etrayalogs | (no subject)

PASS.
This is the first thing Yelena sees on the morning of August 9, with no context from Eos at all. She has no idea what she did to earn such apparent praise from the AI, but she’ll take it. She didn’t become who she is without being very good at subterfuge, and it really might have been more insulting if she’d failed somehow, even if she would never know the reasoning, or the criteria the grade was based on. All-in-all, it’s not the worst start to the day.

It is not long after this that she is ushered back to Etraya by companion bots with everyone else via a portal in the park.

As she makes her way through downtown, she can’t help noticing the near-eerie sense of calm around the city. She can’t quite place a finger on what’s wrong, but the feeling lingers in the air around her, heavy and hard to ignore even when she tries.

Her first act of business upon return is to regroup with Steve and Natasha at the compound. She’s sure that’s where their first stops will be as well, and Yelena had gotten busy with the mission. Lost track of her sister and wanted to catch up with her. And Steve has been so good to her since they first met in that awful drill room in the maze. He’s a little bit like having a golden retriever around, it’s nice.

What she finds once she makes her way through the city and down the winding path to the main door into the tower is… absolutely nothing. Near as she can recall, every single thing is where it was when they all left. The book on the coffee table in the living room that Steve had been reading; the blanket Yelena had been curled under during the last movie night she’d been so insistent on, even though all of Etraya’s versions of films were… wrong like terrible off-brand mockeries of the real thing; an abandoned mug of coffee on the kitchen counter from Natasha.

A wave of that same eerie feeling from her walk here passes over her and a knot forms in her stomach, though she can’t quite place why.

Calling out for either of them does her no good, gets her only deafening silence in return. Something almost like panic tightens her chest, but she pushes it down and continues about her day like nothing is wrong.

Morning passes into afternoon and still there is no word from either of them. Yelena decides they are simply catching up with some things outside of the house. Decides to start cooking dinner so there’s something ready when they both inevitably come back.

When no one has returned by the time the sun is setting and dusk is upon the city, Yelena feels something sink down into her stomach, which is churning not unlike a whirlpool of emotions now. “Drochily,” she mutters under her breath as she taps out a basic message to each of them to find out where the hell they are and when they plan to be back.

Both texts bounce back immediately:

ERROR. RECEIVER UNAVAILABLE.
She tries, frantically, a few more times to contact Natasha in every way possible on the Etrayan comms, private inboxes, a call, a video, anything, but every time she gets that same stupid message. It’s burned behind her eyelids and she sees it every time she blinks.

Maybe there are rational explanations for this. Maybe it’s something innocuous. But the growing tension in her stomach from earlier in the day is at its peak now.

There is a bright clarity in her panic, though, and she reaches out to the first person that comes to mind: Kate Bishop.

Her heart sinks even lower when the call goes through. Suddenly, her mind is blank, her voice is gone, and she disconnects the call after a few, confused moments on the other end.

Edited 2024-09-05 08:17 (UTC)

Kate has been the frequent recipient of various forms of calls, both intentional and not (Clint Barton and butt dials go hand in hand at times), but it's rather rare that people hang up on her when she answers. Unless it's because they meant to call the other Hawkeye. Story of her hero life.

Yelena is not likely to be calling Clint, however, so Kate just sits there for a few minutes, waiting to see if there would be another call. When it doesn't come, she does what she does best, and that's bug a friend to find out what's going on. Kate texts a quick message and sends it along.

hey
what's up? we could have talked

Yelena stares at the message, everything feels empty and hollowed-out now. She at least does Kate the courtesy of responding, if not responding well:

I can't.

She's gone.

There's no context given, but maybe Kate will pick up on the distress of it all anyway.

Yelena kept to herself for days after her initial realization that Natasha was simply… gone. As quickly as she had appeared in the bubble city, she had disappeared. Without so much as a chance to say goodbye. Learning the news the way she did felt like a rehashing discovering it back home, and dragged up all those unchecked emotions about her sister’s death in an inescapable wave.

Kate and Cassandra helped that first day in the ways that they could, but… Yelena couldn’t bear the idea of being around anyone at all after that. She spent five days in a high depressive state. She didn’t leave the compound, she didn’t see or speak to anyone, she barely left her room at all. Everything felt so empty, and she didn’t know what to do with herself all alone in all that space, so she self-contained and made herself small. Isolated to hide her pain.

But Yelena knew she could not live that way forever, and she needed to find a way to dig herself out of the hole she was wallowing in. Thats when she asked the residents of Etraya for tips on how to handle grief. There was an almost overwhelming outpour of sympathy and support, a variety of ways to handle the situation were offered. She might still use several of those tactics in the come days and months as things are further processed as time goes on.

But one idea in particular had inspired her in a way that got her moving. Something in her sister’s honor, a little token to keep the reminder of her there. And a send off of sorts, since no wake or funeral could exactly be had.

She found a simple locket necklace and took one of the photos from the envelope in Corrine’s Cafe to cut down to size and slip it inside. She will be seen wearing it from now on.

To give her sister the send off she never got to, Yelena decides to make a simple, paper lantern to release off the dock at the back of the compound. It’s nothing fancy, but Natasha would have hated something over the top, simple, discreet is best for people like them. It’s enough just to be remembered.

That night, the people she is closest to will receive a text inviting them to a simple dinner, and to be there when she sets the lantern free. The set-up is little more than a charcuterie board of crackers with cheese and meats and a few different nuts and fruits.

Mostly, she’s just trying not to be so alone.

Edited 2024-09-04 15:56 (UTC)

Ava's never actually been... invited to anything before, and the text catches her off guard because her immediate instinct is that 'dinner' is a trap of some sort. Until she has enough time to evaluate and overthink it and convince herself otherwise. Yelena might be the closest to trust that she's come to anyone since her arrival, having finally offered the woman her name. But. It's not a feeling she even knows what to do with, when her intentions are to not get too close to anyone here.

And while she's sure that Yelena has other friends to attend, the sympathy for Yelena's loss of her sister, however, makes it hard to ignore the request.

She shows up, knowing she can just as easily leave the moment it becomes too much. And though the group might be small by most standards, by Ava's it's entirely too many people at once. She keeps quiet, avoiding eye contact with anyone, nibbling occasionally on a cracker.

At some point she slips Yelena a folded piece of paper in a makeshift sympathy card, with sorry for your loss scrawled on the inside. It's signed with a small star.

Yelena knows how much of a struggle being social when you don't want to be is, and she imagines that sort of feeling is only ten-fold in someone like Ava, who seems hell-bent on trying to pretend connections don't matter. Yelena knows better, but she doesn't try to argue the point much to the other woman. There's not really any point to, if she isn't ready to admit it, she won't, and Yelena doesn't have the energy to try to convince her otherwise. So instead, she just sort of lets cards fall where they may between them.

Apparently, tonight, that card falls almost quite literally into Yelena's hand. It's not much, a scrap of paper with a hand-written note scrawled inside. But it's still kind of sweet.

"Hey," she greets the other woman not unlike someone approaching a frightened animal. She keeps her voice soft, her movements open, traceable, "thanks," she lifts the paper still tucked between her fingers.

"Wasn't sure if it was the appropriate thing," Ava admits with a bit of a shrug, to downplay that Yelena appreciating the gesture even matters. It's not much, even as a sentiment. Especially coming from her.

She shifts from foot to foot, without actually moving at all, a restless phantom form that blurs in and out.

Ava frowns, glances about. "These your friends?"

Yelena feels her lips twitch with amusement, "No, you are fine. I meant it- thank you." she nods a little, hoping she can pick up on the sincereity in her voice.

She glances over at her, one eyebrow arched curiously at her. The question of: Are you okay? is clearly written across her face.

"Some variation thereof," she shrugs a little. She had been a little surprised at the number of people she even felt had deserved an invitation. Even more so by the number of them that actually showed up.

She picks up on the meaning of the glance, and frowns in response. Because no she is never anything close to okay. But there's nothing immediately wrong with her, other than the extreme discomfort of being around people she doesn't quite know. That they're Yelena's friends and hopefully people she's vetted enough to trust helps a bit, but not with the overall anxiety of being aware of herself as a social outcast.

But also it's not her sister that they're mourning the loss of. Ava swallows down, and finally mumbles something she swore she wasn't going to ever bring up. "I owe your sister. Agent Romanoff. My freedom. In a way."

"What?" Confusion mixed with a little bit of surprise spills across her face like paint on a canvas. Her chest feels a little tighter in anticipation of whatever the answer to her next question might be, "What do you mean, how?"

Ava swallows roughly, there's too many other people here for this conversation. Because the answer might be simple but all the messy backstory is not.

"Can I tell you another time?"

She feels the breath leave her lungs at the question, but she understands it might be better as a private conversation and nods a little. "Yeah, sure. That's fine," her words come out a little harsh, sharp and stilted in her surprise from earlier.

"It's... more than I want you to know about me. Right now. But I wanted you to know that about her. That you're not the only one thankful for her."

They'd talked about the loss, and Aerith can certainly relate. There's another thing, funnily enough, that's familiar about all this, though.

"Did I tell you? I...did something like this recently. With the lanterns." Aerith is there, of course, at Yelena's invitation. She wouldn't miss it for the world. As she stands next to the other woman now, she offers a little smile that she hopes is more encouraging than anything. That says 'I'm here.'

"It was kinda a local tradition. Releasing them in honor of those we've lost..."

And, in having been given a platform to speak, she'd been able to work out some stuff for herself, too. About her role as the last Ancient, and...the things she's grateful for.

"This is gonna be perfect, Yelena." Unless she shies away, Yelena will get a squeeze on her forearm: affirming. "Wherever she is, I know she'll feel it."

Yelena stands at the edge of the dock, and it feels so... final standing there, this group of mix-matched friends of hers gathered in something of a circle around her. She isn't ready to let go, so the lantern is set aside for now, but it won't be long before she can no longer delay why she's there. Why they all showed up for her.

But she'll delay it just a little longer. While she can.

"Really?" she asks, turning toward her at that. "I've heard of it, as a tradition, before... it seems nice."

She doesn't shy away from the touch, if anything, she leans a little more into it than she'd like to admit. "Don't make me cry in front of Clint Barton," she lets out a soft, water laugh; she doesn't even care if he's closed enough to hear her say it, honestly.

"Yeah. And it was nice. It's so beautiful, to see them all drifting away up against the night sky, but the act of...holding it, then letting it go, was really - cathartic."

That's the point, right? A representation of letting go.

...

"I'll try, but I think he'd understand. Today's an emotional day, after all." She smiles, eyes softening. "And besides: we're all here to support you however we can. If that means he looks the other way to give you the privacy to feel whatever you're feeling, he'll do it."

Yelena invites her, so of course Cassandra goes. A little shadow. (Does she care if anyone aside from Yelena herself notices her? Sometimes. It’s not that she’s TRYING to go unnoticed, but it’s habit, anymore. To pass between attention spans and hide between the beats of the ways that people watch each other.) She’d met Natasha, once, and she understands the pain Yelena is going through. Some; she’s not had to suffer the sudden appearance and loss of family all over again. (She hadn’t thought about the arrival of someone from her world until realising that there were some here who shared worlds. She tries to not think about what she would do were her brother to arrive. ~~Or worse. One of the Briarwoods.?~~)

So she arrives, with a handful of flowers. And when Yelena releases the lantern she’ll let flower petals trail from her hand into the water in its wake.

Cassandra has become something of a permanent fixture in Yelena's life in Etraya, the idea of not inviting her to this never even touched her mind at all. She's young, but Yelena knows a few things about her history now. And the giving of comfort is not limited to a specific age: Cassandra is just as capable as any adult for the task.

And Yelena does take a measure of comfort in the shadow of the younger spy being there. Even only at the edges of the gathering, mostly noticed by Yelena and no one else. No one is here for the kind of social mingling that a party might create, after all.

"Thank you," she whispers, voice wavering in a way that betrays any attempt at keeping herself together in that moment, as she watches the petals float gently on the water.

contact/plotting

Note

HMU on Yelena's HMD /

loyalwolf for something specific if the prompts below don’t strike you~

Mod post

[If your character replied to this post, you want to handwave they saw it, or heard about it from someone else, go nuts; mostly going to write around actual training stuff, I'm not good at writing fights (but I'll try), but feel free to even just +1 for a "my character did a sparring sesh with her" if you want! YOLO, do whatever you want (swear she won't go as hard as that gif with her trainees! lmao but already skilled fighters are definitely not getting curbed sessions with her~)]

Edited 2024-08-29 15:08 (UTC)

(no subject)

{August » Backdated threads

{Alone again, naturally » CLOSED to Kate Bishop [Aug 9]; “wankers”

a million years later...

Re: a million years later...

{Paper lanterns in the sky » Close CR only [Aug 16]

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{August Mingle

{Impact

{Shattered remnants

{September Threads

{Sparring sessions » OTA