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Special Delivery
It was a fairly normal Friday night.
Okay, really it wasn’t, because this was a very non-normal location full of very abnormal people.
But nothing was currently exploding or on fire and a relative peace had been reached in the last few weeks between the misfits that made up the New Avengers*.
This was especially impressive given that they were all apparently expected to live together in Avengers Tower and Valentina had been riding their asses like a little league dad furiously shouting pitching advice to their eleven year old from the other side of the dugout fence.
At the moment though, to the relief of everyone else present, Valentina was completely ignoring them as she sat on one side of the spacious main room huddled over her tablet.
Bucky, John Walker, and Ava were awkwardly gathered on the other side of the room where a few new couches and chairs, along with a large, very modern looking coffee table were set up in poor attempt to make it look cozier.
Even though the three of them were occupying the same space, they didn’t seem comfortable, and the atmosphere was similar to introverted classmates whose moms had dropped them off for an unwelcome play date.
Walker had just opened his mouth to suggest they get something to eat when the elevator dinged and he turned his head, hoping that it was Alexei returning. The guy could be incredibly annoying, but at least he’d be someone to talk to. Bucky was more of a silent brooder and Ava liked to pepper their conversations with clever insults, mostly directed at him.
But when the elevator doors slid open, they revealed someone, who was definitely not Alexei, holding a massive stack of pizza boxes. The boxes were piled so high that all Walker could really make out on the other side was the top of a black baseball cap.
He leapt to his feet, stepping around the chair he’d been sitting in to face this unexpected intruder. In response to his quick motion, Ava and Bucky had also jumped up, both of them shifting their weight into automatic fighting stances as they looked for the threat.
There was a moment of silence as they all focused their attention on the person who had exited the elevator and taken a few cautious steps into the room.
“Who are you?” Bucky asked, his eyes narrowing.
“Just a humble pizza delivery person,” the intruder responded, their voice cheerful and giving away that they were young and female.
She lowered the pile of pizzas just far enough to reveal the top half of her face and a pair of dark blue eyes.
“I’m just gonna…,” she added, and crossed further in the room to drop the pizzas on a conveniently placed table with a loud thud.
Having done that, she shook out her hands and rotated her wrists a few times.
“I work out and everything, but seriously, those things weighed a ton.”
The delicious smell of pizza started to fill the air, but Walker was still looking at the stack of boxes with suspicion.
Then he glanced over his shoulder towards Bucky and Ava.
“Should we…?”
Before he was able to finish the question, Ava had already phased over and flipped open the top box to reveal…a pizza.
She quickly and methodically checked every box, gave the delivery girl a long, probing look, and then phased back over to her original location.
“Okay, first off,” the girl said, looking at Ava delightedly, “that was freaking awesome. And second, what did you think was in the boxes?”
“Uh, you know, maybe a bomb,” Walker said, sounding impatient.
“A pizza bomb? Seriously? What a waste of perfectly good pizza.”
“No, like, there wouldn’t be any pizza,” Walker argued, “just a bomb in the pizza box. Special delivery. Boom.”
“Huh,” she replied, looking like she was considering the concept, “but wouldn’t it be way cooler if it was pizza and then the toppings were a bunch of tiny bombs? Like, oh look at this delicious pepperoni, and then…kapow!”
All three of the others looked at the pizza boxes in sudden alarm and the girl quickly raised her hands.
“No, no that wasn’t a threat! Just a wacky hypothetical. Like something from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon.”
This reference to a children’s television show was apparently the thing that finally got Valentina’s attention because she looked up from the screen that she had been focusing on like she’d suddenly realized there was a stranger in the room.
“I’m sorry, who is this?”
When there was no immediate response from the others, she turned towards the girl.
“Who are you? How did you get in here?”
The girl looked shifty and did not immediately respond.
“Right,” Bucky said, as if just now remembering they were standing in what was supposed to be a high security building. “I guess we should have already asked that question.”
“Seriously?” Valentina said, scoffing at him aggressively, “sometimes I can’t fathom how any of you people ever succeeded in shadow ops.”
“Yeah, but she’s like…a kid,” Walker said, waving a hand at the girl.
“I’m 24,” the girl muttered.
Valentina rubbed her temple with her thumb, and looked like she was getting a headache.
“Yes, and one of your team members was an incredibly successful child assassin. Are you an idiot? Take care of this.”
But faced with the girl’s pretty solid attempt at a charming smile, and the fact that she just kept standing there with her hands out to the sides to show that she was unarmed, they all hesitated.
It was true that she didn’t look all that threatening at the moment, though she was fairly tall and seemed solidly built. But she was wearing baggy jeans and a dorky looking red jacket with Herman's Hearty Slice embroidered across the chest.
She’d taken off the baseball cap and left it on the table by the pizza, and her long, dark hair was a little mussed.
She looked young, and she was pretty, and she didn’t seem scared.
Bucky, John, and Ava all exchanged glances, but none of them made any move to go and grab her.
In the face of their continued absence of doing anything about the situation, Valentina let out a deep sigh and snapped her fingers in the girl’s direction.
“You. Pizza Girl. How did you get up here?”
The girl slowly lowered her hands and turned her head to look at Valentina, though she was still watching the other three out of the corner of her eye.
“Well, you know…a little bit of this, and a little bit of that…”.
“Define this and that,” Valentina commanded in a flat tone.
“I’d say, if you want to talk in mathematical terms then 20% traditional lockpicking, 30% proprietary and possibly slightly illegal tech, and 50% charm.”
“Charm. That could be a valuable asset considering no one else here seems to have any of it,” Valentina mused.
“I’d say it’s an underrated skill,” the girl agreed, seeming to warm to the subject, “I mean sure, super strength can come in really handy, but sometimes you need to be able to talk to someone, you know? Like Gordon. He was a really integral part of my plan”.
“Who the hell is Gordon?”
For a second the girl’s blue eyes widened guiltily and the corner of her mouth turned down in a frown.
“I probably shouldn’t have name-dropped him. Oops. He’s one of your security guards. A real animal lover. And not to brag, but I have an amazingly cute and photogenic dog, and the other night good old Gordon and I chatted about dogs long enough for me to hack his phone, and maybe I was then able to slip some spyware into your security network…”.
“Gordon is so fired,” Valentina muttered.
“Sorry Gordon,” the girl said, sounding a little remorseful, “anyway there was a lot more to the plan like figuring out how to override the elevator security access and convincing a pizza delivery guy to deliver all these pizzas to the kinda creepy alley behind this building, so I could sneak them and me through the service entrance which required picking a couple pretty serious door locks…but I don’t want to bore you with all the details.”
“Why bring the pizza though?” Ava asked, speaking for the first time since the girl had shown up.
The girl turned slightly towards her with a smile.
“Your accent is awesome by the way. And I guess I didn’t want to show up empty handed, it seemed rude.”
“But you broke in,” John pointed out.
“I didn’t actually break anything,” was her rebuttal.
But she’d stopped paying attention to him and was looking all around the room.
“So, uh, no one else is here at the moment?”
“Why does that matter?” John asked suspiciously.
“No reason,” Kate said, her smile still charming though it was starting to strain, “I was just…”:
Her sentence came to a crashing halt when Yelena walked into the room.
The blonde woman was saying, “Do I smell pizza? I told Alexei he has to stop ordering the door dash. He is very terrible at…”.
Then she saw who was standing there and her sentence also stopped dead.
There was a long, heavy pause where her eyes remained fixed on the girl with laser focus.
And then she said, “Kate Bishop.”
Instantly, Walker, Bucky, and Ava all had guns out and trained on the pizza delivery girl who froze in place, eyes widening.
But before she could say anything, Yelena snapped, “Lower your weapons.”
It was a sharp warning, and so commanding that all three of them obeyed, lowering the guns so they were pointed at the floor.
“What was that?” Yelena demanded, glaring at the three of them.
Bucky shrugged.
“You full named her. I thought that meant that she was a threat.”
Yelena swept a hand out towards Kate, exasperated.
“Does she look like a threat?”
“Hey!” Kate interjected, sounding affronted, “I did figure out how to sneak into your fancy, super secure building.”
That did make Yelena’s eyebrows raise one impressed fraction.
From where she was now standing by the bar, Valentina muttered, “And we will be discussing that further.”
Kate and Yelena both ignored her in favor of looking at each other.
Their mutual assessment was interrupted from a sound by the table, and they looked over to see that Ava had phased over and was in the process of lifting a slice of pizza out of one of the boxes.
“If the two of you are just going to stand there staring at each other,” she said, quite matter of fact, “I might as well eat.”
“Great idea,” John said, walking over to check out the pizza options.
Bucky had holstered his gun, but made no move to follow the other two, who now both had their mouths full of pizza. He was watching the silent standoff between the two women with curious eyes.
Eventually, Yelena spoke again, though it was only a one word demand.
“Explain.”
“You’re going to have to be a little more specific about what you want me to explain because, honestly, a lot has happened since the last time I saw you.”
Yelena made an aggrieved sound and muttered something in Russian.
“Explain, specifically, what you are doing here, right now.”
“I came to find you.”
“What?”
The question was asked in such a flat tone that it didn’t really sound like a question at all.
At this point, Kate Bishop’s confidence finally started to crack a little.
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and started to explain, sounding a lot less chirpily cheerful than she had just a few minutes ago when she was making quips about pizza bombs.
“I wasn’t in the city when the…incident happened, but then I saw you on the news, and you looked…”.
Here, she trailed off, and cleared her throat before skipping whatever she had been about to say and jumping to the next thought.
“So when I got back in town I found out that apparently you were here, like here in this iconic tower, so ever since then I’ve been plotting a way to get inside.”
Yelena’s expression gave nothing away, but she did chew on her lip for a moment before ignoring everything that Kate had just said in favor of asking, “What do you have behind your back?”
Yet again, Kate found herself being scrutinized by everyone else in the room.
She held out her hands again to show that they were empty and tried to deflect.
“What do you…”.
“Take off your jacket,” Yelena interrupted.
“Geez. Buy a girl dinner first maybe.”
There was a small, quickly suppressed snort of laughter from the table in the corner and Yelena shot Ava a brief glare before leveling her gaze at Kate again, looking very unimpressed.
“Fine,” Kate grumbled, unzipped the jacket, and dropped it on the ground, revealing the top half of a sleeveless tactical suit.
She then slowly, very slowly, reached behind her to adjust something and the top of her quiver became visible over her shoulder.
When she brought her arms forward again, there was something in her left hand.
Bucky looked at it like it was triggering some memory.
“Okay, nobody freak out when I do this,” Kate said, and then she made a short punching motion that sent the collapsible bow unfurling with impressively quiet grace.
“Awesome, right?”
“It is at least a little bit cool,” Yelena admitted.
Kate grinned like that was extremely flowery praise.
“You should see some of the new trick arrows I made. Clint was skeptical about the boomerang arrow, but that’s because he's boring and has no sense of flair.”
“Yes, Clint Barton is very old and boring,” agreed Yelena.
“You know Clint Barton?” Valentina asked, now looking at Kate with more interest.
“He’s my mentor,” was Kate’s proud response, “and I’m basically the new Hawkeye, which is another reason I wanted to see what was going on with the New Avengers.”
Yelena looked over at Valentina, not liking the speculative look on the older woman’s face as she focused on the young archer.
“You know,” she said to Kate in a casual tone, “Valentina here is the one who gave me Clint Barton’s photo and told me that he killed my sister.”
Kate's expression shifted into something that was ice cold and surprisingly intimidating, and her fingers flexed against her bow.
This of course only made Valentina look even more interested.
“Water under the bridge,” she said dismissively, “The present day is more important, and I’d like to know more about this new Hawkeye.”
That made Yelena finally move, and she walked over towards Kate, positioning herself between the girl and Valentina.
“Alright Kate Bishop. You have accomplished your mission of finding me, so now it is time for you to go back home and enjoy your safe life.”
She started herding the archer back towards the elevator, and Kate collapsed the bow and reattached it to the back of her suit before grudgingly giving ground, protesting the entire way.
“You don’t even know what my life’s been like, there’s all kinds of crazy stuff that’s been happening…and don’t you want to see my new arrows? Oh, or pictures of my dog Lucky?”
That last offer did actually make Yelena pause for just a moment, but then she shook her head and continued lightly shoving at Kate.
They had almost made it to the elevator when the doors opened.
Alexei was standing there wearing large, obnoxious sunglasses.
He had a case of beer propped up on one shoulder and a bag full of clinking bottles was dangling from his other hand.
At his side, partially hidden by his large frame, was Bob, who was holding an overflowing bag of snacks.
The big man ignored Kate in favor of going over to the table and setting everything down before regarding the impressive amount of food with delight.
“Who has ordered all this pizza? Thank you, thank you! I am starving and Yelena keeps deleting the delivery apps from my phone.”
“Kate Bishop brought us this pizza, but now she must go.”
Alexei had been reaching for the biggest slice of pepperoni in the box when he paused and turned back around, resting his hands on his hips.
“Kate Bishop, Kate Bishop, why do I know this name? Oh! This is the girl who slapped you in the face!”
Yelena spit out a sharp curse in Russian, but Alexei was undeterred.
“Yes, yes! I remember this story, it is a very good one with rappelling down buildings…and fighting Hawkeye on ice rink…and this girl slapping you right in face in elevator.”
“She slapped you?” Ava asked, looking both amused and impressed.
“More of an instinctive flailing,” Kate admitted, but she was smiling again.
Yelena looked like she was considering jumping out a window to escape the situation.
The next person to move was Alexei, and he swooped in and grabbed Kate, wrapping her in a bear hug.
“It is so good to meet one of Lena’s friends!”
Kate tried to say something, but it came out in a breathless squeak.
“Daddy, could you not crush Kate Bishop please?”
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, releasing her. “I am just so excited!”
When Kate could breathe again, she stared up at Alexei.
“Wait, this is your dad?! You talked about me to your dad?”
At the look of exhilaration on the dark haired girl’s face, Yelena groaned and said something to Alexei in Russian. It didn’t sound very friendly.
Bucky tried to cover up a snort of laughter with a cough.
By now, Bob had wandered over too and he looked excited.
“This is your friend? You have a friend?”
“We are not friends,” Yelena said.
“Not yet,” Kate pointed out.
She turned a charming smile on Yelena who just looked annoyed.
But their eye contact continued on for long enough that it could accurately be described as them gazing at each other.
Bob watched the interaction and smiled.
“I get it.”
“You get nothing,” Yelena told him grumpily and then waved a hand to shoo him away.
He kept smiling, but obediently went over to where the rest of the team was gathered, all of them now eating happily.
After Bob had unloaded the snacks and selected his own slice of pizza, he turned back around and asked, “How did the two of you meet?”
Kate looked absolutely ready to spill every detail, but a glance at Yelena made her reconsider.
“You know, it’s kind of a long story…”.
“We have enough food to last all night,” Ava said, gesturing to the loaded table, and then smirking over at a still very grumpy looking Yelena.
“Oh, uh, well,” Kate stuttered, trying to come up with a better excuse and not finding one.
“And we have drinks!” Alexei practically shouted, ripping open the case of beer.
He tossed the first one to Yelena, who easily caught it without even looking, and then the next one to Bucky who reached out to grab it automatically.
The third one went flying at Ava, but she phased out for a split second, just in time to allow the can to hit Walker right in the face. It fell to the ground and he rubbed his cheek as he glowered at her.
“You suck.”
Alexei boomed out a laugh, and Kate looked like she wanted to laugh as well, but she managed to hold it in.
With a cheeky grin, Ava phased over to grab two more beers and then back to present one to Walker with a flourish.
“Thanks,” he grumbled, immediately cracking it open and taking a long drink.
Alexei squinted over at Kate as if not sure if he should toss a can at her, and there was a moment of awkward silence.
But then, to everyone’s surprise, Yelena went and grabbed a beer and then crossed back over to hold it out to Kate like a peace offering.
The girl’s expression softened as she accepted it.
And when their fingers brushed together in the process of handing over the can, Yelena’s face softened as well.
Everyone else remained absolutely silent and pretended that they weren’t deeply emotionally invested in what was happening.
The exception to this was Valentina apparently, because she packed away her tablet with an unnecessary amount of noise and crossed the room to stand in front of the elevator.
Her eyes flickered between Kate and Yelena, and then settled on the blonde.
“Keep an eye on her. Ms. Bishop and I still have some things to discuss.”
Yelena glowered at her, but the other woman seemed immune and walked confidently away, stepping into the elevator and letting the doors close behind her.
While Yelena kept glaring at the elevator doors and Kate watched her do that, Alexei was waving his arms and cajoling everyone to bring all the food and drinks over to the “living room”.
They all cooperated, picking up bags of chips and boxes of pizza, but when Kate tried to move in their direction, Yelena grabbed her by the wrist.
“Why did you really come here?”
She could see Kate thinking about lying, but then the girl’s shoulders slumped and when her eyes met Yelena’s, they were steady and honest.
“I saw you on TV, like I said, and you looked good, but you didn’t look happy, not really. I know that our experiences in life are wildly different, but there was something there that I recognized.”
“So you are here because you feel sorry for me,” Yelena said flatly.
“No.”
Kate was adamant, and she reached out and laid a tentative hand on Yelena’s shoulder.
“I’m here because I thought maybe you could use a friend.”
She paused, and a tiny version of that charming smile settled back on her face.
“Plus, you’re an Avenger now? I mean, I feel like that’s a big deal, and we should talk about that, especially since I’m basically the new Hawkeye. And…you did agree to have a drink with me.”
Yelena looked past Kate for a long moment, staring blankly off into the distance, and then she seemed to come to a decision.
She released Kate’s wrist and gestured to the can of beer.
“Okay Kate Bishop, but we are not drinking that cheap swill my daddy purchased. We’re having vodka.”
Kate managed to look only slightly alarmed by this news.
“Uh, yeah, for sure. Vodka. My favorite.”
Yelena went over to the bar and grabbed a bottle of vodka, something much more expensive than what Alexei had bought, and then led Kate over to where everyone else was now seated and eating.
They ended up on a couch with Alexei, Kate next to the large man, with Yelena on her other side.
Due to the fact that Alexei took up so much space and liked to make a lot of big gestures when he talked, Kate had scooted as far from him as she could, and her leg was pressed up against Yelena’s, something both of them were very aware of but were pretending to ignore.
They all sat there, stuffing themselves with pizza and swapping stories.
Kate was now two shots of vodka in and the alcohol was only making her more chatty.
Yelena sipped on her vodka, and ate some of the hot buffalo wing pizza Kate had brought, listened a lot more than she talked, and tried not to be acutely embarrassed by everything that came out of Alexei’s mouth.
At the moment, he was asking Kate about her tactical suit, which was deep purple and had a prominent bow and arrow logo on the chest.
“Oh, purple is kind of my color, and the bow and arrow is the logo I came up with, kind of on the nose, but it’s easy to understand. Branding, you know?”
Alexei lit up.
“Yelena, I like this girl, she gets it!”
Then he gave Kate an affectionate slap on the back that nearly knocked her off the couch.
“Please do not injure Kate Bishop, she is not a super soldier.”
“Oh come on,” Alexei said, unrepentant, and then grabbed Kate’s bicep and gave it a squeeze, “Look she is strong! She can take it!”
Yelena rolled her eyes, but Kate was taking the manhandling gracefully, and instead of looking upset, she agreed with the big man.
“Yeah, I once fought Kingpin one on one and didn’t die, and let me tell you, he’s a very large and scary dude. I mean, to be fair, he did crack a couple of my ribs.”
“I did not know about that,” Yelena said quietly, her eyes roving over Kate with concern.
Kate just waved her hand.
“It was a long time ago. No worries.”
The interaction had everyone else staring at them again, and seeing Yelena looking grumpy again upon noticing the attention, Kate quickly changed the subject, asking Ava a question about her suit and pulling everyone else back into a lively conversation.
Kate’s presence was making the atmosphere more light-hearted than usual, and eventually, Yelena started to relax.
She thought of her other self from the void, those empty eyes, the hand reaching out to grasp her neck.
It had been a long time since someone had reached out a hand not to take, or to harm, but to give.
Her eyes settled on Kate’s face again, animated as she relayed some impossibly ridiculous series of events involving a would-be mugger, a fire hydrant, and a very pissed off street cat.
Then she looked at each of the others in turn, noting that all of them looked engaged, and even Bucky had a small smile on his face.
This was not the family that she’d wanted, and it was not the family she would have chosen.
But maybe that was alright.
Kate turned to her, blue eyes warm, and she smiled.
Yelena smiled back.