Double-Edged Sword ─ age of ultron ✓

two

This is shit, quite frankly. I've had such bad writer's block with this chapter. Writing Steve and Alex doesn't come as easily as writing Sasha and Nat, I have realized. It's also all over the place. Once the story picks up, the whole thing will be less awkward, trust me. I hope, lmao.

★★★

A YEAR ago, when Steve went to visit Peggy, and she told him about Alex, he thought that she could not possibly be lucid. That entire experience felt like being hit by a train as he was facing away: a massive shock he did not see coming. All in that conversation, he was confused, he gained a daughter, and he lost a daughter. As far as anyone knew, Alex disappeared without a trace sixty years ago at age ten, assumed dead by the entire world. Whether that was more shocking than Alex, looking only a few years older than she'd been in the picture Peggy had from sixty years ago, appearing from the shadows to try and kill him, Steve hadn't decided yet.

When Steve ran into Alex at the nursing home, he had never been so terrified and so lost in his entire life. This teenage girl, this ex-Hydra assassin, was his kid. His kid, who he didn't know existed until a couple days ago and thought was either dead or seventy. She was just a child, which meant that it was his job to take care of her. He wanted to do right by her in the way he couldn't have when she was younger, but he didn't know how to do it. Nothing in the world had ever scared him as much as becoming a half-grown child's father did.

And then he actually did it, and it wasn't so bad.

In the beginning, Steve didn't know what he should expect from this girl. After all, young as she was, she spent the last non-frozen four years of her life as a trained, brainwashed assassin for Hydra. He, quite frankly, expected her to be a slightly more hardcore version of Sasha Romanoff, or whatever last name she used. Sasha was an interesting, intelligent, moderately entertaining person to be around, but he did not think he could handle raising someone with that kind of mouth. But Alex wasn't like that at all. She was bubbly, sweet, upbeat, and soft-spoken. There was a wide-eyed innocence about her, so happy and excited about everything. Steve would do pretty much anything to put that bright smile back on her face.

He sat at their kitchen counter, watching Alex dart around the room. Thanks to Sasha, Alex had recently discovered the wonderful world of Pinterest. It was, of course, like nothing she'd ever seen before, and it blew her mind. She could search up anything she wanted and save it for later. Some of it was pure fantasy, like the clothes or room decorations she might buy if she had money, and some of it was stuff she would actually use. In particular, Alex had a bit of an addiction to the recipe side of Pinterest. Every other day, it was something new.

"What are you making again?" Steve asked. Alex began scooping pink batter into a small Ziploc bag.

"Macarons," she said, cutting off one corner of the bag. She began piping small circles on a baking sheet covered in wax paper.

The wonders of modern technology certainly fascinated Alex and piqued her curiosity, but there was a little more to her new hobbies than that. She did just about everything to occupy her mind and keep it away from herself, from her nightmares.

"Do you ever get nightmares about everything you've done?" Alex once asked Sasha. "Like, all these memories that make you feel like a monster?"

"Sometimes, yeah." Sasha nodded. "It's the curse of holding onto your conscience after all of that."

"How do you deal with it?"

"I'm only an expert on how not to deal with things. Most of my life choices are shit." Sasha took a sip from her water glass, which she got after Natasha cut her off from iced coffee at six p.m. "For me, I guess one of my healthier, therapist-approved coping skills is redirecting myself. You know, finding something more positive or productive to distract me from whatever's happening."