It was kind of an exclusive club: Eastern European former antagonists that the Avengers scooped up and half-adopted like a set of strays. Yelena's route had come through Natasha, and Pietro and Wanda had largely come through Clint, and since the two former SHIELD agents were best friends, it had been easy enough for their younger recruits to gravitate to each other, be assigned together on missions, find their footing together. And when the twins had first said something snarky to each other in Sokovian during a team meeting, thinking they had free rein— Yelena had barked a laugh, and the two of them had shot a startled glance at her, and an unspoken understanding flickered through them.
Yelena's Red Room training had meant picking up language after language to operate across Europe, a casual familiarity with Russian and English and Sokovian and Finnish and German and others. She couldn't float things with her hands and she couldn't run around the city in the blink of an eye, but she was a former trained child assassin, and yet she had an easy, laissez-faire demeanour despite her brutal upbringing. And all three of them were orphans misled by HYDRA or controlled using technology cribbed from HYDRA: sharper, darker origins than those of the Avengers' group who'd simply been bitten by a spider, or stolen someone's shrinking suit.
So, they'd become friends.
Today, standing outside the local carnival set up on the city outskirts, the short blonde is doing limber stretches in the parking lot as she waits for Pietro to show up. She doesn't have to wait long— timeliness is, of course, one of his strengths.
The friendship between the twins and Yelena was likely inevitable at some point. A bit like kids growing up with parents who were friends— you hang around someone enough, eventually the friendship just sort of happens. Pietro particularly enjoyed Yelena’s brand of sass that she brings along everywhere she goes.
He hasn’t been to a carnival in years. A decade or more now, he supposes. Back when he was young and his parents were still alive. It’s an odd feeling, that sort of reminiscence isn’t something he allows himself often.
Pietro is a blur of motion before pulling himself to a short stop next to Yelena. “Do you always do yoga in parking lots?”
“I do yoga wherever there’s space, Maximoff.” Unfussed, she tilts to the side; leans down and touches her toes; glances up at him from the bend of her knee. “I have done yoga in a creaky attic in Siberia, and in a dark warehouse in Bolivia, and in your kitchen. It helps to stay limber, you know. You never know when you might need to jump into real action, even at a carnival. And don’t you ever get cramps?”
To illustrate, she swats at his leg. Pietro automatically sidesteps long before her hand even gets close to him, though, and she snorts in amusement before straightening with a long stretch and a yawn.
“I need energy and sugar. Will you buy me cotton candy?”
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Yelena's Red Room training had meant picking up language after language to operate across Europe, a casual familiarity with Russian and English and Sokovian and Finnish and German and others. She couldn't float things with her hands and she couldn't run around the city in the blink of an eye, but she was a former trained child assassin, and yet she had an easy, laissez-faire demeanour despite her brutal upbringing. And all three of them were orphans misled by HYDRA or controlled using technology cribbed from HYDRA: sharper, darker origins than those of the Avengers' group who'd simply been bitten by a spider, or stolen someone's shrinking suit.
So, they'd become friends.
Today, standing outside the local carnival set up on the city outskirts, the short blonde is doing limber stretches in the parking lot as she waits for Pietro to show up. She doesn't have to wait long— timeliness is, of course, one of his strengths.
no subject
He hasn’t been to a carnival in years. A decade or more now, he supposes. Back when he was young and his parents were still alive. It’s an odd feeling, that sort of reminiscence isn’t something he allows himself often.
Pietro is a blur of motion before pulling himself to a short stop next to Yelena. “Do you always do yoga in parking lots?”
no subject
To illustrate, she swats at his leg. Pietro automatically sidesteps long before her hand even gets close to him, though, and she snorts in amusement before straightening with a long stretch and a yawn.
“I need energy and sugar. Will you buy me cotton candy?”