to Steve.
"I'm not the Yelena from your universe—that woman is a stranger to me. But I can't even begin to imagine how painful it must be, to see my face, and see the face of someone who let you suffer in the Red Room, for a day longer than you had to."
She took another step closer. She knew it was a gamble—she said a quick prayer that Loki's protection spell would hold up—took a deep breath, and finally went, "So even though I'm not her—and this should come from her, not me—please know, that I'm sorry. I'm sorry you were left behind."
Natasha nodded, her lip quivering as she took Yelena's hands in hers.
"I'm sorry too," she managed, just before the protection spell—and the runestones—dropped to the ground.
And then, a split second later, Natasha and Steve were ripped away, as if they were suctioned by a vortex, to Loki.
"What—"
Yelena and Bucky watched as Natasha and Steve shrunk, down to the size of figurines. Stephen Strange and Loki had cast a spell, and encased them in what looked like a crystal, to about the size of a softball.
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
Wanda was screaming, throwing fists at Stephen Strange. He didn't do much to stave her off. "You knew, you fucking knew—"
"—I just found out this afternoon, Wanda—"
"—you goddamn liar, I fucking trusted you—"
Loki sighed, and used a spell to pull her off of him. He turned his attention to Yelena and Bucky, who were staring at him with their mouths agape.
He clapped his hands together. "Well. Now that that's done—let's talk about how we're going to fight Kang."