Widow Sisters and Friends (Restoring Our Broken Hearts): Book 2

Safe and Sound: Part 2

Summary: In the aftermath of torturous disaster, Yelena is the only one that can pick up the pieces of what is left of Natasha's mind and bring her back to who she was before. Fortunately, Natasha is extremely receptive to her efforts and craves her baby sister's nearness and comfort.

   Yelena let out a long, shuddering breath as she shifted in her chair near Natasha's bed.

Natasha had mysteriously disappeared almost a week ago on a solo mission. Yelena had desperately wanted to go with her, but Natasha had insisted that she stay home because it was going to be a simple retrieval. Besides, it was going to work better in terms of stealth if only one person went.

However, when Yelena stopped getting a response when she pressed the light-up heart on their connected bracelets that they had, she knew something was deeply awry. From then on, she had tirelessly searched for Natasha alongside the rest of the Avengers and even Kate.

When they had finally found Natasha, it had been in the deep undergrounds of the town that Natasha had been visiting to fulfill her mission. It was in a bunker connected to an abandoned warehouse, and it had been on the opposite side of the town from where Natasha was supposed to be for her retrieval.

Yelena and the entire group had stormed in, and Yelena had immediately caught sight of the machine in the room where she could see her sister suspended inside with a blindfold over her face. Once the enemies had been neutralized, Tony had quickly assessed that it was a sensory deprivation chamber, and it was a device designed to shut off the parts of the brain that managed the experience of the five senses.

Yelena had immediately made her way to the machine and started opening it up, pulling out the IVs and weird tubes that had been pumping nutrients and sustenance in Natasha's body. Clint had to pull Kate out of the room because she was so freaked out and so desperate to see Natasha, and everyone knew that Natasha needed calmness and stability when she woke up. As Yelena had pulled her sister out of the machine, Natasha had passed out in the middle of it all from how overwhelmed she was, and it proved that they had been right in taking Kate out of the equation.

The fact was that these men were not after simply torturing Natasha. They were after something more.

Originally, the strangest part of the entire thing had been that the men had fed Natasha. Through the tubes and connective devices inside the machine, they had fed her and kept her perfectly healthy in terms of physical condition. But with their sensory deprivation, it quickly became crystal clear why they had fed her.

They were interested in destroying her mental condition. They had been planning to expose her to the sensory deprivation and drive her insane to the point that she completely lost all sense of her own identity and all else.

And based on the vials of the mind control serum that they had stored in another part of the bunker, they were planning to have the first perfect, flawless, and, most importantly, mindless widow. It was obviously an attempt at creating a new breed of widows, and the very thought of it made a chill settle in Yelena's bones that froze her to her very core.

The fact that they had wanted to do this to her big sister, her Natasha, both made her blood boil and made her feel like throwing up.

However, since Natasha was technically in perfect physical health, Yelena had been allowed to take her home. Well, after much argument and insisting on Yelena's part. Tony and Steve had been concerned about her mental state and wanted her to stay so they could monitor her. But Yelena and even Clint had been insistent upon them taking her home for her because she knew Natasha would be far more at ease if she was in her own home and only in the company of one person.