KillSwitch ─ s. rogers ✓

twelve

ALEX was a little scared that she would do something stupid and accidentally terrify these people. The knife on its own was enough, and she didn't want to push her luck any further. She took special care not to move aggressively, figuring it would probably look bad if the wounds Sasha slashed in her back started pouring. She also only had the clothes she was wearing, so bleeding through them wasn't an option.

Once Alex stepped inside and the woman shut the door, there was a moment of awkward silence.

"I'm Elizabeth," the woman said finally. "Michael's wife."

"I'm Alexandra," Alex answered, as if that wasn't clear. "Alex."

She looked down at her shoes and bit the inside of her lip. Michael looked at her warily. His eyes flickered to his wife, who gave him The Look™ and led Alex into the living room. She gestured to a worn chair upholstered with a rather hideous floral fabric, and Alex hesitated a little before taking the cue and sitting down.

For whatever reason, it occurred to Alex that she hadn't sat down on something that wasn't cement, pavement, metal, or wood in years. It was such a random thought, as if sleeping on a cement floor was the greatest of her problems, but at the same time, it was symbolic of everything she lost. Looking around the room, she realized just how much disappeared from her life when Hydra took her captive. You could immediately tell that it was a place where people lived. The room was small, but it held two chairs, a couch, a scratched-up glass-topped coffee table, and a fireplace. There were faint stains on the rug, and the upholstery of the furniture was worn. Crooked framed photos hung from the walls, some smaller ones sitting on top of the fireplace. Alex could have been a part of this life. She could have had a life like this.

She wondered just how much she missed. She recognized her mother and her stepfather in some of the photos, and there were a couple of herself and Michael, but many of them featured kids and adults she didn't recognize. Some photos were black and white; the ones in color must have been more recent.

"Are these..." Alex gestured around awkwardly. "The photos...kids? Grandkids?"

"Yes." Michael stepped up to the fireplace and picked up a photo of himself and Elizabeth with their three kids, two girls and a boy. "Both." He pointed to the older girl. "Margaret." Then to the boy. "Kenny." Then to the smallest girl. "Alexandra."

Alex's eyes shot wide open. Guilt turned her stomach upside down. It wasn't her decision to be taken by Hydra, but it still felt like her fault. Her disappearance caused so much pain. Hearing that one of Michael's kids had her name in some kind of memoriam constricted her throat. She swallowed, but the sides of her throat wouldn't come apart.

"Oh my god," she whispered. A few tears slipped down her cheeks.

"Maybe we should get to that later."

Alex couldn't thank Elizabeth enough. Elizabeth and Michael took a seat on the couch, watching Alex's every move.

"I guess I should start from the beginning," Alex said after a moment of silence. Elizabeth and Michael nodded. "My memories of life before Hydra were wiped, but they're starting to come back. They're still pretty fuzzy." She exhaled heavily. "I left Jacqueline's house. I was walking down the sidewalk, and someone was following me. He came up behind me and grabbed me, and he injected me with something. The next thing I knew, I was across the world, and they were dragging me into this big, cold, metal facility. They forced me down and drew a lot of blood. Then they threw me into a cement room that I wasn't allowed to leave for over a month. All I could do was scrape out drawings on the wall with a broken-off piece of cement.

"They weren't able to recreate the super serum from my blood, so they decided to weaponize me, just like they did with the Winter Soldier. They wiped my brain. They told me my name was KillSwitch, and that I was going to kill for Hydra. The Soldier trained me to fight and to kill. He and I spent a lot of time together, and even though he'd been brainwashed too, he was more human than everyone else in Hydra combined." She shook her head. "I already miss him. It probably sounds strange, but he was all I had to stay sane.

"I killed for Hydra. I did so many terrible things that I've lost track of the number, but I remember all of them so well, and they always haunt me. They took me out of cryosleep—how they kept me and the Soldier alive for so long—had me kill, and put me under again. That was it, until everything that happened recently. This girl...she told me my real name, and it sort of triggered my memories. She, Captain America, and his friends took down Hydra, and they released all of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra's files onto the Internet. If you want, you can access them to confirm this." Alex swallowed. "The Soldier—Bucky is his real name—wanted to run, but I wanted to figure everything out. He ran, and I hung back. I, um..." Her face turned red with guilt and humiliation. "I stole this outfit to blend in. I asked around, and people told me to go to the library, so I found it. I searched up my name, which was when I found the file that had my father's name, and I found this older article with the whole story about what happened after I disappeared. It gave your name, so I searched it up, and...you happened to live in the area. I got directions and walked over. I just...I didn't know what else to do."

There was a long period of silence. Nobody knew what to say. Three minutes passed, and Michael opened his mouth.

"Wow." He didn't have words. "I never...I never thought that would be a possibility. I...I'm so sorry. I can't even wrap my head around this. It still makes no sense, but...I need time to process this."

"Yeah." Alex looked down at the floor. She sighed. "Is my—our—mother still..." She was terrified of the answer. "Is she still alive?"

Michael nodded.

"She has severe Alzheimer's, and she's barely lucid, but she's alive. She lives in a nursing home."

The nursing home part seemed pretty cut and dry, but Alex had never heard the first part.

"Alzheimer's...?"

"It essentially means that she has severe memory loss and confusion a lot of the time," Elizabeth explained. "She has periods where she can recognize people and recall certain things, but they're few and far between, and they don't last long. Steve...your father contacted us. He's seen her a couple times."

"Can I see her?" Alex asked. "After that, I don't know what I'll do, but I want...need to see her, even if she has no idea who I am."

Michael and Elizabeth shared a look. Alex slid to the edge of her chair, bouncing her leg up and down.

"Yes." Michael sighed. "I don't understand any of this, and I need time, but you deserve to visit her, and she deserves to see you. She deserves to know that you're okay."