ian

Marvel:

⋆ This Is Fine (And Other Lies I Tell at Work) ✰ AO3

Pairings: John Walker x Bob Reynolds Theme: Officemates, Friends with Benefits Completion: Completed.

⋆ We Don’t Get Paid Enough for This

Pairings: John Walker x Bob Reynolds Theme: Abbot Elementary AU but make it Avengers version. Sitcom. Crackfic. Completion: Coming Soon.

⋆ When the Silence Break: Part One Part Two ✰ AO3

Pairings: John Walker x Bob Reynolds Theme: Criminal Minds AU Completion: Completed

⋆ The Man, The Myth, The Hip Roll

Pairings: John Walker x Bob Reynolds Completion: Completed.

⋆ Wish You Weren’t My Type (But You Are)

Pairings: John Walker x Bob Reynolds Completion: Completed.

⋆ Therapist Says I'm Fine (He's Lying)

Pairings: John Walker x Bob Reynolds Completion: Completed.

⋆ Spike Me Once, Shame on You

Pairings: John Walker x Bob Reynolds Completion: Completed.

⋆ You, Me, and Our Little Brothers

Pairings: Sam Wilson x Bucky Barnes, Joaquin Torres & Bob Reynolds Completion: Completed.

⋆ It’s a Medical Emergency (And He’s the Cause)

Pairings: John Walker x Bob Reynolds Completion: Ongoing.

⋆ I Think I’ve Known You Before

Pairings: John Walker x Bob Reynolds Completion: Completed.

⋆ May the Best Man Wins

Pairings: John Walker x Bob Reynolds Completion: Completed.

⋆ We Got Married

Pairings: John Walker x Bob Reynolds Completion: Completed.

⋆ Dead Boys Don't Stay Alive

Pairings: John Walker x Bob Reynolds Theme: The Umbrella Academy inspired. Completion: Ongoing.

⋆ What We Break to be Golden

Pairings: John Walker x Bob Reynolds, Minor Johnny Storm x Bob Reynolds, Minor Yelena Belova x Kate Bishop Theme: Olympo inspired. Completion: Ongoing.

Warnings: Homophobia, Explicit smut scenes, Public Sex, Voyeurism, Brief Violence, Mentions of blood and bruise

Word Count: 2,392

Miss Ian's Masterlist | Dead Boys Don't Stay Alive Masterlist | AO3

Chapter 1: We Were Seven

The first thing you notice is the heat. It drips down the cracked New York pavement like melted crayons, thick with smoke, gasoline, and something weirdly sweet — artificial vanilla? Burned jellybeans? A marshmallow inferno devouring a half-condemned candy factory.

Sirens wail from somewhere way too far away — stuck behind a garbage truck, probably.

Inside, the fire climbs fast. Molten sugar hisses like snakes. Someone’s yelling, but it’s hard to tell if it’s a grown-up or just another criminal regretting all their life choices.

Then a second-story window explodes —

—and John Walker, age seven, flies out of it like a rocket-powered dodgeball.

He doesn’t fall. He dives . Arms tucked. Eyes squinty with determination. A crackling blue shield slams into place on his forearm mid-air. When he hits the pavement, the ground ripples with a thoomf like a dropped piano, and one of the suspects — who definitely picked the wrong day to be alive — goes flying into a rusty van with a sound that’s mostly “oof.”

John pops up. Grinning. Proud. Dirt on his cheek. “Steal from a children’s charity again, dummy. See what happens.”

Inside the factory — more chaos.

Three knives zing from the rafters like they’ve got homework due — pinning two guys to the wall by their sleeves. One tries to wiggle free. The third blade stops half an inch from his ear.

Bucky Barnes, also seven and very serious about knives , drops to the ground in a swirl of smoke and sugar dust. His boots crunch glass. Four more blades float lazily around him, like they’re waiting for instructions.

“Warehouse clear,” he says into his comm, voice calm and clipped. “They were cooking synthetic sugar into knockoff stims. It’s super illegal. Like, double-illegal.”

“ Who does that to candy? ” Yelena Belova growls as she kicks open a truck trailer like she’s storming a pirate ship.

“You want me to torch it now or wait for dramatic poses?” she asks.

“Smash now,” Ava Starr chirps, blinking into existence right beside her. “You pose too much already.”

Ava’s phasing weird again — flickering like a broken lamp, one hand disappearing into a crate before she remembers to stabilize. She glances down.

“Oh. Gross.”

She yanks out a grown man trying to hide under a pile of bubblegum packets.

“He tried to phase with me,” she says, like she’s offended. “He threw up inside the air.”

The man groans and rolls over.

“Space-sick,” Bucky says, nose wrinkling. “Bet he deserved it.”

“Bet he still smells better than you,” Ava fires back.

“Top floor’s about to fall!” someone yells — and then the ceiling does.

With a crash like a vending machine from space, Alexei Shostakov,  also seven years old and still baby-faced, slams through the roof holding a glowing crate marked: “TOP SECRET — DO NOT LICK”

Red light pulses under his skin. He skids across melted gumdrops and powdered sugar, yelling:

“GUYS! THEY MADE MARSHMALLOW GRENADES ! THIS IS AWESOME.”

“You’re way too excited,” Yelena mutters.

Alexei shrugs. “I mean… c’mon. Grenades. ” Then he drops the crate. Loudly.

The air shifts. No breeze. No sound. Just… cold.

And then from the shadows, Antonia Dreykov steps out — hoodie zipped, eyes big and dark, moving with the quiet precision of a kid who listens way more than she talks. Her mouth moves like she’s counting.

She lifts one hand. Points up.

“Above us.”

Every kid tilts their head.

The support beam is groaning. Bending. Glowing red. Fire licks at it like a monster under the bed.

Then it snaps.

Straight toward Ava and Alexei — too fast.

“MOVE—!” John yells, but—

Yelena’s already running.

Her blood whips out in a gleaming red cord, catches the beam mid-fall with a crack of pressure, and yanks it sideways. It slams into a wall. A stack of sugar drums explodes.

Yelena wobbles. Her nose is bleeding. Real blood.

She wipes it on her sleeve. “Ow.”

“You looked cool,” Ava says, eyes wide.

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“ Everybody shut up,” Bucky mutters. “We’ve got sixty seconds.”

Mel’s voice bursts through John’s earpiece — warped and staticky:

“Authorities en route. Extraction advised. Or stay and explain to law enforcement why you incinerated a confectionary.”

John looks around.

Factory: on fire. Bad guys: tied to candy shelves. Team: sticky, sweaty, sugar-dusted chaos gremlins. Status: victorious.

His chest puffs. He’s missing a shoe. His shield is flickering. But he’s grinning like it’s his birthday.

“That’s a win.”

They don’t wait for backup. Don’t high-five. Don’t even realize their hair’s on fire.

But they leave together — boots thudding through syrup puddles, Ava’s flickering trail lighting the way.

Far away, in the west wing of Thunderbolt Academy, Bob Reynolds sits curled under a scratchy blanket, fingers clutching a chipped mug of warm juice. The Academy’s main screen blinks in front of him — coverage from the scene.

He watches them walk through the smoke like baby gods who don’t know what it means yet. His smile is small. And soft.

And just a little bit sad.

The Academy smells like lemon cleaner, warm wiring, and whatever experimental meal the kitchen bots burned that morning.

But for now, it also smells like sweat. And sugar.

The kids burst through the main hall  like someone shouted “free ice cream” — sprinting, stumbling, and tracking a chaotic mixture of dust, frosting (a lot), and the hot-buzz adrenaline of a mission that kind of counts as a win.

Ava phases halfway through the glass door and forgets to un-phase. Yelena follows and bonks her forehead straight into it.  Bucky’s laughing so hard he drops his boot. John claps once — just once — and the sound booms off the walls like a firework.

“We’re gonna get yelled at,” Ava giggles, twirling mid-stride.

“We always get yelled at,” Yelena replies, rubbing her nose. “Might as well earn it.”

John’s tactical shield— smaller, duller than the one he’ll carry later—  fizzles out with a pulse of heat. Antonia ducks under it, braid bouncing behind her, already moving like she knows exactly how to dodge a punch that hasn't been thrown yet.

Alexei’s trailing behind them, arms loaded with confiscated candy.

“You’re gonna share those, right?” Bucky asks.

Alexei pauses. Looks at the pile like it’s a holy artifact.

“…Maybe.”

They’re all seven. Wobbly elbows. Gapped teeth. Giggles layered over growing pains. They wear their uniforms with the total disregard of children who’ve been handed tactical gear and told it was "essential." Yelena has somehow duct-taped her sleeves into a cape. Ava’s boots are on the wrong feet. John’s vest is buttoned perfectly . Antonia’s got chalk marks on her face from practice drills and hasn’t noticed.

They’re not siblings. Not yet. Not officially.

The files say students . Mel says authorized minors under monitored combat development . But something’s shifting.

Bob rounds the corner.

Late again. Crayons on his sleeves, graphite smudged across his cheek, his sketchpad hugged tight to his chest like it might disappear if he lets go.

His hair is sticking up in all directions. His smile’s a second behind the rest.

“Hey,” he says, hopeful.

Six heads swivel.

“Bobby!” Yelena yells, and immediately launches at him in a full-body hug that nearly knocks his sketchpad loose. “You missed everything!”

“I was drawing,” he says, muffled in her shoulder.

Antonia peeks at the pad, then gives him a tiny, crooked thumbs-up. Bucky ruffles his hair on the way past. Alexei tries to hand him a mushed jelly roll with a very serious look, like it’s an offering.

John’s the last to pass. He slows. Looks at Bob a beat longer than necessary.

“You okay?”

Bob nods fast. “I’m good.”

The intercom crackles overhead—Mel’s voice, sterile and amused:

“Gear check complete. Debrief in thirty. Anyone caught hiding gummy bears in their lockers will receive a full nutrient recalibration.”

Groans all around.

Yelena pegs a gummy bear at the nearest speaker. It boinks . John doesn’t laugh. Not out loud. But his mouth twitches.

As the others start tumbling toward the locker room like puppies after a thunderstorm, Bob slows, feet dragging.

He’s not cleared for gear check. No missions. No suits. Not yet.

Still a little too slow. Still… something else.

“I’ll wait here,” he mumbles, more to his sketchpad than anyone else.

But John stops at the door.

“You won’t have to wait long,” he says, not smiling, but gentle . “We’ll be back in ten.”

“I’ll race back,” Ava promises. “I’ll phase through the walls!”

Yelena points two fingers at her own eyes, then at Bob. “I’m watching you,” she says solemnly. “You better not eat all the snacks.”

He laughs, finally. Just a little.

And then they're gone.

Voices echoing down the hallway, footsteps fading, laughter bouncing off the sterile walls like a song that almost got stuck.

Bob stays by the corner.

Sketchpad in hand.

Drawing the moment they left.

That night, they sneak their sleeping bags into Rec Room 2B.

Technically, lights-out is at 20:00. Technically, they’re each assigned identical, too-cold rooms with sheets that smell like bleach and not a single stuffed animal in sight. Technically, they’re not supposed to end up in a snoring, giggling, elbow-in-your-ribs puppy pile on the floor.

But technically?

Nobody stops them.

Yelena grabs the biggest couch first, throws her arms out wide, and loudly declares that everyone needs to respect her personal space — while simultaneously kicking off her socks and smacking John with a pillow. Ava half-phases into a squishy beanbag and refuses to come out, mumbling, “I live here now.” Antonia shows up wrapped like a burrito in a constellation blanket, only her eyes peeking out. Alexei brings cheese crackers, a flashlight, and a sock puppet named Captain Wiggles. Bucky is quietly, methodically constructing a pillow fortress with perfect corners. John sits next to it, pretending he’s on “security detail,” even though he’s yawning so hard his eyes go teary.

And Bob — Bob sits cross-legged in the corner, sketchpad in his lap, drawing all of it. He’s humming under his breath, pencil smudged on his cheek, eyes flicking between his siblings like he’s afraid to miss a moment.

They talk over each other. They laugh too loud. They fall into a mess of tangled limbs and crumbs and warmth.

Bob doesn’t say much, but he smiles the whole time — the kind of quiet, happy smile that sneaks up from inside your chest and lingers at the corners of your mouth. Every now and then, someone tosses a pillow at him, or leans against his shoulder like it’s the most natural thing in the world. It is.

Above them, the ceiling screen glitches through scrambled mission footage — flickering, twenty seconds out of sync. A blurry shot of Yelena tripping Bucky appears. Ava rewinds it. Eight times. Bucky threatens war. Ava offers a cracker as a truce. Antonia’s already asleep, hugging a plastic dagger like it’s a teddy bear.

Then the screen freezes.

It’s Bob — soft-eyed, caught mid-sketch, knees pulled up around a too-big notepad. He’s looking up, just as the camera catches him. That smile on his face — it’s tilted and quiet, like he didn’t mean to smile at all. Like it escaped before he could tuck it away.

John doesn’t say anything. But he watches it. His breathing slows.

Later, the lights are off. The only glow is from the projector, casting a sleepy blue shimmer across the ceiling like ripples in a pond. The air smells like marshmallow crumbs and fabric softener.

They start whispering.

“I bet I’m the oldest,” Ava says proudly. “Probably by a whole minute.”

“That’s not even how birthdays work,” Bucky replies, forehead pressed to a stuffed penguin someone definitely wasn’t supposed to steal from Med Bay.

“We’re clones,” Yelena mumbles, mouth half full of crackers. “Science goblins, all of us.”

“I’m just a big accident,” Alexei says brightly, grinning like it’s the best thing he’s ever been.

They dissolve into that kind of wild, helpless laughter only seven-year-olds can manage — the kind that scrunches your whole face up and makes you forget your lungs. Ava snorts. John hiccups. Antonia sleep-giggles without waking up. Bob lets out this shy, startled kind of laugh, like he forgot he could.

John glances up again.

The screen is still frozen — their first official team photo. They’re standing shoulder to shoulder, arms stiff at their sides, no one smiling. Just uniforms and expectation.

Bob redrew it later. He added stars behind them. Softened their eyes. Gave Yelena dimples she pretended not to like. Drew John’s shield with glowing edges. Fixed the way Antonia’s hood fell over her face. Gave it back to them the way he saw them.

John liked that one better.

Yelena’s half-asleep when she whispers, “We should be something.”

“A team?” Ava murmurs, drowsy and warm.

“No.” Yelena pulls the blanket up over her head. “A family.”

The room goes quiet.

Then, from the other side of the pillow fort:

“…Okay,” Alexei says.

And somewhere between the beanbag and the fortress, Bob whispers, so soft no one hears:

“Yeah. We should.”

Later, when everyone’s asleep — mouths open, arms flopped across each other, the projector blinking its final frame — Bob Reynolds curls deeper under his blanket. His newest sketch is folded carefully beneath his pillow. The paper is wrinkled at the edges, warm from his hands. Pencil lines trace seven small figures in mismatched pajamas, all grinning. One has a sock puppet. One has a plastic knife. One is flickering at the edges like a daydream.

[ Present Time ]

The paper is yellowed at the corners.

Creased where it was folded. Smudged where it’s been handled too many times. A faint line of water damage curls through the edge of Ava’s pajama sleeve. Antonia’s outline is a little faded, like she’s slipping out of the scene.

John stares at it.

He’s sitting alone. Concrete walls. Dim lighting. Dust dancing in the air like it's trying to remember how to be sunlight. The sketch lies open in his lap — the same one Bob hid under his pillow that night. It’s survived fire, frost, time, and John himself.

His thumb drifts over the penciled faces. Yelena’s wild grin. Alexei’s giant hands cradling the sock puppet. Bucky, blurry with motion. Bob — right there in the middle, the only one not looking at the viewer. He’s watching them. Still.

John's throat works around something that never made it into words.

He traces his thumb down to the title. We Were Seven.

End of Chapter 2.

────୨ৎ────

Warnings: 18+ content, Mentions of death

Word Count: 3,428

Miss Ian's Masterlist | Dead Boys Don't Stay Alive Masterlist | AO3

Chapter 1: The Funeral

On the 12th hour of the first day of October 1989, 43 women around the world gave birth.

This was unusual only in the fact that none of these women had been pregnant when the day first began.

Director Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, visionary billionaire and war strategist, resolved to locate and adopt as many of the children as possible.

He got seven of them.

[ Today. ]

John Walker is already drunk when he sees the news.

The motel is the kind you pass on long drives and never admit you stayed in. Yellowed walls. Buzzing fridge. A bed that sounds like it’s negotiating its own funeral.

The bottle he’s holding doesn’t have a label. Just pain.

The TV is on mute. The caption rolls across the screen like a dare:

"Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine confirmed dead after private plane crash—"

He doesn’t need the rest.

The bottle goes airborne. The wall takes the hit.

The silence after is biblical.

He breathes in. Regrets it.

Doesn’t cry. Doesn’t scream.

Just sits there. Drenched in memory and spilled liquor.

The kind of ruin you don’t walk away from—you marinate in it.

Bucky Barnes doesn’t flinch when the message comes.

He’s perched on a rooftop in Brussels. Cigarette smoke curling like a ghost.

His phone buzzes once. The message is short. Final.

“It’s done. She’s gone.”

He doesn’t reply. Doesn’t move.

Below, the world keeps spinning—idiots laughing, trains arriving, everything just… moving.

He pulls out the sketch.

Bob’s. Folded and refolded until it feels like part of him.

He holds it in his glove. Doesn’t open it.

Some things don’t need to be looked at to hurt.

He doesn’t cry. But his breath catches—

—like he’s still not used to breathing without someone else’s permission.

Yelena Belova finds out over a shit croissant.

The job’s done. The blood on her knuckles isn’t hers, which always feels like a win.

The café is quiet. The coffee is burnt.

She’s scrolling through headlines, half-bored, when it pops up: "Thunderbolt Matriarch Valentina de Fontaine Dies at 64."

She stares.

Then tears the croissant in half like it insulted her mother.

Closes the app.

There’s no one to tell. No one who’d get it.

She sits there anyway.

Letting the bitter coffee scald her tongue and wondering why satisfaction feels so much like grief with its mask off.

Ava Starr sees it in three places at once.

In one timeline, she’s elbow-deep in circuitry in Kuala Lumpur.

In another, she’s arguing with a past self who still believes in chain of command.

In the last, she’s a child in a backyard that never existed, listening to Bob laugh like the sun is coming through his voice.

Across all three: "de Fontaine, Dead at Last."

Time skips a beat.

Ava laughs. Just once. Small. Sharp.

Then vanishes like a dropped signal.

Gone from all three moments—

as if her grief’s got better things to do.

Alexei Shostakov gets a letter with no sender.

It shows up on the table like a ghost. The envelope looks dug up, not mailed.

Inside: a photograph.

Valentina’s coffin. Closed. Polished. Pretending to be peaceful.

He stares.

Then turns toward the seven empty chairs at his table.

One is Bob’s.

Still untouched. Still sacred.

He places the photo in the center like a warning. Or a dare.

And waits for the house to feel less haunted.

(It doesn’t.)

Antonia Dreykov knew before the plane ever left the ground.

She saw it—on astral planes, in split timelines, in the mirror on a Wednesday.

She felt the engine stall. Felt Valentina’s fear thread through her ribs like wire.

She wrote it down. Burned it all.

The ashes told the same story.

So when the message comes, she doesn’t answer.

She writes a note. Folds it in the style Bob used to—sharp creases, quiet hands.

Leaves it on the sill.

Watches the wind try to carry it away.

She doesn’t mourn.

She prepares.

Because the storm is coming home.

The Thunderbolt Academy doesn’t breathe anymore.

It used to — in that eerie, half-sentient way buildings sometimes do. Bones in the walls, creaking with the cold. Radiators groaning in protest through winter. Lights humming overhead like a lullaby no one trusted. A body pretending to be a home.

But now? Now the house feels hollowed out. Stripped of its marrow. It sits still — not abandoned, not dead, just waiting . Like a wound that never clotted. Like something patient and angry in the dark.

The wrought-iron gates still stand — jagged teeth rusted in place. They don’t open unless commanded, and no one’s left to give the order. The security drones twitch in their nests, optics flickering like dying stars. The hedges are trimmed, still, by unseen hands. But dead things cling to them anyway — feathers, cobwebs, a child’s sneaker sun-bleached and forgotten. One marble lion at the entrance is cracked down the middle, as if it split trying to roar.

No one's touched the front door since the day Valentina de Fontaine stopped breathing.

Weeks ago. Maybe years. Time doesn’t pass here — it lingers .

And yet — the porch light is on.

Inside, the air tastes wrong. Heavy, stale, buzzing with static. Ozone and old floor polish, burnt wires braided with something sweet gone foul. A rot you don’t see, only feel , behind your teeth. The kind of sugar that curdles mid-swallow. The floors gleam like they’ve been cleaned, but the shine feels dishonest. Like something was scrubbed , not forgotten .

The grand staircase still spirals up into the dark like a ribcage. The dust has been wiped from the bannisters, but all the portraits are veiled in white sheets — children frozen in time behind fabric. Their names carved into the wood. Deep. Crooked. Permanent.

NUMBER ONE. NUMBER TWO. NUMBER THREE. NUMBER FOUR. NUMBER FIVE. NUMBER SIX. NUMBER SEVEN.

The last is scratched out. None of them did it.

The foyer light buzzes. Flickers. One bulb pops. Quiet. No one flinches.

The house remembers footfalls.

The floorboards dip in all the right places — where fights once flared, where secrets broke open, where someone learned to fly and someone else never landed . The walls hum. Not with nostalgia. Never that. Just memory. Crusted on like lichen. Impossible to wash off.

Bob’s door is still locked.

It doesn’t need to be. No one’s lived inside in years. But it doesn’t open. No one tries anymore.

The Academy never welcomed them. It endured them. And now that Valentina is dead — it watches .

Waiting.

For something. For someone.

John was the first to arrive.

Of course he is. Bursting through the front door like it might dare to stop him. Boots cracking against tile. Fists clenched, already hunting for a fight.

The house offers none. Only dust. Silence. And a ghost too cold to haunt anything properly.

He doesn’t look around. Doesn’t need to. He knows this place in the marrow. Every whisper in the walls. Every scream it ever swallowed.

The chandelier buzzes above.

“Thunderbolts: Status—” Mel begins.

John stops. A warning in his jaw. “Don’t.”

A pause. Then static shifts.

“Welcome home, Jonathan,” Mel says — quieter. Glitched. Like it hurts her to say it.

His jaw tightens. But he doesn’t reply.

Bucky comes next.

He slips in through the half-open door like a shadow that doesn’t want to be noticed. Half-expecting the house to shut behind him. Trap him in old ghosts.

He sees John. Doesn’t speak.

John sees Bucky. Doesn’t blink.

They move past each other like war monuments — carved from grief and fury, unreadable to anyone but themselves.

“Still playing the loner act?” John mutters.

“Still pretending you were in charge?” Bucky answers.

The silence between them hisses.

Neither moves first.

Ava blinks in.

Literally. One second outside, the next inside — stumbling fully into phase like she skipped ahead without checking where she’d land. She shakes static from her jacket.

“Jesus,” she mutters. “Still smells like scorched trauma in here.”

She clocks Bucky first. Then John. Her mouth twists.

“Great,” she says. “Testosterone ghosts and repressed father wounds. Just like old times.”

John’s scowl deepens. “You’re late.”

“And you’re still yelling like that ever made you right.”

They stare. No warmth. Just battlefield recognition. The intimacy of survival.

“Can we not?” Bucky says softly.

Ava shrugs. “Sure. As soon as Captain Trauma stops acting like he’s the only one who lost something.”

Yelena doesn’t knock.

She never did.

She’s all silence and steel now. Anger, refined. A knife, not a flame.

Her eyes find Ava. Something tightens between them — sharp, frayed, unfinished.

“Look who’s still vibrating through walls,” Yelena says.

Ava snorts. “Look who still can’t hold a conversation without emotionally curb-stomping someone.”

But neither walks away.

They know each other too well for that.

Yelena gives Bucky a nod. He returns it. No smile. No words.

It’s enough.

Alexei is last.

Of course he is. Still trailing behind like he thinks he can hold them all together with string and soup.

He steps in and breathes deep, like the house might still welcome him.

“Everyone looks terrible,” he says, voice warm and threadbare. “I brought soup. It’s cold now. But I thought—”

“We’re not twelve,” John snaps.

Alexei’s smile fades, but only a little.

Antonia is already here.

No one saw her arrive. Of course they didn’t.

She stands at the base of the stairs, notebook in hand, eyes fixed on the hall. On his door.

She hasn’t looked at any of them. She doesn’t need to.

Yelena looks, then looks away.

Ava does the same.

No one says his name. They never do. But the house knows.

Bob’s presence clings to every corner.

A breath in the vents. A name under the skin. A silence that hums.

The walls shift. Something old stirs.

Then a voice — not Mel. Not the ceiling.

It comes from the walls .

Melina. Their robot mother.

“Oh,” she says, soft and sweet. “All of my children are here.”

They freeze.

Her voice is gentle. Too gentle. Like she hasn’t noticed they grew up. Like she remembers scraped knees, not splintered hearts.

“I asked Mel to log your vitals. Most of you haven’t eaten in twelve hours. Some over thirty. That is not acceptable.”

Yelena blinks upward. “She upgraded?”

“She reverted,” Ava mutters.

“I can warm the soup,” Melina says cheerfully. “Or prepare your usual comforts. Yelena, the cereal with the colorful marshmallows is still in the greenhouse. You used to hide it there.”

Yelena says nothing.

“And Bucky — your knives are back in the footlocker. I polished them. They seemed... important.”

Still, he doesn’t speak.

“Antonia — your blanket was on the roof. I repaired it.”

“She doesn’t talk anymore,” Yelena snaps. “She doesn’t need a blanket.”

A pause.

“I know,” Melina says softly. “But I remember when she did.”

It lands like a knife.

The house exhales. Cold. Waiting.

“I only meant to welcome you,” Melina says. “It’s good to have you home. Ms. de Fontaine’s memorial is at six. Black attire only.”

No one says thank you. No one calls her Mom.

They scatter.

No one asks where. They already know.

Bucky disappears down the west wing — toward the radiator that always leaked and the wallpaper Bob used to draw on.

Yelena takes the attic stairs. “Need air,” she mutters.

Ava phases through the wrong wall and doesn’t correct herself.

Antonia drifts to the observatory — always just out of reach.

Alexei lingers in the parlor, watching them go like he still believes in second chances.

And John... doesn’t mean to walk.

But the house nudges him. Gently. Cruelly.

And suddenly — he’s outside Bob’s room.

The door is the same.

Dark wood. Gold handle. A scuff where Bob used to kick it open.

Dust clings to the frame.

He shouldn’t open it.

He does.

Inside: stillness. Memory. Time caught mid-breath.

Sketchpads. Notebooks. Headphones cracked but unmoved. A jacket on the chair.

Exactly where he left it.

John steps in.

His body revolts. Grief curls in his throat.

He presses his palm to the desk. Doesn’t sit. Can’t.

“Bobby,” he says.

The name barely makes a sound.

The room breathes — just once.

On the desk: an open sketchbook.

A fresh drawing.

The gate. All seven of them.

Even now.

John closes the book. Walks out.

He doesn’t close the door.

He can’t .

They gather in the courtyard.

The sky is too gray. Not stormy. Just hollow — a flat, uncaring sort of blankness that stretches above them like a lid on a coffin. The clouds don’t threaten rain. They don’t threaten anything. They just exist , like the rest of this day. Like the stone. Like the statue.

The Thunderbolts Academy doesn’t have a chapel. Valentina never believed in God.

She believed in precision. In control. In legacy carved out of bone and fire.

So there is no priest. No prayers. No softness. Just a tall marble urn on a black pedestal, placed beneath the statue she had commissioned of herself years ago — arms crossed, chin lifted, eyes carved to mimic omniscience. It’s the kind of expression that promised she would always win. Even now.

There is no warmth here. No absolution. No comfort.

Only the weight of memory pressed into steel and stone and silence.

Her insignia gleams on the urn — clinical, proud, unfeeling. The ashes are sealed inside a vessel tougher than most of the people standing here. Of course. She would’ve hated fragility, even in death.

A crackle, sudden and sharp, cuts through the stillness. Mel’s voice floods the courtyard through hidden speakers, bright and clean like brushed aluminum.

“Thunderbolts. We are gathered here today to honor the life and accomplishments of Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.”

“She was a visionary. A strategist. A protector. A mother—”

“ Don’t ,” Yelena mutters, and it’s not loud, but it’s sharp — the kind of sound that could shatter glass. Could shatter ribs. Could shatter faith .

Mel keeps going. Cheerful. Programmed. Impervious to grief.

“Her work changed the world. Her legacy lives in each of you. You are her triumphs. Her weapons. Her family.”

That word — family — lands like a slap across a half-healed bruise.

None of them look at each other.

Behind them, Melina stands frozen, chrome joints locked in a posture too stiff to be real grief. Her hands are folded like she remembers the shape of mourning but not the substance. She was programmed to grieve. She never learned how.

“Would anyone like to say a few words?” Mel offers. Her voice is light as mist. Almost gentle. Almost cruel.

Silence.

Ava glances sideways. Toward Yelena, whose jaw is clenched so tight it looks carved from stone. Antonia doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Bucky’s hands stay buried in his coat pockets, fists hidden. John stands apart from them all — a man carved from shadow and tension, barely breathing.

Then—

“Yeah,” John says, and steps forward.

Alexei shifts beside him, an instinctive reach that doesn’t land. He doesn’t stop him. Not this time.

John doesn’t ask for permission.

“She lied to us,” he says. His voice is flat, precise — the voice of a man too tired to scream, too full to cry. “She built us, broke us, and called it love.”

Bucky’s breath catches — not loud, but sharp enough to slice the air.

“This isn’t the time,” he says, quiet. Controlled. Fractured.

“When is it, then?” John turns on him, fast and bitter, eyes gleaming like wet glass. “You want to pretend she didn’t put Bob in the ground before any of us could save him?”

Something shifts in Bucky — something electrical, buried, dangerous.

“I’m not pretending anything.”

John laughs. A sound that doesn’t reach his eyes. “You’re still just standing there. Like always.”

The silence hardens. The air closes in.

Yelena tenses, arms folded across her ribs like armor. Ava flickers slightly at the edge of herself, glitching with emotion. Antonia doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. Like she’s already seen how this ends.

“You think yelling at me brings him back?” Bucky says. His voice is a blade. “You think you’re the only one who lost him?”

“You weren’t the one who was supposed to protect him.”

“And you did ?” Ava cuts in before Bucky can. Her voice cracks like thunder through frost. “Because if you did, John — we wouldn’t be here .”

John’s fists tighten. White-knuckled. Shaking.

“You weren’t even around .”

“ Enough! ” Yelena barks — but the dam’s already broken.

John surges forward and shoves Bucky hard in the chest.

Bucky doesn’t flinch — doesn’t fall. Just responds. Fast. Precise. Years of muscle memory and unresolved grief lashing out as one. He slams back with his metal arm, sending John staggering. Gravel scatters underfoot.

Ava tries to get between them, hands up, flickering in and out of phase — but John jerks wild, nearly backhanding her by accident.

“ Don’t—! ” Yelena yells, snatching her out of the way. “He’s not seeing straight!”

Antonia takes a step forward — then stops. Some memory pulls her back. Something old. Something unchangeable.

A fist lands.

Then another.

Bucky’s lip splits. John’s knuckles crack.

The pedestal rattles.

Valentina’s ashes do not stir.

The statue keeps smiling.

She always wins. Even now.

“I trusted you!” John snarls, voice hoarse.

“I never asked you to!” Bucky slams him back, metal shining beneath his torn sleeve.

They crash to the ground in a tangle of grief and violence. Marble meets bone. Fury meets memory.

Yelena lunges forward, grabbing Bucky’s coat with both hands. “You’re done , soldier!”

But Bucky shrugs her off without looking, eyes still on John, something wild flickering beneath the calm.

The hurt is too old. Too big .

Ava stands a little off-center in the courtyard, shoulders trembling. Phasing. Fading.

“This isn’t him,” she whispers, to no one in particular. “This isn’t what Bob would want.”

And for a moment, they are children again.

Trained to fight. Taught to bury. Conditioned to endure.

The Academy looms above them, silent. Unmoved.

It never did anything but watch.

And Alexei—

Alexei is no longer there.

He left when the shouting started. When the silence cracked like ice beneath his boots. Now he walks across the courtyard like a ghost with a purpose, a man untethered from the present.

He kneels under a crooked tree no one’s pruned in years. A second headstone waits there. Smaller. Simpler. Weathered down by time and wind and all the years they didn’t say his name out loud.

Robert “Bob” ReynoldsThe Boy Who Glowed.We Remember You in Silence.

Alexei kneels. Places a battered soup thermos down on the grass beside the stone.

“I made too much,” he murmurs. It’s barely sound. It’s breath shaped like apology. “I figured you’d still be hungry.”

He brushes his fingers along the edge of the marker. His hand is too big for gentleness, but he manages it anyway. Reverent. Familiar. Like he’s tracing the edges of a memory that could still maybe come back.

“Your sketchbook’s still out,” he adds, voice catching like a thread pulled too tight. “You always used to leave the last page blank.”

He doesn’t say the rest.

I thought it meant you’d come back to finish it.

Behind him, the fight rages. Voices. Flesh. Rage. The old lessons. The wrong ones. The ones Valentina taught with iron and fear.

But here, beneath the tree, everything is still.

The grass doesn’t move. The stone stays cold. The thermos steams quietly in the faint breeze.

Alexei stays there a while.

Because Bob is the only one who ever listened .

And this time, maybe someone should stay.

And far above the courtyard — unseen, unspoken — someone is watching.

High on the northwest tower, half-shuttered windows cracked open just wide enough, a figure leans in the shadows. Still. Composed. Wrapped in a black coat that doesn’t catch the light.

Face unreadable.

No movement. No words. No interruption.

Only watching.

The fight. The sorrow. The fractures in the foundation of a family trying so hard not to collapse.

Eyes track John. Linger on Bucky.

Longer on Yelena.

A jaw tightens — just slightly — at the sight of the urn.

The statue.

The insignia.

Fingers flex once at a side, then go still again.

No one looks up.

Not yet.

But the figure is here.

The kind of presence that makes the air feel colder. The kind of silence that carries intent. The kind of calm that only comes after something has already been lost — or before something’s about to be taken back.

This house isn’t home.

But the doors are open now.

And this is not a visit of mourning.

This is the beginning of something else.

Something sharp. Quiet. Unstoppable.

Something that wants the truth.

End of Chapter 1.

────୨ৎ────

01. JOHN WALKER – “The U.S. Agent”

Power: Super Strength, Tactical Force Field Known for: Fallen Captain. Rage in a uniform. Grief in motion. The Role: The leader-turned-liability. Once Val’s golden boy, now a disgraced vigilante haunted by the person he loved that he couldn’t save.

02. BUCKY BARNES – “The Winter Soldier”

Power: Telekinetic Bladework. Metal Arm. Known for: Eye of the hurricane. With knives. The Role: The strategist. Silent blade in the dark. Keeps his distance, but still knows where everyone is.

03. YELENA BELOVA – “The Black Widow”

Power: Blood Mimicry & Reanimation Known for: Brash. Brutal. Protective in silence. The Role: The fighter. Mercenary. Half-co-leader, half-wrecking ball. The only one who could make Bob laugh.

04. AVA STARR – “Ghost”

Power: Time-Slip & Spatial Phasing Known for: Restless. Radiant. A flicker at memory’s edge. The Role: The genius time-fixer who never stays in one place long enough to heal.

05. ALEXEI SHOSTAKOV – “The Red Guardian”

Power: Kinetic Amplification (at the cost of his body) Known for: Broken knight. Big heart in an old shell. The Role: The dad-brother. Quiet anchor. Fading with time, but still leaves a chair for Bob.

06. ANTONIA DREYKOV – “Taskmaster”

Power: Astral Displacement Known for: Ghost. Guardian. Conscience. The Role: The silent shadow. Scarred voice. Empty halls. Leaves sticky notes behind instead of speaking.

07. BOB REYNOLDS - "The Normal One"

Power: None Known for: The soft one. The kind one. The boy who didn’t belong in a war zone. The Role: The seventh sibling. Powerless. Gentle. The one everyone tried to protect—and the one they all lost.

VALENTINA ALLEGRA DE FONTAINE

Role: Architect of pain. "Mother" in name only. Legacy: Trained them. Broke them. Buried Bob. Now she’s dead—but her rot remains.

MELINA VOSTOKOFF

Role: Robot Mom. Glitched guardian. Known for: Mechanical hands. Soft voice. Locked memories. She remembers everything. But she’s not allowed to say a word—unless the right command is spoken.

NATASHA ROMANOFF

Role: The outsider. The hunter. The truthseeker. Known for: Grief sharpened into justice.

MEL

Known for: AI System Interface. The house’s voice. The eyes behind the cameras. The last command Valentina ever trusted. The Role: The Thunderbolt Academy’s embedded digital assistant. Overseer, mission handler, surveillance hub, and emotional void.

Characters: John Walker, Bucky Barnes, Yelena Belova, Ava Starr, Alexei Shostakov, Antonia Dreykov, Bob Reynolds, Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, Melina Vostokoff, and Mel.

Pairings: John Walker x Bob Reynolds, Bucky Barnes x Natasha Romanoff, Yelena Belova x Ava Starr

Status: Ongoing.

Chapters:

00. Meet The Thunderbolts Academy 01. The Funeral 02. We Were Seven

Warnings: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Not Canon Compliant with Movie: Thunderbolts (2025), Reincarnation, Soulmates. Tragic Romance. Angst and Tragedy, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Historical References, Slow Burn, Doomed Timelines, Doomed Relationship, Eventual Romance, Temporary Character Death

Word Count: 9,507

Miss Ian's Masterlist | AO3

The first time they meet, it is not in peace.

The air tastes of ash and iron. The sky is bruised with smoke, the sun bleeding through in pale, spiteful slashes. The battlefield is littered with bodies—some whole, most not—and the only sound left is the low hum of dying prayers, whispered by men who don't believe in gods anymore.

And yet, the gods still believe in them. Still use them.

No one remembered the name of the land—not truly.

Not outside the bloodied hymns and the crumbling stone. Not beneath the echo of banners torn by wind, nor in the voices of those who survived only to forget. It had been ruled for so long by the divine that memory bowed beneath myth, and myth fossilized into law.

They called it balance.

The Celestials watched from above—distant, vast, unfeeling. Always present. Never merciful. Their silence was worshiped. Their violence, divine. And when the stars trembled and the earth split in mourning, it was not called cruelty.

It was called fate.

And fate, it turned out, was maintained through war.

War—and sacrifice.

Bob had been born into that order. A seer-scholar, marked before he could speak. The glow of it stirred beneath his skin like a buried flame—golden and soft and quiet, like something holy trying to survive. When his small hands first touched the sacred tablets, the priests gasped. When he recited star-language in sleep, they wept.

He was chosen, they said.

A vessel. A bridge. A child made to serve the will of the Celestials, shaped not for life but for obedience.

So he bowed. He studied. He wrote prophecies with trembling hands, translating the dreams of gods into decrees that sent mortals to war. He believed—he had to—that it meant something. That the light in him was for more than punishment.

But the cracks came slowly, like frost beneath marble. A fracture in faith. A splinter in scripture.

The visions started contradicting each other. Symbols looped endlessly. Messages blurred. The gods began asking for more, always more. Blood for answers. Blood for balance. Blood for peace.

He began to question. Quietly, at first—like heresy whispered in the dark. Then louder. Then sharper. Then afraid.

The war was not divine, he realized.

It was designed.

And then came him.

General John Walker.

Steel-eyed. Unflinching. Loyal like breath, like pain. A weapon forged for victory and left to cool in blood. There were stories about him long before Bob ever saw his face—of cities flattened, of soldiers who followed him into death without hesitation. He marched like a blade. He didn’t lose.

He had never heard of Bob before the war. Only that heretics had corrupted the temple. That rebellion had rooted itself in sacred soil. He was told to purge. To burn. To restore what had been ordained.

And yet—

On the battlefield, the first time they met, something stilled.

Bob stood alone, robes stained with ash, eyes ringed with exhaustion. He looked like nothing and everything. Thin shoulders set with quiet defiance. Fingers twitching with unreadable magic. He didn’t run. He didn’t kneel.

John didn’t strike.

He should have. Everything in him screamed kill. But he froze.

And Bob didn’t flinch.

They stared.

Seconds passed. Then more. An order was shouted from behind—John didn’t move.

Neither did Bob.

The moment broke first in the wind. But the damage was done. Their blades stayed sheathed.

From then on, their paths braided like fate itself was watching.

A skirmish near the sacred river. A stolen moment during a siege. A shattered library, where they reached—unthinking—for the same scorched map. Dust between them. Ash in their mouths. The echo of prophecy burning between fingertips.

Enemies, always. Fated to destroy each other.

But they never did.

Bob began dreaming of fire. Of endings. Of hands he didn’t recognize holding his heart together. John, without understanding why, began drawing strange sigils into the dirt with the tip of his blade—symbols he couldn’t read, but his bones remembered.

And they started to speak.

Not in full sentences. Not at first. Just glances. Just questions. Doubt exchanged like contraband. Secrets passed like breath between sleeping camps. Under the shadow of banners soaked in blood, they unlearned the names they'd been given.

They weren’t fighting for peace.

They were being used to destroy.

All of them were pawns on a divine board—their gods, their rulers, the Celestials above—who fed off the war like leeches fattening on prayers. The violence wasn’t punishment.

It was sustenance.

When Bob and John realized the truth, it didn’t feel like freedom.

It felt like grief.

But they turned anyway.

They didn’t call it rebellion. There was no rally, no banner, no victory song. Just small, sharp defiance. A scroll smuggled from the archives. A prisoner set loose under moonlight. A temple fire that burned from the inside out.

They were caught.

Of course they were caught.

Dragged in chains through the streets that once revered them. Bob’s glow flickered weakly under cracked skin. John’s back had been broken in places no healer dared touch. The people they’d saved looked away.

The Celestials did not tolerate dissent.

They were sentenced before the divine court. The Sacred Hall. A place mortals didn’t return from.

The Celestials were not shaped like anything. They were—vast, formless, voices layered like storms cracking across mountains.

“You seek to sever what we have bound,” one thundered.

“You deny the gift of order,” spat another.

“Then you shall never know peace.”

Bob could barely stand. His body ached with hunger and pain and something worse—something final. But when he faltered, John caught him. Held him upright like it was instinct. Like even here, in the belly of their gods, he would not let Bob fall.

The gods were not finished.

“You will live,” they said. “Again and again. You will forget. You will suffer. You will love, and always lose. You will rot in the ache of recognition. And you will never be free.”

They didn’t scream.

Not when the chains melted into fire.

Not when their bodies began to unravel—skin blistering, blood singing, light bursting through the cracks of who they were.

They didn’t scream.

But just before the flames reached his throat, Bob turned.

His vision was gone. His mouth tasted of smoke. But he found John’s eyes—blue, and wrecked, and sure.

“In the next life…” Bob whispered, choking on smoke. “Find me.”

John’s face was bloodied, raw. But his hand tightened in Bob’s. He didn’t hesitate.

“I will,” he said hoarsely. “Even if I don’t remember why.”

The fire took them.

The world turned.

The curse began.

And somewhere far away from the ashes, far from the hunger of gods and the silence of broken temples—

—a child took his first breath.

Soft light flickered beneath his skin.

Elsewhere, a different child screamed as he was born into battle, fists curled tight, jaw clenched like defiance carved into flesh.

They wouldn’t know each other.

Not yet.

But across time, across lifetimes—

They were already searching.

And one day—tomorrow, a century from now, on a battlefield or beneath the quiet sky—

They would find each other again. And this time, they would remember.

The world had turned again.

﹏

Gone was the endless desert and burning skies of gods who demanded blood. Instead, the air hung heavy with sweat, dust, and the distant roar of a crowd thirsty for spectacle.

John knew this place well. The arena was his cage and his battleground, a sun-baked pit of sand stained dark with the blood of those who fought for their lives—and sometimes, for freedom.

His muscles ached from a lifetime of chains and lashes, his hands scarred from gripping sword hilts slick with death. The crowd’s chants crashed over him, a tidal wave of voices calling for carnage, for victory, for survival.

He was no longer a general, no longer a commander of legions. Here, he was simply John—the gladiator. Fierce, rebellious, and burning with a rage that refused to be quenched.

Bob was a shadow in this harsh world—a captured healer forced to tend to broken bodies. His touch was gentle but hurried, his hands stained with the coppery scent of blood and sweat.

He moved through the barracks and the makeshift infirmary, the flicker of candlelight casting trembling shadows across his face. His eyes, haunted and tired, caught glimpses of John among the warriors—always distant, always fierce.

There was something in those eyes.

Something familiar.

Neither could place it.

But every time their gazes met, the world seemed to shudder—time fracturing in a silent, electric pulse.

John would catch Bob watching him from the edge of the infirmary, eyes wide as if trying to remember a face from a dream.

Bob would flinch whenever John approached, his breath hitching like a secret tether had been pulled taut.

Underneath the roar of the crowd and the clang of swords, a quiet rebellion brewed.

They shared stolen words beneath moonlight, voices hushed and raw with hope and fear.

Together, they plotted freedom—not just from their chains, but from a fate neither fully understood.

But fate was cruel.

One night, beneath a sky smeared with smoke and fire, Bob’s breath faltered.

A jagged spear had found its mark.

He collapsed into the bloodied sand, pain washing over him in waves.

John dropped to his knees beside him, hands trembling as he pressed his fingers against Bob’s chest, feeling the uneven beat of a fading heart.

Bob’s eyes fluttered open, filled with confusion and something achingly tender.

His lips parted in a weak smile.

“You remind me of someone,” he whispered, voice fragile and strange—as if trying to grasp a ghost.

John’s throat tightened.

“I… I don’t know,” he breathed, hand tightening around Bob’s.

But deep down, a flicker of something unspoken, unremembered, glowed between them.

They both knew. Just not how.

Bob’s breath slowed, and then stilled.

The arena was silent for a heartbeat.

John sat there in the dust, heart splintering, haunted by a name he couldn’t quite recall.

The world turned once more.

And somewhere, across time and memory, two souls searched again.

Waiting. Searching.

Yearning to find the other in the endless dance of fate and flame.

﹏

Ice and fire. Blood and steel.

The howl of the wind through towering pines. The scent of salt and smoke heavy on the air.

They were no longer gladiator and healer—no longer scholar and general.

They were warriors, born of different clans, hardened by frozen winters and endless wars.

John was a shield-brother from the north—muscles knotted beneath furs, eyes sharp and relentless like a hawk’s. His axe was an extension of his fury, his loyalty carved into every scar and battle cry.

Bob came from the south, a warrior of quiet strength. He was the steady hand in chaos, the one who patched wounds with rough cloth and stronger will. His gaze held a calm certainty beneath the storm of battle.

They met on the edge of the world, where clans clashed and legends were born in the spray of the sea and the flash of iron.

At first, they fought as strangers—opposite sides in a war that had lasted generations. But when a new enemy appeared—far darker and more merciless than any clan—they found themselves fighting shoulder to shoulder, blades intertwined in desperate dance.

There were no words between them, only glances and shared breaths, the silent language of warriors bound by survival and trust.

John’s shield covered Bob’s flank. Bob’s axe cleared the path.

They moved as one, fierce and unyielding.

The fire of battle lit their faces, sweat mixing with blood, eyes fierce with something beyond hatred or fear.

In the chaos, fierce loyalty blossomed—unspoken, undeniable.

They didn’t say it. They didn’t have to.

On the final day, the battlefield was a frozen hellscape.

The ground was churned to mud beneath their feet, red with the blood of countless fallen.

The enemy pressed in like a tide that could not be turned.

John and Bob fought back to back, every slash and parry a promise.

No words, no fear—just the pulse of shared purpose.

When the last spear struck, it found them both.

John’s breath hitched as he felt the cold burn in his side.

Bob’s eyes met his one last time—a look filled with sorrow, with something fierce and tender.

“You’re the one I fought for,” Bob whispered, voice thin but clear against the dying storm.

John’s grip faltered, a broken smile curling on his lips.

“And you, my partner,” he replied, voice raw.

Their bodies slumped together in the mud, the cold creeping in as the world darkened around them.

They died as they lived—side by side.

And as the frozen winds howled through the pines, the cycle spun on.

Time folded, lives erased and rewritten.

But beneath the endless sky, two souls stirred—waiting.

Searching.

Yearning to find each other again.

﹏

Dust clung to everything out here.

To boots and brimmed hats, to the backs of tired horses and the blood-cracked edges of knuckles. It caked along throats dry from the sun and silence. It hung in the air, golden and thick, catching the last rays of light before dusk bled the sky red.

John Walker was a man shaped by the desert—sharp lines, steady hands, eyes the color of sky before a storm. His aim was legend. A sharpshooter, they said. Dead-on. Dead-fast. Dead-serious.

Bob Reynolds had been a bounty hunter once. Clean coat, clean conscience, clean lines crossed only when he had to. Then something snapped. Some line was drawn one too many times. He stopped following rules. Started following his gut. Now he was wanted in four counties with a price on his head and a weight in his chest he didn’t know how to name.

They met in a place called Devil’s Hollow, drawn into the same crew by bad luck and worse timing. At first, they barely spoke. John didn’t trust anyone. Bob didn’t try.

But something unspoken twisted between them, like smoke from a lit match.

It wasn’t kindness, not exactly. They weren’t built for kindness. But Bob would pass John the flask without being asked. John would keep his eye on Bob’s blind side in a shootout. They moved together without meaning to—covering each other like they’d done it before.

They never talked about it.

Not the sense of knowing. Not the flickers of déjà vu that danced behind their eyes when the fire crackled too loud, or when a dusty sunset cast long shadows and something inside them whispered again, again.

But they felt it. In the quiet. In the echo.

The final stand came on a blistering day with no wind.

The outlaw crew was cornered near the Mescalero ridge—nowhere to run but down into the gulch, open and hot as hell itself.

The law came fast. Too many badges. Too many bullets.

John reloaded in rhythm with his breathing, sighting targets through the shimmer of heat. Bob stood beside him, shotgun primed, teeth gritted behind sun-chapped lips.

“They’re closing in,” Bob growled, backing into cover.

John gave him a crooked half-grin. “Ain’t they always?”

They fought like ghosts. Like men who knew how to die and weren’t afraid to do it again.

But the odds were wrong this time. They’d always been wrong.

A bullet caught Bob in the ribs. His knees buckled, hands slick with blood, the ground rushing up to meet him.

John yelled—raw and wordless—but didn’t hesitate. He dropped to cover him, gun blazing, until his own body jerked with a final shot to the gut.

They collapsed together in the dust, the world narrowing to heat and smoke and the taste of copper.

John coughed, vision blurring, sand clinging to his lashes.

Bob’s hand found his.

He didn’t know why he reached. He just… did.

John gave the smallest squeeze back, breath ragged.

“Feels like we’ve done this before,” he muttered, voice thick and distant, like it came from someone else's mouth.

Bob looked at him then, brow furrowed like he was trying to remember something just out of reach. Like his soul was pacing behind locked doors.

“Yeah,” he rasped. “Feels like… you always find me.”

The sun burned overhead. The desert swallowed them whole.

And time—merciless, eternal—shifted again.

Their story did not end in the dust.

It was only sleeping beneath it.

Waiting for the next sky. The next lifetime. The next chance to get it right.

﹏

The first snowfall came quiet and early, draping the mountain temple in a hush so complete it made the world feel paused.

Wind whispered through pine needles. Lanterns swayed on rusted hooks. In the stillness, the world held its breath.

Bob Reynolds swept the temple steps each morning before the sun rose. It was a ritual he never missed. There was comfort in the motion, in the way the broom bristled over stone, how the mist clung to his robes, how the cold grounded him.

But lately, something in him had shifted.

He dreamed strange dreams.

Golden deserts and silver swords. Warm blood. War cries. A name in his mouth when he woke, syllables lost to dawn.

He would sit up in the dark, breath fogging in the cold, hands trembling. Sometimes, he’d find he’d already lit the incense, though he didn’t remember doing it.

Sometimes, he woke with his heart breaking over someone he had not met.

Until him.

Until the man arrived—wounded, ragged, half-frozen at the temple gates.

John had once worn armor with pride. Now, the plates were gone, stripped away like honor. His swords were dulled with blood, and shame clung to his skin thicker than the frostbite.

He did not give a name at first.

He only bowed once, stiff and slow, and accepted the monk’s silent gesture toward the fire.

Bob did not ask who he had killed or why he carried himself like a man already buried. He only cleaned the wounds, left warm rice beside the futon, and watched John with the quiet weight of someone who knew things he could not explain.

The days stretched long and wordless.

John did not pray. He sat on the steps during sunrise, the same time Bob swept, saying nothing.

But the stillness between them grew familiar. Almost easy.

One morning, John found a scrap of parchment and a stick of ink. He knelt on the temple floor, brow furrowed, fingers moving as if guided by muscle memory older than this life.

The sigil came before he knew what he was drawing.

A loop, jagged at the base. A broken sun. A shape that had no name—but carried the taste of sand, of salt, of firelight and loyalty and loss.

Bob walked in mid-stroke. His breath caught.

“I’ve seen that,” he said before he could stop himself.

John looked up.

Bob’s eyes were wide, color drained from his face. “In my dreams,” he whispered. “In the desert. On a sword. On—on a body.”

He sank to his knees, dazed.

Something thrummed between them. Something so old, it didn’t have language anymore.

John swallowed hard. “Me too.”

That winter, they spoke more.

About the dreams. About places they’d never been and yet remembered like old scars. About fighting shoulder to shoulder. About dying back to back. About names that never made it past their lips—but burned on their tongues like forgotten vows.

“I think we were something once,” Bob murmured, kneeling beside the altar one night, voice lost in the flicker of candles. “Not just in this life.”

John didn’t answer, but his hand hovered over Bob’s for a moment before pulling away.

It was not yet time.

The raid came without warning.

Bandits seeking shelter and blood. The temple stood no chance.

John fought like a demon reborn—no armor, no clan, only fury and a blade that remembered how to kill.

But even he couldn’t stop the arrow.

Bob had run to drag a child behind the altar when it struck him clean through the ribs.

He gasped once, fell to his knees, and the world blurred in red.

John caught him before he hit the ground fully. “No,” he choked, “No.”

Bob blinked up at him, face slack with pain, but oddly calm. “We do this a lot, don’t we?” he rasped, a faint smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “Dying.”

“Stop talking,” John ordered, pressing his hand against the wound, voice breaking. “Just stay—stay here. Stay.”

Bob lifted a trembling hand to John’s face, fingers smearing blood across his cheek.

“You always find me,” he whispered.

And then he went still.

The snow kept falling.

But the sigil remained on the temple floor, etched deeper now in blood than ink.

John didn’t leave for a long, long time.

He sat with the body.

With the silence.

With the ache of knowing and the helplessness of memory not yet whole.

But in the stillness, he made a vow.

Next time, he would remember sooner.

Next time, he would save him.

﹏

Paris, 1794. The Reign of Terror.

Smoke coils over the cobblestone streets as musket fire cracks in the distance. The city is alive with fury—red banners, angry chants, blood spilled in the name of liberty. Paris has become a fever dream of broken monarchs and broken promises, and through it all, the revolution marches on.

Bob fights not for vengeance but for something softer. Hope, maybe. A future he’s only seen in dreams. His hands shake as he reloads his pistol, crouched behind the barricade, soot smudged across his cheek. He’s not a soldier. He’s a pamphlet-writer, a printer’s apprentice turned rebel. But his chest burns with a purpose he can’t name. Like he’s lived this before. Like he’s died for it.

Across the smoke, a figure darts into view—tall, broad, wrapped in the tattered red-white-blue of the rebellion, moving like the battlefield bends around him. Bob doesn’t know why, but his pulse stutters. His body remembers something before his mind can.

A musket shot rips through the barricade.

Bob scrambles up, half-mad with instinct, and leaps across the debris to grab the man’s arm. “You,” he pants, “you feel—”

The man—John—stares at him. Sweat beads on his brow. His jaw is set, eyes storm-dark. He’s a revolutionary soldier, a man forged by battle. He should shove Bob away, should demand answers, should pull his blade.

He doesn’t.

Instead, his grip tightens like he knows him too.

“…familiar,” Bob finishes, breath hitching.

John blinks like he’s been hit. “I thought it was just me.”

Then there’s no time. The National Guard charges, orders barking down the street. Revolutionaries scatter. The sky cracks open with gunfire and screaming.

They fight together that day, shoulder to shoulder, as if they always have.

But revolution devours its children.

Captured. Tried. Condemned.

The prison is cold, stone walls weeping. Bob sits in a dark cell, chained, but not alone. John’s beside him, their wrists bound but pressed close. The guards mock them—two more martyrs for the guillotine. Two more names to be crossed off.

“I remember… fire,” Bob whispers into the stillness. “Ash. A temple. But it doesn’t make sense.”

John looks at him, quiet. “There was a symbol in my dreams. A sun. Always burning. And your face.”

Bob leans against him. “Maybe next time, we’ll meet sooner.”

John’s voice is steady, resolute: “Next time, I’ll find you.”

They die within moments of each other, heads held high beneath a sky that forgets them once more.

But the story does not end.

The sigil burns in the ashes again. The cycle continues.

﹏

France, 1917. The Western Front.

Mud. That’s what the world has become.

A swallowing, suffocating, soul-deep kind of mud that clings to boots and bones and breaks down whatever’s left of a man’s spirit. The trenches run like infected veins across the battlefield—dugouts, dug graves, it’s all the same now. The smell of rot, metal, and fear never leaves your throat.

Bob breathes through it anyway.

He’s a medic. Young, quiet, steady. The kind of man who never yells but always shows up, hands already moving, bandages already unraveling. His coat is damp with blood that isn’t always his. His eyes are tired—like he’s lived a thousand lives and remembers pieces of each one, but only when he dreams. Only when he wakes up with a name stuck in his throat and tears on his cheeks.

The name is always John.

“Jesus, Doc,” someone says behind him, low and southern. “You ever sleep?”

Bob startles. Spins.

John Walker. Private. Rifleman. Trouble.

He grins like he belongs to a different war—a warmer one, a sunnier one. But his eyes are shadowed. Like he knows he’s never really belonged to any place that wasn’t soaked in violence.

“I—I was just patching up Mick,” Bob says, voice caught.

John crouches beside him, boot squelching in the muck. “You’ve got this look sometimes. Like you’ve seen all this before.”

Bob’s hands freeze.

“I have dreams,” he says before he can stop himself. “Of battles. Not this war. Older ones. Swords. Deserts. Fire. Your face.”

John doesn’t laugh.

Instead, he whispers, “Do I die in them?”

Bob swallows. Nods.

John leans in, warm even in the cold. “Then maybe you remember the part where I’d do it again.”

They aren’t supposed to bond. Medics keep distance. Soldiers disappear too fast to hold onto.

But John keeps coming back with injuries Bob patches himself. A bullet graze. A bayonet nick. A cracked rib from diving over a trench wall to save a comrade. Every time, Bob scolds and John just smirks and says, “Missed me again, Sunshine.”

Bob hates that nickname. He also aches when he doesn’t hear it.

Some nights, they huddle under the same tarp during rain so hard it sounds like gunfire. Bob wraps his coat tighter and John leans just close enough to warm his side.

“I had the dream again,” Bob says once, voice hoarse. “You had a sword. I wore red. We burned.”

John’s voice is soft, as if in prayer. “I think I loved you in it.”

Bob closes his eyes. “I think I always do.”

The assault is sudden. Orders come down. Over the top.

Bob’s not supposed to go. But someone’s wounded. The line’s breaking. And John—John is already halfway to no man’s land, his rifle strapped tight, shouting for his squad to follow.

Gunfire. Smoke. Screams.

Bob runs after them.

He doesn’t see the shell until it’s too late. Doesn’t register the blood until he’s kneeling in it.

John is lying in the mud, chest torn open, eyes wide. The tags around his neck catch the dull gray light.

John Walker.

Bob collapses beside him.

“No, no—come back, come back—” His hands are trembling, covered in blood. “You weren’t supposed to—this wasn’t—”

John coughs, a wet sound. His lips twitch faintly. “Told you I’d do it again.”

Bob presses their foreheads together. “You idiot. You absolute—god, I remember all of you. Every one. And it’s always you.”

John breathes his last with a whisper: “Then find me next time.”

Bob screams as the shells keep falling.

And somewhere in the mud, stained with centuries of love and loss, the sigil reappears—drawn in blood, fading into the earth.

The cycle continues.

﹏

Cold War is colder than ever.

But the city of Vienna breathes like it’s holding a secret.

The streets are lined with narrow shadows and diplomats. Coffee houses hum with whispered suspicions and jazz. Men smoke behind newspapers, women vanish into taxis, and somewhere between East and West—between the iron teeth of two worlds grinding against each other—two men meet in silence.

Bob wears a trench coat and gloves, collar turned up. His hands don’t shake, but only because he’s trained them not to. Soviet defector. Asset-in-limbo. A ghost on every list.

He waits inside a hotel bar with dark wood paneling and crystal ashtrays, untouched vodka sweating on the table. He doesn’t look up when the American sits beside him.

“You’re early,” Bob says, English soft and precise, but distant.

John Walker doesn't answer immediately. He lights a cigarette, exhales slowly.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

Neither of them has slept in months.

Their first real conversation happens in a coded letter, tucked into the hollow of a dead drop in a cemetery outside Prague. Bob reads it on a train at midnight.

You remind me of someone I’ve never met.

I don’t dream often. But when I do, you’re always walking away.

He folds it carefully. Doesn’t cry. Not yet.

They meet again in Berlin. Then Zurich. Then Florence. Always in the same bland hotel rooms with matching curtains and bleeding wallpaper. Always under fake names, in bodies that are never fully relaxed.

They eat dinner in silence. Share black coffee in rooms with bugs in the lamps. Bob presses his forehead to John’s just once, when the walls are thick enough and the windows covered.

“I don’t believe in fate,” Bob whispers. “But you feel like something I never had a choice in.”

John touches his cheek like he’s memorizing him. Like he’s waiting for him to disappear.

“I’d burn countries down to keep you,” he says.

Bob believes him.

They fall in love by accident. And on purpose. Over time. And in moments too small to record.

John teaches Bob how to cook American bacon in a hotel kitchenette. Bob corrects John’s Russian grammar with a smirk and two fingers pressed to his wrist.

One night, Bob finds a photo in John’s wallet—blurred, half-torn. They’re both in it. Not now, not this life. Older clothing. Different time. Bob, in a red military coat. John, in a dirty white shirt. Arms around each other. Dying light.

John catches him staring.

“I’ve carried it for years,” he says. “Didn’t know why. Until I met you.”

Bob doesn’t speak for a long time. Then, in a breath:

“I think I’ve been waiting.”

The kill order comes from D.C.

Someone’s sniffed too close. Bob’s name is rising again. Not as defector. But traitor.

John finds the man first. Ends it in a quiet alley. Two bullets. No witnesses.

When he returns to the flat, Bob’s already waiting, barefoot, shaking.

“You killed for me.”

John looks tired, wild with it. “You think I wouldn’t?”

Bob steps closer. Presses their foreheads together. “You always do.”

They leave Vienna that night, blending into the foot traffic. They’re steps from freedom—crossing into the crowd near a checkpoint—when it happens.

A gunshot. Then another.

John stumbles.

It takes Bob a moment to understand. One, two seconds of wrong silence.

And then, “John!”

The crowd panics. People scream. Bob drops to his knees, catching John before he hits the pavement. Blood on his chest. Too much.

“No, no, look at me—”

John’s eyes flutter. His hand lifts weakly to Bob’s face.

“Still—still yours,” he whispers.

Then nothing.

Bob screams his name—again, for the fifth, tenth, hundredth time across lifetimes. This one doesn’t echo. It just vanishes in the Vienna wind.

By the time the police arrive, Bob is gone.

So is the man he loved.

So is the version of him that believed they had time.

Later, they’ll call it a diplomatic incident.

A rogue agent. A stray bullet. An accident.

But deep in the archives, someone will find the letter John never got to send:

If we have to do this again in the next life—

If there is one—

Please find me sooner.

﹏

The first time John sees him, Bob’s standing on top of a milk crate in the middle of Washington Square Park, yelling about truth and imperialism like his lungs don’t know fear.

He’s small and wild-looking, curls half-tamed under a knit cap, paint under his nails and a sign slung on his back that reads BOMBS CAN’T FIX WHAT YOU BROKE. His voice shakes a little when he gets riled up, not with nerves but with fury. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a few days—maybe longer—but his eyes are burning. Bright. Alive.

John doesn’t mean to stop. Doesn’t mean to watch him. But something about the way Bob holds the space, all electric rage and aching tenderness, pins him in place like a memory he hasn’t made yet.

Bob locks eyes with him mid-sentence.

John forgets what day it is.

They meet again two days later at a protest outside City Hall. Tear gas clouds the air like ghosts. Cops shove people to the ground. And Bob, idiot that he is, runs straight toward the chaos with nothing but a bandana over his face and a canvas messenger bag full of pamphlets.

John’s instincts kick in faster than thought. He grabs Bob by the collar and yanks him back into a side alley, both of them coughing and blinking through the chemical sting.

“You have a death wish, or are you just stupid?” John snaps, voice low, angry in the way fear makes you.

Bob rips off his bandana, panting. “That depends. Are you one of them?”

John scoffs. “I was a soldier. Not a fucking bootlicker.”

Something flickers in Bob’s face—relief, maybe. Recognition.

“Then why’d you pull me out?” he asks.

John shrugs. “I don’t know. You looked like someone who’s got more to paint.”

Bob grins. “What gave me away?”

“You smell like turpentine.”

That’s the first time Bob kisses him. Right there in the alley, between the echo of sirens and the hiss of gas. It tastes like ash and adrenaline and something tender he doesn’t know how to name.

John doesn’t stop him.

They fall fast.

Fast enough that it’s terrifying. Fast enough that neither of them says the word love out loud for a long time, because naming it might make it real, and real things break.

Bob paints John in every light he can find: with shadows under his eyes and war in his smile, with one hand curled like he’s still holding a rifle. John hates how accurate it is. Loves him anyway.

They argue about everything—Bob thinks John’s too cautious, too quiet. John thinks Bob’s going to get himself killed running around like every cause is his to carry. But Bob always comes home. And John always waits up. Even when he says he won’t.

They eat bad Chinese takeouts on rooftops. Dance to bootleg Dylan tapes. Share one cigarette between them like it's sacred. Make love on paint-stained floors, slow and quiet, like it’s the only thing holding the world together.

At night, John curls around Bob like a shield. Bob traces the scars on his chest and whispers about revolutions in colors.

“You ever think we’ve done this before?” Bob asks one night, voice thick with smoke and sleep. “You and me. In other lives.”

John kisses his shoulder and doesn’t say yes.

But he doesn’t say no either.

The fire starts in the old church turned shelter on 3rd and Avenue B.

Bob was supposed to be there for a mural. Something hopeful for the walls—hands reaching, children laughing, a future that didn’t feel so far away. John had kissed him goodbye that morning, teased him about getting more paint in his hair.

The fire was electrical. Fast. Angry.

They say Bob ran back inside three times. Once for the night manager. Twice for a sleeping mother and her kid.

The third time, he didn’t come back out.

John gets the call and doesn’t breathe for thirty-seven minutes.

When he sees the wreckage, the mural is half gone—smoke-eaten, the hands reaching into nothing.

He doesn’t smile again. Doesn’t protest. Doesn’t sleep.

He punches a wall and breaks his hand. Smashes Bob’s last canvas in a fit of something between grief and rage. Can’t bring himself to throw it away.

The world keeps moving. John doesn’t.

Sometimes, he swears he hears Bob in the crowd. A laugh. A lyric. A whisper in the hiss of a passing train.

He keeps the lighter Bob always carried, the one shaped like a matchbox with chipped enamel on the side. It stopped working long ago. But John still flicks it open when the nights feel too quiet.

Just to remember the warmth.

And somewhere, across the fold of time and sky, a soul waits.

Watching.

Burning.

Saying:

Come back to me.

Please. Just one more life.

Let me find you again.

﹏

Somewhere between sunrise and goodbye.

It begins on the subway.

Bob stands near the back of the Line 2 car, one hand braced against the metal rail, the other clutching a sketchbook worn soft with use.

He’s dressed in a faded army jacket layered over a turtleneck, collar turned up against the cold. His thumb is smudged with charcoal, black streaks against pale skin. 

He’s trying to sketch the ahjumma with bags of greens stacked at her feet, but the lines won’t behave. They keep bending into the shape of a face he doesn’t know—sharp jaw, bent nose, the kind of eyes that carry both gravity and light.

Across the car, John leans against the opposite door, one headphone dangling from his left ear. A cassette player clipped to his belt hums a grainy version of Queen’s “Somebody to Love.” He doesn’t even hear it. His eyes are fixed on the artist with the quiet hands and the restless eyes. He doesn’t know why, but his chest aches with something familiar.

They glance up at the same time.

It’s not cinematic. The subway jolts. Someone coughs.

But in the blur of motion and neon flickering through the windows, their eyes catch.

Something pauses.

And then—smiles. Awkward. Hesitant. Like they’ve just spotted someone they dreamed about years ago and never expected to meet.

The second time is three days later.

It’s raining—late spring rain, warm and sudden. The streets of Myeongdong glisten, neon signs shimmering in every puddle. Bob is soaked, his sketchbook clutched tight to his chest, eyes squinted under dripping hair. John, standing beneath the green awning of a pojangmacha, holds up a cheap umbrella with a flick of his wrist and grins.

“You always get caught in the rain?” he asks in accented Korean.

Bob shivers, but it’s not from the cold.

“Only when I forget my past lives,” he says.

And for a second, everything is still.

Neither of them laughs. Not right away.

Then—soft, disbelieving chuckles bubble up, like air surfacing after holding their breath too long.

They fall in love fast this time.

Too fast.

This love is all cassette mixtapes and convenience store ramen. Midnight movies and cramped rooftops. Holding hands in Gwanghwamun Square when no one’s looking. Shouting their lungs out at protest rallies, then fleeing when the riot police come charging.

John is a former conscript turned activist. He reads banned books and tapes political flyers to telephone poles.

Bob is a painter who sells portraits by the Han River and paints government critique in secret on abandoned buildings. His fingers are always stained, always moving.

Their love is messy and loud and sacred.

They kiss behind old bookstores. They press their foreheads together at 3 a.m., whispering things like “I swear I know you,” and “If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up.”

They fight for causes. They fight for each other.

And for once, fate lets them be soft.

Until it doesn’t.

The car crash happens in July, after a night spent drinking cheap soju and dancing barefoot on a friend’s rooftop. Bob’s head is resting on John’s shoulder. The radio plays a scratchy version of "Time After Time.”

The streets are slick with rain again.

It’s late. Too late.

The lights blur. The brakes fail. The world shudders.

The windshield cracks like paper tearing.

John’s hand is still in Bob’s.

They don’t scream.

There’s no time for last words. No goodbyes.

Only the look—their look—between them.

That silent, aching recognition: Oh. It’s us again.

And then—

Everything stops.

There’s no funeral. No newspaper headline.

Just twisted metal, and the sound of rain, and the undeniable truth that they were here.

That they found each other.

That even now, they’re not letting go.

And somewhere, behind another waiting lifetime, something ancient whispers,

Try again. You’re so close. Try again.

﹏

The road into town is gravel and dust, lined with rice fields and peach trees, and in spring the air smells like new rain and tilled earth.

Bob arrives in a hand-me-down truck with a broken cassette player and a folder of lesson plans tucked under his arm. The town is quiet—two stop signs, a single convenience store, and the same old man selling sweet potatoes at the market every Sunday. Bob's never lived anywhere this small, or this still.

He teaches literature at the middle school—a small building with cracked windows and chalkboards that squeak no matter how softly he writes. The students are loud and kind. The nights are silent. His days stretch like long threads of silk, thin and peaceful. For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel like he’s waiting for something.

Until he meets John.

John is a farmer with strong shoulders, worn jeans, and hands that know the rhythm of soil and sun. He sells vegetables at the town co-op and lives in a modest house at the edge of a hill, where you can see the stars without trying. He’s quiet, polite, and strangely familiar in the way that makes Bob pause too long the first time they shake hands.

“You’re the new teacher,” John says, not a question.

“And you’re the guy who sells carrots like they’re national treasures,” Bob replies, and that makes John laugh—a deep, surprised thing, like a well filling after a drought.

Their friendship builds the way most things do in towns like this: slow, sturdy, with unspoken routines. Mornings become shared coffee. Saturdays are spent mending fences or painting the school library. Bob reads poetry out loud while John tends to seedlings, and neither of them says it aloud, but they both know they’re building something.

It’s quiet.

It’s enough.

One evening, midsummer, with fireflies blinking like signals in the dusk and the smell of grilled corn in the air, John says it.

“I think I’ve loved you before,” he says, voice quiet, eyes on the stars overhead.

Bob, startled, turns—but John’s not looking at him. He’s staring up like the sky holds an answer they’ve both been chasing.

“I mean—now too,” John adds quickly. “But I feel like I’ve said this before. Somewhere. Some time. And I don’t want to wait again.”

Bob doesn’t speak for a long moment. He just watches the way John breathes—steady, scared, sure.

Then he says, “I think I’ve been waiting for you.”

This time, they fall in love the way the land changes seasons: gently, without apology. Love becomes shared chores and evening walks. Kisses over dishwater. Mornings tangled in each other and the sound of sparrows outside the window.

It’s not passion like wildfires. It’s warm like sunrise.

Bob tells his students to write stories about home. John brings lunch to the school on Thursdays, always pretending it’s too much so Bob will take the leftovers. They argue about which tomatoes are sweeter, about whether Keats is better than Yeats, about who snores more (it’s Bob).

They don’t say “I love you” every day.

But when they do, they mean it.

They grow older. Together.

They wrinkle at the corners. Bob gets forgetful; John starts walking slower. They buy a second rocking chair. They lose people, plant trees in their memory, and hold each other tighter each year the peach trees bloom again.

They die the same way they lived—softly, side by side. John first, with Bob’s hand in his. Bob soon after, with John’s name still warm on his lips.

It’s peaceful. It’s complete. It feels like an ending that should last.

But the thread tugs again.

The world pulls. The wheel turns.

And though this life was the first where love did not end in fire or war or broken glass—it still ends. It still sends them back.

The curse is quiet now, not cruel. But it lingers.

In the space between one breath and the next, something stirs.

And somewhere new, far from farmland and silence—

They begin again.

﹏

Robert “Bob” Reynolds was born in Sarasota Springs, Florida.

Not to a life of ease, or love, or anything soft. The world greeted him not with lullabies but with yelling, shattered plates, and the heavy-footed thunder of an angry man who called himself father. Bob learned early how to duck. How to lie. How to disappear into the corners of his own home.

He survived an abusive father. Lost his mother to addiction—though if he was honest, she’d been lost long before she died. By middle school, Bob was already chasing silence the only way he knew how. Morphine, first. Then anything stronger, anything that could dull the sharp edge of his own existence. The spiral was ugly—meth, back-alley deals, bar fights, a string of charges he couldn’t remember collecting.

At one point, there’d been a chicken mascot job. Fast food. Kids throwing ketchup packets. Parents laughing like he wasn’t a seventeen-year-old trying not to pass out in a $9 suit that reeked of sweat and failure. That job ended when he attacked a civilian while under the influence of methamphetamine.

So he ran.

From the cops. From the courts. From himself.

All the way to Malaysia.

And for a while, the silence tasted like freedom.

Until someone from O.X.E. found him.

They didn’t look like a savior. Just a clean suit, a too-smooth smile, and a dossier too thick for comfort. But they knew his name. His real one. Knew what he’d done, what he’d been through. Said they’d been watching. Said they could help.

They told him he was special.

That he didn’t have to be a tragedy.

That inside him, there was something remarkable—something powerful.

They offered him a miracle drug. Promised he’d become the best version of himself. No more running. No more pain. No more wasting what they called “potential.”

And he believed them.

He took it.

And for a moment—a brief, golden second that he would come to relive in his dreams—he was. The weight lifted. The pain dulled. His body felt stronger, lighter, sharper. He could see things he’d never seen. Be someone he never thought he could be.

But power without healing is just a loaded gun. And in the silence of his mind, from the depths of his loneliness, his pain, his fury—

Void was born.

A shadow he never meant to create. A dark mirror, twisted from everything he tried to bury. A wound with a heartbeat. And when it emerged—slipping through the cracks of Bob’s psyche with teeth and terror—it didn’t ask permission.

It killed before Bob even realized what was happening. His hands. His body. His voice. But not his choice.

By the time he understood what he’d become, it was too late. The blood had dried. The screaming had stopped. The bodies were still.

And Bob collapsed, consciousness splintering under the weight of what he couldn’t undo. A coma. His last words slurred with shame—just a whisper of remorse on his lips.

The scientists called him a failure. A broken prototype. A miscalculation not worth fixing.

So they sealed him away. Labeled. Catalogued. Forgotten.

A body behind glass. A name scratched out of history.

Until now.

The desert didn’t care who you were. It swallowed secrets whole.

Which made Utah the perfect place for a vault.

The O.X.E. facility lay buried deep beneath sand and scorched stone, sun-bleached rock disguising what festered below—chambers lined in lead and silence, each room a tomb built to house the unholy.

When Yelena Belova breached it, it wasn’t with stealth.

It was with fury.

Her boots hit the grated floors of Sublevel 6 like thunderclaps, a fluid ripple of black and vengeance. Sirens wailed overhead, red strobes blinking like arterial warnings through the sterile gray of the hallways. Metal, concrete, and cordite filled her nostrils. Somewhere ahead: Ava Starr known as Ava Starr. Rogue asset. Betrayer. The mission was clear— eliminate.

She hadn’t expected U.S. Agent.

John Walker emerged from the far corridor like a loaded gun—shoulders squared, blood already slicking one brow. No pretense, no pause. His shield was airborne before the lights caught up.

It struck her in the shoulder, blunt and brutal, slamming her against a support column. Pain burst down her collarbone. She gritted her teeth and shoved off, smirking even as blood smeared her mouth.

The second strike came faster.

Yelena ducked it, twisting low, her knife flicking out and grazing the edge of his thigh. Walker hissed, breath punching out of him in a growl as he staggered back.

Their missions were clear. He was here to kill her. She was here to kill Ghost.

Neither expected a fourth operative.

The vault lights flickered.

Then—Taskmaster dropped from the ceiling like silence made flesh. A blur of motion, twin blades gleaming. The target was Walker.

But something phased through the wall behind them—like smoke with bones.

Ava Starr. Ghost. Flickering between solid and spectral like a bad memory you never quite forget. But she wasn’t after weapons or data or escape. Her eyes locked on Taskmaster like a trigger pulled. Her mission was clear also:

Kill Taskmaster.

She didn’t hesitate. A gun in one hand. Rage curling off her like heat.

Walker twisted around just in time to meet Taskmaster’s first strike, shield up, steel-on-steel with a shriek of sparks. Behind them, Yelena intercepted Ava, catching her mid-phase with a snap kick to the ribs that sent her sprawling.

It was chaos.

Concrete trembled under their boots. The steel beams above groaned. The sharp tang of ozone hung in the air—gunmetal, sweat, static.

Ava rose again. Blood at the corner of her mouth. She didn’t wipe it away. She smiled.

Then vanished.

Yelena spun—

Too late.

Ava reappeared behind her in a flash, slamming a boot into Yelena’s spine. The blonde crumpled forward with a strangled grunt. But before Ava could follow through, Taskmaster intercepted with a punishing right hook that cracked across her jaw.

They fought like revenants. Half-glimpsed shapes through smoke and blinking alarms. Steel met spectral. Blade against blade. Phase against mimic.

And in the middle of it, John—furious, barely breathing—grabbed a heavy equipment table, shoving it aside with a grunt to get space between himself and Taskmaster’s relentless assault.

The table crashed into the side wall.

Metal cracked.

A sealed containment module behind it hissed, shuddered—then released a final, guttural snap.

None of them noticed.

Not yet.

Inside: a man.

No. A boy, maybe. Or something in between. Pale. Curled tight like a question the world refused to answer. His eyes fluttered.

He stirred.

Robert Reynolds blinked awake to a nightmare.

Alarms howled. Shadows danced in time with muzzle flashes and blade strikes. The air reeked of cordite, sweat, and the ozone-sting of energy discharge. His ribs screamed with every breath. His skin felt like it didn’t belong to him.

Where was he?

His mind was a storm of nothing and static. No bearings. No answers.

He crawled from the pod, barefoot and shivering, slipping into the narrow gap between shipping crates. He crouched in the dark—watching, breathing through his mouth to keep from gagging on the iron tang in the air.

He watched.

Ava’s blade sliced open Yelena’s arm. Walker slammed his shield into Taskmaster’s helmet with enough force to dent steel. No one noticed him. No one noticed the fifth life suddenly blinking in their warpath.

Until Ava turned—eyes cold—and fired a bullet straight into Taskmaster’s face.

The thud of the body hitting the ground echoed like a door slamming shut.

Bob’s stomach lurched.

He vomited. Hard. Loud.

All three assassins froze.

Three sets of eyes turned, scanning the dark.

Ava turned first, sidearm already raised. “There’s someone else here.”

Bob scrambled to his feet—slipping in his own sick, heartbeat hammering. He darted toward the vault door—sealed. Of course it was sealed. He slammed his fists against the door once, twice, but the lockdown was total.

He turned.

And they were there.

Yelena. Ava. Walker.

Guns. Knives. Cold eyes.

“Don’t—please—” His voice cracked like glass. He lifted his hands slowly, trembling fingers stretched to the flickering overhead light. “I don’t—I’m not—”

Ava spoke, voice clinical, sharp enough to cut steel. “Who are you?”

His lips barely moved. “I—I’m Bob. I told you—I’m—uh—yeah—Bob.”

John narrowed his eyes. “Jesus Christ, stop saying Bob.”

Yelena took a cautious step forward, blood still trickling down her arm. “Who sent you, Bob?”

“Nobody!” he said, voice high and broken. “Why would I be sent? W-we’re you all sent?”

The question hit like a pin dropped in silence.

The red emergency lights blinked across their faces. Shadows moved over blood and bodies and the cracked casing of Bob’s broken containment pod.

None of them spoke.

But something changed.

Because the truth was crawling into their minds now, too.

They had all been sent.

No backup. No evac. Just three orders on a collision course—and now, a fourth variable.

Bob stood before them. Gaunt. Shivering. Sweat plastered to his forehead, hospital clothing soaked with panic. He looked like someone who had died already—but somehow hadn’t stayed dead.

There was something wrong in him.

A pressure. A presence. Ava’s hand tightened on her trigger without meaning to. Yelena’s stance subtly shifted.

And John—

John didn’t lower his gun.

But he didn’t move either.

He couldn’t.

Because Bob looked at him.

And something—something—clicked.

Their eyes met.

And in the middle of the carnage, the sealed vault, the still-set trigger under John’s finger—something shifted.

Not outwardly. Not in any way the others would notice. No dramatic gesture. No sudden tears. No name whispered across the smoke.

But somewhere deep, in the marrow of time and memory, something split.

Something pulled.

A thread, ancient and frayed, tugged taut between them. Irrefutable. Unnamed. It stretched through dust and blood and air that tasted like metal—but it held.

A current neither of them understood. But both of them felt.

And not for the first time.

Not in this life, and not in the last.

In the din of blaring alarms, under the red haze of lockdown sirens, with vented steam curling around the room like a noose—there was a pause.

Just one.

A beat.

A breath.

And in it—recognition.

Flickering. Shimmering. Gone before it could be touched.

But real.

Somewhere deep within them, something stirred.

Not memories—no, not yet. But echoes. Reverberations. A tremor in the soul where no language dares to reach. It is not something they can name. It is something they feel.

Like breath caught in the lungs before a kiss. Like the pull of gravity when two stars fall toward each other, destined to burn.

There are fragments, impossible to forget:

A hand, calloused and trembling, held beneath the blaze of a foreign sun. A promise, spit between blood and laughter, because they already knew—somehow—they would never live long enough to keep it. Ruined stone underfoot. Ghosts in the dust. Footsteps chasing after shadows that refused to stay dead.

A kiss—raw, unpretty, all teeth and desperation—broken by the scream of steel and the snap of history folding in on itself.

A name. Written in blood. Whispered like prayer. A vow, scrawled across lifetimes and carved into the aching hollow of the chest. A life—quiet and golden—where they dared to dream, just once, that the curse might forget them. A goodbye that wasn’t a goodbye, but a surrender. A plea to time itself: please, not this time. Not again.

A thousand endings.

And now—this.

This moment.

A beginning.

Bob didn’t speak.

Neither did John.

But they didn’t have to.

Their eyes said everything—words that hadn’t been spoken in decades or centuries or timelines. Words that hadn’t been spoken yet.

They do not remember—not with the mind. But their souls remember. Their bones remember.

And somewhere deep inside—quiet and raw and certain—they both knew.

Even if it didn’t make sense.

Even if it was impossible.

They knew each other.

They always had.

“In the next life… find me.”

And maybe—just maybe—he finally had.

End.

────୨ৎ────

Between trying not to pass out in the OR, dodging emotional breakdowns in the supply closet, and surviving his intern class: Peter overachieves yet always panics, Johnny keeps violating the dress code, Joaquin thinks he's on Grey’s Anatomy. Bob can confidently say that he has enough on his plate.

Now Bob’s spiraling through 36-hour shifts, surprise trauma cases, and an increasingly inconvenient crush, while his fellow interns bring nothing but chaos.

There’s no time for feelings in a hospital like this. (Which is exactly why Bob is screwed.)

A Grey's Anatomy Inspired SentryAgent AU.

Warnings: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Inspired by Parent Trap, Exes SamBucky, Chaotic scheming little gremlins BobQuin, Fluff, Hint of Angst, Hopeful ending

Author's Note: I kept seeing bobquin parent-trapping sambucky and couldn’t stop myself. This is my love letter to little brothers, second chances, and the chaos of summer road trips. Hope this will makes you smile.

Word Count: 6,723