Double-Edged Sword ─ age of ultron ✓

fifteen

This book really needs a new title, because I hate Double-Edged Sword, but I have no better ideas.

★★★

THEY needed all hands on deck for this one. Sasha wanted to be the one to rescue Nat and Alex, or to at least accompany Bruce, but everyone decided that her presence on the streets of Sokovia was more important. Unlike Bruce, she could fight Ultron's robot army without morphing into a savage green giant with no self-control, although that would probably encourage people to evacuate the city.

Bruce set out for the place Natasha's signal came from alone, fully armed with weapons to hand off to Alex when he arrived. They all assumed Ultron confiscated anything Alex and Nat had on them, and even if he hadn't, there was no such thing as too many instruments of death in this business.

He crept inside, hoping Ultron wouldn't be waiting for him.

"Natasha?" he called. Probably not the smartest move when trying to break prisoners out without alerting the warden. "Alex?"

"Bruce?" Natasha answered. Bruce followed the sound of her voice to a small cell. Alex and Natasha were both trapped behind the bars.

"You all right?" he asked quietly, as if he hadn't just let the whole area know he was there by yelling.

"Yeah," Natasha told him with the tiniest hint of a smile.

"The team is in the city. It's about to light up."

"I don't suppose you found a key lying around here somewhere," Natasha said. She gestured to Alex. "Not even she could pry these things apart."

"Actually, I did." Bruce pulled out a gun, and Natasha and Alex both stepped aside. He shot the lock open. Alex pushed the bars open with ease. Once they were out, Bruce handed Alex two handguns and her comms. "Go on. They're going to need you up there. They're evacuating the area and taking down as much of Ultron's army as they can. The Maximoffs are on our side now, so don't try to kill them."

"Not even going to ask. Got it." Alex didn't bother holstering the guns. She figured she'd need them pretty quickly. "Thanks."

She ran off in the direction Bruce came from, leaving him and Natasha alone.

"Bring anything for me?" Natasha asked. Bruce shook his head.

"I'm here to get you to safety. You've had enough. Alex has been through a lot less these past couple days, and they'll need her strength up there."

Nobody besides maybe Thor was hit by Wanda as hard as Natasha was. It was obvious just by looking at them all after the fact. Her vision left her fucked up, knocked off her game in a way the Avengers had never seen before. Alex took a hit too, but not like that. She was back on her feet in under an hour.

"Job's not finished," Natasha insisted. Not only did she want to stop Ultron's apocalypse, she wanted—needed—to find Sasha. Sasha must be somewhere in the midst of that fight, because at a time like this, she'd never allow herself to be anywhere but in the action.

"We could help with the evacuation, but I can't be in a fight near civilians. Our fight is over."

"I can't just disappear with you right now." Natasha shook her head. "I need to get to Sasha. It can't wait."

Bruce nodded. He wasn't shocked by that response, which he thought was for the best. He saw the way Sasha reacted to the separation—the girl needed Natasha back ASAP. And Natasha probably felt at least some of what Sasha did. After all, these days, they were closer than ever before, and Natasha didn't get close to many people. He imagined that made those people pretty important.

"I have no idea where she is," he admitted. Everybody pretty much ran off in the direction of their choice once they landed.

★★★

Alex sprinted through the streets, dodging the chaos of people and their cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic trying to escape. She searched for stragglers, anyone who didn't appear to be heeding the Avengers' warning, although there weren't many. When a team of internationally recognized superheroes showed up and told you what to do, you generally did it. There was also the fact that robots had begun ripping through the earth to terrorize the city.

She spotted her father standing on the middle of a bridge, fending off the robots and yelling at people to go. Alex sped up, moving so quickly that even her enhanced heart had trouble keeping up. He needed her help, and she needed to see him.

Alex finally reached the bridge. She hopped over a couple cars that were at a standstill to get into the street and made it about halfway before Steve noticed her. Then the ground beneath her began to quake. She didn't know what was happening, but when the ground was shaking violently, a bridge was usually the worst place to be.

"Alex!" Steve yelled, his eyes wide.

There wasn't any time to think. Alex holstered her guns and broke into a run, bolting across the roofs of cars to get to her father. The bridge started cracking up ahead. She leaped off of a pickup truck just as the street crumbled, grabbing onto a piece of metal jutting out of the other side. As she hung over the widening gap between Sokovia and the rest of Earth, the only thing keeping her from falling to her death was her hands gripping a thin rod of metal that used to keep the bridge sturdy. For a few seconds, she made the mistake of looking down. She really should have run the other way.

Slowly, Alex slid her hands across the metal to move herself closer to the section of the bridge still standing. Once she got close enough, she planned to swing her legs onto the sidewalk and pull herself up that way, but then a hand reached down. Alex looked up and saw Steve standing over her. She grabbed it with her right hand and let him pull her up. When her feet were steady on the ground, she threw her arms around him.

"Alexandra Sarah Carter, don't you ever do that again," Steve said into her ear.

"I make no promises," Alex answered. Her eyes went wide. "Incoming!"

She pulled away from him and fired two shots at the robot that had appeared behind Steve. Apparently, she hit a bullseye. The thing fell to the ground, and for good measure, Alex jammed her foot into its neck and broke its head off. She kicked it over the ledge. Steve watched in shock; sometimes he forgot she was a trained assassin with the same abilities as him.

"We should probably get going," Alex suggested. "They're going to need all the help they can get."

"Good idea."

They ran into the city side by side. Steve spoke into his comms.

"Stark, you worry about bringing the city back down safely," he said. He met Alex's eyes. "The rest of us have one job: tear these things apart. You get hurt, hurt them back. You get killed, walk it off."