No More Excuses//Katelena

28: Lavender Haze is a Privilege I've Lost

Welcome back my dears I hope you're ready for another chapter of whatever this is :))

Content warnings: angst, injury, trauma

"Why didn't you go to a hospital?"

Yelena glares at Clint darkly before she goes back to situating the young archer onto her bed. "Because I killed every ублюдки that was involved in this. Authority or medical officials would make everything worse."

And I'd rather eat hot coals than step back into a hospital, is what she doesn't say.

Yelena stares down at Kate before pressing a tender kiss to the woman's forehead and smoothing her hair out of her face. "Rest, my Kate Bishop." Kate's leg had been successfully -albeit painfully- patched up, and the rest of her injuries had been cleaned and tended to. Thick, comfortable bandages wrapped around her chest, stomach, and neck under several ice packs that Clint had gone out to buy.

Clint is watching her closely when she stands back up, and Yelena meets his eye, unwavering even as her brain fogs. "What?"

He's silent for a moment. "I still trust you to take care of her, y'know," he says softly, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

Yelena is stiff as a board, but his words punch into her heart like a knife, and all of the terror and anger and fear that she had been pushing down suddenly spills over in a tidal wave. She crumples to the floor without warning, slowly at first, and then all at once, curling into herself over her knees and wrapping her arms tightly around her body as strangled sobs quiver her shoulders.

Clint dropped down onto his knees and draped his arms over Yelena's back, hugging her close. She wilted against him as she wailed into her cracked and swelling hands, tears dripping down onto the floor and splashing it with tainted, flaky red.

She was still covered in dried blood.

Yelena struggled to stumble to her feet and drag herself downstairs, ignoring Clint's bleated protests and locking herself in the bathroom. "I need it- I need it off," she hiccupped, tearing the blood-soaked clothes off of her body in a frenzy and kicking them away from her. The stolen gun clattered to the tile, and the sight of it had her stomach roiling.

Killing those men had not been difficult in the slightest. She would do it again. She would do it a thousand times over. But if she had gotten there just a second later, there would be no Kate Bishop to save, and the thought scared her shitless.

The what if, what if, what ifs rang endlessly in her head, and her temples throbbed. Images of black and red flashed behind her eyes, scenes of violence and misery and unknowing. The shower water wasn't hot enough to burn away the feeling of Kate's blood from her skin; her nails weren't long enough to claw it off.

Yelena hadn't been this lost since Natasha's death, and it was paralyzing. The numbness had finally been going away.

How and why was Kate Bishop bringing it back?

——

Yelena's hair is still wet when she throws on one of Kate's hoodies and a pair of sleep shorts and slumps into the couch next to Clint. His eyes are soft and impossibly tired, and a part of Yelena wants to scream at him to go home to his kids and wife.

"She'll be alright," he says eventually, hands clasped together between his knees. "I did some more checks on her vitals, and she's already stabilizing. The blood loss will have her in bed for a couple days, and the bruising in her stomach and neck will hurt like a bitch, I'm sure, but she'll be good."