too young to know it gets better

how they communicate

Yelena Belova is one of the assassins everyone knows in the Red Room.

Anya remembers hearing how Yelena Belova will be fighting and her blood running cold. The atmosphere would change even though they were already under the guise of the mind control.

She was on a mission when the Red Room fell. She remembers her mind suddenly going quiet. It stayed like that for years - her basically running on autopilot - until Sonya found her. She doesn't exactly understand how she survived.

Yelena isn't what Anya expected. She jokes around with Anya and drinks iced coffees by the gallon and has a million rings that she plays with constantly.

The laughing is what catches Anya off most. Widows are supposed to be marble, but here's their most deadly weapon, a human being who laughs.She also has a dog, who warms up to Anya pretty quickly, but still stays stuck to Yelena's side and rarely barks.

The room in the safehouse that Yelena dubbed hers is too nice. It has blankets and pillows and the blankets feel like nothing she's ever felt before. They're nothing like the blankets in the red room that were just there to make sure that they didn't die. They're actually warm and really fuzzy. She likes rubbing her face against them. Not that she'd ever do that in front of Yelena, though.

Yelena and Sonya share a room. She hates that she's almost jealous of that, but she is. Back in the Red Room, no one had a room to themself. It was just the way things were and it was comforting to know that even if she got her ass handed to her, she'd come back and all of the girls would be in a silent solidarity.

She doesn't really know what's to come for her future, and she knows that Yelena doesn't know either. But she hears talks between Sonya and Yelena through the walls about the next steps and it makes her head hurt. She never really considered having a future, yet setting that into their hands seems wrong.

Yelena keeps coming back to taking Anya with her to the states, mentioning that Natasha took her in and it probably wouldn't be a bad solution until they find a more permanent solution. Anya's not sure how she feels about that - she's known about the Black Widow Natasha Romanoff most of her life and the legend that surrounds her. The idea that she can just be homely feels out of place. Then again, most of Yelena feels out of place.

It's late now, maybe two or three in the morning, and Yelena and Sonya's talking has long ended. Anya's sure they're asleep.

Anya slips out of bed, as quiet as ever, enjoying the fact that they didn't cuff her to the bed. She never enjoyed being so confined in the Red Room.

She has vague memories of her life before everything went so wrong - an older brother that played games with her, a mom brushed her hair a little too hard but hugged her warmly after, a dad that was rarely home but always made his presence known with kisses goodnight when he was home. Part of her thinks she dreamt it up being that it was so long ago, and to be fair, all of her memories are fuzzy.

She quietly pads into the kitchen fingertips dancing over the smooth countertops as she contemplates finding something to eat. Normally that's what people do in kitchens late at night, right? Midnight snacks?

She opens the fridge, seeing it mostly empty until her eyes fall upon something in the drawer. She quietly opens it, finding a smattering of different kinds of chocolates from all over the world. There are Cadbury bars and Hershey bars, Brazilian chocolates and Swiss chocolates, everything a chocolate lover could ever want is in this drawer. It's not stocked nicely, either, they're all kind of shoved in tightly, but Anya can't help it. She grabs a Hershey bar before closing the fridge and slowly opening it.

"Hershey?"

Anya's head snaps up and dread washes over her. Was she not supposed to take this? She was told to help herself and Yelena promised that she wouldn't hurt her.