fiction | Part of the journey is the end

7. Daughter. Sister. Avenger.

In a grassy area, Yelena Belova got out of a truck.

Natasha furrowed her brows. "Yelena?"

"Your sister?" Clint said as he looked at Yelena with interest. He had never known how she looked like even though Natasha talked about her all the time. It was sweet.

"Wait, what's up with this other family we never knew about?" asked Sam. "You mentioned them before, but other things were going on at the time."

Everyone else winced. The other times Natasha mentioned her other family was when they had just seen half of the universe die, and then the second time was when they had seen Natasha die.

Natasha sighed. Maybe it was time to tell everyone about Yelena, Alexei, and Melina, and not just Clint. She trusted all of them, anyway.

"I was inducted into the Red Room when I was a toddler and was trained there until 1992 when I was eight. That's when I was chosen to go on an undercover assignment to Ohio with Yelena, Alexei, and Melina. Yelena was my sister, and Alexei and Melina were my parents."

"That's why you love 90s music!" Tony realized.

Natasha smiled. It was true; she had a soft spot for 90s music since she always heard it when she lived in Ohio. It's what she had grown up with.

"Eight?" Peter said, shocked.

Natasha nodded. "Yelena was even younger. She was three, but she didn't know we were on a mission. To her, everything was real." And it was real to me, too, she thought.

"What was the undercover mission about?" Wanda asked.

Natasha looked at Bucky. "Infiltrating the North Institute in Ohio."

Bucky choked. "That was you? The fire? It was you?"

"Technically, it wasn't me; it was Alexei, but yes."

"I remember this," said Tony, shocked. "It was all over the news. Everyone was stunned that were Russian undercover agents in a normal, boring suburban neighbourhood. In Ohio of all places."

Peter blinked in surprise. Natasha's undercover mission was just like The Americans. "Like The Americans?" he asked.

Natasha snorted. "Exactly like The Americans. Who do you think that show is based on?"

Peter's jaw dropped.

"Wait, hold on," said Steve. "What's the North Institute, and why does Bucky know about it?"

"The North Institute was a HYDRA research facility. I was there for a while before they put me back in cryo," Bucky answered.

"Well, everyone thought it was SHIELD," said Natasha. "I only found out it was HYDRA two years ago."

Steve and Tony clenched their jaws.

"And why did your dad infiltrate the North Institute?" Rhodey asked.

Natasha swallowed and closed her eyes. She knew there was no way she could've stopped it because she was a child at the time, but it still hurt seeing what that research had done to Yelena and the other Widows.

"In conjunction with the Winter Soldier project, they had dissected and deconstructed the human brain to create the first and only cellular blueprint of the basal ganglia. Alexei was sent to steal it, but he didn't know what he was stealing."

Everyone sucked in a breath and glanced at Bucky, who blanched. Steve and Sam were furious at hearing another thing HYDRA had done to Bucky.

"So that's why I was at the Institute," muttered Bucky. He furrowed his brows. "But when I was at the Red Room, the Widows weren't mind-controlled. It was psychological conditioning, not chemical subjugation."