[ they're in another anonymous town in another anonymous corner of the midwest; similar enough to ohio, in ways that yelena doesn't want to examine too closely. but it's easier to escape off the grid here, far from the packed crowds and dense security cameras and high-profile nature of a city like new york. it's a good place to lie low, waiting for the heat to subside, with their safehouse a few miles away.
but tonight, the fair has come to town.
yelena's standing outside the gates where the ticket-taker is trading cash for stamps and ride tickets. she's listening to the distant sound of screams (of delight, not fear, which is a change of pace), and chatter and laughter and music and the grind of machinery. bright colours, winking lights. there's an infectious excitement in the air and an almost childish anticipation buzzing in her fingertips as she sips at her massive plastic cup of soda, head tilted as she watches the commotion: part of her keeps automatically noting the exits, the dark corners, the places where someone could vanish if they're being chased. she's still scrutinising the lay of the land (as if they're on a field mission—) when there's the sound of approaching footsteps behind her.
she leaves her back exposed, doesn't immediately turn to look at nat. that, in and of itself, is a sign of how far they've come. at least it's a start. ]
Have you ever been to one of these? After we were kids, I mean.
[ they'd ended up back in the midwest after finding another cluster of former widows in that area, trying to finish what they'd started once melina had been able to engineer more of the antidote. it had gone about as well as it could have, and they'd been left with some downtime once the others had been given new ways to hide and pointed in the direction of places that might be able to help. which had lead to their conversation the other day, and it being the time of year it was it hadn't taken long for natasha to spot an advertisement for a local county fair while driving. she'd called yelena on the way to the safe house, barely giving her time to get ready before picking her up to take them both there.
she stops on line to pick up a sheet of tickets, way overpriced for the kind of thrill rides being offered. but that's part of the experience and natasha wants to give her sister the full, real thing after so many years apart. natasha's occasionally sipping from a root beer float that's been served in a cup that's considerably smaller than yelena's soda, but it makes for an amusing challenge given the amount of ice cream that's dangerously close to melting off the side.
once she retrieves the tickets, she heads back towards her, noting the slight tension in the line of her shoulders. but she doesn't whirl around immediately upon hearing natasha approach or abandon her soda for a tucked away weapon, and it warms her to see her inaction. maybe they won't be able to lie low forever or even for much longer, but while they have it it's still something to treasure. ]
Not just for the sake of going. Here, hold this. [ she hands yelena her the sticky remains of what's in her cup so she can tear the sheet of tickets in half and takes it back to hand her the bottom half of them. ]
[ yelena accepts the cup, then blithely digs around in it with nat's spoon in order to slurp down the remainders of the drink. she's developed an incorrigible sweet tooth; she'll eat pretty much anything after years' worth of the tasteless gruel they plied them with at the institute, but the american obsession with sugar has unleashed a monster. her own ridiculously huge beverage is tucked under one elbow (big gulp, what a name) while she polishes off the float without asking. ]
I'm pretty sure I killed someone in a tunnel of love once. But I don't think that counts.
[ she keeps her voice low enough to not be overheard, and her tone conversational.
the thrills in the rides tonight are, of course, nothing to a pair of globe-trotting assassins when they've leapt off plummeting airships and god knows what else during the course of their missions— and yet. there's something so endearingly quaint about how little it takes to impress an average civilian. there's an innocence to the sound of all that human delight emanating from the carnival. ]
i wanted to do this in cyrillic but google translate kept denying me
[ her mouth drops slightly open, but she did kind of set herself up for yelena to pilfer the rest of her float. not to mention she promised her a night of indulgence and fun, and there's plenty of time in the evening for more of that. they probably shouldn't have too much of the indulging before getting on the rides, anyway. ]
Brat. [ spoken in their mother tongue, but with fondness and a smile. spotting a nearby trash can, she pitches it inside with perfect aim, showing yelena she's not the only one talented at projectiles. her voice is also low, all too aware that there's people around who may look at them sideways for talking so blithely about their past and that she's still technically on the run from the government. ]
Not so much. [ but there's no tunnel of love to be found tonight, since this particular county fair is boasting rides that err more on the thrilling side, thus a little more their speed. so to speak. ]
Any idea what you want to go on first? [ there's roller coasters, the zipper, the gravitron, the viking pendulum - all relatively tame compared to the kind of activity they're used to. but the point tonight is to do things more mundane, but less familiar. letting her experience innocent fun for the first time since ohio. ]
[ she sounds even more comfortably smug in russian. whenever they slip into their mother tongue, it's like casually reaching for a tool which always sits close to hand. natasha's american accent comes more easily to her than yelena's does — more time spent in the west — but while they're out here stateside, yelena tugs on that mask, too, until she sounds like a local native. it takes some conscious effort to tamp down her obviously eastern european accent and round out her vowels, softening them into the blandly neutral and unremarkable voice of a tv newscaster. they were always taught it's better for going undercover; no trucking with a distinctive southern or boston twang which might get them noticed.
she turns her attention to the rides, considering. ]
Roller coaster, [ she pronounces firmly, her head tilting backwards to eye the somewhat-rickety structure. considering the safety statistics on these small parks, hell, maybe it'll be exciting after all. she lobs her drink into the bin and then sets off into the park interior with her sister by her side, the pair of them weaving effortlessly through the crowd.
roasted nuts, hot dogs, cotton candy. she can smell all of it, a rich tapestry around them. she unconsciously speeds up a little, her short legs scurrying as they duck into the rollercoaster line beside a busy, harried family. yelena flashes them a radiant smile; her attention sliding to a darkhaired little girl who's cowering behind her father's knees and averting her face from the ride. ]
Are you afraid? Don't be. These are fun.
[ a roll of her shoulder, indicating the ride above them, where it rumbles and clanks ]
[ it's an interesting parallel with their accents. natasha remembers the early days of their assignment in ohio, struggling with the pronunciation and accent while yelena had picked it up remarkably quickly, probably due to her having been so young when she'd been brought in. natasha had been young, too, but she'd already had years of training when they'd started. ]
You got it. [ it looms a short distance way, a pretty impressive structure even though she can hear the rattle as the cart goes whooshing over the tracks. they make their way through the crowd until they reach the line, natasha trailing shortly behind her (yelena's legs may be short, but she's still got an inch on natasha) and slip into it behind a family with two parents and a cluster of children, one of them a small girl ducking behind her father that draws yelena's attention.
natasha smiles as she talks to the girl, who looks nervously up at the tracks as another cart full of riders zooms by, their shrieks of delight piercing her eardrums. ]
It's only scary for a minute. But then you feel like you're flying.
And it's even safer than flying. You'll be strapped in the whole time.
[ yelena shoots nat a knowing smirk, at that faint comparison to their skydiving. she'd fully expected to die, plummeting off that airborne facility. but her sister had come to her rescue, with a reckless daredevil improbable leap of faith. saved her life. ]
And besides, you've got your dad with you. You can hang onto his hand the whole time and squash his fingers.
[ the little girl exhales, looks up at the two women with a mumbled "okay, i guess," but now she's at least looking towards the front of the line rather than like she's considering running away. the father nods gratefully at them, and yelena feels her heart twist sharply in her chest at the innocuousness of this whole interaction. this little american girl will never know what it's like to have her childhood ripped away from her, her family obliterated, and to be forced into brutal training.
—yelena had almost never minded the training itself, though. it had been losing her family which had hurt worse; the wound that left her walking with a gaping absence inside her where they'd once been.
she shakes it off. shuffles a little further ahead in the line and turns her attention back to nat. ]
Do you have any favourites at this kind of place? [ still, to this day, trying to learn more about her sister and the woman she'd become. ] Like, of the games, or rides.
"Two guards at the southwest corner, three minute patrol rotation."
Olga Alexievna informed the woman lying prone beside her, still peering intently through her field binoculars at the compound in the valley beneath them. Even after years of Widow training that had left her proficient in five languages, the faint stress on her o's when using her mother tongue still betrayed Olga's origins from northern Russia, origins which whilst acclimatising her perfectly to the cold, did little for her in the sweltering heat of the Brazilian tropics. Pausing to wipe a layer of sweat from her brow she continued her observations.
"Suggest entry through the window beside the drainpipe, the rotten frame suggests it can be forced but it's large enough to fit through...unless you've been binging on American doughnuts teacher-Yelka."
Lowering the binoculars she gave her companion a brash grin. The Red Room's training and mind control had only temporarily suppressed Olga's irreverent sense of humour and now that she was free she could express herself once more. There was no other Widow that Olga would trust enough to use a diminutive, but Yelena Belova had been a training partner in the Red Room and surviving it forged a bond, no matter how much the program tried to break them.
"Are we sure the Novichok's actually here? I'm not sure how much I trust the Americans to be right." Nodding toward the compound, Olga grimaced at the thought of whatever super-bioweapon the former Biopreparat workers were making. Eliminate the stockpile, retrieve the formula, simple to say, difficult to do, but that was the mission and she wasn't going to let Yelena down.
"The American doughnuts are part of my training, Olechka. If I cannot devour an entire box by myself, then how can I pass for American?" Yelena quipped back, although her face was still pressed to the scope of her sniper rifle, using it to squint at the details Olga noted from the building while the other woman held the binoculars.
Her own humour was irrepressible: mouthy, tongue-in-cheek, seeming to almost never take anything seriously. (A defense mechanism, like so many other things were.) But it was like they were making up for lost time: both of them had been rigid automatons for so long, weapons on a shelf, made to be seen and not heard, and so now they could finally rediscover their old personalities buried beneath that conditioning. They could be more loose and informal and teasing, even if they were still brutally efficient.
The Contessa would tolerate nothing less, after all. And while it felt like a regression in some ways — going back to espionage and assassination, picking up old habits — this time, it was because Yelena chose to do it. And she had decent pay and time off, so like, it was an improvement. She'd been out of the game for five years and came back to a changed world, her contacts run dry. She'd needed resources, and Val had offered them. Because Widows still needed saving and Widows still needed jobs, and they could use their talents effectively here.
Maybe even do some good with those talents. Maybe.
After a moment, she set down the rifle. "Well. If it's not here, then that's our friends in intel to blame, and I will have some stern words with them. But all we can do is try, yes?"
Olga's reply was half-snort half-laugh as she packed the binoculars back into her utility belt, nodding in agreement at Yelena's statement. The organisation they worked for tended to have good intelligence, which reassured Olga that they could indeed execute the mission successfully.
"You can try, I will succeed." She grinned, getting up from her prone position to stand in a half crouch. "Shall we proceed?" Keeping low she headed into the nearby undergrowth, moving stealthily through it down the hillside that led toward the facility's perimeter fence. This far out there were unlikely to be motion sensors, but birds taking off might attract attention, but that didn't stop her murmuring over her shoulder.
"Are you keeping up Yelka after all those doughnuts?"
Of course Olga had no doubts in Yelena whatsoever, there was nothing her teacher couldn't handle in her opinion, but that didn't mean that the younger Widow didn't intend to surpass Yelena someday, (if only in cockiness) and was happy to say it. However, as the perimeter fence neared she slowed her pace, partly out of caution and partly so as to let the more experienced Widow take the lead.
They slid down the hill they’d used as a vantage point, now skirting through the undergrowth, advancing closer to the building. Their heavy-duty tactical clothing held up against the dirt and loose rocks and occasional sharp branch trying to catch on their uniforms as they went down, and Yelena eventually stopped her descent with a boot against a tree trunk. “Don’t say ‘hop’ before you jump,” she murmured to the other woman with a half-smile; the Russian equivalent of don’t count your chickens before they hatch.
And it was strange, being the older Widow for once. Yelena had been the baby for so long — child assassin, child prodigy, the Black Widow’s younger sister, a reputation she hadn’t been able to shake even back at the Red Room — that stepping into the role of mentor and teacher still felt a bit like she was wearing someone else’s mask and hoping no one caught on. Slipping into her sister’s shoes and walking a mile, or two, or ten.
She wondered what Nat would have thought of it.
The blonde peered up at the side of the building, then shook off her hands and took a running jump towards the drainpipe, starting to scale it up towards the second-storey window they’d pinpointed as an entrance. The pipe made an ominous creak; it really hadn’t been built to carry the weight of a whole person, let alone an adult human, even if she was very short.
Hm. Maybe she did need to lay off the American snacks.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
→ for ~changement; back through the winds of the ferris wheel.
but tonight, the fair has come to town.
yelena's standing outside the gates where the ticket-taker is trading cash for stamps and ride tickets. she's listening to the distant sound of screams (of delight, not fear, which is a change of pace), and chatter and laughter and music and the grind of machinery. bright colours, winking lights. there's an infectious excitement in the air and an almost childish anticipation buzzing in her fingertips as she sips at her massive plastic cup of soda, head tilted as she watches the commotion: part of her keeps automatically noting the exits, the dark corners, the places where someone could vanish if they're being chased. she's still scrutinising the lay of the land (as if they're on a field mission—) when there's the sound of approaching footsteps behind her.
she leaves her back exposed, doesn't immediately turn to look at nat. that, in and of itself, is a sign of how far they've come. at least it's a start. ]
Have you ever been to one of these? After we were kids, I mean.
no subject
she stops on line to pick up a sheet of tickets, way overpriced for the kind of thrill rides being offered. but that's part of the experience and natasha wants to give her sister the full, real thing after so many years apart. natasha's occasionally sipping from a root beer float that's been served in a cup that's considerably smaller than yelena's soda, but it makes for an amusing challenge given the amount of ice cream that's dangerously close to melting off the side.
once she retrieves the tickets, she heads back towards her, noting the slight tension in the line of her shoulders. but she doesn't whirl around immediately upon hearing natasha approach or abandon her soda for a tucked away weapon, and it warms her to see her inaction. maybe they won't be able to lie low forever or even for much longer, but while they have it it's still something to treasure. ]
Not just for the sake of going. Here, hold this. [ she hands yelena her the sticky remains of what's in her cup so she can tear the sheet of tickets in half and takes it back to hand her the bottom half of them. ]
no subject
I'm pretty sure I killed someone in a tunnel of love once. But I don't think that counts.
[ she keeps her voice low enough to not be overheard, and her tone conversational.
the thrills in the rides tonight are, of course, nothing to a pair of globe-trotting assassins when they've leapt off plummeting airships and god knows what else during the course of their missions— and yet. there's something so endearingly quaint about how little it takes to impress an average civilian. there's an innocence to the sound of all that human delight emanating from the carnival. ]
i wanted to do this in cyrillic but google translate kept denying me
Brat. [ spoken in their mother tongue, but with fondness and a smile. spotting a nearby trash can, she pitches it inside with perfect aim, showing yelena she's not the only one talented at projectiles. her voice is also low, all too aware that there's people around who may look at them sideways for talking so blithely about their past and that she's still technically on the run from the government. ]
Not so much. [ but there's no tunnel of love to be found tonight, since this particular county fair is boasting rides that err more on the thrilling side, thus a little more their speed. so to speak. ]
Any idea what you want to go on first? [ there's roller coasters, the zipper, the gravitron, the viking pendulum - all relatively tame compared to the kind of activity they're used to. but the point tonight is to do things more mundane, but less familiar. letting her experience innocent fun for the first time since ohio. ]
italics it is
[ she sounds even more comfortably smug in russian. whenever they slip into their mother tongue, it's like casually reaching for a tool which always sits close to hand. natasha's american accent comes more easily to her than yelena's does — more time spent in the west — but while they're out here stateside, yelena tugs on that mask, too, until she sounds like a local native. it takes some conscious effort to tamp down her obviously eastern european accent and round out her vowels, softening them into the blandly neutral and unremarkable voice of a tv newscaster. they were always taught it's better for going undercover; no trucking with a distinctive southern or boston twang which might get them noticed.
she turns her attention to the rides, considering. ]
Roller coaster, [ she pronounces firmly, her head tilting backwards to eye the somewhat-rickety structure. considering the safety statistics on these small parks, hell, maybe it'll be exciting after all. she lobs her drink into the bin and then sets off into the park interior with her sister by her side, the pair of them weaving effortlessly through the crowd.
roasted nuts, hot dogs, cotton candy. she can smell all of it, a rich tapestry around them. she unconsciously speeds up a little, her short legs scurrying as they duck into the rollercoaster line beside a busy, harried family. yelena flashes them a radiant smile; her attention sliding to a darkhaired little girl who's cowering behind her father's knees and averting her face from the ride. ]
Are you afraid? Don't be. These are fun.
[ a roll of her shoulder, indicating the ride above them, where it rumbles and clanks ]
🖤
You got it. [ it looms a short distance way, a pretty impressive structure even though she can hear the rattle as the cart goes whooshing over the tracks. they make their way through the crowd until they reach the line, natasha trailing shortly behind her (yelena's legs may be short, but she's still got an inch on natasha) and slip into it behind a family with two parents and a cluster of children, one of them a small girl ducking behind her father that draws yelena's attention.
natasha smiles as she talks to the girl, who looks nervously up at the tracks as another cart full of riders zooms by, their shrieks of delight piercing her eardrums. ]
It's only scary for a minute. But then you feel like you're flying.
no subject
[ yelena shoots nat a knowing smirk, at that faint comparison to their skydiving. she'd fully expected to die, plummeting off that airborne facility. but her sister had come to her rescue, with a reckless daredevil improbable leap of faith. saved her life. ]
And besides, you've got your dad with you. You can hang onto his hand the whole time and squash his fingers.
[ the little girl exhales, looks up at the two women with a mumbled "okay, i guess," but now she's at least looking towards the front of the line rather than like she's considering running away. the father nods gratefully at them, and yelena feels her heart twist sharply in her chest at the innocuousness of this whole interaction. this little american girl will never know what it's like to have her childhood ripped away from her, her family obliterated, and to be forced into brutal training.
—yelena had almost never minded the training itself, though. it had been losing her family which had hurt worse; the wound that left her walking with a gaping absence inside her where they'd once been.
she shakes it off. shuffles a little further ahead in the line and turns her attention back to nat. ]
Do you have any favourites at this kind of place? [ still, to this day, trying to learn more about her sister and the woman she'd become. ] Like, of the games, or rides.
no subject
"Two guards at the southwest corner, three minute patrol rotation."
Olga Alexievna informed the woman lying prone beside her, still peering intently through her field binoculars at the compound in the valley beneath them. Even after years of Widow training that had left her proficient in five languages, the faint stress on her o's when using her mother tongue still betrayed Olga's origins from northern Russia, origins which whilst acclimatising her perfectly to the cold, did little for her in the sweltering heat of the Brazilian tropics. Pausing to wipe a layer of sweat from her brow she continued her observations.
"Suggest entry through the window beside the drainpipe, the rotten frame suggests it can be forced but it's large enough to fit through...unless you've been binging on American doughnuts teacher-Yelka."
Lowering the binoculars she gave her companion a brash grin. The Red Room's training and mind control had only temporarily suppressed Olga's irreverent sense of humour and now that she was free she could express herself once more. There was no other Widow that Olga would trust enough to use a diminutive, but Yelena Belova had been a training partner in the Red Room and surviving it forged a bond, no matter how much the program tried to break them.
"Are we sure the Novichok's actually here? I'm not sure how much I trust the Americans to be right." Nodding toward the compound, Olga grimaced at the thought of whatever super-bioweapon the former Biopreparat workers were making. Eliminate the stockpile, retrieve the formula, simple to say, difficult to do, but that was the mission and she wasn't going to let Yelena down.
no subject
Her own humour was irrepressible: mouthy, tongue-in-cheek, seeming to almost never take anything seriously. (A defense mechanism, like so many other things were.) But it was like they were making up for lost time: both of them had been rigid automatons for so long, weapons on a shelf, made to be seen and not heard, and so now they could finally rediscover their old personalities buried beneath that conditioning. They could be more loose and informal and teasing, even if they were still brutally efficient.
The Contessa would tolerate nothing less, after all. And while it felt like a regression in some ways — going back to espionage and assassination, picking up old habits — this time, it was because Yelena chose to do it. And she had decent pay and time off, so like, it was an improvement. She'd been out of the game for five years and came back to a changed world, her contacts run dry. She'd needed resources, and Val had offered them. Because Widows still needed saving and Widows still needed jobs, and they could use their talents effectively here.
Maybe even do some good with those talents. Maybe.
After a moment, she set down the rifle. "Well. If it's not here, then that's our friends in intel to blame, and I will have some stern words with them. But all we can do is try, yes?"
no subject
Olga's reply was half-snort half-laugh as she packed the binoculars back into her utility belt, nodding in agreement at Yelena's statement. The organisation they worked for tended to have good intelligence, which reassured Olga that they could indeed execute the mission successfully.
"You can try, I will succeed." She grinned, getting up from her prone position to stand in a half crouch. "Shall we proceed?" Keeping low she headed into the nearby undergrowth, moving stealthily through it down the hillside that led toward the facility's perimeter fence. This far out there were unlikely to be motion sensors, but birds taking off might attract attention, but that didn't stop her murmuring over her shoulder.
"Are you keeping up Yelka after all those doughnuts?"
Of course Olga had no doubts in Yelena whatsoever, there was nothing her teacher couldn't handle in her opinion, but that didn't mean that the younger Widow didn't intend to surpass Yelena someday, (if only in cockiness) and was happy to say it. However, as the perimeter fence neared she slowed her pace, partly out of caution and partly so as to let the more experienced Widow take the lead.
no subject
And it was strange, being the older Widow for once. Yelena had been the baby for so long — child assassin, child prodigy, the Black Widow’s younger sister, a reputation she hadn’t been able to shake even back at the Red Room — that stepping into the role of mentor and teacher still felt a bit like she was wearing someone else’s mask and hoping no one caught on. Slipping into her sister’s shoes and walking a mile, or two, or ten.
She wondered what Nat would have thought of it.
The blonde peered up at the side of the building, then shook off her hands and took a running jump towards the drainpipe, starting to scale it up towards the second-storey window they’d pinpointed as an entrance. The pipe made an ominous creak; it really hadn’t been built to carry the weight of a whole person, let alone an adult human, even if she was very short.
Hm. Maybe she did need to lay off the American snacks.