𝐀𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 | 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬

Winters' Fall

"Your entire life is still there."

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

'Just introduce yourself and tell them the situation, Seren, it's not that hard.'

Seren rolled her eyes. Leaning back in her seat, she gazed ahead at the screen where Tony's face was. He was lucky he was behind that screen and not sitting with her in the plane because she wouldn't have been able to guarantee his safety at that moment.

"If it was so easy, why didn't you fly out to Malibu instead?" she raised an eyebrow at him.

"We've been over this. You're the people person in this team," Tony answered, to his credit, smoothly. "Steve swore by it too, you know."

Seren cocked her head to the side, eyes narrowing suspiciously. "I don't see him on the screen—is he still alive?"

"Oh c'mon Twinkle Star, you've only been flying for 2 hours. We're not that bad."

Seren would've loved to be that confident but she couldn't deny the genuine fear she had leaving Steve and Tony in the same room for more than an hour. They were working on their relationship, true, but she was leaving them for a lot longer than an hour. It made her nervous...

"I'm going to do what I can but I just don't think it'll go well for me if I announce myself as the agent who introduced Chloe to S.H.I.E.L.D., the place who is now hunting Chloe," she said to Tony.

"Well, don't introduce yourself like that then," he said with a shrug.

Seren deadpanned the man. "That's literally what happened."

"Just say you're Chloe's best friend. I guarantee that'll get you in through the door. Treat it as an undercover mission, Soul."

Seren was about to point out that it would be a downright paradox but Tony chose that moment to end the transmission. She leaned against her seat, trying in vain to relax. There was no way she could relax even for a bit knowing what was coming.

~0~

It was a breezy kind of day in Malibu, but then again it was always breezy near the Californian coastline. Seren had a few missions there to know that.

She came up to a pretty village-esque house that, while looking like almost every other house down the block, stood out to her with its stark white painting and beautiful colorful flowers growing all over the front walls. Seren wanted to think that was all Chloe. She had mentioned once or twice to Seren that she used to have quality mother-daughter time doing the gardening. Seren eyed the small porch garden lining the door and smiled softly.

I'm going to get you some of that mother-daughter gardening time, she thought.

Drawing in a breath, and the determination to see her promise through, Seren walked up to the door and knocked. She had very little time to come up with a reasonable introduction when the door opened up.

A blonde woman in a pretty sunflower patterned apron stood on the other side. Seren immediately recognized her from all the pictures she had seen in the past. Charlotte Winters smoothed out the sides of her apron and greeted Seren with a polite smile. "Yes, can I help you?"

"Um, my name's...Seren Soul. I'm...well, it's sort of..." Seren looked around the street and while there weren't a lot of people, she still felt like what she needed to talk about had to be done more privately. In most cases, she would just show her SHIELD badge and things would start rolling off immediately. Even that was different now.