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She gets her first paper star when she’s four. She had woken up in a bad mood and everything just seemed to go wrong that day. She spilled her milk at breakfast, she tripped and skinned her knees at lunch, she got yelled at for playing the TV too loud, finally she fell and broke something important.
Now she’s sitting in her room. Mama said not to come out until she came to get her so Yelena sits on her carpet with her knees pulled up to her chest as she stares at the door and waits for mama to come back.
Her face is sticky with tears, her nose runny as she wipes it on her sleeve. She has to go to the bathroom but mama had been very mad and said not to leave the room so she didn’t.
Finally, the door opens. But it’s not mama, just her big sister. Natasha slips through the small gap in the door and closed it behind her. “I heard mom yell at you.”
Yelena rubs her cheek on her sleeve to clear her face of tears. “Yeah.”
Natasha approached her, crouching down in front of her and reaching out. Yelena lets Natasha tug her hand away from her face and she feels something pressed into her palm, Natasha closes her fingers around it before letting her hand go.
Yelena uncurls her fingers, staring down at a star made out of paper that she recognized as what was once Natasha’s homework. “A star?” Yelena’s other hand reaches out to run her fingers along the points. It was 3D and small.
“A lucky paper star.” Natasha nods her head. “You are a star, Lee-lee. Don’t stop shining, okay?” She questioned. Her face is oddly serious and Yelena nods her head just to make the look go away. “Everything will be okay.”
“Okay,” Yelena looks back down at the paper star with multiplication tables folded into it.
She puts it with her important things that includes a very cool rock, her favorite scrunchie, and a broken toy pony.
The next time Natasha gives her a paper star, Yelena had fallen off of monkey bars and hit her head. She was sitting on the counter, mama fussing over her as Yelena’s head pounds hard in her skull.
Natasha slides up next to her while mama is putting crushed ice into a ziploc bag. She holds her hand up to reveal another paper star, this time it was made out of blue construction paper with green polka-dots drawn on with marker.
Yelena clutches it carefully in her fist when mama shoos Natasha off. She remembers her promise to Natasha and stays still when mama presses ice to the bump on her head.
She adds that star to the first one.
Natasha started to give her paper stars whenever Yelena was upset or hurt. They were a variety of colors and sometimes sizes.
Yelena accidentally squished them sometimes. When Natasha saw Yelena’s collection of flat paper stars, she showed her how to pop them back up.
Yelena asked her how to make them and Natasha won’t show her. She presses her fingers to her lips and tells her that it’s a secret.
On Yelena’s fifth birthday, Natasha gives her an empty jar of salsa that had been filled with paper stars layered in different colors.
Yelena collects the next empty jar that was available and dumps her collection into that one, hiding the two jars at the bottom of her toy chest so that mama can’t find them.
Yelena starts preschool and she’s very nervous. She worries about the other kids not liking her. What if she does something wrong? She won’t have Natasha or her mama all day long.
Natasha gives her another paper star, this one smaller than all the rest, made out of a gum wrapper. “You can take this one with you.” She tells Yelena. “Remember, it’s lucky. That means you’re going to have a good day.”
Yelena takes the paper star and tucks it into her jacket pocket. Whenever she felt nervous at preschool, she’d stick her fingers into her jacket pocket and touch the star. It makes her feel brave.
She ends up having a very fun day and Natasha grins at her when she gets home that afternoon. “Well? Did it work?”
Yelena nods her head and adds the gum wrapper star to her jar.
Yelena’s collection grows to be big. Whenever Natasha doesn’t give her a new star, Yelena carries the very first one along with her. She’s learned to flatten them so they don’t get squished and then pop them back up again to store them in the jar.
Natasha still won’t show her how to make them. Not even when Yelena says please or begs her nicely.
“How am I supposed to make magic lucky stars for you if you know how to make them yourself?” Natasha finally asked her and Yelena supposed that made sense. “No, only I can put super secret lucky magic into them.”
“You’re not magic,” Yelena replies and Natasha sticks her tongue out at her.
“Am too,” She retorts. “You’ll see.”
Yelena never does get to see.
Yelena is six and receives her last paper star three days before her world crumbles. It’s a pink star, Yelena’s favorite color, and it is a little bigger than all the rest. Natasha made it because she wanted to.
When dad tells them that they’re going on a big adventure, Yelena makes sure that her lucky star is in her pocket. It becomes one of two possessions that she is permitted to keep for the next twenty years.
A paper star and a photograph of her and her big sister is all she has to her name. No matter how much the chemical subjugation messes with her mind, looking down at the two will remind Yelena that Natasha cared.
Even if it wasn’t real, Natasha cared.
The paper star wasn't filled with lucky magic, it was just a strip of paper from Natasha’s homework, but it was a symbol of the love that her big sister held for her.
That matters more.
Yelena, unsure and very lost in the world, was free. She has a paper star, a photograph, and a black case of antidotes.
She has a dream two weeks after being freed, a foggy memory of Natasha giving her paper stars. When she wakes up, she looks up how to make them.
Yelena makes her first paper star. She will proceed to make another one each time she gets triggered or distressed. She buys orange construction paper and makes orange ones when she misses her sister.
She throws them away after squishing them but she keeps one single orange one.
Yelena doesn’t mention the lucky paper star in her pocket when she reunites with her big sister to take down the Red Room. She doesn’t mention how learning to make them helped keep her grounded on rough nights and how Yelena wanted nothing more than to fill a jar with orange ones to give her.
Natasha is still her big sister. Yelena knows that. Even if Natasha has a rough time coming to terms with the childhood stolen from them and how much Yelena has grown as her innocence was destroyed.
When they part ways after the fall of the Red Room, Yelena leaves behind more than her vest.
Right before Natasha turns herself in to Ross so she can go free the Avengers, Yelena grabs her wrist and pulls her hand out, reaching into her pocket and pressing something into her hand.
It’s not until Yelena darts away that Natasha has a chance to look down.
Sitting in the palm of her hand was a flat paper star made out of multiplication tables.
Yelena’s lucky star.
A smile crosses Natasha’s face as she tucks it into the pocket of the very cool vest she received just above her heart.
She’ll give it back the next time they meet.