A faint beeping noise could be heard, bothering Marlena terribly. She forced her eyes open, though the light shining brightly above her caused her to shy away. She turned on her side, immediately realizing she was on the floor, which confused her slightly. The last thing she remembered was being in the tower with Steve and Bucky...and Kellan. Kellan had taken her and she wasn't sure how. The only thing she was sure of was the anger burning through her veins. No matter what, she never seemed to be able to catch a break.

Marlena groaned in pain and sat up, raising her hand to her aching head. She examined her surroundings quickly and was immediately met with a dreadful sense of familiarity. She was almost positive she knew where she was, but she wasn't allowed the time to think on it.

Marlena found her misty reflection in the glass she seemed to be trapped behind, and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying desperately to make sense of what the hell was going on. She opened her eyes again, her focus falling on her reflection once more. Marlena continued to rub her aching head, but as she did, she watched her reflection remove the hand from her head, and she immediately found herself in a heap of confusion.

"What the—?" she whispered to herself, squinting her eyes as if to get a better look at whatever was going on in front of her. She was sure she was hallucinating, but little did she know that was the farthest from what was happening.

"Boo!"

Marlena's reflection jumped forward, startling the brunette tremendously. Marlena backed herself into the wall of what she figured was her holding cell, while her reflection laughed and stood up. The door to her cell opened, and Marlena's reflection, who she was beginning to think wasn't her reflection, stepped into the small room, closing and locking the door behind her. Marlena couldn't believe her eyes. She wasn't sure who she was looking at, whether it be a clone or a real person. All she was sure of was that this person—this woman—looked exactly like her. It was strange to say the least, so strange that Marlena couldn't even begin to comprehend it. In her life, she'd seen her fair share of strange, but this had to be number one on her list.

"Wow, I've been waiting to do that for years." The woman laughed and sat down in a chair at the opposite end of the room; even their voices were the same, though this woman's accent was broken between American and thick Russian. "I definitely have to go back and rewatch that later."

Marlena couldn't think or speak. All she could do was sit and stare at the woman in front of her. She was visibly in shock, but rightfully so.

"Are you alright?" The woman asked Marlena, her brow raised. "You're looking a bit pale."

"I just, um—" Marlena couldn't even finish her sentence. Her mind was way too muddled to conjure an appropriate response to whatever was happening.

"Are you actually going to speak or are we just going to sit here and waste my time?" the woman asked with a groan.

"This isn't possible." Marlena swallowed the lump in her throat and shook her head. "Who are you?" Marlena couldn't find her way inside the woman's head, so she could only assume she was the telepath that controlled Kellan. It seemed to make sense, but at the same time Marlena wasn't sure what to think.

The woman laughed again and leaned forward in her seat, her hazel eyes meeting Marlena's own. "Are you serious? I figured the identical face would be a dead give away."

"You—you're Alena," Marlena spoke with a hint of realization in her tone.

"Alena Viktorovna Chernova to be exact, but yes, I am," she told Marlena with a smirk on her face. "It is so nice to finally meet you, Marlena."

"I can't believe this." Marlena was stunned over the confirmation. In that instant, she had the answers to questions she never even thought to ask. She no longer needed to question Rumlow's out-of-date recognition of her, and up until now she hadn't really taken Tony's joke regarding her "evil twin" seriously. Everything made sense, but at the same time nothing did. "I've been trying to figure out who you are..."

"Believe me, I know." Alena rolled her eyes. "And I do have to say it's about time. It only took you 20 years."

"B-but how?" Marlena stammered over her words. She couldn't seem to believe what was happening. "H-how is this even possible?"

"What? That you have a twin?" Alena chuckled quietly and started picking away at her sleek black nail polish. "You're surrounded by them! Wanda and Pietro aren't the first set the Claire family's seen, Marlena, and they definitely won't be the last."

This woman, Alena, was Marlena's twin, or at least that was what she was being told. Sure, the two looked exactly alike and spoke exactly the same, give or take a difference in their accent, but it all still confused Marlena. How had she never known she had a twin? At this point, Tony trying to clone her made more sense.

"It can't be possible," Marlena uttered to herself. She was in denial. She'd been questioning her life for days, even more so after the conversation with her mom, but now that she had a solid answer her life was never as it seemed, she found a certain comfort in not knowing anything at all.

"I'm going to assume Stark never mentioned anything to you," Alena hummed and raised a brow. "Well, how could you expect him to tell you the truth when your own parents couldn't?"

"What do you mean?" Marlena asked, her brows furrowed in confusion. "What does Tony have to do with any of this?"

"A good bit," Alena chuckled dryly and shrugged her shoulders. "He's one of the main reasons I was never able to get to you. He found out about me not too long after Miranda was killed, and he's been protecting you since. But now he's gone, and you're here, so I'd say things worked wonderfully in my favor."

Marlena still didn't know what to say. If what Alena said was true, Marlena wasn't sure how Tony was able to keep such a secret from her or why he would to begin with. If at one point in time Marlena was to accidentally uncover such a crucial detail about the life of someone she loved, she knew she'd let them know, but the circumstances had obviously been different for Tony. She wanted to be upset with him, the same way she was upset with her mom for being dishonest with her, but she couldn't. All Tony ever tried to do for Marlena over the years was protect her, despite how unusual his tactics often proved to be. Regardless, she planned on saving her anger for someone else, someone who'd been responsible for helping tear apart her world five years ago.

"I just—I don't understand," Marlena practically whispered.

"Then perhaps I can help you," Alena chimed happily. She seemed way too excited for the opportunity to completely tear apart Marlena's world.

"How do you intend on doing that?" Marlena asked quietly, scooting towards the small bed at the opposite end of the room. She was trying to create as much distance between her and Alena as possible. There was no telling what her intentions could be, and Marlena wasn't looking forward to finding out, at least not before figuring a way out of the mess she'd found herself in.

"By telling you everything your parents and Stark never had the decency to tell you about who you really came from," Alena answered matter-of-factly. "I mean, I'm sure by now you've managed to figure out Miranda isn't your mother..."

"Obviously..." Marlena was visibly upset over the confirmation. It was almost unbelievable, as she never would've thought differently of Miranda Claire.

"Our mother was Anastasia, and she was one of Hydra's elite agents," Alena began explaining to Marlena. "In 1993, they sent her and several other agents to the United States on a mission to infiltrate the military. There she met our father and decided a life being bound by Hydra was no longer what she wanted. She deserted the organization and her mission and found out she was pregnant a few months later. She located our father soon after to inform him of the pregnancy. By that time, he and your mom were already back together. They became the only two to know about Anastasia's pregnancy, or at least that's what she thought."

"What do you mean?" Marlena questioned, her brows furrowed.

"Well, we don't all have Tony Stark to keep us safe from Hydra," Alena remarked, a slight smirk on her face. "It was discovered only during our birth that Anastasia was pregnant with twins. An undercover agent posing as a nurse took advantage of this. You were given to our father, who still knew nothing of my existence, and I was taken and given to Hydra. Anasatasia—she died due to complications from our birth, but I believe she was killed for her desertion."

"So, she's dead?"

"Precisely, but is that really so important?" Alena stood up, her hazel eyes on Marlena. "Just be grateful you got the good life, Marlena. You got to go home and live your happy little life in Washington, while I was forced to kill my way through life. But don't worry—I wouldn't expect you to understand anything about that."

There was a certain bitterness in Alena's tone Marlena didn't miss. Alena spoke almost as if she were jealous of Marlena, or rather envious, and she wondered if that was the reason why all this had happened. "Is that what all of this has been about? Is that why you took the twins and made the last five years of my life a living hell? Because you blame me for what happened to you?"

"I wouldn't say I blamed you in particular, but I can't just sit back and act like you didn't get everything I ever dreamed of having." Alena was getting emotional, though she tried desperately to conceal it. Seeing Marlena was something of a dream to her, but as she stood there looking into the hazel eyes that mirrored her own, she was pulled back into the nightmare that was once her life and reminded of the anger that'd been burning through her veins for three agonizing decades.

"You got to grow up with a family that actually cared about you," Alena continued, her tone grim and almost threatening. "My family only cared about what they could make out of me. The only good thing they ever did was give me back my father."

Marlena raised a brow at the sound of her words, but was otherwise intrigued by the possible meaning of them. "What do you mean by that?"

"The answer to that question is pretty interesting, and it very well might just be the best part of all this." Alena laughed quietly as she thought over the words she was getting ready to say. She was about to completely change Marlena's entire world, and she found a certain joy in knowing that. "When we were eleven, our father did find out about me, and when he found out about me, he found out about Hydra too. After so many years he finally came to get me, but he and his men didn't get too far."

"Yeah, they killed him," Marlena responded, the sadness seeping into her body at the mere thought of her father's death. She could see the footage inside her head as if she was watching it again for the first time. "The Winter Soldier killed him."

"And that's why this is the best part of the story," Alena laughed again. "They never killed him."

"What?"

"Our father had his mission, but Hydra also had theirs," Alena told Marlena, crossing her arms over her chest. "And that mission was to capture Lieutenant Colonel James Claire."

"No, that can't be right." Marlena quickly shook her aching head and moved to sit on the uncomfortable mattress of the bed behind her. "I saw it, I heard it..."

"You saw and heard whatever Hydra wanted you to," Alena informed her. "The man who helped raised me—our Uncle Viktor—he knew exactly who our father was. Viktor couldn't kill him knowing who he was to me, but he also couldn't risk him becoming a liability to Hydra, so the solution he sought was to capture him and let him live out the rest of his life just like me—a prisoner to Hydra."

"So, you're saying my dad's alive?"

"Pretty much," Alena replied nonchalantly, moving to sit back down in her chair across the room. "He's been in cryostasis on-and-off over the years due to his deteriorating mental state, but he's as alive as it gets."

Marlena was met with an immediate sense of relief. After all these years of believing her dad to have been dead, knowing he wasn't made her much happier than she thought she would be, but she couldn't seem to get past the endless anger she felt. There was a massive piece of her life missing—a piece in which the faces of her children and her father were simply blurred.

"Well, I guess Hydra knew what they were doing when they taught you how to ruin someone else's life." Marlena chuckled bitterly and shook her head as she thought over everything she wanted to say. She wanted to feel bad that Alena spent her life as a prisoner to Hydra, but she couldn't seem to get past the years she'd lost because of her. It was a complicated situation with even more complex emotions involved.

Marlena's words, however, seemed to elicit a negative emotional response from Alena, and it could be seen through the vibrant blue that flashed inside her hazel irises. The sight was a lot less shocking than Marlena thought it would be with her knowledge of Alena's telepathic abilities, but it was still so strange, nonetheless.

Despite the angered expression on Alena's face, however, Marlena still had more to say. There were still questions she needed answers to, such as why Alena decided to take Charlie and Jay from her to begin with.

"Why did you take the twins from me?" Marlena asked before Alena could even think of a response to her previous words.

"I took them so I could get to you," Alena finally answered. "I just wasn't aware that'd take another five years."

A new question then popped into Marlena's mind, one that made her furious when she imagined one of the two answers she might receive. "D-did you h-hurt them? Because if you did, I promise a lifetime of torment at the hands of Hydra is nothing compared to what I'll do to you."

"And here I thought you were too soft for your own good," Alena chuckled quietly, completely dismissing Marlena's question. It wasn't a laughing matter to Marlena, however, and she was quick to let her know.

With a swift movement, Marlena had Alena trapped beneath the strength of her abilities. She stood up slowly from her spot on the mattress and focused her energy solely on the woman in front of her.

"This isn't a joke to me," Marlena spoke, her tone serious and filled with anger. "I don't know what game you think you're playing, but I don't care who you are to me. What did you do to my children?"

Alena was initially shocked Marlena actually decided to use her abilities, but was otherwise unbothered. Sure Marlena was strong, but Alena was trained to be stronger, or so she believed. Regardless, she had no issue showing Marlena just how strong she truly was.

Without bothering to answer Marlena's question, Alena worked her way out of her sister's grasp by locating a weak spot within the energy encasing her body. It wasn't too hard, as she knew Marlena was still weak from her unexpected journey with Kellan. She raised her glowing hand, and as her hold grew tighter, Marlena's grew weaker.

"We might have the same face, the same voice, the same eyes, and even the same power, but we are complete opposites in strength," Alena said to Marlena with a contemptuous smile spread across her face. "Condescension is not a good look on you, Marlena. You are not above me...not here."

"Let me out of here and we'll find out who's above who then," Marlena shot back, wincing slightly at the paralyzing effect of Alena's telekinetic abilities. Her threat left the brunette absolutely unfazed, however. She had Marlena right where she wanted, and she planned to keep her there.

"Yeah, probably not."

Alena walked over to Marlena, who was still trapped within her energy, and pulled a syringe from her pocket. She uncapped it and shoved the needle into Marlena's arm before finally releasing her.

"I found your suppressors by the way." Alena smirked at the sight of Marlena on the floor and placed the syringe on the desk behind her. "Courtesy of Tony Stark."

"I'm gonna kill you." Marlena grumbled as the effects of the suppressors wreaked havoc on her body. She was so sick of everything going on. She was ready to lose her mind.

"I don't think you are, Mar." Alena winked at Marlena and walked over to open her cell door. "You and I both know it's not really your style."

Marlena didn't say anything. She simply growled under her breath and watched Alena disappear. Someone was about to find out exactly how weak Marlena wasn't.

Author's Note: Okay, so Alena's very specific introduction was obviously inspired by Pretty Little Liars. Her character and the idea of her character, however, was not. I've been planning/writing this book since before Infinity War came out. This ENTIRE book was originally meant to be centered around the twins being taken, Marlena looking for them, and finding out the truth about her family along the way, but with the Infinity War/Endgame storyline I had to eliminate a good chunk of story so I do apologize if this isn't very fulfilling.