Falling for a Maximoff

Chapter 26: Training and Yelena

TW: Knives, guns, anxiety (attack), injuries

Pov y/n

The next morning I feel every muscle in my body and it hurts. I still feel exhausted even after sleeping. A loud, annoying noise woke me up and I quickly realized it was an overall alarm for every widow here.

I slowly get up and every small movement hurts and it's not just my muscles, the bruises on my body also hurt. There are quite a few from all the fighting training yesterday and I'm sure my face also doesn't look too pleasant. I don't know when I have to be at breakfast so I decide to take a quick shower before that.
When I open my door, I find new cloths for today and towels. I take both with me to the bathroom and get in the shower. The warm water feels good on my body and I relax a little bit.

Since I don't know how long I have until breakfast, I hurry up in the shower and get dressed fast. It feels good to be all fresh and to wear new cloths but I still feel like shit.
My sense for time is completely destroyed so I don't know how much time passes before a widow comes to lead me to the eating room. The way isn't that hard and I try to memorize it, just to have at least a bit orientation.

I sit alone at a table again and watch the other widows while I eat. They vary in age. I'd say the youngest ones are around five or six and the oldest ones are in their mid-twenties.
The smaller ones still talk a bit while they eat but the older ones just sternly sit and eat. It's almost scary to see the transformation from the young age to a fully trained assassin. The ones who are my age are way more trained than I am and considering, they are in here for around ten years, that makes perfect sense. I wonder if the older ones feel sorry for the younger ones and if they care for them, like in a loving way but I kinda doubt that, at least according to their faces they don't seem to care.

When all of the others start to move, I get up too and observe where the ones my age go and follow them. I hope it's not workout again, I can't do that today.
We walk a bit longer to our destination than yesterday which is a sign that we're doing something else today.
At first I am relieved but that changes when I step into a shooting range. The widows all take ear-protections and a gun and stand in a free slot. One is left for me and I slowly look around, seeing no instructor and back away to the door we came through but I walk straight into the arms of the instructor who pushes me over to the free slot and hands me the ear-protection and the gun.

I put the protection on and look over to the other girls who hold up their guns, pointed at the targets in human shape. They don't shoot and seem to wait for the instruction.
I take the gun into my hands and immediately get flashbacks from the night at the tower where Tony handed me a gun and I couldn't shoot.

Anxiety and insecurity fill my body and my hands start to shiver. I put the gun down onto the small space in front of me to calm myself but the instructor doesn't seem to like that and I earn a slap. Biting my lip, I pick up the gun again, hating that I still have to fight tears when I get hit.

Her eyes are on me and when I aim the gun at the target, she gives a sign and the other girls start to shoot. It's still loud and I jump.
Since I never really held a gun, I have no idea how to work it which seems to draw the instructor's attention and she walks back to me. Without talking, she adjusts my position and hold on the gun and nods her head towards the target. I turn my head to look at the target and a million thoughts run through my head and my hands shiver again. She doesn't stop me so I guess she doesn't care that I'm emotionally not able to do it.

I take a deep breath to get a hold of my emotions and try to focus. My finger on the trigger slowly moves and when I fire the gun, my arms get pushed back a little and it's louder than expected. My vision gets a little blurry and my whole body starts shaking. The gun drops out of my hands but is caught before hitting the ground. I don't know why I react this strong but the force this weapon holds and firing it, is just too much for me. It always seemed so easy when mom did it but it's not.