Sweetheart - Yelena Belova

Chapter 7

"Belova."

"I came in here because I didn't want to talk," Yelena was clearly crying.

"Sweet. I hate social interaction anyways."

Jaya and Yelena sat in silence for a while. They could tell that everyone else was still talking in the dining room, but their words were too quiet for the girls to make out. It was nice, getting some distance from all of the chaos.

"What happened to your parents?"

Jaya suddenly tensed up at this. "H-huh?"

"What happened to your parents?" Yelena repeated. "Based on half of our conversations in that dingy helicopter, you basically said that you've been looking for a stable job since 17, and you didn't have anywhere to stay. Why didn't you ask your parents for help?"

Jaya didn't know how to respond to that. No one knew about her personal life except for Stark, who had been like a father-figure to her. "Pride?" she tried.

"Bullshit. You have the lowest self esteem anyone had ever possessed on this planet."

Jaya was taken back by this statement. It was 100% true, and she knew it, but she didn't know that Yelena would be this observant. "It's really none of your business."

"You basically know about all of my family history," Yelena pointed out.

"Because I was trying to help on the mission," Jaya argued.

"And who let you come along on this mission?"

Jaya knew Yelena had a point, but she really wasn't in the mood to talk about her personal life. "You're not getting anything out of me."

Yelena stopped trying, and the two of them sat there in silence for 15 minutes before Jaya finally decided that maybe she did owe it to Yelena. 

"It was pride." The blonde looked up at that. "But...not in the way that you're thinking."

I'm really gonna do this, Jaya thought. No turning back now.

"I knew I was gay since I was 14. I came to that conclusion while riding my bike, weirdly enough. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out. But that was after all the years of overcoming internalized homophobia." Yelena was listening intently. "Anyways, that's besides the point. I've kinda had this plan to come out to my parents as soon as I graduated. For me, that was 17, cuz I was a genius child. Ha, no. If that was the case I'd have a much higher gpa. Something to do with the cutoff date."

Yelena cleared her throat, and Jaya realized what she was doing. "Right, I'm getting off track again, aren't I? Or maybe I'm avoiding the topic." The short haired girl chuckled again. "So anyways, I went through with that. They kicked me out. End of story."

Yelena stared at Jaya, completely dumbfounded. She just explained how her parents kicked her out because she was gay, and she was just smiling, solving a rubix cube(where did she even find that?)like it was nothing.

Still, Yelena wasn't a trained spy for nothing. She knew that this wasn't the whole story, but she was too scared of pushing Jaya too far. This was the first time she'd seen Jaya truly emotional-or rather, talk about emotions, as she didn't look shaken at all.

"You know, Belova...your parents, I can tell they really do love each other." 

"Yeah, that much was obvious sweetheart, no?" Yelena chuckled.

Jaya cracked another smile. "Yeah. I was feeling real awkward there, with all those sexual innuendoes. Point is, they love each other. They love you too. I'm sure Natasha doesn't mean what she says; trust me, she's shaken up. As weird or as unnatural as your family history is, even though you're not biologically related, you guys are the closest things you've got to a family. And I can't see any one of you letting that go in the future."

A beat of silence.

"That was terrible, wasn't it?"

Yelena laughed. "Absolutely horrifying, yes."

"I really need to work on this whole emotions thing. I didn't take AP Psychology back in 11th grade for nothing." Jaya put down the solved rubix cube.

"I'm sure if you actually went to college you would've been fine," the blonde joked.

"Yeah. College. Could've been a therapist, eh?" Jaya laughed, but Yelena could tell her heart wasn't in it. Still, she was grateful for the talk. As shitty as Jaya's little pep talk was, Yelena was starting to feel a bit hopeful about her family again.

Suddenly, the lights went out. 

"That was you, right?" Yelena asked, slowly. 

"N-not that I know of, no. Maybe I've unlocked a new superpower or something. Do you think the simulation theory is tru-" A bang, as the door to the room is opened. The Red Guardian walks in, pushing Jaya to the back of the room. 

"Get down," he says to the girls. Suddenly, he's shot with a red dart. Alexei scoffed at this. "They think..." He was interrupted as he was bombarded by several other red darts.

He fell to the ground.

Yelena scrambled up to him, examining his body before going up to the door, opening it, gun in her hands. "Get behind me," she commanded.

Jaya tried to argue. "I could help, I'm not just gonna hide behind you-"

"Get. Behind. Me. I don't want you getting hurt."

Jaya cursed and stood behind Yelena, unable to see anything in front of her due to Yelena's height. Yelena wasn't tall. Jaya was just short. As they walked across the room, Jaya picked up a frying pan, holding it steady in her arms like a baseball bat.

Like Rapunzel, Jaya couldn't help but thinking.

Suddenly, Jaya crashed into Yelena's back, as the blonde stopped short. 

"I'm sorry," Melina.

Suddenly, red electricity spread across Yelena's body as she fell to the ground, unconscious, leaving Jaya uncovered, face to face with the emo milf. 

Jaya was shocked(not literally). She wasn't sure if Ms. Goth here was going to give her, Yelena, and Natasha the location to the Red Room, but Jaya sure as hell wasn't expecting Melina to sell them out. She quickly recovered to her senses, and lifted her pan into a baseball stance. She suffered through 5 years of softball training during her teens, and she was going to put it to use.

"Bring it, Bellatrix," she said, lunging towards her and knocking her on the head with the pan.

However, this was a lucky shot, due mainly to the fact that Melina's focus was mostly on something else. That something was taskmaster, who raised their fist in Jaya's direction. Jaya cursed and ducked down at the last minute. She vaguely remembered taking Karate classes in high school, but she doubted it was going to help her now. Grabbing a table leg, Jaya launched it at taskmaster, who easily moved out of the way. She kept throwing things at the murder bot until she reached a dead end. 

"Listen man, or woman, or whatever you are, I'm sure we can come to an agreement. What do you want? I can trade my life for the others. Except maybe not the evil milf," Jaya was desperate. She knew she couldn't physically beat the bot, and she started to panic as their fist came up.

"Or how about pokemon cards, huh? I've got pokemon cards, shopkins, what about money? Actually no, no money, I'm broke mate, but I-"

The fist. Coming down. Striking Jaya across her face. 

The last thing Jaya saw was Yelena's unconscious body before passing out.

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IT'S ME FOLKS! IM BACK WITH A BRAND NEW CHAPTER! I am so so sorry for not updating sooner, school just started and getting back into the groove of things was a but tiring, but I should be back to writing more often now!

Anyways, I hope you liked this chapter! And thanks for reading!