Chapter Text
The Level Ten Threat alert tone rang softly through the halls of the New Avengers Tower, yellow lights flashing on every floor as an automated female voice said, “Alert. All team members report to Ready Room. Alert. All team members report to Ready Room,” over and over. Yelena focused on the elevator doors as she rushed along, wondering what the hell was happening.
The past months had mostly been full of smaller level threats. Things a team of five tactically-trained people could handle pretty well: a hostage situation in Miami, a border skirmish in Eastern Europe— but nothing had ever, ever pinged a level this high. She wondered apprehensively what exactly it was as she hurried through the door to the Ready Room and stopped short, seeing Ava and Walker already there. Bucky sat in a chair, elbows on his knees, hand over his mouth as he stared at the large projection screen, and that wasn’t good: that wasn’t good at all.
Alexei burst in, fully suited up, with Bob behind him, who offered a wave and sat down quietly in a chair without speaking, just looking around and watching everyone else. She didn’t blame him: it wasn’t like he was an acting field member at this point. “I am here!” bellowed her father. “Okay! What is the threat?”
“What the hell is that?” asked Ava, staring up at the screen.
Walker tapped his wrist, increasing the clarity and focus of the image. A massive piece of metal, twisted and burning, streaking towards Earth, filled the screen, trailing fire and smoke. “Don’t know, but whatever it is, it’s coming fast. Touchdown in three days according to the numbers from NOAA.”
“Well, where’s it going to hit?” asked Yelena. She crossed her arms and looked back over at Walker. “Does NOAA know that? Kind of important, you know, for—”
“Yeah, uh, looks like it’s projected to collide with Earth right here, in the Atlantic,” he said, opening another map and pointing at a sea of blue. “Right by the Turks and Caicos, in the Caribbean Sea, causing an impact zone hundreds of miles wide”
“Shit,” said Ava. Her large eyes blinked as she rapidly calculated the fallout. “Shit, that’s millions of people affected by the initial impact and, you know, tsunamis. What do we even do? We have three days, we could—”
“It won’t be just them,” said Bucky, pulling his hand down his face. “That thing is miles wide. The size of a city. When it hits, the impact is not only going to create a huge explosion equivalent to a whole bunch of nukes, it’s gonna throw up a massive cloud of dust and debris and pulverized sulfur that’s not gonna play real well with our atmosphere.”
Yelena tried to wrap her head around it. “You are talking about, what, like nuclear winter or something? Climate change?”
“No,” said Bob unexpectedly from the chair where he’d folded himself down. Every eye in the room turned to find him as he stood up, transfixed by the screen. “No, he means that this is a mass extinction event. Like the one that killed the dinosaurs.”
Alexei stepped back briefly. “Ah, but the thing that killed the dinosaurs let humans thrive, yes? Made it so mammals were the kings of the animal kingdom. We will be fine. Yes?”
“No, we won’t,” said Bucky, standing up and facing away from the screen as he tucked his hands into his sides. Yelena had never seen him looking so grim. “Bob’s right. We’re talking about extended freezing temperatures. Almost ninety percent of plant life wiped out, frozen in the blackout for at least a decade. So a whole lot of people everywhere starve to death. And that’s not even taking into account the floods. Diseases. Social unrest. War.”
“Oh, something new just came in,” said Walker, scanning his tablet. “Ah, shit. Looks like it’s a discarded engine off some stupid Sakaarian barge from outer space. Seriously?” He shook his head. “Great.”
“Well, what the hell do they want us to do about it?” demanded Yelena, her throat tight. “Shoot it?”
“No, they want us to start a full-scale evac of the Caribbean islands and the northern coast of South America.” Bucky waved a hand over his own tablet and a new set of images sprang to life. “The citizens of New Asgard are going to be lending tech and vessels to the area’s governments to get people to the other side of the planet as quickly as possible and offer refuge up there in Norway. Sam Wilson and one of his new team members are over in Eastern China right now finishing up a diplomacy talk so more displaced people can be settled there. Shuri— sorry, that’s Queen Shuri now, I keep forgetting— she’s willing to accept a limited number of people to be protected in Wakanda, too.”
“But that won’t change anything about the fallout. Doesn’t his team have Carol Danvers?” demanded Yelena, trying to think of anything at all that would help. “Can’t she just fly up there and—” she gestured with her hands, mimicking an explosion— “blow it up with her, you know, her powers?”
“Carol’s offworld right now, apparently. Really bad timing, if you ask me.”
“Shit,” Ava mumbled, sinking down into the couch. “Okay. So we evacuate these people, and then… still buckle down for imminent death, probably? Then what’s the bloody point?”
“To give people some hope, that’s the point,” Yelena said, staring at the screen. “We can’t just abandon them to be obliterated in the biggest explosion-slash-tsunami disaster the world’s ever seen. That’s not what heroes do, you know, that’s not…” That’s not what the Avengers would have done, she thinks, letting her voice trail off.
“The king of New Asgard is working on getting the Sakaarian Council over here in the next three days to try to net it out of the atmosphere before it becomes a problem, but apparently all their biggest tow ships are being used on the other side of their galaxy for another humanitarian mission, so that’s not gonna pan out,” Walker said as he put the tablet down and placed both hands on his hips. “Yelena’s right. We give people hope, or we try to, and that’s why we’re putting aside our differences with Wilson’s team to work together.” He sighed deeply.
“Okay. Jets are being warmed up as we speak.” Bucky picked up his own tablet and tapped a few buttons. He turned to face the room and lifted a hand. “Who speaks Spanish? Show of hands.”
Yelena’s went up, along with Alexei’s and Walker’s. “French,” said Ava apologetically, halfway waving hers. Bob was still standing quietly in the back of the room by the sofa, staring at the screen above them as if he’d been pinned there, his lips moving to himself. Yelena forced herself not to think of anything beyond what was happening right here, right now: compartmentalize, push things back and forward and down into tiny little boxes for later. For later.
“Great. Okay. Alexei and Walker, you take one jet, Yelena and Ava will be on the other with me. Bob—” and Bob startled right out of his trance, whipping his head around like he’d forgotten anyone else was in the room, “you stay here and monitor the feed. I’ll be checking in every hour. Keep tabs on Wilson’s teams, make sure we don’t miss a report from New Asgard while we’re in the field. Call Mel if you have to. She can provide backup.”
“Got it,” he said quietly, and shot a look at Yelena. Swift, precise: speaking volumes with no words spoken. She ducked her head and put a hand on his arm in acknowledgement as she passed him and went to the elevator, heading down to the gear room to grab her stuff.
It wasn’t fair, she thought dimly as she rested her head on the copilot’s seat, listening to the roar of the engines as they blasted over the Mid-Atlantic heading due south. Below was nothing but dark, distant blue, stormy and gray. No, it wasn’t fair: it wasn’t fair that they had Bob and that the Sentry was the best choice they had for getting this stupid giant falling piece of space trash away from Earth and saving billions of lives, and it wasn’t fair that the Sentry couldn’t act without what would probably be dire consequences later. Although, when Yelena did the math— the casualties from the unleashed Void could be brought back. It was not permanent. Lives lost to climate destruction— that was irrevocable. Couldn’t be fixed, ever. She would just lose Bob, in a way, while his memories regained and the cycle back to stability regulated itself.
It had happened once before. That stupid plane that had crashed into the East River three months ago, all those kids, and Bob had suddenly become… something else, lifting off his feet as gold and dark navy had swallowed his body from throat to toe like magic, inexplicably existing, and he’d confidently said don’t worry, guys, I’ve got this before shooting out of the bay window like a bullet and vanishing around the corner, gone in a flash.
All lives saved. Plane pulled out of the water. No deaths. The glory of success, the joy of lives rescued, a few blurry photos off phones posted online: who is the Sentry?
But then he’d vanished.
Yelena had been frantic and trying to pretend not to be as they’d looked everywhere, all over, finally finding him unconscious two weeks later in an alley in Hell’s Kitchen via a phone tip. Bob had been huddled under an old army blanket between two overflowing dumpsters, red-eyed and barely responding to most of them.
But he’d known her. He’d looked right at her and seen her, recognition in every line of his face, and she had said, Robert, oh, God, I was so afraid for you, are you okay?
What he had said was: did I hurt anyone?
The answer to that had been, as far as they could tell: no. No ghostly black shadows had smeared any walls, no creeping darkness lingered on the roads or sidewalks— or if they had, whatever he’d done to bring himself out of it must have fixed whatever damage might have existed. But he said he couldn’t remember what that might have been, so it was really just a big question mark all around. The guy who’d called them to let them know that Bob was passed out in the alley wasn’t much help either— he was blind, and had heard the number on the news. But he was local, and he was also a lawyer, so they had asked him to please call them again if he heard about anything that could help, maybe from a client, or even just on the street. And he’d said he would. Nice guy.
After that, though, Bob had not wanted to speak to almost anyone. Scalding hot shower in his room, closed door, quiet. It hadn’t been until a week after he’d come home that he’d pinged Yelena on their intercom system. Hi. Do you have a minute tonight?
How was she supposed to say you can ask for any time you want and I’ll give it to you, I’ll always give it to you when every time she tried to say anything emotionally deeper than how are you feeling today her throat choked up and her hands went sweaty? But she’d messaged him back: yes, of course, and then after dinner with her father she’d gone to his room in the Tower and he’d let her in and they’d just sat together on the floor, backs to his sofa, and said nothing at all.
His room was warm. Cozy. Kind of cluttered. He’d pulled in all kinds of things he was interested in— music and books and weird sculptures and things he’d found on the curbs of New York and rugs in every different color and shape and style imaginable. She’d entertained herself by looking around at all of it for a while, her knees up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Board games. A treadmill that probably wasn’t used as much as the ones in the tower’s gym. Plates with paintings of flowers and chickens and cows and cats. Posters on the walls, too: vintage concerts, movies, album art, all next to his diploma— he’d worked really hard and gotten his GED and Alexei had proudly framed it for him and nailed it right into the drywall over the TV. Yelena had been looking at a Nirvana design and thinking about nothing in particular at all when Bob’s elbow had reached out and tentatively touched hers. And that—
“Hey,” said Bucky, snapping his fingers. “Hello. Earth to Yelena.”
“Sorry, sorry,” she said hastily as she scrambled to sit up and blink herself back to life. Jet. Trip to the Caribbean. Massive falling piece of space crap. End of the world. “Drifted off for a second.”
“With your eyes wide open?”
“Daydreaming, okay, you should try it some time, very good for the imagination.” She squinted through the windshield at the stretch of runway pointed out ahead of them, cushioned on both sides by dark green past which bright, turquoise waters stretched out endlessly. Large gray planes were visible at the end, lined up side by side like toys. “Did the military beat us here?”
“Yeah. Not just the Americans, either. England, India, and Australia are here with the heavies for transport. We’ll get out there, be visible, and assist with evac.” His blue eyes flashed to hers briefly. “I know what you’re thinking,” he added as he guided the jet down for the landing.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“You’re the Winter Soldier, okay, your power is punching things and shooting, you don’t read minds.”
“I know because I’m thinking it too,” he said.
“Oh, I highly doubt that,” she muttered under her breath, the memory of Bob’s elbow pressed into her arm tingling under her jumpsuit.
“Yeah, I think we’re all thinking it,” said Ava from the back, her voice gone low and controlled. “Sorry.”
“That if Sentry was just Sentry this would be easier,” Bucky said, and Yelena lowered her head, fighting to not wince. “That we can’t— you know, that the circumstances are just FUBAR right now.”
“Oh, FUBAR, Yes, yes, we get it, you were in the American military, ooh,” Yelena said lightly, aiming for a teasing tone, but it didn’t work quite right. “But yes,” she added. “Um, because it sucks that technically he could save us but, you know, after the incident—”
Ava sighed. “Oh, God, yeah, no. East River.”
“Yeah, right, after that— it’s like there’s a correlation. The harder he… does hero stuff, I guess, the worse the crash is later. It’s been kind of a pattern.”
“Higher the rise, harder the fall.” Bucky steered the jet perfectly down to the runway, where the wheels touched down and they screeched down the tarmac before slowing to a controlled acceleration. “I gotta say, though, I’m finding it hard to kind of make an argument for him letting loose with the Sentry again. He's not a weapon, you know? He's a person. But at the same time, uh... he might be our only chance. I don't know."
“I know what you mean,” she said miserably as she unbuckled her seat straps. “But we can’t ask him to do that, Bucky. We’ll lose him forever if he convinces himself he’s only on this team because sometimes he can be useful, you know?”
“Well, it’s not gonna matter much in another year when everyone’s dying of typhus and starving to death,” Ava mumbled on her way out of her seat. Past the windshield, Walker and Alexei’s jet streaked past to land. “Okay. Let’s go meet everyone.”
Twenty frantic hours.
Twenty hours on her feet, of evacuation, of the same five phrases repeated in Spanish and French and English in Trinidad and in Guyana, in Barbados and Caracas and in Haiti and in Barranquilla, over and over and over until Yelena forgot she could say anything except Please follow me, let’s go, hurry, you’re going to be safe, and it’s okay .
Twenty hours of hot sun and cool night winds and rain that drenched the tarmac and the makeshift airfield, of helping people find paperwork. Of one single hot meal standing in a tent in Grenada eating beans and rice and pork before going back out again, moving her way past frightened families and old people and sick people and angry students and people who insisted they wouldn’t leave no matter what. Twenty hours of the press following, snapping photos, documenting the combined efforts of the four countries’ efforts to come together and save as many people as possible with the New Avengers.
You are so useless and stupid, she wanted to shout at them so many times, so many times. What is the point of all of this, huh? Talking pictures for a future that doesn’t exist? You are so stupid. You are useless.
But people had known her. Known them all: children had delightedly grabbed at Bucky’s metal arm and shouted to their friends, asked Alexei to lift them onto his shoulders— they had pointed to Yelena and giggled behind their hands, shy and delighted. One girl in Jamaica had dragged her to a little sand dune, behind the beach, and told her in rapid, excited patois that she had made the flag hoping they’d come, and it had almost broken Yelena’s heart. A yellow handkerchief, tied to a stock, an A inside a circle inked out in black on it with a careful child’s hand. She had been too tired and dehydrated to cry, so she’d hugged the little girl instead, forcing all her emotion down. It was so simple for children: they were saved, the New Avengers were here. They had no concept of what would happen to their homes, their lives, their whole world. They were children. They did not know.
A very nice Indian Air Force pilot who’d had a full twelve hours of rest had volunteered to fly them home, so they had loaned the other jet to the Australians and collapsed in a heap in the cargo bay of the one they were catching back to New York. After all, what did it matter, losing a jet? Maybe Congress would be mad. Yelena didn’t care. She was so tired, and she was moving through a warm beach and sun was shining on her face and a small girl pointed at her, back to the horizon, and said, Black Widow, and she could not say anything in response, couldn’t say no, not me, that was my sister not me because her mouth wouldn’t open, but the sky was exploding behind the little girl, a fireball so high it overpowered the sun and the shockwave was blasting toward her at a thousand million trillion miles a second and—
“Ah!” Yelena jerked upright, gasping, her hair in her eyes and her mouth tasting of pennies. She’d struck out at something that had touched her, but it was— it was Bob, crouching down on the metal floor with his hands up in surrender. Everyone else was gone. “What— where’s everyone, where’s—” Her voice was a dehydrated squawk, and she coughed.
“You’re home,” he said, handing her a water bottle. She grabbed it and sucked down the liquid inside, choking on it: she was so, so thirsty. “You’re really sunburned.”
“Yeah, well. Long day,” she croaked, rubbing her eyes.
“Everybody else, um, got off the jet. They didn’t want to wake you up. But they’re all in bed, now, you know. Asleep.” He reached out a hand and she accepted it, standing on legs that shook with exhaustion. “I’ve, um, I’ve been thinking,” he said as he helped her down off the plane, but took a moment to glance over at the pilot, who was stretching his back by the front wheel. “Hi, Mr. Balakrishnan,” he said politely. “I got her. You’re cleared to leave American airspace anytime in the next twelve hours. Thank you for dropping everybody off.”
“No problem,” said the flight lieutenant, waving a hand. “Could I trouble you for a nap?”
Bob nodded eagerly. “Yeah, man. You can have my room. Those doors there, and take the elevator to the residence floors, uh, floor number three.”
“Thank you very much.” Balakrishnan made his way toward the bay door and vanished through the large sliding metal panels that parted to let him in, and Yelena closed her eyes, leaning on Bob as he guided her to the back elevator, the private one that went to the Ready Room.
“We have forty-something hours until that thing hits and ruins all our lives, and I’m so tired that I don’t even care,” she mumbled as he pressed the button and the doors slid shut.
“But you got a lot of people out of the way of the initial blast,” he said, reaching out and touching her wrist. “And I— Yelena, I’ve been thinking.”
She closed her eyes, so tired. “About what,” she whispered.
“About Sentry. About— about how what heroes do is, is put themselves behind others. Do what they have to do to help people.”
She shook her head. Please don’t do this. Not now. “Bob, the last time the Sentry came out, you went missing for two weeks.”
“I remember why. Don’t you want to know why, Yelena? Why I went— why I—” He swallowed as the doors slid open and they both walked into the large empty atrium of the Ready Room, the night sky black against the glass windows that stretched floors and floors above them. A few dimly lit golden lights were all that served to keep the dark at bay, and it was toward one of these by the wide, low sofa that Bob steered her. “Just sit for a moment.”
She could not have this conversation. “I need a shower, Bob, I have to— I have to get at least one last shower before the world ends and there is no more hot water and we have to boil it on a fire, okay?”
“Please just listen to me for a second. Please.” His voice was quiet, warm. She could not help but shove away her exhaustion and look at him. At his face, at his soft brown hair, at the way his jaw clenched and his lips moved before he spoke, like he was tasting his words to see how they’d come out. “The Void… doesn’t kill people. They get caught in it, but they don’t die: they’re not gone forever. They’re just miserable, trapped in their worst memories, you know, you called them the shame rooms... but they don’t die. And this thing is going to kill so many people, Yelena. So many. Really kill, not just vanish for a while and come back.”
“Yeah? The people it took at the lab, did they ever come back?” she whispered, tears burning behind her sunburnt eyelids.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. But you know what the difference was there?”
And Yelena asked, even though she thought, maybe, maybe she already knew— “What?”
“You weren’t there,” he said softly. “You weren’t with me. I was alone. I was so, so alone, and I didn’t have anybody and they put me in cryo-freeze and threw me into the storage unit like garbage. And when— when the East River thing happened, I… I feel like I remember bits and pieces of it. I remember the Void… taking over, slowly, coming for me like a wave and knowing I had to get away, get somewhere nobody could, I wouldn’t, I—” He took a breath and exhaled, puffing his cheeks out before smiling a little and shaking his head. “Whew. I, uh, I— the thing is, Yelena, whatever super-soldier stuff they gave me in that lab, it doesn’t let me die. If something happens, you know, that would ordinarily kill me, it just kickstarts… either the Sentry or the Void, depending on where I’m at, you know, in the head. And, uh—” He shot her a nervous look, his hands twisting over each other. “I’m sorry. You’re tired. I— you want to go shower. I’m sorry.”
“Bob,” she said, weary beyond words, “what exactly are you trying to tell me?”
“I think— I think—” He pressed his lips together again, his shoulders hunched. “I was by a construction site. I don’t know. I remember falling. I think I landed in a concrete foundation being poured or something. And the next thing I remember is not knowing where I was, but being me, you know, Bob, and this guy was pulling me out, dragging me down the street.”
“A guy pulled you out?” she whispered, trying to register all of this with her sleep-deprived brain.
“Yeah. I don’t remember a lot. The memory’s fuzzy. Wore a suit, I think, had on these glasses with— it doesn’t really matter. He was nice. He cleaned me up and gave me some clothes, but I remember being so lost. So lost. I was looking for something important but I couldn’t remember what it was, and I just went out somewhere and then the next thing I remember after that, you know, was you finding me.”
“Why are you telling me this now?” she whispered, tearing up. “Huh? Why are you— you didn’t tell me this before, after, when I came and saw you in your room.”
“I wanted to,” he whispered, head hanging. “I wanted to, but I didn’t know— I didn’t know how to tell you, Yelena. It’s not exactly, uh, a great conversation topic.”
She leaned back with her head against the back of the sofa, too tired to argue. “So what— what’s the point, huh? You want us to follow you with the jet and a big freezer so that when you finish drop-kicking the giant falling miles-wide piece of junk about to kill us all right back into outer space, you can fly right in and be frozen until the Void goes away? What kind of plan is that?”
“No, that’s not—” He chuckled, shaking his head a little. “No, I mean that when I was awake, you know and I was wandering around looking for something, I think… I think I was looking for… the team, or someone. Not a thing, a— people. Person.” His eyes darted back over to hers for the briefest second. “I have this feeling— and I know it’s crazy, okay, I do— but I can’t shake this idea that maybe if someone was there with me for the shift, you know, if someone was… all the times this has happened I’ve just been alone. Completely alone. And it’s not…” Bob hitched his shoulders up, turning his face away. “It’s fine,” he said thickly, wiping his eyes. “It’s fine. It’s just that it’s not, I don’t, this can’t be my decision alone. It has to be the team’s. And we have time. We have forty something hours, right?”
“Forty something,” she echoed, hanging her head and putting her face into her hands. “Yeah. Oh, God. I have to shower so bad, and that pilot is in your room. Do you— how about you just come up with me tonight, huh?”
“You— oh, in your room? Okay.” He got up, following her to the elevator, and she turned the lights out, drowning the Ready Room in darkness lit only faintly by the light pollution of New York City below them. The elevators spilled light out, and they followed it in.
She thought about light on the way up. Light: New York hadn’t seen constellations in a hundred years. Light could pollute and light could bring life and light could reveal things and she was so tired she almost fell asleep standing up with her head on Bob’s shoulder before the doors to her floor slid open and she stumbled forward to the bathroom. “You can just… yeah,” she mumbled, waving vaguely at the room, and hauled herself in, leaving the door ajar.
Off came her boots. Her belt, her gloves, her harness and her holsters and all her gear that had seemed so important yesterday when she’d gotten dressed but didn’t seem that important anymore, not in the face of the slow end of the world. She peeled herself out of her suit, her skin sticking to the canvas and cotton, and wrinkled her nose at the stink of her own body. The mirror showed red-tinged skin on her nose, her cheeks, her chin and her neck. Aloe, she thought. I should get some at the store before the world ends. The thought was silly. She laughed to herself and started the shower, as hot as she could stand it with a sunburned nose. Sand and sticky dried sweat and dirt came sloughing off her, ingrained along her wrists and throat and down her back and legs. Gross. She lathered up a washcloth and scrubbed frantically. If someone was there with me. They could do it. It was totally an option, which was the craziest thing, and she had been so stressed all day and this was… he was offering. Offering. But the consequences… but the…
Someone was singing, low and quiet outside the bathroom door. “A long, long time ago, I can still remember, how that music used to make me smile…” She sniffled and tilted her head back, closing her eyes and wishing she wasn’t sobbing in her shower as the water ran down her face and Bob continued to sing. “And I knew if I had the chance, I could make those people dance and maybe they’d be happy for a while…”
Car rides. Her favorite song from long ago, when she had been small and truly believed she had two parents who loved her. A sister. Suburban windows open. Red and golden hair flying, mixed together in the wind. She lifted her voice up, shaky and quiet. “But February made me shiver, with every paper I deliver.”
He joined in. “Bad news on the doorstep, I couldn’t take one more step…”
“I can’t remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride, something touched me deeeeeep inside. The day… the music… died.” She didn’t bother trying to sing the chorus as she hung her head and tried not to cry too loudly as Bob sang a few notes, mimicking the piano music she knew so well, then let his voice trail off.
“Yelena,” he said, low and measured behind the cracked door. “Hey, you doing okay in there?”
“I’m fine,” she choked, sniffling and lifting her head up. “Ugh. Don’t come in, I’m disgusting.”
“Can’t be worse than me,” he said. “You sure?”
A laugh broke past her tears as she wiped her nose. “Okay, come in. I didn’t even— you’ve been here all day alone, huh? Manning the phones?”
“I didn’t leave the Ready Room for the whole day,” Bob told her, pushing the door open and coming in. “Mel was really busy.” She could see his forest green sweatshirt behind the glass of the shower walls. Blurred, indistinct as a dream. “Can I come in there with you and wash up? I’m gross, too. We can, you know. Be gross together.”
Yelena shut her eyes, remembering. Sitting on the floor. Quiet, together. Staring at the Nirvana poster. And his elbow, nudging her arm, and her head turning toward his just in time to catch the barest, softest kiss she’d ever had, as quiet as he was, as gentle as dandelion fluff. And how they’d never talked about it. And how much she had wanted to talk about it, wanted to tell him how much she’d liked it but all her words had gone dead in her throat, emotions so—
“Yeah, come in,” she said softly, rinsing her hair. “But no complaining about the temperature.”
“Never.” He was undressing. Sweatshirt, pants, socks, underwear: all of them were just blots of color behind the glass and then his tall, leanly muscled body was near enough to the door that she could see him and his hand pressed against it, opening it, and he slipped his body through and then he was naked and she was naked and they were here in the shower together.
Yelena barely noticed his body. She was so tired, but she was glad he was here, and she handed him the soap. He ducked his head under the water, raking his hair back, and sighed with satisfaction as he started to wash himself. With his hair slicked back, he looked so like the Sentry that it made her breath hitch for a moment. “You know,” she said hesitantly, trying to find the right words and not stumble all over herself, “um, do you remember when I came to see you in your room?”
“After the East River. Yeah.” He shot a look over at her, hesitant and nervous.
“Yeah. I— I didn’t— when you did that thing that you did, I didn’t really react, I think. And I wanted to kind of just explain that.”
“You don’t have to explain,” he said, ducking down and lathering his hair with her shampoo. “It’s okay. I get it. I misread the— I do that a lot.”
“No, you didn’t misread anything, okay? I— I’m not— I’m not a very—” She blew air out, so tired, so tired. “I don’t do this kind of thing a lot, you know. My life is more punching and kicking, you know, than it is being… intimate with people. Anybody. Okay? So I don’t— it doesn’t—”
“I’m sorry,” he said very sincerely, looking at her before he tilted his head back and rinsed the bubbles out of his hair. “I won’t do it again.”
Yelena closed her eyes, bracing herself to just get it out. “That’s not— I would actually like very much for you to do it again, okay? I would. And if we’re maybe going to die in the next, like, two days or something, or even if we’re not, uh, I think I want you to know.” Silence. She squinted through one eye, peering at him. Bob stood there with water pouring off him in rivers plastering his hair down, gazing at her with his lips parted and the softest look on his face and she couldn’t stand it for another second even though she was so tired: she opened her eyes and reached up, touching his shoulder. “Oh, just come here, would you,” she whispered, kissing him on the mouth, and he moaned softly in surprise through his nose and caught her by the waist with both hands, tugging her close: they ended up against the shower wall, his back to the tile, and she couldn’t stop kissing him, stroking his cheeks, his shoulders, his neck. Her suburned nose creased and burned in the heat of the water and she didn’t care. Not for a second. But breathing through her nose was kind of difficult with all the water and also the crying that kept sort of ripping out of her chest and clogging her up with snotty tears, so she broke off to gasp for a breath, her forehead pressed to his as she stood on her toes to meet his face.
“Yelena,” he whispered, brushing his nose against hers. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she choked, feeling very foolish. “I— I—”
“I’m so tired, um, I don’t think I can really do a lot more than… this,” he said weakly, kissing her again, deft and careful on the lips. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she told him. “I’m so tired I’m probably already asleep and don’t know it.”
Bob chuckled, going in for one more kiss at the corner of her mouth. “I, um. I’m really glad you— you liked it,” he said as he pulled back. Some of his wet hair hung in his eyes, but he didn’t move to push it back. “Can I sleep here?”
“Yeah, of course you can sleep here, yes.” She reached up and touched his cheek, smiling. “Yeah. You can stay. Just don’t thrash around in your sleep, okay?”
“Why would I— oh, I figured I’d take the couch, I—”
“No, you can sleep in the bed with me. I— I would like that. I would really like that.”
“Oh.” He blushed, a warm pinky shade that blotched his cheeks and throat. “Okay.”
“Okay. Come on, let’s pass out before we lose any more time.”
“I don’t think even we can sleep through the end of the world,” he told her as he shut the water off and they got out of the shower, drying off with her towels.
“You would be surprised. My father slept through the collapse of the Soviet Union. Never got over it.” Yelena opened the bathroom door and shot him a smile. “Maybe set an alarm.”
“Good idea.”
When Yelena woke up to the sound of her alarm, sunlight was pouring through her windows and a heavy, hot, solid arm was pinning down her waist. She didn’t move for a moment, then slowly reached up her free hand and switched her phone off without moving her body. It was two in the afternoon. What day? She didn’t know or care. But Bob was in bed with her, both of them sleep-warm and naked and clean, and his head was nestled into the nape of her neck, his breath on her shoulder, his knee slotted right into the back of hers, his free arm under her head.
She hadn’t felt this secure, this safe, in… a very long time. So of course it had to happen at the end of the world. Yelena closed her eyes, savoring the feeling of being cuddled for a long, long moment. If everything failed— if there was no last save, if Bob’s plan didn’t work, whatever— she’d hold onto this, maybe, right up there with the last memory of her sister laughing, of whistles in the woods, of sunshine and her mother's voice calling them home across the open yard.
“Hey,” she whispered, nudging his leg. “Bob. Wake up. Come on. Let’s go talk to the team and tell them your plan to save the world.”