too young to know it gets better

how yelena decides

"What're you gonna do if you ever get out of here?"

Yelena shifted her weight to her other leg, brain barely catching on to the words said. She looked over at the widow next to her, who had her eye clearly on their target.

This didn't seem like a time for small talk.

"Get a dog," Yelena said softly, "find my sister."

Natasha - known to the Red Room as Natalia - had escaped a week ago. No one really knows how, but word got around fast. The instructors had been scrambling for days now to get girls out on missions and Natasha forgotten as soon as possible. Yelena knew she wouldn't forget, though, she'd been clinging on to memories of the blue-haired Natasha that read her stories since she started here.

"I want to get married," the widow replied, "They talked about it in one of the shows I was required to watch, it sounds nice. Falling in love and all that."

"Love is for children," Yelena found herself echoing. She couldn't help but be confused as to where this conversation was coming from. Widows weren't around to fall in love. They were around to complete missions and disappear in the shadows.

"We're fifteen," the girl replied, "Fifteen's still a child."

Yelena rolled her eyes. She hasn't been a child since she was six years old in Ohio. And she really wants this girl to shut the fuck up.

"I'm taking the shot," she said quietly, lining up the shot and firing.

There was a loud bang and a lot of screaming and the two women quickly disassembled their guns and got out.

Right as they thought they came upon the rendezvous point, Yelena realized that they were a couple of buildings off.

"We're gonna have to scale and jump across," she said, setting up her grappling hook. The widow nodded, doing the same and following her up the building. She must've been a newer recruit, Yelena noted, with all of the chatting and letting Yelena take the lead on the actual mission.

"Three buildings south," Yelena said when they got up, crouching over the edge of the building. She blocked out the distance down, only focusing on the building six feet over. She could jump that far, she's done it hundreds of times. "Come on!"

The first building hop is easy, so is the second, but then the third is a little different. It dropped maybe six feet, not enough for her to seriously injure herself, but enough that if she messed it up, she could hurt herself.

She tightened the straps of her gun against her back, letting the other widow go first and waiting for an all-clear before going herself.

Her liftoff faltered, and when she landed on the other side, her weight all went on her knee and she heard a sickening crack before pain surged through it and her entire body.

Oh no.

"She's fifteen?"

Yelena hasn't been able to shock Isabel visibly many times, but after telling the story about Anya and everything about the girl now in her care, she's accomplished just that.

"Yes," Yelena replies slowly, not meeting Isabel's eyes. Her gaze falls on her shoes, laces tied in perfect knots that are so tight today that they almost hurt. She doesn't really know why she did that, but...

"I've been thinking about me at fifteen versus her at fifteen..." Yelena drawls, trying to find the right words, "We're very different."

"How so?" Isabel folds her hands in her Isabel way, completely attentive.