DIVINE RETRIBUTION │barnes ²

fifteen

𝐀 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐂𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 (𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐄𝐕𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐈𝐀)

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𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗛𝗢𝗨𝗦𝗘 𝗪𝗔𝗦 𝗗𝗔𝗥𝗞, devoid of any lights at half past three in the morning. From across the room, Sharon's phone rang once, twice, three times, before the former SHIELD agent groggily creeps over to where it lay charging.

'Carter,' she announced herself as a way of greeting.

'Sharon. It's Steve. Wake Evgenia up and turn the TV on. I don't think she'll want to miss this.'

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'Mama! Mamochka!'

The curly haired child barreled into Natasha at top speed, almost knocking the redhead back as she clutched her mother's waist with all the strength she had, which was quite a lot.

Natasha lent down to place a kiss on her head. 'Privet Zhenulya. I can't breathe.'

'Ty khorosho? Lyudi v poryadke?' Are you ok? Are the people ok?

'Some casualties. And Bruce disappeared shortly after Maximoff killed Ultron. You saw? On TV?'

'Yes, Sharon woke me up and we watched you fight like a badass! And we saw Rhodey and Uncle Sam!' She said, responding with such enthusiasm that only a kid could have.

Zhenya notices that Natasha ignores her bad language.

'And how were the Carters? Does the younger one share enough life experience with you to be your friend?' Natasha presses the button for the elevator.

'Actually yes. Hestia is nice and funny and she had some guns in the basement that we spent all of last night loading and clearing. And she speaks Russian!'

The door to the lift open with a fluroscent ding! and Zhenya walks in, her arms still tightly coiled around her limping mother. There's a comfortable silence as they descend and Evgenia catches her breath from speaking so quickly.

She replays her mother's words in her head. 'What do you mean Uncle Bruce is missing?'

'We can't contact him. He was last seen in the quinjet but we haven't been able to find a location.'

The redhead takes the lead and walks out of the elevator and towards the residences. There's a long pause as Natasha fumbles for the key card, cautious as to not hit a growing bruise on her hip, but she soon gives up and presses her hand against the keypad.

'When you were missing,' Zhenya kicks off her shoes and stretches her bionic leg, 'He ran some tests for where I got the Super Soldier Serum from.'

Natasha looks at her in interest from where she now stands in the kitchen and quickly catches on. 'There are two other people in the world with the serum.'

'I know. And I said it would be super weird if Steve turned out to be my papa.' Zhenya pulls a face at that.

She couldn't see anyone else other than her papa being her blood. The man had raised her, despite everything that he had gone through - that they had gone through. He had been there for her when she lost her first tooth, when she cried after a particularly gruesome mission and all the times that she had woken up from a nightmare.

And as she stood next to the woman she called her mother, Evgenia couldn't help but feel her heart long for the father that had gone suffered so much and was possibly still suffering.

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Two months after the end of the whole Ultron saga, Tony Stark appeared at the door of the Romanova household, a small piece of paper in his hand.

He knocked sharply on the oak door twice, leaning against the slight angle of the wall. His signature shaded sunglasses were balanced on the end of his nose so when Zhenya opened the door, he peered down at her like an assertive detective.

'Mama's not here.'

'I'm not here for Nat,' he pushes his way past her and into the living room, his newly polished shoes squeaking against the marble tiles. Tony snatches an apple from the kitchen island. 'Paternity test is back, Carmen Cortez!'

Evgenia grabs the yellowed file out of Tony's other hand, eyeing him as she plops herself onto a beanbag. 'You ate the sticker.'

'Huh?' Stark spins the apple around, tongue running along the roof of his mouth. 'Oh yeah, I meant to do that. You gonna open that?'

'I will.'

She's staring at him pointedly now.

'Oh! Oh! Right, yes ok. Privacy.' He launches the half eaten apple into a nearby bin. 'I'm going, I'm going.'

Zhenya watches him leave, waiting until the door closes with a soft click before her fingers rapidly unravel the piece of string and rip the envelope open. The letter instead is snatched from its cocoon. Her eyes travel down the page at lightning speed until they rest on the last sentence. 

In accordance with the results of the conducted tests, it can be determined that James Buchanan Barnes is the biological father of Evgenia Yakovlevna Romanova.

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that's the last chapter of the age of ultron phase my dudes! it was so hard to write this week because i had three assignments and an essay to hand in all before thursday and i'm fucking sick (physically but also mentally) but i hate leaving y'all hanging.