No More Excuses//Katelena

6: What are You Running From?

Yelena needs her fair share of angst too don't ya know (as if she isn't already traumatized and mentally ill enough)

Content warnings: Depression, Natasha, Yelena angst my poor baby

Yelena Belova considered herself an intellectual in badassery. A connoisseur, if you will. A maestro. A legend.

She absolutely did not feel like a legend right now.

While it was true that she never got to properly enjoy the high that came along with jumping off of buildings and leaping between moving cars, she was generally able to find some comfort and bodily rhythm in running. The Red Room had stolen indescribable amounts of precious life from her, but she was lucky enough in this one regard.

Yelena could run.

She wasn't running from anything in particular of course- no. No one was chasing her, and she had no end goal in mind, but the air was so sharp and wonderful in her lungs that she kept pushing her body until the pain had built and eventually faded.

Runner's High, Natasha had told her once, her sister's voice deep with exhaustion over a call late one night before the Blip. You run and you don't stop and everything just melts away.

Simply put, Yelena was addicted. If she were to make a list of her favorite things, Natasha would be number one. Vodka and running would be remarkably close to each other, along with her sort-of-parents, her dog, and the vest she had given Natasha all those years ago.

Funny thing was, it didn't feel that long ago to Yelena. She lost five years and her sister in one fell swoop, and Yelena had no experience to show for it.

So she ran. Away from the grief, away from the terror of being lost and aimless and oh so alone. Because of course she was running from something. Yelena wasn't stupid enough to convince herself she was okay. She wasn't, but she was at peace with that. Or she hoped she could be one day, anyway.

Yelena was the world's best child assassin. She was 30 years old, had a dog, and had more blood money than she knew what to do with. She had parents who loved her and whom she loved back dearly, even if the situation was very strange and they were rather dodgy at best. She was a daughter. She was a killer. Maybe even a friend.

But she was not a sister anymore. And that title had mattered most.

She indulged herself, letting the tears fall and freeze against her cheeks as she continued to run. She had bought new running shoes just the other day, and the uncomfort of breaking them in only fueled her further. She didn't actually have any errands to attend to, as she had told Kate before disappearing as quickly as she could.

There had been something there with the archer, and it scared Yelena. So she left. Very smart.

Сука.

It was well into the afternoon and brimming over into the evening before Yelena's body finally gave out, and she forced herself to scale a small building before collapsing onto the roof to catch her breath and rest. She ignored the cold of the cement underneath as it bit through her thin layers. In her haste to get out of Kate's orbit, she hadn't thought to grab a hoodie from where she had her clothes stashed in a closet she knew Kate never used.

Yelena sucked in a deep, shuddering breath, frost nipping down the inside of her throat and deep into her lungs. She spread her aching limbs out slowly, stretching the muscles as they shrieked and twanged. Yelena only exhaled at the pain, welcoming the familiarity.

The clouds above her were a crisp ivory, puffy and swollen and dipping into celestial pools of purples and reds. A few stars twinkled out shyly, doing their best against the NYC light pollution.