Chapter Text

Yelena

i’m outside, the text from Nat says.  want to walk over together?

Yelena tosses her phone on the bed.  Natasha has no right to her time- she’s not going to reply.  Then she thinks about her sister for a longer second.  If nothing else, she’s persistent.  Yelena won’t be able to slip past her and she can’t out wait her.  It’s their first day of practice and Yelena can’t be late.  It’s been drilled into her not to be.

Nat may have gotten loose with her morals over the last three years, willing to stake her senior status on smoking Yelena out of the building, but Yelena has no such history to rest on.

She peeks out her window, looks down.  Kingsway Park is full of smaller dorms, scattered over a large area.  Nat, of course, knows where she lives.  She helped her move in yesterday, all the while giving her tips on the campus and her classes.  As if Yelena isn’t smart enough to figure it out on her own.

Naturally, Nat is staring right up at her window on the fifth floor when she glances out and she rears back quickly.  Stronger methods may be needed.

no, she texts back.  go away.

She looks out again, after checking her bag one last time as their parents taught her.  She’s always prepared.  Nat is looking down at her phone now, and Yelena watches her slump a little and stalk off.  She makes note of her path; it’s in the direction that she thought the fields were and she nods to herself.  She’s fully capable without Natasha.

Yelena doesn’t get lost on the way to the fields.  It does take her five minutes longer than she thought it would, and she knows there has to be a quicker way when she sees Natasha juggling.  That’s pretty far down in their warm-up routine, so she must have shaved off at least five minutes somewhere.

It doesn’t matter.  Yelena can learn without her.

“Hey,” a voice comes, distracting her from watching Nat.  Yelena knows the voice.  It’s Maria, who is Natasha’s best friend, roommate, and unknowing love interest.  Not someone she wants to talk to, even if Maria’s not so bad herself.

She grunts in response, trying to stave off a long conversation.  She doesn’t want to be disrespectful to her, not when she’s her captain.

“It’s Hill,” Maria says.  “Or Maria.”

Yelena glances up at her.  She’s got a stern look, but she always did when Yelena saw her.  It faded into a soft smile around Nat, most of the time.  Disgusting.  “I know,” she says.  “Captain.”

Maria nods.  “Can I get your phone number?”  She holds out her phone, open to a new contact.

Yelena puts it in silently.  She sits down to put on her cleats and shinguards.  First, the right cleat, fully laced, then the left, fully laced, then she puts on her right and left shinguards.  She completes it by knocking twice on each one, then standing up and jumping up and down to test the feeling.

“Huh,” someone says behind her.  She’s a shorter brunette, large grin covering her face.  “Did you stalk Nat or something?  Because she does that exact thing too.”

Yelena grits her teeth.  It’s been her thing for the last three years that they’ve been playing apart, but now, it’s instantly Natasha’s.  “No,” she says.  “Just happened, I guess.”  She looks at the girl more closely.  “Darcy, right?”

“Oh,” Darcy says.  “Yeah.  Uh, did you stalk me then?”  She begins to pull her hair up into a ponytail.

Yelena shrugs.  “I wanted to make sure I knew who I’d be playing with,” she admits.  It’s a bit extra, she knows.  But every little bit that can give her the edge, that can get her to a start, it’ll help.  She just hopes that Darcy doesn’t take it the wrong way.

Darcy claps her on the shoulder and lets out a loud laugh.  “Incredible,” she exclaims.  “Who are you, then?”

“Yelena,” she says.  Darcy’s eyes don't flicker in recognition and she breathes a silent sigh of relief.  She can make her own story for now.

When they finally start practice, Yelena makes sure to keep her space from Nat.  She can’t stay away from all the seniors, the ones she met when she came around a lot three years ago, but by some sort of divine intervention, they don’t mention her sister.

When they start to scrimmage, Yelena is displeased to find she’s on Nat’s team, on the same side.  Coach Peggy knows that they’re sisters of course.  It’s not a bad idea for her to test them out together.  They’ve had incredible chemistry when they’ve played together in the past and they’ve trained in the same way for years upon years.  Still, she had hoped for a chance to break out on her own.

At the third pass from Nat, she reconsiders.  It’s taken them five minutes to fall back into it, their history winning out over the most recent years.  The ball is perfectly weighted into her path such that her first touch is a thing of beauty; she accelerates down the sideline and sends in a cross for Kate, who heads it in with ease.

“Nice cross, nice header!” Natasha shouts out.  She glances over at Yelena before looking down.

Yelena throws her a bone.  She did help, after all.  “Thanks for the pass,” she says.  “Good weight on it.”

Natasha grins.  “I remember,” she says, her face lighting up.  Yelena scowls.  She’s going to be insufferable now.

“Is it going to be a problem?” Maria asks her after the game.  She glances over at Nat, who’s distracted by some of the juniors, joking around with them.

“No,” Yelena says.  “We clicked fine, no?”

“And off the field?” Maria questions.  “No problems there?”  She stares at Yelena expectantly.

Clearly, they have problems.  Natasha fucking abandoned her after a brief taste of university life, leaving her to the full brunt of their parents.  She hadn’t even come back last summer to train with Yelena.

“Doing great,” she mutters.  “Just reciprocating her style of love.”

“Ah,” Maria says.  Yelena can see the moment when she makes a decision.  “Don’t make her suffer for too long?” she requests.  “A little might be warranted, though.”

Yelena snorts.  “No promises,” she says, and ends the conversation there.

Natasha

Natasha is sulking in her room.  It’s not exactly the behavior that you would expect of a 22 year old, but she’s just gotten off a loud and furious conversation with her mother, where she had done nothing but complain about Nat and ask after Yelena, so she feels justified.  It’s this kind of thing that makes her resent her sister, the younger child, the baby.  The one her parents favor.

She hadn’t had their help moving in - Yelena had a tournament.  She hadn’t gotten a call for a week in her first year - now they were harassing her on their second day about her sister.  She hadn’t gotten an invite home for weeks and they were already planning a dinner and asking after her schedule and were her and Yelena free?

It was infuriating.  There was a reason she had nearly cut off contact with them.  

“You okay?” Maria shouts from the living room.

She storms out.  “Great,” she says sarcastically.  “My parents are the best.”

“Want to go play?” Maria asks.  They had weights this morning and training in the evening, but the midday is theirs for the taking, even if it’s to do more soccer.

“Let’s,” Nat says, grabbing her soccer bag.  It’s probably not the best idea they’ve had, but they can go light.  She won’t overtrain- she’s already made that mistake in her first year and paid the price with an injury that benched her for a few games.  Still, she and Maria regularly go out to the fields whenever one of them is in a mood.  There’s just something about kicking the ball around that lets them rage safely.

When they get to the field, Natasha is not happy to see there’s already someone there.  Someone she knows intimately well, in fact.  Yelena is dribbling down the sideline furiously.  She cuts back and forth around imaginary defenders, weaving through them with ease.  Looking up, she takes a shot on goal, hitting the upper left corner with ease.  With her weak foot, no less.

“Wow,” Maria murmurs.  “She’s gotten much better.”  She glances over to Nat.  “So, are we joining her or what?”

The question hangs in the air.  Natasha really does not want to join her, not when she’s the reason that they’re here.  A secondary problem is that the drill is exactly the one that Nat wanted to do.  She’ll look stupid setting up on the opposite side of the field when Yelena already has the cones out.

“We can ask to join,” she says reluctantly.  Yelena checks her shoulders and freezes at the sight of them before pushing on.  “She’s gonna say no.  And I don’t wanna,” she adds childishly.

Maria chuckles.  “Yeah,” she says.  “But you should make the effort.  And I have no problems with her, so.”

“I already made the effort,” Natasha complains.  “And she didn’t like it.”

Still, they walk over to the center of the field.  Natasha spills their three balls out and begins to put on her cleats.  She’s not going to run off by her little sister.  Yelena is walking back so slowly that Nat knows that she’s running through scenarios in her head.  “Ask,” she says to Maria, jerking her head over to Yelena.  “Let’s get it over with.”

“Hey,” Maria calls.  “Can we hop in?”  Simple, easy question.  “I’ll play defense,” she offers, trying to sweeten the deal more.

Natasha watches Yelena carefully.  Her eyebrows knit together as she parcels out the hidden meaning behind the request.  Her gaze flickers from Maria down to Natasha on the ground.  Natasha raises her eyebrows at her in question.  Well?  

“Okay,” she says.  Natasha feels her expression flicker in disbelief.

Yelena grins at her.  It’s a mean smile, one that Natasha normally sees her turn on the other team.  Now she’s the subject and she feels very small.  Then she pushes that aside.  If Yelena wants a competition, she’s going to get one.  She’s not the only one who’s improved after all.  She smiles back a nasty smile.

Maria sighs.  “This is going to go great.”  

They warm up together as Yelena continues the pattern, and then Maria takes the place of the cones and Natasha joins Yelena at half field.  “Best out of five?” she offers, then remembers that this isn’t Clint and she is busy trying to crush her sister.  Of course they’re counting.  They always have.

“Obviously,” Yelena says before she can retract it, and takes off down the field.  She really has gotten better.  She’s much more smooth, more instinctual.  She blazes past Maria and nails the shot and for a minute, Natasha gets worried.  Although she gets up the field a lot as an outside back, there’s a difference in frequency than someone like Yelena who is a true winger.  

There is also this: Maria knows Nat well.  

She hasn’t learned Yelena’s ways yet, hasn’t found out that she likes to cut to her left against intuition because she trained for years to be like Nat and be good with her left side.  Yelena once asked their mom, when they were much younger, if she could give birth to her again, only this time she would be just like Natalia: red haired and left-footed.  Natasha had laughed with their mom, old enough to know that it was a ridiculous ask, but she had made sure to take the time to help Yelena with her weak foot.

She doesn’t regret it, but now she’s forced to become inventive, faking once, twice, three times to get past Maria before she nearly skies her shot.  By the smallest of margins, it hits the crossbar and ricochets down and in.  Maria whistles.

They get through ten each before Maria calls for a break.  She’s the one who has to go again and again, coming out here voluntarily with Nat, and Yelena respects her as captain, so they drink water in the center circle and do not make any idle conversation.

“1v1s,” Yelena proposes, and stares Nat down.  They both remained standing up during the break, not willing to become the shorter one, but now that she’s looking closely, Nat realizes a horrible, horrible fact.  She’s looking up anyway.  At some point in the last three years, Yelena had finally grown those last five centimeters, and more.  She hasn’t seemed to realize it yet and Nat quickly resolves that she never, ever will.

“Fine.”

The 1v1s do not go well.  Maria very kindly offers to fetch all the balls from their shots and pass them out to the mark where they’re starting, halfway between the box and midfield.  With her out of the way, it’s just Nat, Yelena, and the ball.  Oh, and the burning resentment between them.

They only make it through six rounds before Maria stops them.  Three of those rounds contained violent elbows to the ribs, and when Natasha kicks her sister in the shins the first time, by accident, of course, Yelena abandons the ball and begins to turn to come right back at her.

“My fault, my fault,” Maria says when she’s got a grasp of both of their jerseys in her hands.  “Clearly, neither of you are mature enough to handle this.”  She glares at them.  She’s so pretty, even when she’s mad.  “Now, either you two practice separately or someone leaves.  And we have practice in four hours, so you better not overwork yourselves.”  Her gaze swings back and forth between them.

Natasha sighs.  “Sorry, Maria.”

“Sorry,” Yelena mumbles out as well.

They spend another 20 minutes there, individually practicing, before Natasha gives up and resolves to come back another time.

Maria

The sisters are going to drive Maria crazy.  She’s hiding out with Skye in her room because Nat is having another yelling match with her parents, probably her mom, and while it’s in Russian, Maria still doesn’t like to eavesdrop.  She’s so close to locking them in a room together and letting them fight it out.  Somehow it’s Carol Danvers, well known for being ready to punch anyone looking at her the wrong way, who’s stopping her.

She sighs heavily and Skye looks up from her phone.  It’s been a few weeks from the start of the season, and about three days since Skye moved in with them.  It’s been a bit awkward at times, of course it has.  Her room is personal to her, and Skye now knows a lot about her peripherally, just from existing there as well.  Maria’s wall has a picture of Coach Peggy winning the championship 16 years ago, which is sort of awkward when she’s being coached by her.  She’s got a whiteboard with game strategies that Skye likes to mess with, and a few personal books and items that don’t mean anything specific, but still are beyond what a casual stranger is allowed to know about her.  Beyond what even a teammate is allowed to know.  

Maria likes her privacy, okay?  Having Skye here is worth every bit of solitude she’s lost though.

“Are you okay?” Skye asks.

“Don’t mind me,” Maria says quickly.  “Just worried about Nat.”  She cuts off the details there, not wanting to remind Skye of her own sister.

Skye hums.  “You guys are dating, right?” she asks innocently.

“What?” Maria says.  “No.”  She doesn’t allow herself to blush.

Still, Skye looks at her speculatively.  “But you want to,” she concludes easily.  “Are you afraid she’ll say no?”

Maria groans.  “It cannot be that obvious.  And no, I’m not.”  She lowers her voice.  “Nat hasn’t realized it yet, that I’m actually flirting with her or that she likes me.”  It was almost hilarious, how clueless she was.  Clint and Maria had despaired about it multiple times, pondering what to do before deciding to just let her come to her own conclusions.

“What?”  Skye’s mouth drops open.  “You literally called her baby this morning, and she said, of course darling.”

“She thinks we’re playing a game of chicken,” Maria says.  “It’s because she’s stupid competitive with Yelena.”  She lets out a frustrated grunt.  “She’s so stupid.  But so smart.”

“Unite them against their parents,” Skye says quietly.  “That always worked for me and Kora.”

“Yeah?” Maria speaks gently, not wanting to spook Skye.  “I think Yelena hasn’t exactly realized that the way their parents pitted them against each other wasn’t necessarily the best way to do it.  And Nat hasn’t realized that leaving her sister alone with their parents and getting her own freedom might have activated a lot of jealousy for Yelena.  But I don’t know the details, so it’s hard to say exactly what their problems are.”

Skye shrugs.  “Siblings.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Maria says.  “I’m an only child.”  She glances over to Skye.  “Anyway, it sounds like the shouting is over.  Want to go have lunch?”

They pull out supplies for sandwiches and Skye begins to assemble hers on the table while Maria goes over to knock on Nat’s door.  Melinda is out with Phil, doing some planning, and Okoye is on a run, so it’s just the three of them.

Natasha throws the door open upon her knock.  “The nerve of this man,” she says, “to tell me that I must be on my period for how emotional I was last game.”  She takes a deep breath.  “God!”

Maria winces.  “Lunch?” she asks.

Natasha does join them and as they’re eating, she suddenly says, “Skye, are you and Yelena friends?”

Skye looks at Maria doubtfully.  “Yeah, I guess,” she says.

“Is she doing alright?” Natasha asks desperately.  “I had a hard time my first year coming away from my parents’ style of coaching, but she won’t talk to me.  You don’t have to tell me details if she doesn’t want me to know, it’s just for my own peace of mind.”

Skye has a tremulous smile on her face.  Maria steps on Nat’s foot, trying to remind her that they aren’t supposed to bring up siblinghood around Skye if they can avoid it, but she’s already too far.

“She trains a lot,” Skye comments and they both ignore how her voice wobbles.  “Maybe more than necessary.  Or good for her.”

“Yeah,” Natasha says.  “I did that too.  It doesn’t go well with the amount of other training we have to do.”  She looks at Maria.  “Can you speak to her, maybe?”

Maria inclines her head.  If she truly is overtraining, it’s an issue that Maria and the captains should address.  And maybe she’ll finally get it through Yelena’s thick skull that Natasha does care about her.  She thinks about her previous attempts and quickly moves past that idea.  Yelena wants Nat to grovel at her feet for months for her slight and nothing that Nat does seems to make a difference to her.  

When she catches Yelena at lifting the next day, she silently begins to alternate sets with her.  After ten minutes, she figures she’s given Yelena enough time to adjust to her presence.  “How much extra training are you doing?”

Yelena raises an eyebrow.  “You think I need more?” she asks.  She doesn’t look tired at all, nor weak from overtraining.  She squats cleanly, up and down in a smooth motion.

“That wasn’t the question,” Maria says.  “How much extra training are you doing, and are you talking to Coach Jarvis about it?”

“Enough,” Yelena says.  “And no.”  She steps away from the rack.  “I don’t need him to hold my hand.  I know how to run.”

Maria sighs.  “Edwin normally makes sure that we don’t overdo it, actually.  And you shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss others' opinions.  He has a lot of knowledge.”

“Did Natasha put you up to this?” Yelena says suddenly.  She looks around the room, searching for her sister.  Nat’s in the opposite corner, talking with Val and Clint.  

“I watched your sister overtrain and get hurt in our first year.”  She glares at Yelena.  “I don’t need you to take yourself out as well.  I’m going to ask Edwin to come speak with you, and I expect you to sort it out with him, okay?  We’ve had too many injuries lately.”  She pauses.  “She talks about you all the time, you know.” 

Yelena doesn’t respond.