Sterling hung up the phone with Barton and tapped the device against forehead in frustration. This wasn't good. Something bigger was happening he hadn't seen or realized. Barton certainly hadn't either or else he wouldn't have been completely blindsided by a Black Widow out for revenge. He'd seemed even more surprised when Sterling indicated that he knew her. Personally. And had for a year.
After tapping his phone against his head about a dozen times, trying to prolong the inevitable, Sterling looked down at his cell phone and called Yelena.
Natasha knew that if they were successful, and Yelena and Sterling came back from the blip, Yelena was going to need a new contact in SHIELD to help her locate the remaining widows. She'd left everything Sterling needed to take over her work for him to find when he returned. The note had been sweet. Even in the wake of finding out he'd been dead for 5 years and discovering she had given her life to bring them all back, she still managed to look out for them all. Even asking Sterling to be her contact and not Clint had been an act of mercy. She knew how broken up he would be if she fell in combat and how, at first, he might not have been in a state to help. Hell, she wasn't even sure he would survive the battle either. No, she needed someone else she trusted. Someone, perhaps, with a history of getting little girls out of dangerous situations and helping them start a new life.
In the last year he and Yelena had bonded over their shared project and, to a smaller extent, their loss. He'd even go so far as to call her his friend.
And now he finds out she tried to kill his BEST friend.
"Yelena?" Sterling said a bit too quickly into the phone as he heard her pick up. "It's Sterling. What... What's this I hear about you trying to murder Barton? I--What the fuck happened?"