Okay but hear me out. Kate's been brainwashed, but Yelena doesn't know it yet when this interaction takes place.
To make this even angstier, they'd been getting closer and closer during the previous months, but they hadn't been lovers yet. Yelena had started to catch feelings, in secret. Kate always knew she had a crush on her, but had been extra patient and gentle and discreet.
...Until she isn't anymore. Until she gets colder and colder but it's so gradual, that Yelena doesn't notice at first. You could say that, for the first time in her life, romantic feelings clouded her rational thinking.
Then a big, dramatic betrayal happens, and this interaction takes place. And Yelena is so hurt, that she reveals, she screams her love for Kate.
Oh, but Kate also got so much better at fighting, as part of her chemical indoctrination. And it seems that Yelena is right at the centre of her gunsight. In this occasion, she almost kills Yelena, who's overwhelmed by feelings and by finding a much stronger opponent that what she'd expected. But in that moment, we have some kind of Bucky-and-Steve-in-The-Winter-Soldier interaction, you see some light in Kate's eyes again, and she stops just moments before committing murder. And runs away.
So now we have Yelena, whose life has been completely ruined by mental control once, having to deal with it twice. Alone. Sorta. Thank god she has a mom that happens to be a scientist specialised in mental control.
Oh, and it may be possible that once she gets out of mental control, Kate doesn't remember a thing about that fight....
Hold on I'm going to open a Word doc real quickā
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