Thanks to Sailorraven34 for reviewing!
A/N Sorry for not updating in a little while. School has really gotten in the way.
Punch THWACK punch THWACK punch punch punch THWACK THWACK THWACK. And again. And again. Again. No one knows I come down here when I can't sleep. Except Eva. Because she comes here. She doesn't try to coax me back in to sleeping. She knows that if I went back to bed I'd just lay awake for hours. That's the only part of me that Eva gets. And the only part of her that I get. We get along fine, we just don't see eye to eye. We're not enemies, we're just not friends. Plus, she's more than twice my age.
About that, I never thought I would get lonely in a tower full of people, but I am. There's no one my age, and to be honest, it's kinda depressing "Eva said I might find you here." A voice says from across the room. I recognize it after a couple of seconds but I don't turn around. She doesn't deserve my time anymore. I go back to punching. "I'm sorry, Yana. Really sorry." I keep punching. "YANA!" She shouts.
"WHAT KLARA?!" I scream back, turning to face her. "You left me here, after Irina and Olga just died, and you expect me to be okay? Incase you haven't noticed, I'm not okay. Oh wait, you wouldn't have noticed. Because you haven't been here."
"Look Yana-" No I don't want to see. Not her. I push past her and head back to my bedroom, asking JARVIS to lock it down.
I don't sleep.
At midday, Tony raps on the door asking if I'm okay. When I lie that I am, he gets JARVIS to override my order and comes to sit with me. "God you look ter-" he cuts himself off, realising the mistake, which causes the corners of my mouth to turn upwards. "Yana, everything's going to be okay, you know. Eventually. I know it's hard to accept when someone's dead, or they just don't care about you anymore, but you have to rise above it. You have to show them that they don't matter to you." Does Klara not mean anything to me? I obviously don't mean anything to her, but can I just let her go? She and I went through hell together, but that was with Irina and Olga. Perhaps they were the glue that stuck us together, without which we won't we won't be able to work. Maybe I've become part of a different, much bigger, tool kit now but her being here throws a spanner in the works. "Yana?" Tony clicks in front of my face, and I can tell it's not the first time. "Do you want me to tell her to leave or not?"
"No," I reply, " I have to show here that I'm stronger than her." Tony nods and leaves me.
I get dressed, but the time I'm down on the Avengers floor, all of Clint Barton's famous pancakes have gone. Not that I'm surprised, it is midday. So I eat an apple instead. Then I hear someone sit next to me, and I can tell by the breathing who it is. "Yana, don't be too hard on her. She did come back especially to see you."
"I know. But she wouldn't have needed to if she hadn't left." Natasha sighs. I'm annoyed at Klara, angry even, and nothing will change that.
"Do you actually hate her, or the fact her coming back he's brought up all the bad memories of the Red Room?" Never say the name. Names make places real. Names make things real, people real. Names bring bad things. The bad place. Is Klara reminding me of that? Yes. Can I deal with it? No. She has to leave and I'll have to tell her why. I turn to talk to Natasha, but she's already gone.
Klara was there when I first came to the other place. I was two years old, and don't remember much of it, but Klara was ten and she'd always said that I was the youngest she'd ever seen, and she'd been there a long time. I was brought in two weeks before Natalia Romanova left, and since I only had the name Yana, people began to call me Yana Romanova. I was supposed to become her, if Klara didn't make it. That's what he told me. That's also how I got to know Klara. She and I had all these extra things, because we'd supposedly been picked out for our 'greatness'. Ha.
I find Klara talking to Eva on the Avengers floor. "Umm Klara?" I ask before my brain has even formulated any kind of speech. She nods, almost suspiciously. "I've come to realise that you being here has unconsciously brought me back memories of what it was like to be back in... the other place. I'm sorry about the way I acted earlier, it was childlike and unprofessional." Klara smiles, but before she's thought of something to say, Eva begins to speak,
"I'm sorry dude, you're thirteen. Even if something was childlike, you're a freakin child! And you don't need to be professional when you're around friends... You guys are friends, right?" Tears begin to fall down my face.
"I think we are now. Yana, it's okay." Klara reaches out to hug me. "Eva doesn't know what it was like back there, how you had to be an adult by the time you were five, how it was a business, for them to sell us. But you're not there any more. You're allowed to be a child again." I smile and hug Klara back. "Do you want me to leave?"
"No, just to understand." Klara grins and I turn away to go and eat another apple. I deserve it.
As I'm leaving, I do hear Klara say, "She can't remember what it's like to be a person. She was there for eleven years, and if not for your sister, she'd have been there for eleven more." Maybe Eva will be able to understand me better soon.
Tony passes me in the overly spacious hallway and gives me a thumbs up/ down as he's pretending to listen to Steve. I give him a thumbs up back and as we pass we high five.