black widow movie | dear violette romanoff,

chapter five | adjustment

I blow out from my nose and enter the flat on high alert, holding my gun up in front of my eyes, but immediately lowering it upon seeing that nobody is inside.

The one-room studio that Yelena is squatting in is eerily nice, but everything has a purpose for being exactly where it is: the locked cabinet acting as her bedside table, the kitchen knives as the first and only accessible drawer in the kitchen, the positioning of her couch and dining chairs.

Any good assassin can play each version of the possible outcomes out in their head.

I make it into the kitchen and pull the shade of a lamp off, revealing another hiding spot for grenades.

I sigh.

A gun cocks behind me, and I turn around, raising my own. It's Yelena, looking completely on edge.

"Lower your weapon," I tell her.

"Don't tell me what to do, little sister."

Yelena tries kicking the weapon out of my hand, but I hold it still.

"Don't."

She shakes her head gently, looking slightly delirious with rage or confusion. "You got the serum." She says it rather than asks it.

I lower her gun with my hand, and she walks away into the kitchen.

Yelena's baby face has remained, but not her usually obvious smile. Her dirty blonde hair is longer and thicker, and she has grown much taller. She is all muscle, now, and her love has clearly grown to be conditional, as has mine. Based on the way her eyes are fixed on me, I suppose I look different to her, too.

She drops down her brown leather backpack and pulls out a bottle of pure vodka from the top cabinet.

I try to think of something to say, but absolutely nothing comes to mind.

"Are you just here to stare at me?"

"There's... a lot to stare at."

"I'm not that ugly, am I?"

I smirk and turn away. "Oksana?"

"Dead," Yelena responds.

"Shit." I try not to look affected in any way. "What happened?"

"Dreykov was still controlling me," Yelena says.

"Where are the vials?" I ask.

She takes a shot of vodka. "Show me that I can trust you."

"You don't trust me?"

I sit down on her leather couch and pull my legs up to my chest. I roll my shorts up, revealing the fresh cut on my thigh after having removed the Red Room's tracker. I open my back and pull out my pockets, showing absolutely no weapon.

Yelena walks back over to her backpack and pulls out the vials, holding them tightly in her hand: at least ten neatly packed away together in the metal box.

I exhale in relief. "We have to free those girls."

"We can't," Yelena responds and puts down the vials, which makes me nervous.

"Don't be stupid. It's human decency, Yelena," I tell her.

"Excuse me for not wanting to see that place ever again."

"You've got to help them."

"Don't decide that for me."

"I'm not deciding anything. I'm giving you a choice, just telling you not to be an idiot."

"You didn't have to come here to tell me that."

The tension is too thick to be cut by a knife. I don't know whether to look at her or not.

"What are you going to do, get a dog and settle down?"

"I could get a dog."

"Oh, shut up. The Red Room will end you before that becomes a possibility, and you know it. They already know about Oksana's gas; that was the whole reason why you and I were commissioned in Sweden and Budapest, to retrieve them. Tell me, what did Oksana say to you when you realized?"

"She told me to free the others."

I nod and scoff. "Right. Okay."

"It's impossible, Violette. We don't even know where the academy is."

"Then we make it possible," I say. "We find someone... someone higher."

"The widows have already been operated on," Yelena explains. "Even if we do somehow impossibly find and get inside, two of us wouldn't manage at least eight of them and Dreykov."

I drop my head in my hands.

"I'm not saying that I disagree. Those girls deserve out. I'm saying that it's impossible. Impossible for the two of us to handle."

I sit down, distressed. "That's as equally as negative."

She passes me the shared bottle of vodka and sighs.

I look up. "Whatever. You don't have to do this with me, I just thought that—"

"I have... the dumbest idea," she interrupts me.

I am thankful for anything at this point. "Will it work?"

"It will work, though. It will work, I hope. You said we needed someone with higher authority?"

I nod with caution.

"We know someone with much higher authority."

My eyes widen in realisation.

"It's worth a shot," Yelena mutters. "An Avenger seems higher up enough."

"Nat still thinks the Red Room is destroyed," I say.

"She can't possibly believe that, or else she would have come back for us."

"I don't think I could talk to her," I explain.

"You wouldn't have to."

I look up.

Yelena blows out roughly. "She owns an apartment. In Budapest. We'll go there, and find out where she is, pay someone to deliver the vials and a note, or something, from the two of us. She'll take them to the Avengers, and soon enough, she and Captain America will be on the front page of Hungary Today for taking down the Red Room."

"Nat wouldn't know," I correct her. "She'd make the mistake of coming to find us."

"Not if we were in Budapest."

I don't like the idea, but am annoyingly desperate. "Whatever works," I assure myself.

"Whatever works."