KillSwitch ─ s. rogers ✓

eighteen

"LET'S just go back to the apartment hunt," Steve said, deflated.

"Neat." Alex grinned in an attempt to lift him up. "I want to see what this Internet thing can do."

Her smile reminded Steve of Peggy.

"Alright." He typed "apartments in Brooklyn" into the search bar. Alex watched incredulously as he clicked on Zillow and added all kinds of filters to the search. The power of the Internet had her slack jawed. Steve glanced over at her, smiling to himself a bit when he saw the awe on her face. He looked away before she could catch him and clicked the first apartment that came up.

★★★

At about eight o'clock that night, Alex was out cold. She hadn't slept much the past several days—nightmares—and it finally caught up to her. Steve found her fast asleep on the couch. He scrawled out a note on a piece of paper and put it where she would see it, just in case she woke up. Moving as quietly as possible, Steve slipped out of the apartment.

When Alex awoke the next morning, she found an unopened pack of graphite pencils and a sketchbook on the floor, neither of which had been in the apartment last night. She rolled off of the couch and picked them up. According to the nearest clock—analog, of course—it was a little after five-thirty AM, so Steve was probably awake. She turned around to find Steve sitting at the kitchen table, sipping what appeared to be a mug of tea and reading a good, old-fashioned newspaper.

"Are these yours?" Alex asked, as if there was anyone else they could belong to.

"No," Steve answered. "They're yours."

Alex stared at him in shock.

"You didn't have to. Really."

"I wanted to."

Alex felt so guilty accepting the sketchbook, but she wanted to be able to actually draw again.

"Thank you so much." She grinned. She found it so interesting how much she changed since remembering who she used to be. Alex wasn't KillSwitch anymore. She wasn't Alexandra either. She was just Alex. Maybe Alex could find a way to go to school or something, meet people, get a life.

"Oh." Steve stood up. He got his laptop out of his room and pulled up a page on Zillow. "I found an apartment that could work."

He showed Alex, who nodded; she wasn't picky.

"I like it!"

Luckily, Natasha already helped Steve get ahold of some forged documents for Alex. He hated the idea of faking, but he didn't have the real ones. Even if he did, he doubted he could get away with handing a school a birth certificate from 1945 for Alex. He wanted a chance to help her be a regular person. After the mess Alex's life had been, she finally deserved a taste of having one.