CHAPTER SEVEN:

I get out of the crashed helicopter and look around at the place. Hey, at least it's a nice view. I start to walk down the muddy road and they follow on.

"I swear, if I hear one more word from him, I will kick him in the face." Yelena hisses, the two of them suddenly beside me.

"He's the worst-" 

"NATASHA." We look over at him. "Natasha, Natasha. Come here, I want to ask you something. Come, it's important."

Nat lets out a sigh and walks over to him. "What?

Although it must've meant to have been a private conversation, both me and Yelena could easily hear it all. "Did he talk to you about me?"

"What?"

"Did he talk to you about me? You know, trading war stories?"

"Who? What are you talking about?"

"Captain America." He says, as if it was obvious. "My great adversary in this theatre of geopolitical conflict. Not so much a nemesis. More like a contemporary, you know? Coequal. I always thought there was a great deal of mutual respect..."

"Wait. You haven't seen either one of us in 20 years- and you're gonna ask me about you?" Nat asks him.

He looks around at all of us. "What is with this tension? Did I do something wrong?"

Yelena tries to hold herself together as she looks over at him. "Is that a serious question?" I shake my head in disbelief at the man and I continue down the road, leaving them to deal with their- family issues? Is that the word?

"I'm starting to think we should've kicked him out of the ship a long time ago." Yelena says, appearing beside me after a while.

"Couldn't agree more." I mutter as we walk down the road. We walk in silence for a moment.

"A robot?" 

I look over at her and furrow my eyebrows. "What?" 

"She cheated on you, with a robot." She says, adding some form of context.

"Yeah..." I say, looking away.

"Sounds pretty dumb." She says.

"On who's side is it dumb?" I ask her, raising an eyebrow.

"I mean, sure, the robot might last longer, but what's the point in that?" She asks. "To break someone else's heart because you've fallen for a machine."

"It kinda stirred things up at the compound for a while, but I guess there's worse things that could've happened." I shrug.

"Worse?" She looks over at me.

"When you live in a compound with people who are trained assassins, super soldiers, soldiers in general, geniuses with Iron Man suits, and people who can move things with their minds, things can easily get out of hand." I say. She nods. "Take what happened with the accords as an example- none of us were too happy with each other's views, it only caused a war between us all." 

"And now you're on the run, from basically, everyone." She finishes.

"Precisely." I say.

"Sounds pretty lonely. Being on the run." She says.

"I've done it more than once." I assure her. "You get used to it. Besides- I've got Nat." I shrug it off.

"Oh, you are so lonely." She says, hitting my arm.

"I am not!" I say defensively.  

"Say that to me with a straight face." The girl challenges me.

I cock an eyebrow at her for a moment before sighing. "I am not lonely." She gives me a hesitant look for a while before looking along the road, silent. We walk down the hill and we see a small hut with a farm next to it. It seemed too out of place for a Red Room scientist and strategist to be living in. We walk out to a gate and a woman stands there, holding a gun. How nice and thoughtful.

"Honey, we're home." Alexei says to the woman. She gives me a stare and walks down to the house. He looks over at us. "Come on, girls." I decide to not correct him, considering his brain probably couldn't take the fact I don't have a fixed gender. We walk after him and towards the house. It was small, but big for just one woman to live in by herself.

I follow Alexei into the house and hear Melina say something on the lines of making ourselves at home. 

"Are there any booby traps around here? Anything we need to know about?" Nat asks her, I stand there awkwardly, unsure what to do. 

"I didn't raise my girls to fall in traps." 

"You didn't raise us at all." Nat snaps.

"Oh, maybe so. But if you got soft, it wasn't on my watch." I look over and see Yelena sat down at the table. I walk over and stand there for a moment trying to decide mentally where to sit.

She looks over and furrows her eyebrows. "What are you doing?" 

"Where do I sit?" I ask her. She tries to hold in a laugh but it doesn't work too well. "What? It's an honest question."

"Why are you so panicked?" She asks, a little smile on her face.

"I don't have the best history of meeting families." I say. "You should've seen me when I first met Barton's family. The kids couldn't bare to look at me for a day. Did you have like- a seating plan when you were kids?" I ask her.

She shakes her head in disbelief at what I was panicking about. "Just sit opposite me, idiot." 

"Oh, so I'm the idiot, now?" I ask as I sit down. The two others join us before she can even fire back an argument. 

"Where's Alexei?" Yelena turns to the two others before we hear a groan and then grunting from the bathroom. There's silence as the noises continue.

"Let's drink." Melina takes shot glasses out and pours us all a shot of vodka. We hear someone clear their throat and when we look over we see Alexei in a different change of clothing. A red and white suit with a matching coloured helmet which looked pretty old. 

"Still fits." He says proudly. There's a wolf whistle heard in the room and I'm 90% sure it came from Melina.

"Oh. My God." Yelena turns back forward to the table, unable to look over at the others at the table. 

"I never washed it once. Come and drink." Melina tells Alexei as he sits down. 

"Family. Back together again-" He says. "And an extra." The guy adds on.

"Seeing as our family construct was just a calculated ruse that only lasted three years, I don't think that we can use this term anymore, can we?"

"Agreed." Nat says, trying to get to business. "So, here's what's gonna happen..."

Alexei reaches over the table, taking food and stashing it onto his plate as he talks over Natasha. "Okay, a reunion then, huh? And uh..." He turns to Melina. "I want to say something right off the bat, you haven't aged a day, huh? You're just as beautiful and as supple as the day they staged our marriage." I pick up my shot of vodka and take it, Yelena does the same after a moment.

"You got fat. But still good." Melina replies. Yelena picks up the vodka bottle and pours another shot in both of our glasses.

Alexei chuckles. "I just got out of prison... I, uh... I have a lot of energy-" 

"Oh!" I pick up my shot and take it again, Yelena gives me a look and I shrug it off.

"Please don't do that." Nat says. There's a moment of silence. "So, here's what's gonna happen-" She leans forward as she speaks.

"Natasha, don't slouch." Melina tells her.

"I'm not slouching-"

"Yes, yes, you are." 

"I don't slouch."

"You're going to get a back hunch." 

"Listen to your mother." Alexei tells Natasha. Yelena goes for her second shot.

"Oh my God-" Nat mutters.

"Up, up." Alexei sits up straight, as if teaching Natasha how to sit.

"All right, enough, all of you." Nat begins.

"What the hell did we do?" I ask referring to me and Yelena.

"That's not fair." She adds. I can feel that Nat wants to make an argument but decides against it before she says it. 

"Here's what's gonna happen-" She turns back to Melina. 

"I don't want any food!" Yelena complains to Melina, still holding the shot in her hand.

"Eat something, Yelena, for God's sake." The woman mutters.

"You're gonna tell us the location of the Red Room." Nat says, finally being able to get a word into the conversation.

Melina has a smirk on her face and continues to put food on everyone's plates. "You know, it's like when you told them that they could stay up late to catch Santa Claus." She says to Alexei.

"What? That was fun. You know, He come down the chimney, girls. Look out! Where is he? You wait for him, and then when the cookies are gone, then you see he's there." They start to argue again and I can already feel my next shot coming on. 

"Finding Dreykov is not a fantasy, it's unfinished business." Nat says.

"You can't defeat a man who commands the very will of others. You never saw the culmination of what we started in America." She says back to her.