Disclaimer: Everything you recognise here either came from the MCU films or the original Marvel comics, but I hope you enjoy the results anyway
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The Legacies' Triad
Yelena had never truly been part of what she believed people called a 'team-up' before now (working with her sister and other Widows on missions felt different from what she was doing now), but as she travelled through the streets of New York on her motorcycle, she wondered if other people felt this kind of connection with their 'colleagues' when working alongside others.
She was aware on one level that Melina in particular would be critical of her being this open to a relative stranger, but as far as Yelena was concerned she was overdue the opportunity to find friends and talk with her peers. Kate Bishop might be richer than Yelena's old American life had been, and she still wasn't sure exactly how old Spider-Man was under that mask, but they both reflected aspects of the unique life that Yelena had been practically born into, and she enjoyed the chance to share her experience with others. She hadn't come to New York expecting that she would meet anyone who could assist her or that she had to more personally keep an eye on, but until she fully understood what she was dealing with it was best to keep an eye on Kate, and so far Spider-Man had shown some interesting talents beyond his physical abilities.
As she reached the street with her safehouse, she brought the motorbike to a halt and parked it at the corner of the building, looking back to smile as she saw Spider-Man swinging towards her. She had glanced back often enough to confirm that he was keeping up a good pace without overtaking her, and while he had taken a quick detour at one point she was satisfied that he would catch up. The strange weapon she had retrieved was strapped to the back of her bike, so she took a moment to remove it from the bike and wait for her ally to join her.
"Sorry about that," the young man said as he landed beside her, waving his hand behind himself. "There was a mugging, and… well, it's the job, you know?"
"Indeed," Yelena said, privately wondering when it became a 'job' to stop a crime when a person had power on this level. She was not against the idea in principle, but in practise it seemed the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut (she believed that was the expression) for Spider-Man to deal with something that conventional law enforcement could handle.
Something to question him about later on; there are more immediate matters to discuss.
Without a word, but confident that her associate would understand her intentions, Yelena turned around and walked into the building. Making her way to the elevator, she tapped in the code on the accompanying keypad and gave herself a moment before the doors opened. Once she had stepped inside, she waited for a moment as Spider-Man joined her and then used the keycard to activate it. She could control the lift from the apartment itself if she wanted, but it was good to give herself a range of options for getting in if the obvious options became unavailable.
"Uh… have you found anything else about whoever was buying these weapons yet?" the wall-crawler asked her after a moment of awkward silence.
"I have a few avenues I am exploring, but I have nothing I am comfortable exploring yet," Yelena said. "My targets are so alert that they would react if I attempt to find them and fail; I will only follow a lead if I am certain that it is correct."
"…Makes sense," the vigilante nodded at her. "Sucks that we're waiting, but hey; maybe we'll find something-"
The door opened, but Yelena was surprised to find Kate Bishop sitting on a chair against the opposite wall when she stepped out of the box. The young brunette was dressed for physical activity, including tight sweatpants and a top that was just too big to be called a sports bra, a faint shine of sweat.
"Hey, you're here!" the girl grinned at Yelena as she stood up. "Mom was away for the next couple of days, so I stopped by-"
"Kate?" Spider-Man said, stepping out of the lift to stare at the girl in surprise.
"You know her?"
"You know me?"
"Uh…" the red-and-blue-clad vigilante looked between the two women, somehow managing to look anxious even when Yelena couldn't see any part of his face, before he seemed to collect himself and continued talking in a deeper voice that she hadn't heard from him before. "Of course I don't know her; I said 'Wait', because I thought that-"
"Peter?" Kate cut him off, looking at the new arrival with an incredulous grin. "That's- you're Spider-Man?"
"Peter?" Spider-Man said, still using that deeper voice. "Who is Peter? I don't know-"
"We talked about the Avengers a lot; I remember how you sound when you're putting on that deep melodramatic voice, you idiot," Kate said, amused irritation in her voice as she walked over to stand in front of the figure in red and blue. "Come on, you've pretty much blown it already, and I think we both wouldn't be here if Yelena didn't trust us both; maybe you don't try and insult our intelligence by trying to keep pretending?"
Lost for what she could say in this situation, Yelena simply stood in silence and looked between the two people she had been associating with ever since she came to this city, waiting for either of them to make the next move. After a few moments had gone by, during which Kate smiled teasingly at Spider-Man and he simply stared back at her in silence, Yelena's strange ally shook his head in resignation and reached up to remove his mask. The face underneath was younger than Yelena had expected, displaying a young clean-shaven boy with brown hair and an earnest expression.
"…Hi?" he said, turning to wave awkwardly at Yelena herself. "Peter Parker."
"Yelena Belova," Yelena replied; if she was going to learn his full name now, it was only fair that she reciprocate. "As I previously stated, I am Natasha Romanoff's adopted sister."
"Thanks-" the now-named Peter began before Kate Bishop suddenly walked up and struck him over the back of the head. "Hey, what-?"
"You're Spider-Man!" Kate yelled at him in what Yelena was only fairly sure was partially feigned outrage, moving to slap his chest as Peter turned to face her directly. "You're a freaking Avenger and you didn't- oh my God you were fighting Hawkeye you asshole!"
"Hey hey hey!" Peter countered, trying to deflect her first few blows before he jumped up to a higher point on the wall behind him. "It's not like I was planning on doing that, and for the record I didn't actually fight Hawkeye-"
"You were on the other side of that damn 'civil war' and you didn't think about anything?" Kate continued. Yelena had to give the other girl credit for being willing to continue arguing with Peter even when he was squatting on the wall.
"Uh… when Tony Stark showed up and told me Captain America had gone crazy and had to be stopped, there wasn't exactly time to do a lot of background reading about the situation-"
"Then you make time and think!" Kate yelled, walking up to slam her hand just below Peter's feet as they held him to the wall. "You were fighting Hawkeye and Captain America; I get that you admire Mr Stark, but don't just dive into a situation without finding out more about both sides!"
"I… never really had time for the news," Peter shrugged awkwardly at her, even as Kate stepped back from the wall while continuing to glare up at him. "I mean, I got that the situation wasn't as simple as Mr Stark said, but I just… come on, if you had the chance to help Hawkeye, wouldn't you take it?"
"If it meant fighting the other Avengers?" Kate shook her head at first, but then she paused and tentatively shook her head. "I mean… OK, maybe if he sold it the right way… but did you even look up any of what Iron Man told you?"
"Again, there wasn't exactly time to do background research…" Peter trailed off as Kate continued to glare at him, before he sighed and his shoulders slumped. "For what it's worth, I've been thinking about it a lot since that mess in Leipzig; I know that I don't want to go public with my identity even if Mr Stark's supporting the Sokovia Accords, and then there's all that committee stuff I've been hearing about…"
"Yeah, that's just stupid," Kate nodded, hostility replaced by a supportive smile as she looked up at her friend. "Seriously, the kind of things that the Avengers deal with wouldn't always give people time to run it by a committee, and what happens if someone infiltrates that committee anyway? We had all that crap with Hydra just a few years ago, and then the vice-president was involved with that Mandarin stuff the year before that; what happens if someone got on that committee who has their own reasons for wanting to keep the Avengers out of a certain situation? Doesn't that kind of thing prove that the Avengers work best as an independent unit?"
"…Yeah," Peter nodded, gently jumping off the wall to land on the floor beside Kate, giving her a cautious smile. "I mean, Mr Stark made a few good points about how it's better if we're kept in check and can get some government support, but I started doing this to save lives; I'm not going to just… not go out if I think I can help because someone tells me not to."
"Good to know you didn't become a complete idiot," Kate gave him a more affirmative grin before she indicated his body. "But on the topic of what you've become, how did you even get like this anyway? I mean, I'm guessing that it kicked in around the time you stopped wearing your glasses, but how did that all happen in the first place?"
"I was… bitten by an escaped research spider during a trip to the science museum," Peter explained with a shrug. "I felt bad the evening after, but once I got home and had a good sleep, I woke up with better vision and… well…"
"All this?" Kate grinned as she indicated his body.
"He was not always like this?" Yelena put in.
"Oh… uh, sorry," Peter said, Kate muttering her own apology even as she looked curiously at him. "Kate and I are… friends; we met after the Avengers reformed following that stuff in Sokovia, and we spent some time hanging out…"
"Until you just stopped showing up after- oh," Kate said, her initial mocking hostility being replaced by a sense of sympathy as she looked at Peter in new understanding. "Your uncle… and then Spider-Man started going out shortly afterwards, right?"
"Uncle?" Yelena asked. "What does your uncle have to do with anything?"
"He died," Peter said, suddenly struck by the thought that he hadn't actually said this to someone before now. "And… and it was my fault."
"Say what?" Kate looked at Peter in confusion, initial anger clearly forgotten. "How could you have done anything that would- you loved that old guy!"
"He was out looking for me after an argument and I didn't stop a petty crook because I was in a bad mood, and the guy ended up shooting Uncle Ben for getting in his way."
Looking at Peter as he made that confession, leaning against the wall and looking sadly at his hands, Yelena was struck by the notion that she wasn't sure she would even know how to care about someone that way. She had enjoyed spending time with Natasha again during their recent mission, but Alexei and Melina… while she cared about them, it was hard to feel the same kind of bond in their case as she felt with her sister. She would question Peter's focus on his uncle when it felt appropriate, but even for Yelena's inexperienced eye it was easy to see that he had cared a great deal for the man he had lost.
"That…" Kate began, her own mood shifting as she looked at Peter with greater sympathy. "That's… you couldn't have known that was going to happen…"
"Maybe not… but how does that make it any better?" Peter looked back at her, a look of dejection about him that Yelena had never seen him express. "If I'd just done the right thing and not been such a self-centred asshole for that one minute…"
"And that's why you do this now?"
"If I can help someone… that's what it's all about," Peter said, before he turned to Yelena with a smile. "So we've got the weapon and we've got the tracer-"
"Tracer?"
"Yeah, I managed to get a tracer on the van before I lost track of it; did I… not mention that already?"
"You plant tracer and you do not mention that straight away?" Yelena looked critically at him.
"When I already got thrown about by the vulture guy?" Peter countered with a defensive shrug. "I get that you're good at the spy stuff, but is it really a good idea for us to after the bad guys when they'd already be alert and ready to fight us and I just took a beating?"
"…That is fair point," Yelena nodded. As much as she wanted to go after their enemies as soon as possible, diving into battle wouldn't do them any good if they weren't prepared. So far she had been fortunate enough to catch them off-guard, but they would be alert and ready for an attack after they were nearly intercepted by Spider-Man, and Peter had already taken a beating even if he was doing well.
"And if we're talking about the bad guys, how did you get involved in this?" Peter looked at Kate.
"Someone tried to abduct me," Kate shrugged.
"What?" Peter looked at her with new shock. "Are you-?"
"I'm fine," the girl grinned at him. "Seriously, Yelena took out everyone doing it before they could even touch me; she just thought it would be better if I stayed with her for a bit in case they tried to pull that off again."
"That's… good," Peter nodded before he looked at Yelena. "I take it the people who were going after Kate are the same people who're buying weapons?"
"Yes."
"So they're buying weapons and trying to abduct women?"
"I believe I am hunting another Black Widow."
"Another?" Kate and Peter looked at her in shock.
"Black Widows were part of a Cold War program that went underground even after the conflict ended," Yelena explained. At this point keeping that kind of secret would benefit nobody, and it wasn't as though she owed any loyalty to the people who had created the program anyway.
"Cold War?" Peter repeated with a tentative smile. "That's… OK, disturbing on one level, but it's kinda cool on another."
"Uh… no offence, but if it was a Cold War program…?" Kate began with a tentative wave of her hand.
"I was brought in after the program had officially closed down," Yelena explained, anticipating Kate's question. "Only certain parties in the government were aware that it was still in operation when I was part of an undercover operation in Ohio that began in 1993."
"…OK, I am thinking of some very disturbing possibilities here," Peter looked at her with a new sense of sympathy. "I mean, Alex Rider is cool as a concept but it's messed up enough that he has to do all that stuff when he's a teenager; someone seriously brought a toddler on a spy mission?"
"Yeah, that's just… yikes," Kate said, looking at Yelena with her arms slightly open as though she wanted to do something but wasn't sure what that something should be.
"It is in the past now," Yelena said. "Natasha joined SHIELD after she was captured by them on a past mission; I was only recently able to escape myself as those in charge kept us under control with a complex chemical process."
"You were drugged?" Peter looked at her, his expression so emotional that Yelena wasn't sure how to definite it.
"It is more complicated than just being the subject of an injection, but essentially yes," Yelena nodded. "Once I was able to contact Natasha, we worked together to bring down the man in charge of the Widow program, but there are many others still active, and I have traced at least one of these operatives to New York."
"And someone involved in a big spy program would probably be interested in weapons like those, huh?" Kate indicated the gun now lying on the ground.
"Which is what we're doing here," Peter confirmed as he picked up the weapon once again and looked around. "Is there somewhere I could take a proper look at this?"