Double-Edged Sword ─ age of ultron ✓

fourteen

SASHA hadn't spoken in hours. She hadn't done anything in hours besides stare into space with her earbuds in. Steve was somewhere between distraught and rageful, the latter not at anyone in particular, just in more of an "I hate everything" kind of way, but Sasha shut down. One minute, she was livelier than she'd been in days, not even because she and Tony found their unknown—who she thought was absolutely intriguing. The next, after Clint told her Natasha was missing, all of that disappeared.

Everyone felt the silence. In the lab alone with Bruce, even Tony felt the empty space where she would have insisted on being. Normally, she would have been all over this insane piece of technology like nothing she'd ever seen, and she would have immediately shot down his idea to put Jarvis in the body forming in the Cradle. Not that he would have listened, but he kind of missed her smart mouth.

When Sasha was this far gone, the only person who could ever talk her down was Natasha. Nobody else knew how to, and even if they did, she wouldn't be receptive the same way. Clint periodically checked on her through the glass walls of the room she sat in, but outside of that, everyone left her alone. Unless they had information about Natasha and Alex's whereabouts, they felt like they had nothing to contribute.

The first thing Sasha's brain did was catastrophize. What if they never found Natasha? What if Ultron killed her? Where would Sasha go then? What would Sasha do without her?

Crash and burn. That's what Sasha would do without Nat. Every day was a test. Every mirror, every piece of food, every nutrition label was a challenge. Every flashback of her past was a hurdle she had to leap over. It all sat on her shoulders, slowly accumulating more and more weight. Nothing could make that shit disappear, but having Natasha around made her feel more capable and more motivated to keep that burden from cracking her. Natasha peeled her off the floor when she thought she couldn't take it and collapsed. Being able to sit around together at night when they both felt crappy or when Sasha needed to not be alone lifted her spirits. Without that, how could Sasha manage to stay upright and willing to hang on when demons threatened to pull her back in?

Her whole life before age ten, Sasha had nothing. She had no family, no freedom, no real possessions of her own. She was just another chess piece on the Red Room's board. Natasha was the first thing she actually had. The first person who cared. When S.H.I.E.L.D. collapsed, they still had each other. If the Avengers didn't get her back, Sasha would have nothing.

"Sasha."

Sasha blinked, returning to reality to find Clint standing in the doorway. She sniffled and, upon realizing that she shed a few tears, wiped her face with her sleeves.

"Yeah?" She cleared her throat.

"I just got a signal I think is from Nat. Coordinates."

"To where?" Sasha ripped out her earbuds and hopped out of her chair.

"Somewhere in Sokovia," Clint told her.

"So not right around the corner. When can we—" She trailed off, noticing the sound of loud voices above them. "What the hell is that?"

From there, she couldn't make out much other than that there was a fight brewing on the next floor.

"Let's find out before someone ends up dead." Clint jogged out of the room, Sasha just behind him. He went straight down the hall, probably to get a look into the lab from below. Nothing about the architecture of this building made sense; the center of Tony's lab had glass floors, meaning you could see into it from the floor below. Sasha turned and ran upstairs.

"It's nothing compared to what's coming!" Tony yelled. Sasha didn't need context to know that someone was about to do something crazy. She stumbled out of the stairs and ran into the lab, slipping in behind Steve and the Maximoffs, the latter of whom she was not a fan. She had neither the time nor the tolerance for whatever was happening now. The only thing on her mind was getting to Nat and Alex.