too young to know it gets better

how it begins

"We've been broken up for four months, there's no reason why I should still be in love with her."

"Why not?" Isabel sends Yelena a challenging look and Yelena sighs, twisting the rings on her left hand and pressing her lips together. Isabel continues, "Love isn't something you can control, Yelena. You know this. Why do you think that there should be a timeline on how long it takes for you to not be in love with Kate anymore?"

"I want to move on," Yelena says bitterly, "I know I'm on medication now and it's helped with the depression and anxiety and whatever other shit I have, but something still feels wrong. It has to be Kate Bishop."

"Have you made amends with her yet?" Isabel asks, watching her carefully.

Yelena decides that she doesn't like the question much and instead focuses on her hands, twisting the silver ring on her thumb and thinking about how she's bored of the color of her nails right now (they're a simple light blue right now that Natasha picked out, but part of her really wants to paint them a dark color).

"Yelena."

She brings her focus back to Isabel, who gives her a look, "C'mon, have you made amends with her yet?"

"No," Yelena huffs, "I haven't spoken to her since September. She hasn't reached out to me, either."

"Why do you think that is?" Isabel asks, leaning back in her seat and pulling one leg up to rest underneath herself.

"I'm not Kate, I don't know," Yelena bites out, skin crawling.

"Has anything happened recently? Why are you getting defensive? You know I'm only here to help you," Isabel says. Yelena's sure that if this was a month ago, Isabel would've had that fake sympathetic tone that makes her want to throw up, but this time her tone is direct, far more wanting to get to the bottom of things. Yelena appreciates it somewhere in the back of her mind.

"Nothing's happened," Yelena twists the ring again, "but something's wrong."

"And you've deduced that it has everything has to do with Kate," Isabel summarizes.

Yelena can't help but feel like Isabel's making fun of her, even though she knows in the smart part of her brain that she's not. She furrows her eyebrows, "What else could it be?"

"Let's start with how long you've been feeling this way. Then we'll take it step by step, okay?" Isabel carefully folds her hands together, a habit that Yelena's noticed in the almost three months that she's been working with her.

"It hasn't been that long," Yelena picks at the sleeve of her jacket, focusing her eyes on the arm of Isabel's chair instead of her face.

"So, a couple of days? A week?" Isabel asks simply.

"A couple of days," Yelena replies slowly, eyes shifting to her lap where her legs are crossed. She notices a bit of dirt on her boots and rubs at it with her finger, hoping it'll dissolve away.

"Did anything happen?"

Yelena shakes her head, "No. Um, I went out with Natasha on Thursday, she brought me to a bakery and they had these giant chocolate chip cookies that were still warm and they got chocolate all over my fingers. It was kind of gross."

"Gross in a good way?" Isabel asks now, and Yelena looks up at her and nods.

"Yeah. She also got ones with walnuts in them, they were kind of like rocky road ice cream, but without the marshmallows. Natasha said she'll bake me that at some point. Probably the next time we go to the Bartons," Yelena tells her, pulling at a loose thread on her jacket, "Natasha's a really good baker."