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.