85 CHAPTER 85 - ESTRANGED SISTERS

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[Steve Rogers POV]

BAM! BAM! BAM‼

RIP!

"Damn it all!" I cursed at the fourth punching bag that I've destroyed since I started going at them a few hours ago.

I was trying to ease my frustration and stress, maybe clear my mind, in the best way I know how to but it's not working as every punch I take seems to bring back only flashbacks of memories I thought I had put to rest a long time ago.

Gunshots going off. Bombs and smokey sky that made the eyes hurt. The biting cold of winter as we laid on wait under the snow for hours just to ambush a contingent of reinforcements.

I pushed those thoughts as far as I could from my head and hung another sand bag and started again with slow hits.

I couldn't even throw more than two punches before images of a fight that happened last year forced its way into my head, not caring of my efforts to clear my mind.

"You okay, Cap?" I heard Sam's voice which forced me to stop and take a breather. "Something is definitely wrong because the only time I've ever seen you like this was when we had HYDRA on our asses."

That prompted a smile and a soft laugh out of me, but unfortunately this was different. Maybe not in difficulty but in complexity.

"Well, you're not entirely wrong." I caught the bottle of water he threw me and drank in large gulps.

"So? What's got you so down that you're taking it out on… those." He said, pointing to the heap of sand and torn leather bags lying around.

I didn't say anything and just played the video Vision gave me. This was something I never expected, what no one expected.

It isn't exactly a public secret that Tony's parents died in a car crash, leaving him orphaned at a very young age. But according to the video I was currently watching for the seventeenth time, Bucky was the one who framed the murder as an accident.

"This.."

"Is bound to set him off." I mean, it's Tony. The entire reason he was initially scraped from the Avengers Initiative was due to his volatility and being quick to set off. A record that made him a close runner-up to Bruce.

"What are you going to do then?" Sam asked, looking unsure of how he should react. Guess it's not only me. "You gotta tell him, Cap. It's Tony we're talking about. As long as something like this," He pointed at the video, "..is out there, all he needs is a reason and he'll find out."

"Fucking hell." I couldn't help but curse.

"Wha-"

"Zip it, Sam." I groaned as he burst into hardly suppressed snickers.

I picked up my phone and dialed the first number that popped up. I grimaced at the sight of my hands slightly trembling, something that didn't happen even when I was fighting against an alien invasion.

"Tony, can you come over? It's important." I said as soon as he picked up the call, not even giving him the chance to reply with his usual quips that I've never understood.

I caught Sam giving me a look I couldn't understand. "What?"

"Huh? Oh, nothing. Just wondering if it'd be appropriate to place bets if it ever comes down to a brawl, dunno why."

Maybe I shouldn't have told him after all. "Can you just shut up for a second?"

"Don't worry, Cap. I'd place my bets on you if it ever comes to that." He said while giving me a few pats on the back before leaving.

°°°°°°°

[Vision POV]

I have to say that the conversation the two sisters had, with one bound, was not one I was expecting.

It was somehow stale, cold even, like a discussion rather than whatever kind of talk I had in mind. It felt like a business deal, lacking any sort of emotion as both sides focused on the cons of what the next part of the mission brought as they traded information.

'What more should I have expected from two estranged 'fake' sisters who also happened to be world-class assassins?'

"So what are you going to do next?" Yelena asked while massaging her wrist and shooting a dead stare at Natasha. "Was there any reason for cuffing me so tight?"

"I couldn't take any chances and risk you escaping. You ARE a Black Widow, are you not?" And the redhead just lied through her teeth, not even appearing bothered by the fact that it wasn't standard handcuffs.

'Too bad I can't continue watching such prime time drama.'

"It appears you have some company, Yelena. Want to meet your sisterhood, they might be worried about you." I heard Natasha snicker while the girl I was addressing looked between the both of us as if she couldn't decide who was more unbelievable.

"Do we really have the time to deal with the Widows?" Natasha asked but Yelena cut me off before I could reply.

"If the other Widows know about my capture then we need to get out of here. And given that you disconnected my receiver, they might be forced to send in the Taskmaster." She warned.

Natasha asked with raised brows and folded arms. "The so-called enforcer you mentioned is tasked with retrieving or eliminating stray Widows?"

"Yes."

"In case you guys care about my opinion then I'd suggest we get to the flying fortress as soon as possible." It's not actually a surprise to me that I couldn't get into the Red Room when I tried, with the reason being the same as that of Von Doom's Latveria and to an extent, Wakanda.

They were not using the same digital space as the rest of the planet. But that can be easily taken care of if I get within proximity of it, or physical access to it.

"I'm still holding off on asking why you are so eager to go there, but I agree. We need to move rather than staying in one place and exposing ourselves to the possibility of being tracked."

Natasha went ahead and fired up the Quinjet for takeoff while I watched the movements of the Widows who were making their way in our direction, ignoring Yelena who just stood there until she decided to ask what she's had on her mind for some while back.

"We're currently going to attack the Red Room, right?"

"Yes." I answered simply.

"With just the three of us?" She asked again.

"Yes." I replied again and had Natasha address her doubts before she bombarded us with them.

"Don't worry. With Vision here, we've already achieved half of whatever it is that we're going there for." She said matter-of-factly.

Yelena looked at me with curious interest and a healthy shade of wariness. It's not because of Natasha's words because I can tell she's been wary of me since she woke up, watching every single movement I made with discreet glances.

After uploading the coordinates to the craft's systems, I sat beside Natasha and just enjoyed the journey while also reviewing the calculations that I've been running up in my head since the day before.

I could feel that Natasha didn't want to have the impending talk she knew Yelena would ask which was the whole reason she was flying the plane even though it had a borderline AI to take care of the autopilot.

"Still want to ask?" She suddenly said out of nowhere which made me smile but shook my head.

"I don't think I'm the one who's been dying to ask a very essential question." I said as I corrected the quantum coefficients with a reverse of earth's geographic coordinates after making a few changes to it.

"… Yeah." She said it with such a straight face that falsely showed how little she felt. "I doubt there's anything to talk about between us. At the end of day, it all comes down to the options we were dealt with and the choices we made from them."

My reply to her was given in the same tone she gave hers. "But that's from your own standpoint. You were lucky to have made the choice you did, Natasha, giving you the chance to become who you are today. You don't know the options she was given, or the choices she made from that… or the choices she hoped she could have."

"We only get one such chance like this in life, Miss Romanova." I looked at her in one of my rare moments of seriousness with her involved. "Sometimes making it count is harder than we think it is."

Unlike Natasha who was more than ready to burn all bridges with her past life, I could feel Yelena tightly clinging onto hers so I was doing this for her sake more than Natasha's.

Natasha didn't say anything else and just focused on steering the Quinjet in the direction of the coordinates of the Red Room.

'Who knew redheads were this stubborn?' I only sighed in relief at the timeframe I gave myself for this mission which will extricate me by the time the toxic drama and feelings would be barred out. 'We should be done in an hour, tops.'