KillSwitch ─ s. rogers ✓

seventeen

AFTER Steve's phone blew up with dozens of texts from Tony, he and Alex took a paternity test. The results came back exactly the way the two of them expected; Steve Rogers was the father of one Alexandra Carter. Even though Steve was prepared for that answer, it still nearly bowled him over. Finding out you had a daughter you didn't know about was startling news in itself. Combined with the fact that this girl had been alive for nearly seventy years but was still both a child and a trained assassin, it was pure heart attack material. Although in all honesty, it probably would have been even weirder if Alex was nearly seventy.

Temporarily, Alex was borrowing some of Sasha's clothes. Luckily, they were relatively similar heights, and Sasha tended to go for baggier tops. She also had a supply of leggings, but she didn't wear those much anyway. Unfortunately, some things just couldn't be shared, so Steve passed that task onto Natasha, staring awkwardly at the floor while the girls did their thing. As bad as he felt doing that, he was not quite ready for the shopping-and-Victoria's Secret part of having a daughter. He also nearly had a heart attack when he looked at some price tags. Alex did too. A pair of skinny jeans for forty bucks was criminal. She did her best to stick to the clearance section, because no way in hell was she spending that kind of money if she didn't need to.

Even though Steve's wallet did take a slight hit, he didn't mind. He liked seeing the small smile on Alex's face when she came out of a dressing room and admired whatever she was wearing, her clothing not only a symbol of her new life, but of their new life. When Peggy was lucid, confused as she still was, she seemed happy with what she was seeing. Knowing that their daughter would never know her father always ate her up inside. Whether what she was looking at was reality or a hallucination, it was all she ever wanted for Alex.

Ultimately, the item of greatest importance to Steve and Alex was getting to know each other. They wanted to know everything. The good, the bad, the ugly. In order to do so, they decided that every night at seven, they would sit down and talk about themselves for a little while.

Steve also wanted to make an imprint on this kid before Sasha could. As much as he'd secretly grown to appreciate Sasha's charm, he wasn't too crazy about the idea of his daughter picking up on saying things like, "what an absolute fuckwit," and, "hand me that computer. We're going to commit a crime."

"The main hobby I've always had is drawing," Alex told Steve. "I liked to read and all, but I liked drawing much better. I was a quiet kid when I was younger. Drawing meant that I could observe the world and the people in it without actually speaking to them."

Whenever she spoke, Steve took notice of the hints of an English accent in her voice. If he listened closely, Alex sounded like she was someone from England doing a solid American accent. Near perfect, but some words just couldn't be masked.

"I just kind of sat around and watched," Alex went on. "I was only ten when I...when Hydra took me, so I wasn't any Van Gogh, but I guess I was okay.  After that, I found ways to keep drawing. I would break a piece of cement or something off a wall and scrape something out on the floor. That's all I did for the first month or so after Hydra took me, since I was just locked in a room."

"What?"

"Yeah. When I first got there, they didn't want me as an assassin. They wanted to take my blood to recreate the serum. The stuff they kept making from the Sol—from Bucky's blood sample had a bad effect on people, so since I have the blood of a success story, I guess they figured that maybe it would go better with me. Just in case, though, they kept me locked in this cinder block and cement room." She looked down and played with the ends of her hair. "I didn't see the sun. I wasn't allowed to leave. And there was literally nothing else in the room. It was just the cement floor, the walls, a reinforced door, and me. So I just did whatever I could to maintain my sanity."