Catch Me When I Fall // KateLena AU

Gethsemane

Kate Bishop was losing steam. Perhaps the diner stop was her pink cloud, her last hurrah before falling apart completely, because as the two crossed into Georgia, worryingly close to Valentina, Kate could hardly keep it together. Despite the new socks, her feet were rubbed raw, despite the wrapping, her hand ached. She could not sleep without nightmares, could not eat without nausea. She could hardly think without remembering Clint's body, the scarlet stained ice, Laura's cracking voice on the phone.

One way or another, Kate's journey was coming to a rapid conclusion.

Part of Yelena was tempted to drop the dead weight, leave Kate in a motel somewhere and carry on to collect her payment, but this newer, experimental version of Yelena, the one stupid enough to think she could be a good person someday, she pressed on. Valentina was only a few hours away now, and would have food, water, medical supplies. Or so Yelena hoped.

For all Yelena knew, Val was holed up in some nondescript house, operating as lowkey as possible. That was more likely than the Red Room-esqe compound Yelena envisioned, but at the very least, the two would be flush with cash and granted a few hours to regroup.

But what after that? Yelena had run through a million scenarios like an algorithm in her mind, and of course had come up with no satisfactory conclusion. Perhaps there was no such thing as a proper ending to a tale such as this, to a quandary so perplexing and layered.

The blonde glanced over at her counterpart, whose eyes were dead and steps robotic. This was not the girl Yelena met in December- a vibrant spirit full of cocky charm and reckless optimism. This was a hollow, shell shocked ghost of Kate Bishop, chiseled by tragedy into a jagged marble statue. What on earth was Yelena going to do with her?

"Kate Bishop," Yelena rasped, attempting to keep the archer engaged as the sun rose behind them, marking the end of another sleepless night. "You asked me once what I would do in the future, if I could do anything I wanted."

"Yeah," Kate replied after a beat, hands in her leather jacket pockets. She didn't look up from the gravel road underfoot as she continued, "you'd be a baker, or something."

"Mhm." A smile somehow threatened to brighten Yelena's features. "What would you do?"

"What's the point?"

"Just... in a perfect world, what would you be doing? Who would you be?"

"Doesn't matter," Kate shrugged, eyes glancing briefly up to the towering evergreen canopy. "Do you really think I won't be wanted anymore? Do you think there's any warrants out?"

"For me, yes. You, maybe. And I told you, if you're so worried about that, I'll turn myself in if you ever get caught."

"If I wanted you in jail I would've turned you in myself."

Yelena hesitated, gauging how hard to push Kate's goodwill. "Why haven't you?"

"What, because I turned in my own mom? And not you?"

"Yes. What is the difference?"

Several minutes of silence passed. Worried that Kate had tuned her out and slipped back into her dissociative fugue, Yelena turned to see Kate tracking a hawk soaring high above in the powder blue sky between the rows of trees, its wings outstretched to ride the winds.

As the hawk faded into the horizon, Kate cast her gaze into the grasslands stretching beyond the gravel path, hearing everything and nothing all at once. Her senses, heightened from stress, adrenaline, and Yelena's influence, picked up on the faintest cricket hum, the slightest twitch of a squirrel. She watched as a small bird, perhaps a sparrow, hopped along in the golden grass, its eyes dull and soul without sin.