#no. 16

[brightmalcolm]

WHUMPTOBER 2025-No. 16: Repressed Trauma

[quietlyimplode]

Everything in Transit

An accident leaves Natasha without her memories, without anyone to guide her, and the Red Room chasing after her, the odds are not in her favour… unless those that love her find her first.

Whumptober 2025: Day 16 - repressed trauma

Warnings: trauma talk

Word Count:

Summary: Yelena contemplates leaving and Clint convinces her to stay.

Whumptober Masterlist/Masterlist of Fic / ao3

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LONDON / OCTOBER 03 / 23:37PM

Clint pauses before he enters, knowing full well that likely she’ll be gone.

“Yelena?” he calls out, unlocking the door.

There’s no answer and his stomach has butterflies.

“Don’t kill me,” he warns.

He opens the door and finds Yelena standing in front of it.

Her eyes are glazed and she looks out of it. A gun in one hand and knife in the other, her backpack on.

“I was going to leave,” she tells him, her voice dead.

“But I can’t step forward. I cant move from this spot.”

He steps towards her and is met with a knife at his throat. He steps back but she doesn’t move forward.

“I wanted to leave. I can’t. I can’t move and it’s your fault.”

Clint stays where he is, and puts down the shopping, door still open as he looks at her with interest.

He’s well versed in the breakdown of widows.

This he can do.

He hopes so anyway.

Gently, he turns his back and shuts the door, turning his back slightly on her.

When he turns back around the knife is gone.

“Do you still want to leave?” he asks.

He wonders if he should approach it like he does with Natasha, if he’s honest with himself though, he doesn’t know any other way.

He stays as still as he can, letting her move if she wants to, but making sure if he does he telegraphs the movement so she can follow it.

“Do you want to leave, Yelena?”

She looks at him with big eyes.

She reminds Clint of Natasha, those early days where he’d have to talk her down. Remind her of her worth.

“Why haven’t you turned me in? Why haven’t you told anyone?” she asks.

“I’ve killed people. I’ve done things that you couldn’t even comprehend. I should be locked up. But you know what the kicker is? I don’t care. Do whatever you want with me. Use me for whatever you want. It’s all I’m good for.”

Clint stares at her, his heart breaking.

Never in his lifetime did he think he’d have to do this, again.

“No,” he says simply.

“No?”

“No.”

“We have a mission, don’t we?”

Yelena looks up, her eyes are welling and Clint feels all it would take is kindness to help them fall.

She looks so young.

Maybe like he and Natasha were.

But time has wisened him, and he knows better now.

He knows how to do better.

“I’m glad you stayed,” he starts simply.

“Sometimes being alone with our thoughts can be the worst thing.”

He picks up the bag of shopping and hands it to her.

“Come and help me.”

Yelena takes it without thinking.

He thought there’d be more pushback but unlike Natasha, she talks.

“Why are you helping me? I can’t find her. I tried. Now she’s on the run. I’m being hunted by them, so I’m a liability. You and your… avenger friends, they would know better how to track her down.”

He opens his mouth to reply, but she’s not finished.

“I keep thinking, it’s just one step forward. But it’s not. I just need to keep moving, but I don’t know what I’m moving towards. I wonder if I should just disappear, I know how to and I’m good at it, but where would I go? So one step forward, to a place that seems just as daunting as the last. I don’t know how to do this.”

Clint hands her the pasta, points her to the pot.

Automatically she dumps it in a pot and follows his gesture to fill it with water.

He turns on the gas and lets her continue with a gesture.

“There’s something wrong with me,” she says quietly.

“There’s this part of me that is just so bored all the time, that it craves novelty of something but it never reaches the void. So I’m not excited, or happy or anything. The last thing that made me feel anything, was…”

“Natasha,” Clint finishes.

Yelena nods.

“So I’m going after her, because even for a moment, it gives me purpose.”

She watches him cut up the bacon, both lost in a thought.

“Who do you want to be?” he asks, handing her a bag of cheese.

She absentmindedly opens it and starts eating.

“I don’t know, Clint Barton. To be honest I thought I’d be dead by now.”

He smirks at that.

“Natasha told me that once too.”

She nods.

“I think all the women of the red room think it.”

Clint gives her a spoon and motions to stir the pasta and then gives her salt to put in as well.

“Can I tell you something I told her? Something that was told to me long ago?”

She shrugs.

“This is not who you are. This is your circumstance.”

She looks away, holding a spoon and absentmindedly stirring the pasta.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, that you’re Yelena. You like Mac and cheese. You have a sister called Natasha. You have a friend called Clint. You’re not who they made you. You are a person. You can want good things for yourself too.”

He gently takes the spoon and fishes out a piece of pasta, offering it to her first, she takes it to try it as he does the same with another piece.

“A little longer, maybe,” he comments, and she nods in agreement.

“That got stuck in my teeth.”

She takes the spoon and continues to stir, even though it doesn’t need it.

“How did you know I like Mac and Cheese?” she wonders out loud.

“Natasha. You think she doesn’t think of you? Or talk about you?”

Yelena looks away.

“Nobody thinks of me. I am disposable, when I die, no one will mourn me. I’ll be a name in a dossier of things that I’ve done.”

He laughs.

She stares at him.

“I don’t think that’s funny.”

“Yelena, that’s not true.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Nope.”

“Yes-“

“Take the pasta out,” he tells her, cutting her off, before continuing rapidly.

“No, it’s not true. I can think of two people and one of them is in the room. Maybe in your eulogy I’ll tell of how we cooked together. And Natasha can tell about how you loved to chase fireflies. And maybe, just maybe, when we find Natasha you guys can build more memories that if any of us die can be told at our funerals.”

He pulls out another pan and starts to cook the bacon. He gives her back the cheese.

“I know that the horrors of our past are inextricable from our present; we both know that. I get the void. The way sometimes you have to pry yourself away because if you look at it too long then it envelops you, but I need you to believe that that’s not all there is.”

He adds the bacon to the Mac and Cheese and the rue that he’d made and mixes it together whilst watching her closely.

“Plus, there’s always Mac and cheese.”

.

[serickswrites]

Cleanse

Warnings: gunshot wound, blood, field medicine

"Team Leader, you need to stay down!" Teammate One ordered. They had dragged Team Leader to the medic tent. Team Leader, though grievously wounded as they bled out from the gun shot wound in their gut, fought every step of the way.

"I can't let the others do this for me. They need our help!" Team Leader gripped Teammate One's shoulder fiercely, still trying to fight their way back to the front lines.

"You can and you will. We're nothing without you, Team Leader," Smallest Teammate said as they rummaged through the drawers to find what they would need to field treat Team Leader's wounds.

Blood coated Team Leader's shirt, but still they fought Teammate One as Teammate One guided them to the exam table to lay down for Smallest Teammate. "Team Leader, just let us treat you."

"I need to go back out there! I need to--FUCK!" Team Leader screamed as Smallest Teammate pressed a thick wad of gauze onto the wound.

"Shhhhh, Team Leader, let us help you," Smallest Teammate said as they nodded to Teammate Two.

Teammate Two had followed closely behind Teammate One and had begun to look for some sedatives to keep Team Leader relaxed while they were treated. "We're going to take care of you, Team Leader."

"No, I--FUCK! PLEASE!" Team Leader bucked beneath Smallest Teammate's hands.

"Hurry, Teammate Two," Smallest Teammate said as they leaned their entire body weight on Team Leader.

"NO MORE! I CAN'T! PLEASE!" Team Leader roared as they tried to get out from beneath Smallest Teammate's hands.

"It's ok, Team Leader, we've got you. You're going to be ok. Just let us help you," Teammate Two said soothingly as they injected the sedative. "This should help you feel better."

"I...I need to," Team Leader said weakly, their eyelids quickly drooping.

"You need to rest and let us look after you, Team Leader. Don't worry, the others will be ok," Teammate One reassured Team Leader as Team Leader slipped into unconsciousness. "You're going to be ok," Teammate One repeated as Smallest Teammate quickly got to work.

Tags: @mousepaw @jumpywhumpywriter @knightinbatteredarmor @hufflepuffwritingstuff2 @anightmarishwhump

@steh-lar-uh-nuhs @celestialsoyeon @st0rmm @ay5ksal @pedro-pedro-pedro-pedro-pe

@artisticdemon

[guavie]

No. 16!!

[ap0c4lypticz]

*licks u*

*licks u back* (sensually too)

[fangirlsalad]

Whumptober, Day 16:

From the delightful loon that brought you '5 Times John Sheppard Thought About the Enormity of Rodney's Dick and 1 Time He Actually Did Something About It' and 'I'm Obsessive, I'm Fixating (BOY CRAZY.)' comes the next in horny humor:

Title: Trippin’, Stumbling, Flippin’, Fumbling (Can’t Help It) (E, 1.3k)

Summary: He planted his hand over the entirety of John’s face.

“Wait,” he wailed.

John stilled, still pressed against Rodney all over. Rodney took a few slow breaths, felt his brain start to function again.

“We cannot do this,” Rodney panted carefully. “You are experiencing weird symptoms from an alien bug bite, and we cannot do this.”

A bug bite makes John a little loopy. Rodney finds out how strong his self-control is.

[oxideblack]