The Red Room (Yelena Belova and Y/N)

A Bumpy Ride

While sitting in the back of the helicopter, I had the chance to get a better look at Alexei's tattoos. On his knuckles the name KARL MARX was inked out, and he kept adjusting his jacket to cover a tattoo on his upper chest.

"So, Karl Marx huh?" Alexei looked me in the eye as if I had made some ridiculous remark.

"Are you talking about my tattoos?" What else could I have possibly been talking about?

"I got a lot of them in prison... helps with the pain." Alexei smiled and looked back at his hands folded in his lap. So, he did feel some shame for what he did to Natasha and Yelena... interesting.

"So you're some kind of Crimson Dynamo I've heard? Some sort of super soldier?" Alexei looked up from his hands again with a much more intense look on his face. That might have been a bit too sarcastic for his liking...

"It's the Red Guardian..." He kept staring at me as if I was supposed to know who that was, what a strange guy.

"I was the first and only super soldier for Russia, and then Dreykov put me in prison like some kind of animal. Locked away in a cell, with just my memories, some inmates, and now a bunch of tattoos!" Alexei slumped against the helicopter wall in a toddler like pout, he really was strange, especially considering he played the part of a father for several years...

"And what about you huh? I've heard about my girls of course, the Avenger Natasha, the ruthlessly efficient Yelena, but what about you? Your name's y/n right?" He was obviously trying to hit me back, but I didn't mind all that much, the fact that I hadn't made it onto his radar meant that I wasn't overly flashy, but I had some accomplishments of my own.

"Do you remember Munich? 2014?" Alexei's eyes flashed wide realizing that I had been an assassin in the largest assassination of the decade.

"Well of course, but there were plenty of widows involved, you weren't the only one." Alexei scoffed and rolled his eyes, while it had been more than one, he wasn't entirely correct.

"There were only three of us, the other two didn't last the first few hours, I did the rest." Alexei's eyes went wide again and flashed back and forth from the front to the back of the cabin trying to avoid eye contact, then focusing back on his hands. No apology, no acknowledgement. What was with this guy? I've had enough.

"Y'know, it was pretty shitty of you to just hand Natasha and Yelena over to Dreykov, what kind of father does that anyway..." Alexei slammed his hand on the wall of the helicopter creating a sizable dent, the impact could have crushed any number of my bones.

"It was a mission! And I wasn't really their father! Dreykov gave me such a boring mission in Ohio and went i got back just left me in prison!"

"This isn't just about you Alexei! And you all keep saying that you weren't really this or you weren't really that! Bullshit! If that were true you wouldn't have Natasha tattooed on your chest! Don't try to hide it! You kept moving your jacket over that spot thinking I wouldn't see it? And Natasha, ha! Natasha wouldn't have come to Budapest to see Yelena! You all are completely hopeless! And this Melina bitch whoever she is, I'm sure she'll say the exact same thing right? You all just need to admit that you mean something to each other and move on!" I had gone on a rant before I could stop myself and Alexei was fuming, it looked like he was about to kill me until he bent over and sighed into his hands, muttering something into them. When he realized I couldn't hear him he came back up to sitting to repeat himself.

"Fine. You want to tell me who's family and who's not huh? Where's your family?" A tear started rolling down Alexei's cheek. What had The Red Room done to all these people, I knew they took girls off the streets, from their families, their homes, ripping them from the dead arms of loved ones. But Alexei, I couldn't help but think that his time as the Red Guardian wasn't entirely voluntary.

"Maybe I'm not one to speak about family, but I fantasized about actually having one for longer than you can imagine, so the idea that you had something like that and could just say it means nothing, it doesn't make sense to me. I refuse to believe it." Alexei wiped the rolling tear of his cheek as he gave a sad smile in response. I had forgotten that Natasha and Yelena could hear our conversation over the headphones until I heard Yelena's sniffling over them.

"I hate to ruin the whole therapy session going on back there," Natasha thankfully interrupted the sound of Yelena trying to hold back her tears "but we only have a few miles left." Alexei scoffed at the piece of information.

"The helicopter will have more miles than it says. We'll make it." Natasha kept flying and twenty minutes later we were descending, and thankfully we were able to coast down thanks to the helicopter's strange engineering.

"Ha! I told you we'd make it!" Alexei huffed out, still trying to catch his breath from the bumpy landing.

"And how far are we from Melina? When will we know that we're there?" Natasha was clearly annoyed at running out of fuel, but that was on her for trusting Alexei...

"Oh you'll know!" Alexei started oinking like a pig, I guess Melina must live on some kind of farm...

As we started walking Alexei held Natasha back to talk about something important as I walked on ahead with Yelena. The first couple of minutes were filled with an awkward silence as we slowly walked forward over the rough terrain when suddenly Natasha started yelling.

"You haven't seen either of us in twenty years and the only thing you want to talk about is you and your stupid glory days! You can't be serious!" Natasha started marching our way until Alexei tried to defend himself.

"Oh what and like it didn't work out well for you? Avenger? And Yelena, one of the best widows to ever come from The Red Room? I got locked away and-" Yelena interrupted him, tired of his nonsense.

"Oh! You got locked away? Just put in a prison where you could tell all your inmates your crazy battle stories and get tattoos? We got locked away in a murderer training house that killed off more of my friends than I can count, then sent us out to kill the ones that made it out, all while controlling our every biological function, our breathing, our sight, our movement, our cognitive function! You were more free than we ever were so just shut up!" Yelena was breathing heavy and completely red, her pout sitting on her face again as she turned forward to keep going. Natasha stayed between us and Alexei for the rest of the hike, and no one said a word.