But you knew. You knew why you were suddenly pliable. You were doing this—all of it—for John, even if now you were beginning to wonder if it was really helping at all.

Valentina had John over a barrel. He, like all of you, was technically on government payroll, but for him that meant more. The government money made sure he could pay child support, which meant he more than anyone else had to grit his teeth and bare it even if he wanted to tell Valentina where to stick it. So, when she’d told him that he would be doing a publicity tour in order to rebuild his reputation, he had no room to argue. You, on the other hand, had been the hold up.

There was a show of asking you. Powerpoint presentations, a willingness to let you make a list of demands, literal bribery. Valentina seemed borderline nervous past her attempt at a facade of confidence when she said that a tour as a pair—Hometown Heroes, they were calling it—polled well with the public. She’d been willing to negotiate with you where she demanded from John. You were sure you’d surprised her when you’d accepted what she offered up front instead of arguing for more or to not do it at all. 

Now, though, you thought it was becoming abundantly clear why you’d agreed without much pushback.

Public relations experts had agreed on one live interview. No more, no less. Just enough to capture attention and funnel people to other, more staged efforts. There was supposed to be a set of pre-approved questions with coached answers. There were supposed to be lines in the sand.

Whether the heavily made-up, fake southern accented interviewer went off script all on her own, or whether Valentina was screwing with you again you had no clue. All you knew was that you were a few minutes away from losing it.

John was floundering next to you. You saw his fingers twitch around the arms of the chair he was sitting in. You wanted nothing more than to reach out and reassure him. You thought that if you moved ever-so-slightly you could brush his knee with yours. You also knew it was a bad idea.

Frankly, it had been a bad idea in the first place to send you both back to Custer’s Grove.

There were too many memories here, both bad and good, both together and apart. You had sworn long ago that you would never go back, and John had made the same vow albeit more recently. Valentina had argued that the whole point of Hometown Heroes was moot if you didn’t return home. (You had tried to argue that Custer’s Grove had not been home in a long, long time. It hadn’t worked.) It was essential, Mel had taken over to explain, that you capitalize off your shared background. What better way to remind the world that you were both human than to send you back where you came from?

Whatever group they had polled to come up with that idea clearly had not come from your hometown. Where you were revered, John was reviled. It was truly remarkable how much of the town had so quickly turned on their golden boy. You had not met the same fate, Custer’s Grove still thought you gilded.

You were seconds away from smashing that particular fantasy to pieces.

The interviewer was looking at John like she hadn’t just dropped a bomb on him. What would Steve Rogers think about your actions as Captain America?

Though you weren’t looking at John’s face, you could imagine what it was. You knew what he looked like when he was lost for words. You knew what he looked like when people took him back where he didn’t want to go.

He tried for diplomacy. “I don’t think I can answer that. I never knew him.”

An escape. She instead used it to parry the question over to you. A mistake. You didn’t answer immediately, locking eyes with Mel across the room. She looked panicked. People were whispering in both her ears. But you were live. There was no saving it. You were fairly certain that had been the entire point. No way out like with a pre-recorded tape. 

What was there to say? Steve had already chosen a successor when the government decided it would be John instead. It always should have been Sam, they knew that, you knew that, and John had finally swallowed it down. But that also wasn’t the question she was asking. She wanted to know what Steve would have thought about John’s darkest day. Honestly? You weren’t certain either.

Part of you thought Steve might have been willing to do worse where Bucky was involved. Another part of you thought that a man willing to go to such lengths would not have left so unceremoniously.  Still, you hardly thought the question relevant when Steve was gone and John was a different man entirely.

When you took too long to answer, she pressed, “What do you think about his actions that day?”

The truth? Un-airable. The truth was that, with you in John’s place and Bucky in Lemar’s, you’d likely have made his actions look like child’s play.

“I think the past is the past,” you said, fists clenched in your lap. “And I trust John to have my back any day. On the job and off.”

No one was satisfied with your answer, least of all you. The course of questioning changed anyway. It was clear there was no pulling any true comment on that from either of you. Back to regularly scheduled programming, softball questions from the pre-approved list. None of it mattered. The rest of the interview was stilted at best, hostile at worst. You were seething underneath a blank expression, wanting nothing more than to rip off the mic hooked to your shirt and stomp off.

Mel was beside you the moment cameras stopped rolling. “We’re going to have it wiped.” You were walking already, trailing far behind John and with Mel far behind you. “We can’t do anything about people that watched it live, but—”

“Stop,” you demanded. “I told you this was a bad idea.”

You didn’t stop walking, there was no point. No amount of arguing with Mel, no amount of pleading or assurances from her end would change things. They couldn’t bury this. Live was live, and the internet was forever. Even Valentina couldn’t stop every idiot with a YouTube account.

You were right, of course. Three hours later and even if it wasn’t publicly available on the news’ website, your interview had been clipped and posted around social media.

In silence, you had driven two hours outside of town in search of a place to be where no one would stare. Now you were sitting at a table in maybe the shittiest diner Georgia had to offer, scrolling through public commentary. People were not just misinterpreting things you’d said, but they were analyzing your body language and drawing incorrect conclusions.

Oh she haaaaates his ass, one commenter posted, she doesn’t even look at him when he talks.

You didn’t have public-facing social media, which was probably for the best. If you did, you might have started responding. You knew it would get you nowhere, or it might even make things worse. Mostly you didn’t care. All you wanted was for people to stop dissecting your behavior and acting like they knew you. 

“Not gonna get you anywhere,” John said after a stretch of silence. He plucked your phone from your hands, locked it, and tossed it on the booth beside him. “I would know.”

John had learned indifference to the internet, for the most part. You weren’t so well-trained about it, surprisingly. You thought that after so many years, after watching Bucky go through it during his bid for both presidential pardon and congressional seat, you would have been better. Yet it still sickened you to look at it all, even when most of it was not really directed at you. 

“I don’t know how people write that shit,” you responded.

“Easier from behind a screen,” he told you. “In public they mostly just… look.”

You were used to eyes on you, but not in the way John meant. People never looked at you like they were scared you were a hair’s breadth away from snapping. They didn’t look at you like you were some kind of danger. When you noticed people looking at you from afar it was always with great interest or awe. It was invasive, sure, to be stared at, but you had to imagine the other way was worse. At least you didn’t normally feel like a caged wild animal. 

“You just have to learn what opinions matter,” he continued. “Or so I’m told.”

“Sounds like a Bucky-ism.”

He almost smiled. “It might be.”

It also sounded far easier than it was, you knew that. John said all of this now, but you knew the cycle. You’d seen it before. More than once you’d caught him returning to old articles or videos about himself, scrolling disparaging remarks about himself. It happened less and less frequently now, but you were expecting eventually curiosity would get the better of him. He’d tell you this now, take your phone away for your benefit, but you wouldn’t be surprised to wake in the night and see the same screen on his.

You wanted to reach for him. The look in his eyes suggested it would be a mistake.

In the public eye, your relationship did not exist. It was half-secret, and deeply private even within the confines of the tower, all by John’s choice. It grated on you sometimes, but he’d made his reasonings clear. I’m not dragging you down with me, he’d said once. You told him you didn’t care, and he’d just given you a look that said if you weren’t going to care at all, he’d care double. All you worried about was Valentina using it as a bargaining chip, but even that hardly deterred you.

“I should say something,” you decided. “People might not want to hear you talk yourself up, but if it’s me—”

“They’ll only think less of you,” John interrupted. “And you know it.”

Part of you didn’t think so, most of you knew he was probably right. But at the same time, you’d earned the good will of the public in blood, so you thought they owed you some slack. Besides, most of you also didn’t care what the public thought of you. It had done nothing to save you when you refused to sign the Sokovia Accords.

“I don’t care what people think of me,” you said.

He said nothing, but the doubt read easy on his face. You supposed you couldn’t blame him, you had never known the other side of the coin.

Despite all his silent objections, you reached out across the table. It almost looked casual. Almost. If you hadn’t looked like you were hurting for just the barest brush of his skin, it might have been nothing. He gave you another look.

“We should go,” he said finally, and you didn’t argue.

He wasn’t so withdrawn in the car, which hurt just as much as it helped. He didn’t worry about being caught behind tinted windows and drove with one hand on the wheel while the other held yours. The very same way he should have allowed himself to do in public, if you had anything to say about it. You wanted to walk the world with only one hand to use because the other was permanently stuck with his. 

A two-hour silence with him might usually have been companionable and welcome. There were plenty of times that you merely existed together in the same room. This was not that. This was a silence heavy with an argument that was both happening and not happening. Mostly, you knew it would get you nowhere. That was the problem with loving someone equally as stubborn as you were, neither of you was ever willing to fold. Not until it was almost a too-big problem. The pursuit of compromise was practically a Sisyphean task where the two of you were involved.

The entire drive you tried your best to simply relish the time you were allowed for simple touch, but the weight on you hardly allowed it. You really thought he ought to let you at least try to advocate for him. You also knew he’d sooner shed blood. It was an incredibly cyclical problem to have. All you wanted to do was share the side of him you knew, the differences you saw emerging in a man who was trying to better himself day by day.

He’d tamped his temper, though most would not have noticed it. You saw. You knew why. John told you that Lemar had once told him he couldn’t solve problems with his fists anymore. He’d then said he was trying, even if it was mostly too little, too late. You noticed it. Bob, indestructible as he was, might have once upon a time felt the direct impact of John’s anger. Now when you saw it flare at an off-handed comment, you would watch as John just breathed and said not now, Bob. Small, but different.

It would be a hard thing to show people in your line of work, unless he let you do the talking up for him. It would certainly be worth it to you, regardless of the outcome. At least you would have tried. That was all you could ever do. 

At the hotel, he separated from you like an identically charged magnetic pole, forever forced to repel. However briefly it was for—you knew you’d be slipping out of your room and into his—it hurt.

Mel appeared out of thin air the moment you stepped through the doors. She allowed John to pass, but held you back. Your gaze might have been hard enough to cut glass, the way she shuddered at it. It seemed all her time working for Valentina had not made her immune to your ire. She was apologizing again, explaining there was already a team behind the scenes doing the work to repair the damage the interview had done to the plans. You told her flatly that you were through with the plans. She had Valentina on the phone in the next instant. 

Valentina was sickly-sweet as she told you that under no circumstances would you abandon the plan when you were so nearly through. A momentary setback, she called your borderline-disastrous interview. There are people coming around, she further insisted. Mingling with local politicians will do wonders, she added. What she meant, of course, was that she would be humiliated if you did not stuff yourself into an uncomfortable dress and balance-throwing shoes and show up to the charity event her endless staff had so painstakingly handcrafted as your send-off.

You wanted to tell her to shove it. You also knew she’d send John in alone, and that was worse. She’d come up with some excuse, of course. You’d be reported to be off saving the world or something equally dramatic. She would save face at all costs, and John would have to miserably agree on her arm the entire night. 

“Never again,” you told her flatly. Her relief was so palpable through the phone that one might think she’d talked you off a nuclear option.

Mel smiled at you tensely and you did not respond in kind. She headed off to her room, and you waited a safe twenty minutes before completely ignoring your own suite and heading to John’s.

He was waiting for you, out of casual clothes and into pajamas. Despite the argument you wanted to start, you allowed yourself to melt into him instead. It could wait for another day. It could wait until you were really home.

“What did she want?” he asked, threading fingers through your hair with one hand and tracing your spine with the other.

“Just bullshit,” you responded.

That was what this all was, wasn’t it?

A team of professional stylists, hairdressers, and make-up artists invaded your space for three hours. You practically boiled over with rage the third time they decided you did not look perfect enough. Mel called them off once you’d started threatening bodily injury. Someone remarked that Valentina would not be pleased, and you’d responded they should be pleased to not be in pieces. No one said much of anything after that. 

After all the poking and prodding was finally over, you were ushered directly into a car that already contained Valentina and John. It seemed as though you were going to have to create a moment alone with him if you so craved it. You shared the briefest of glances and then he was back to absolutely imperturbable.

You were all matching. You, John, Valentina, and you were half expecting Mel to arrive separately but in the same color scheme. It screamed family reunion from hell, but you were sure Valentina was going for novelty. It would sell well, she had probably determined based on polls from who-knows-where and experts who probably had much better things to be doing. 

She had directed you both to tablets loaded with important faces. Why you hadn’t been given them earlier, you weren’t sure. Either she had far too much faith in your ability to digest all kinds of information very quickly, or maybe she was going for authentic introductions over anything else. She’d done it before, given you mere moments to peek at information you’d later only remember with prompting. All those months ago, Mel had explained that it often led to the impression that Valentina had been talking these people up to you, even when she hadn’t. You recalled miserably that people had eaten it up.

It would have made sense, if Custer’s Grove wasn’t the type of place that hired from within, so to speak. You’d known most of the local politicians from childhood, and the ones you hadn’t it was only because they were so much younger than you. (Or had been, for some. Blip mathematics were hell on your brain.)

“Big smiles,” Valentina reminded you as the car came to a stop. “Make it look good.”

John was out first and you saw cameras immediately flash. Publicly disliked or no, it appeared he was still quite the spectacle to capture. Valentina was next, John gentlemanly offered her a hand to help her out of the car. You were sure she was practically giddy over the thought of it in the local paper. She made a time of it, at least giving you a few moments to breathe. You doubted that was on purpose, sure that she just relished all of the attention on herself.

You saw her vanish alone. John was still waiting, dipping his head down to look at you still in the car. You did not will your muscles to move, still deep in your desire to not be doing this. Maybe, if you offered enough money, the driver would just take off.

Whoever’s idea it was to host a charity event in your high school’s gymnasium was officially on your hit list. It all suddenly made a lot of sense, though. Talk about recapturing the past.

You weren’t sure how Valentina’s people had gotten ahold of pictures that only should have existed in old cameras that you’d left behind years ago. You weren’t sure why she insisted on torturing you like this, or if she even knew it was torture at all. But the rest was all so clear now.

A team of professionals took three hours not to make you look perfect, but to perfectly emulate what you had looked like decades ago at senior prom. It was sneaky and slimy and you had half a mind to rip Valentina’s head clean off her shoulders. It all clicked now because you had been here before. It had been a Chevy truck instead of a fancy limo, and you’d certainly been a hell of a lot younger, but you were familiar still with the sight of John in a suit offering you a hand to help you out of a vehicle. 

“I know,” he said. Clearly it had not just dawned on him the same way it had you. “She’s a real peach, isn’t she.”

Yeah, you were going to rip her limb from limb.

You took John’s proffered hand anyway and prepared yourself for the barrage. The air practically vibrated with it. The Georgia heat was certainly stifling, but it was not what made you breathless.

Cameras captured as you exited, but you did not stop for your moment in the spotlight as Valentina had done. Your name was called, photographers and journalists alike begging for your attention. You ignored them all. Valentina would get the bare minimum, if even that. Instead of posing and smiling politely, you marched yourself straight into the building.

John trailed you for only the few brief moments it took for his long strides to close on you. He was muttering more at you than to you, given you were in no space to listen. The school was decorated professionally, classy enough for adults but obvious enough what it called back to. You kicked yourself for being such a fool. Really, you should have seen it coming. This whole thing had been about hometown glory, after all. It didn’t hurt any less.

Whatever Valentina thought, your time in Custer’s Grove had been less than pleasant. The very best of it, the pieces that she was mutilating to fit her own agenda, had been John. Not your parents, who you’d frankly been relieved to see pass several years ago. Not friends, who had been barely present regardless and had certainly vanished when you went off to school. Not even school, as studious as you had been. The town tried to paint itself gold in retrospect, but you knew the truth and so did anyone who’d been around then. It should have spoken for itself, the way you couldn’t get out fast enough.

Prom was not even a particularly great memory, in the grand scheme of things. John had won king, which would have been great if you had been beside him, but you’d not been nearly popular enough for that. He’d been a gentleman about it, plucking the plastic crown from his own head and placing it on Lemar’s, saying someone else needed to do kingly duties so he could dance with who really mattered. Later in the night, he’d ruined it all by telling you he enlisted. Then, in your infinite teenage wisdom, you’d fucked him while crying in his beat-up truck. Frankly, you felt foolish about a great many things that happened that night, but that didn’t mean you wanted Valentina to rewrite any part of it.

“One hour,” John said, grasping you around the waist in a darkened corner. “One hour, a raffle, a dinner, then we’re done.”

It did little to soothe the fire steadily burning in your very bones. You weren’t sure you could smile through your fury for ten minutes, let alone an hour. You weren’t interested in parroting nostalgia while Valentina tried to talk up “her” team and her ideas. What you wanted was violence, really. It would have been hugely satisfying, for a moment, to gouge Valentina’s eyes out. 

John had pulled you away from all the noise. Your back was pressed to his chest, his arm wound fully around your middle. He was trying to keep you grounded just as much as he was trying to hold you back.

“It’s gonna be fine,” he muttered, lips against the top of your head. “It’s okay.”

This time, it was you who pulled from him like you’d been burned. If you were going to suffer through this, you were not going to hear his reassurances first. Not when you knew in the light he would separate from you like touching you was only suffering. 

You ran into Mel who was on the hunt and looking harried. She gasped in relief at the sight of you, and you noticed with great annoyance that she was in fact in a matching shade. “Have you seen Walker?”

You only barely kept the frown off your face. “No.”

Though she did not look at all like she believed you, she still just directed you to the cafeteria. Like you needed direction. Nothing had changed here, which was part of the problem. There had been no remodel or overhaul at Custer’s Grove High. It was still so perfectly same that you’d have been able to navigate the halls with your eyes shut and recall a memory at every pause. 

“Ah,” Valentina exclaimed with great effort the moment you entered the room, “there she is! And I’m sure John is just on his way…”

The group she was talking to locked onto you, but clearly had no care for whether John was coming or not. You recognized faces not from just files, but from history alone. You recalled flashes of what you were informed they were doing now. The now-mayor, who had once just been a classmate’s older brother, stuck his hand out at you and smiled what you supposed was meant to be charmingly. He was gentle about it, you were not.

“You’re all grown up,” he commented, and you weren’t entirely sure what to make of it. “We’re all so proud of what you’ve become.”

Ironic, coming from someone who’d told his little sister to stay away lest your bad influence rub off on her.

Your smile came across more a grimace, and Valentina intervened quite quickly. You still wanted to rip her face off, so you were glad when she made both herself and the mayor scarce. She pulled him away, talking about how you favored children’s charities, leaving you to your own devices with the rest of the group she’d amassed in your absence.

They talked at you, rather than to you. None of them had known you particularly well in the past, nor did it seem they truly wanted to know you now. It was abundantly clear that you were here offered up on a silver platter like some sort of advertisement. You were asked to throw your support behind local projects, begged to stick around and give some talks to the schools, reminded of memories reframed to be fond when they absolutely had not been.

John, who appeared to have nearly been dragged in by Mel, was experiencing the opposite. The last time he had been in this cafeteria he’d been the talk of the town, and now he was getting brief polite handshakes before being brushed off. As far as you could tell, he was taking it in stride, smiling tightly every time Valentina brought someone around for him to meet. Clearly, she thought it would take some prodding for anyone to approach him. 

You were being passed around the room both of your own accord and against your will. Though you didn’t want to talk to anyone at all, talking to everyone was still somehow preferable than being stuck with one individual. And, you had to admit, it was becoming more and more bearable as you downed glasses of champagne, though you were beginning to tire of even that very quickly.

Someone was talking at you about a start-up, and you were not listening. John had since shaken Valentina off almost entirely, occupying himself on the sidelines. In a real role-reversal, he was the only thing you were worried about even while all the attention was yours. Just as he had done all those years ago. 

“Sorry,” you said, though not sorry at all. You had interrupted what was assuredly a very boring monologue about… pesticides, you thought, but couldn’t be sure. “I’m sorry, I just see someone—”

The man you’d not been listening to gave you a tight smile. “Of course, I’m sure everyone is dying to talk to you.”

It was true. Everyone in the room was aching for your very presence except the one person you wanted to be around. You made a beeline for him, but Mel caught you halfway across the room. 

“Sorry,” she apologized, and she seemed to actually mean it. “They want you to pull the first ticket for the raffle. Everyone’s going to be directed to their tables in a minute.”

You huffed a breath through your nose, but followed anyway. The makeshift stage that had been pulled together for the evening was just as rickety as you remembered it being, even if it might not have been the same one at all. With no real auditorium, all band concerts had been held in the always-smelly gym with what essentially amounted to a very large wooden box to perform on. 

Cameras were pointed at you again. They were recording for something, you’d discovered. You hadn’t had the room in your head to even think about it during your so-called mingling. You had half a mind to start SOS-ing in sign language just to fuck with Valentina, but you refrained. At the very least, you still had some tact, and this was for charity. 

There was a microphone in front of you, which you tapped twice to ensure was working. You did not want to do this more than once. Near your left, Valentina had taken a seat strategically selected next to John. On her other side was an empty chair, you assumed it was yours. The rest of the table was filled with men in suits. It, for the moment, looked very tense. 

You practically droned your way through talking points that Mel had given you. No outright pre-prepared speech, since that would come of as inauthentic, or so you were told. Under any other circumstances, you’d have tried more. It was for a good cause, but the whole night so far had left you sick to your stomach and with a pounding headache. 

A particularly enthusiastic local businesswoman won the first raffle—a donated luxury spa treatment, or the closest thing that Custer’s Grove had to offer—and you were thusly allowed to turn things over to Mel for the rest of the night. Valentina had vanished by the time you made your way to the table, and you took her seat without even looking at the one meant for you. 

In the space between draws, people tried to suck you into conversation, but you weaseled your way out every single time. In the space between breaths, John snuck his hand to your knee under the table and you promptly forced it off. After that, he seemed to understand that he’d gotten himself into trouble too. 

To be clear, you didn’t blame him for the events of the night. You blamed him for not wanting to touch you in public. You weren’t asking for egregious. You weren’t asking for something that would send grandmothers into early cardiac arrest. You just wanted to be able to hold his hand without him wondering if someone was taking pictures and writing articles about how far you’d fallen. 

Valentina returned looking less-than-pleased about something, but also said nothing about you taking her seat. Instead, she slid easily into yours and began making conversation again like nothing happened. When the focus was not on her, she uttered out of the side of her mouth that you needed to make more of an effort. You responded lowly she had gotten all that she was going to get out of you for the night.

Dinner was served once all the prizes had been divvied, but few people remained seated. Mostly, they milled about rubbing shoulders with one another. It seemed, since they realized they were getting very little out of you, they had moved onto each other. Mostly you wished it had happened earlier, but you also knew there’d be hell to pay once Valentina was done fluttering around and making excuses for your reclusive behavior. 

John remained seated next to you throughout it all, but neither of you bothered touching the food that had been served. 

“We might be able to sneak out of here,” he remarked, and you couldn’t help but scoff. “Not like we’re doing much, anyway.”

“Aren’t you worried someone might see? Might assume.”

John sighed heavily. “We doing this here?”

Well, it wasn’t like you had anything better to do. “Guess so.”

“You know what I’m worried about,” he started. “I told you, I’m not taking you down with me. I don’t know why you want me to.”

“I don’t want— I just don’t care, John,” you began, but stopped and floundered for words. It was impossible to know what the right thing to say was, or how to adequately speak your truth about all of it.

You didn’t want it to seem like you disregarded his care for you. You knew it wasn’t that John truly wanted to keep you secret, not in some kind of shamed way. He saw it as protecting you from the thing that had hurt him the most. But he wasn’t grasping that you’d fought gods and monsters and everything in between, and that you’d lost so many friends in the process that all you cared about now was what mattered.

What mattered to you was holding on tight to what you had now. The people that you had now. Your fragile team, separate pieces of shattered, jagged glass that somehow fit together just right like a puzzle. Him, of course. Always him.

“I love you,” you told him, not a whisper. You would have yelled it, but also you wouldn’t. It wasn’t attention you were going for. You didn’t need to love him loudly, but you didn’t want to do it silently either. “Damn the consequences.”

It rendered John utterly speechless for several moments. You just looked at him evenly, figuring you could forgive him his shock. It was three little words that you’d had a lifelong mental block for. Something you’d only ever thought and never said aloud. Even Bucky, ever emotionally-constipated, had managed it before you did. John had said it often, freely, like he was making up for lost time. He never pushed, never asked it of you. Never flinched when in response you just uttered, you too. Never took offense that you couldn’t manage it.

He finally began, “How’re you gonna say something like that when I can’t—”

“You can,” you interrupted. “You’re what matters to me. Not what people think.”

He spoke quick and low, “You’re in a room full of people who’ve spent the entire night trying to ignore me because they’d rather be caught dead than on my side. I love you, you know that—”

“I wanna marry you, one day,” you interrupted him again. “And that’s never going to happen if you keep trying to protect me from what people are going to think.”

John floundered again. That was certainly a thing you hadn’t talked about, but you figured cards on the table. You didn’t know if he’d even considered marrying again, or if the whole institution was a write-off to him, but you’d found yourself imagining it as of late. It would by untraditional, you knew. There’d be no moving out of the tower to some suburb, and it would probably be more courthouse than big, white wedding, but you were okay with that. It would be more than enough for you.

“Let’s get out of here,” he finally uttered.

Your shoulders slumped unintentionally. “John—”

“Let’s get out of here,” he repeated. “Because I want to go home. Now. With you. And if you don’t care who sees, I don’t either.”

There was a great soar all within the confines of your body. He was standing, offering you his hand, not even casting a glance over his shoulder to see if there was anyone nearby. When you took it and stood, he released only to wrap his arm around your waist and pull you tight into his side. 

“I love you,” he said. “And I’m sorry.”

You weren’t sneaking off. You were just leaving, together, to go home. Your real home, where all of your friends were probably wreaking havoc and trying to kill each other. Valentina was calling after you, trying to draw you back and following your exit all at once.

She sounded utterly shocked as she said, “Where are you going?”

“We’re going home, Val,” John said over his shoulder. “With or without your permission.”

It had happened through no fault of your own, truly. Really it had been no one’s fault at all, but Stephen was taking it on as his own and you did not have enough in you to fight it. He was running himself ragged trying to both mentor America and find a cure for you all at the same time. Flatly, you had commanded him to stop, but he had only looked at you with sharp eyes that told you he was going to do whatever it took. It almost seemed to be tearing him apart more than you, but you supposed that came with the territory of being able to feel without inhibition.

Emotion was a double-edged sword. When you did feel it, which was rarely now, it only served to pain you further, like you were being torn apart faster as punishment for humanity. So, mostly, you avoided it. You avoided people you knew you cared about, or had cared about, just to escape the small chance you might feel a twinge of anything at all. 

Stephen was a problem about it. He sought you out almost daily, spellbooks in hand and his mind full of theories on how to piece you back together. Once, he had suggested an ancient binding ceremony that would tie you to him for the rest of your lives. You’d felt a knife-like presence in your chest and heat behind your eyes and that had been the day you decided you could no longer stay at Kamar-Taj, lest he suggest or try something far more radical than he already had. He cared too much, and you knew it would only kill you faster.

That being said, you weren’t sure if you were truly dying or just emptying. It was a far more ancient magic than either Stephen or Wong had ever encountered that had afflicted you, and neither knew exactly what the end would be. The two most likely options were that one day you would die, or one day you would be a shell of yourself wandering the Earth until your physical body gave way. You could not be certain which would be worse.

Wong caved and allowed you to call New York Sanctum home for whatever remaining balance of time you had. Though it was still Stephen’s domain, even he swore he would only make an appearance if strictly necessary. Still, it was hard to be there all alone with no powers or Mystic Arts to call upon. It appeared along with your soul, all of your abilities both inherent and learned were leaving you too. Thus, you spent much of your time wandering the streets of New York where it wasn’t so hard to be soulless. Almost everyone else was too, in a way.

Perhaps that was why, on one cool, breezy day when the darkness took you, you were not scared or surprised. At least, not until pure shadow turned into an unfamiliar cold, steely, and sterile lab that you had never seen before. Abandoned workstations, collections of half-broken beakers and rusted metal components. Shadow distilled down into marks on the walls and a man with pinprick white eyes looking through you.

His head cocked each way several times as the pure white bored into you. Cold creeped down your through like ice, but nothing more. He was somehow nothing and everything as he took you in silently, as though deliberating. You were not sure if he was truly a person or not, or if this was your adventure into some kind of afterlife and he was the Grim Reaper come to collect.

Time was uncertain and unfamiliar wherever you were, but he spoke after some measure of it. “You’re empty.”

You decided then that he must have been trying to collect a soul you did not have. “Sorry to disappoint.”

He continued as though you had not spoken at all. Circled you like a shark. Assessing. “I don’t know what to do with you. Where to put you.”

Had your tongue not frozen to ice in your mouth, you might have offered a few suggestions simply for the sake of speeding things along. You did not enjoy lingering in your strange Limbo with your odd man of pure shadow who behaved like he had never encountered someone in your condition. You wished he had a face for you to analyze as he was yours. Wished he was more than a black hole of nothing while all you had left was laid bare. If this was how you were dying, you would have liked to see your ferryman. 

The room before you flickered so briefly you might have thought you hallucinated it if he’d not let loose a hum that sounded like a wicked smile. For a moment, you saw Titan. Stephen at your side dusting and leaving you behind. Someone begging, pleading that he didn’t want to go. Tony Stark’s haunted face. It was gone the next instant. The cold in your chest turned to fire and ache. Your throat closed around the memory you never wanted to relive.

Your ferryman’s frustration returned as it vanished. “Let me help you. You’re almost there.”

So, that’s what it was. He wasn’t here to gather your soul, he wanted to ruin what was left of it. It was almost a comfort. The end was here. No more avoiding, no more slowly wasting away. If he wanted to break you, you were going to let him. You closed your eyes, took a deep breath, and waited. A hand closed around your wrist. You expected to be sucked away from everything and into nothing at all, but it only remained there heavy, freezing, and with a softer grasp than you’d have anticipated.

You wanted it, but you would not beg. You would not ask to die, you could still feel enough pride for that. Ice snaked through your blood and seeped into your bones but still you remained. He wasn’t draining you, but freezing you. You wondered if this was the true end of your curse, not dead and not fully empty but half-alive and frozen until the end of time, your only company a man of pure shadow. If you had it in you to cry you might have, but you were also sure the tears would freeze before falling.

What you assumed was his forehead pressed against the side of your face. “Why do I know you?”

His confusion in turn confused you. Until now, you had assumed this was employment or cosmic purpose for him. Now you wondered if he was just as frozen in limbo as you were. Maybe to him, you were shadow too. Your eyes and mouth opened simultaneously, but a great many things happened in quick succession. Before you could manage words, you were no longer alone together. He froze behind you, entirely unmoving.

An unfamiliar woman uttered, “I’ve been here before.”

You recognized the voice of the next man who spoke because the very same one had just been whispering in your ear. “This is where it all started.”

You were beyond confused now, and turned to look at the group that had invaded your purgatory. You recognized none of them except for Bucky Barnes. It took him a moment to put your puzzle pieces together. You looked different now, sunken in and void of light after your months of being put through the mystical garbage disposal. He surged forward as though intent on grabbing you, but the room expanded almost exponentially right in front of your eyes. Shadows held you firm. 

The same voice spoke to you from two places, one muttering in your ear that you belonged here, that he was trying to help you. The other came from across the room, apologizing, nearly begging, telling you he had only wanted to do better, be better. Someone else asked who you were, Bucky responded so low you couldn’t hear him. You were sure whatever explanation he was offering was wrong.

“I know her,” the simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar one muttered. He looked at you then, muted blue eyes that sent a shiver down your spine. “I— I know you from somewhere.” He moved on from your eyes to his counterpart. “Let her go.”

“No.”

The room gave a great shudder as metal ripped and wound itself around everyone in the room except for you, the shadow man, and the very real flesh-and-blood version of him. Adrenaline coursed through you, but you were held fast by an impossibly strong arm wound around your middle. Breath became a near-impossibility but you had grown used to pain. 

The blonde woman who had spoken before said urgently, “Bob.”

The sweater-clad man in front of you looked back at her for a moment. Bob. An unassuming name for who you once might have figured to be an unassuming man. You were learning differently, though. He drug his eyes away from her and spoke more firmly to the man holding you. “Let them go.”

You heard the shriek of metal as it wound tighter.

“You think they care about you?” spoke the shadow.

His hold on you released but you still stood firmly rooted to the spot. You knew deep down you should have tried something. Anything. But what could you do? What would sparks to do an entity who had crushed, at the very least, a known super-solider with metal beams and had held you so tightly you almost couldn’t breathe? You were functionally useless, just an audience for the chaos in front of you.

“You don’t matter to anyone.”

“That’s not true—”

She, the most vocal of them all, was nearly garroted in the next instant. A violent energy seemed to pulse through the room. You could feel it rattle your bones. Bucky called your name, and he met the same fate.

“Stop,” you said, uselessly, fatally. You would have assumed your plea fell on deaf ears if they had not both looked at you.

It seemed for a moment they had simultaneously decided you were the most interesting thing in the room. You had no clue where to look, but you settled for the antagonist of the situation. You began to see the similarities even when one was pure silhouette. A negative of the same man commanding for his friends to be left alone.

“He’s you,” you said, barely a breath. It was almost astounding. You’d have assumed some sort of astral form if not for the feeling of his hands on you. 

“I’m sorry,” Bob said. Real, physical Bob. Not the shadow-self you had been first introduced to. “I’m stronger than him, I’m—”

“We’ll see about that,” his other-self nearly demanded.

Flesh, blood, and bone was on the echo of himself in the next moment. The violence thrummed not just inside the room but inside you. Dread settled deep in your gut. You were feeling, without pain, more deeply than you had in months. It was a great wonder and horror all at once. There was a part of you who wished you could spend the rest of your life here if only just to feel real. The part of you that had made some semblance of a hero before knew you wouldn’t. Your fingers sparked, feeling deeply unfamiliar after months of absence.

The room expanded impossibly once more, distancing you from the war waged only in selves. Metal groaned your way and your hands flew up, stopping it in its tracks. It burned away with some effort, oddly stenchless, but you supposed natural rules did not apply in such a space. Nothing more flew your way, so you set off running. Perpendicular to you, the seemingly very nimble woman was dodging flying desks with the same intent. 

Darkness was crawling up the very real Bob’s body. He was destroying himself. Spitting mad and throwing punches wherever they could land, not realizing he was only satisfying the embodied emptiness. He was still being taunted, but you couldn’t tell if he was really hearing at all.

You reached them—him—first. Your hand slammed into his shoulder, something that should have shoved his astral form out of his body, but nothing happened. He rocked briefly backwards at it, but continued to shred his own knuckles trying to harm himself. It seemed even with your powers you were useless here.

“You have to stop,” you commanded, trying to be firm, trying to not sound like you were begging. But you were, and you knew it. Because he was going to kill himself and trap them all in eternity. 

She joined you then, eyes flickering only briefly to yours before she was trying to physically pull at him. She muttered something so quietly you could not hear, right in his ear. He ignored that too, just like he had you.

“Please,” you said, joining the effort to remove him from himself with force. “You’re tearing yourself apart.” You pushed while she pulled, but it seemed all for naught. “He’s part of you. Your soul. You have to stop.”

Everyone else had pulled free of their restraints too, rushing to Bob’s aid. You still talked incessantly, not thinking of most of your words. You knew what it was to be torn apart from the inside out, even if you had not watched it in front of your eyes. You were a lost cause, unable to stop what was happening in you, but Bob was not. Bob was not yet consumed into whole darkness, still had light and, it seemed, very real friends to fight for.

“Just let go,” you told him, still pushing at his shoulders with all your might, wrists aching every time he drew back to bully on himself again. “You’ll be okay. You can stop this.”

You looked into impossibly wild blue eyes once more and then you were falling. Tumbling. Forward and forward. Right into a mouthful of New York City concrete.

Bucky Barnes appeared on your doorstep five days later. Since your last meeting, he had been branded a New Avenger, and you’d begun to have nightmares. A particularly impressive feat given you’d not dreamt at all, happily or otherwise, since the day you’d been cursed.

“Bob keeps asking about you,” he said, without preamble. You both appreciated and cringed at his directness. You had been trying to ignore and forget about the entire debacle. “Everyone keeps nagging me because I’m the only one that knows you.”

Except you don’t really, you wanted to point out. You’d spent a grand total of maybe two hours together, in battle and out. Thanos for the second time. Tony’s funeral. You chose not to include what you had ambiguously dubbed The Incident.

You stood silent, gripping onto the door. You weren’t sure if you were going to invite him in or slam the door in his face. He looked different than you had known him to, both from before and from his incredibly brief stint as a politician. And, given what he’d walked into at your last meeting, you weren’t sure you much cared to know what he and his rag-tag group of mostly-not-superheros were up to.

“Five minutes,” he bargained quickly. “All I need.”

A little busy, you wanted to say. It was mostly true. Before he’d begun to knock incessantly at the door, you’d been trying to coax Stephen away from tomes and scrolls and into at least a nap. You’d accidentally sent him into a spiral when you revealed you were having nightmares and you were certain he’d not slept in three days. Unfortunately, your valiant efforts to interrupt his intense research were mostly met with him locking you out with magic you were currently incapable of undoing.

“I can wait here all day,” Bucky pointed out.

He meant it, and you knew it was true regardless. You had witnessed him tireless in battle, so you had to imagine he could handle a doorstep for more than a few hours. He entered as soon as you pushed the door aside, slipping through just as you’d withdrawn your arm.

“Don’t waste my time,” you chided as he admired the architecture. “You’re on a clock. Five minutes.”

Bucky turned back to you, looking almost amused. Like he knew you had both an unlimited amount of time but also none at all. It, in turn, did not amuse you. It would likely not have amused you even with a full breadth of emotion available to you. You didn’t often like people invading your personal space and time without notification or reason.

“Bob’s been asking about you,” he repeated. He was trying to whittle at you, that much was clear. He intended to goad you into asking why, into perhaps revealing some secret card he must have expected you were carefully hiding in some secret pocket. You offered him nothing, mostly because you had nothing but also because you did not appreciate games.

“So you said,” you acknowledged. “Would you like to waste your five minutes on repetition?”

His eyes narrowed at you. Challenging, but also curious.

“He doesn’t remember it,” he continued cautiously. “The Void.”

So, that was what they were calling it. An apt descriptor for the complete nothingness of Bob’s other self and the hell-like dimension he’d taken you to.

“Has no clue what went on in there, but remembers you clear as day. Enough to ask who you are. How I know you.”

It might have been smarter to deflect. It might have been wiser to make a smart comment about being memorable, or saying you had that affect on people. Instead you remained in steely silence, letting it sink in. He’d called you familiar. Said he knew you. Now you were the only thing he remembered from what should have been a particularly harrowing experience that should have left you only a minor detail.

Bucky continued after you met him with silence, “Coming from someone whose brain’s been in a blender, I can tell you it takes quite the person to break through all of that.”

“What is this?” you asked finally. “I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

“I don’t know much about your mojo,” he admitted. “I’m just wondering if you might’ve done something in there. Something that can keep helping him.”

Ah. So that was it. He thought you’d left a mark on Bob magically or mystically. Perhaps something that could prevent him from going full Void again. It teetered on amusing. He’d witnessed how utterly useless you had been even with your magic, you wondered what he’d think when he found out you were without it.

“I’m afraid I won’t be much help,” you explained. “I’m somewhat… indisposed, at the moment.”

You were expecting disappointment and instead met with suspicion. You couldn’t blame him. Something about the Void had shifted things, made you more useful than in the real world. It had breathed power right back into you for your short stint. In response to his raised eyebrow, you offered him the barest of sparks from your fingers. They fizzled sadly into nothing before even falling to the floor.

“I’m not being obstinate. I truly have nothing to offer you.”

“That’s not,” Bucky began, choosing his words very carefully. “It’s not the only reason I’m here.” You nodded, urging him to continue. “He wants to meet you. Bob. He says… he says he’s been dreaming about you.”

Well. That was certainly interesting. You opened your mouth to respond, but Stephen appeared seemingly out of nowhere. He looked haggard. Harried. Frantic. He ushered Bucky away through a hastily conjured portal that slammed closed in your face the second you tried to follow. You were left alone and vaguely frustrated.

You didn’t have it in you to seethe, so you made yourself too much coffee just to feel something and waited semi-patiently for them to return. The ticking of the clock was almost soothing. Metronomic as you sipped your hot beverage and allowed it to burn at your palms. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. 

At minute twenty-eight a portal reappeared in front of you and Stephen reappeared with Bucky and two additional guests. Bob, looking absolutely awe-struck at what was happening in front of him, and, glued to his side, the woman you recognized from the Void. 

“Hello,” you said, mostly pleasantly. You weren’t thrilled at having Bucky whisked away mid-conversation only to be further intruded upon thereafter, but you allowed Stephen his reasons. After all, he was practically killing himself trying to save your soul.

Bob stepped forward first, directly between Bucky and Stephen like they hardly mattered. The portal closed as soon as his companion followed. He was looking at you, drawing closer and closer like he was going to reach out just to make sure you were real. You retreated as far into your plush chair as you could. You watched the realization of his mistake flicker in his eyes. Literally. The blue that seemed suddenly so familiar flickered into hot gold and then back again.

“Hi,” he said, straightening. His companion watched him worryingly. “I’m—”

“Bob,” you interrupted. “I know.” Your gaze flickered to the woman at his side. “You, I don’t.”

“Yelena,” she offered simply, not divulging further. You didn’t blame her. She seemed about as uncertain about this entire situation as you did.

Stephen looked at you pointedly. “You’ve been keeping secrets.”

Not really. Sure, you might not have divulged that you ran into the former Captain America’s best friend in a seemingly alternate dimension controlled by a deeply unstable shadow-self, but you’d given him the barest details. The relevant details. The rest of it seemed unnecessary. It wasn’t like you could take him back to the scene of the crime, so to say. After all, when you’d come to with a broken nose and a mouthful of blood there were no New Avengers to be seen.

“Hardly,” you responded. He was not amused.

But he gave you a look that suggested it was your best bet not to argue, so you didn’t. He took the opportunity to explain that he and Bucky had talked it out. (Yelena seemed to sour at that, but also did not open her mouth to plead any case.) Apparently, it was for everyone’s best interests that you return to Kamar-Taj to see why your ailment had suddenly seemed to improve. (You wanted to argue that it certainly had not, but admitted that a nightmare was a dream even if an unpleasant one.) Furthermore, he thought it was for the best that Bob come along for the ride, lest he turn New York to shadow again.

You were with him only mostly against your will until that last part. Something thudded through you. A knife in the middle of your chest. You were not risking bringing a volatile, half-shadow to the mostly-stable home that America finally had. It spilled out of you like fire and blood both. Cutting through your ribcage and twisting your stomach into deeply unpleasant knots.

“No,” you said. You meant it with crying rage, but pain had stolen air from your lungs and it came out wholly flat.

Stephen looked unamused. “I’m not asking you for permission.”

You opened your mouth to argue again. Bob beat you to speech. “It’s not normally like… that. They told me what happened. In there. But normally it’s all…” He tapped a finger against the side of his head. “All in here. Unless I touch someone.”

Really, you weren’t sure what that was supposed to mean.

“We’ve kind of figured out it was different for you,” Bucky added. “Somehow.”

They explained to you the interconnected shame rooms that had plagued them all. Or, explained the concept. Neither of them seemed keen on going into detail, and you couldn’t blame them. But still, it slotted together some things in your mind. The flash of Titan, Bob’s other-self declaring eerily that he wasn’t sure where to put you. The shame had been shredded right out of you, leaving you only him.

None of it was any comfort. You still didn’t like the idea of taking him there, especially not in the aftermath of Wanda’s attack. Not with America there. But you had never been in charge, and even if you had been you certainly weren’t now. 

“I still think this is a very bad decision.”

Your protests fell on deaf ears.

Bob was consistently fascinated by your humanness. You were a novelty surrounded by those who could still wield power and, to your great surprise, a man who apparently held the force of a thousand exploding suns. Everyone had really buried the lede there. You often found his eyes on you when they ought not to have been, but he seemed to take the hint that you weren’t interested in him. Not really.

It wasn’t fear. You’d have thrown yourself to his metaphorical wolves in an instant probably just to finally end your own emptiness. In fact, the great pit in your center seemed to sometimes call for him. Sometimes, you swore you heard the call of the Void in your own mind. What bothered you was the constant, searing, knifing-pain in your chest from the last dregs of worry you could scrounge up. It was the reason you didn’t outright tell him off.

There were two final hanger-on emotions inside you. Worry for America, worry for Bob. Entirely against your own will, you sometimes watched him back and wondered what it was like to live always teetering on the edge of great power and destruction. While Wong worked with America at your request, Stephen had taken up the Herculean task of trying to teach Bob to control abilities no one understood. As anyone could imagine, it was not going swimmingly.

Darkness always seemed to surge forward within him whenever he tried to use any power of the Sentry. Hesitance would turn to overconfidence, then to self-loathing whenever he failed to harness abilities at all or failed to control them. Luckily, it seemed to have proven impossible to truly turn the mirror dimension into any version of the Void. Of course, that was not to say it didn’t weigh on Stephen. 

It must have become clear to Bob too, because you found him one night packing with the intent to flee like a bad one night stand. Part of you screamed to let him. The other, quieter, most still-human part of you knew he was going to flee not to his friends in New York, but straight into isolation. You could practically see it on him, the heaviness.

“You’re not a prisoner, you know,” you told him, leaning on the frame of his open door. “You do not need to flee in the dead of night.”

Caught red-handed, he dropped the clothing he had been holding. All Bob seemed to own fit in a duffle bag, and most of it you recognized seemed to be from his time at Kamar-Taj anyway. But really, you should have expected that. You knew only the vaguest details of his life, but you knew that he had given himself over for medical experimentation for a reason. Though you weren’t necessarily a betting woman, you were fairly certain a happy, stable life was not what led someone to such things.

“I thought it might be easier this way.”

That was the other thing. Bob seemed incapable of lying to you. You were sure that it was not a literal affliction of his, but moreso a complete mental block that seemed to occur whenever you did deign to speak to him.

“Easier for who?” you asked. He didn’t respond. “I’m going to level with you Bob.” You heard him mutter please, so you stepped fully into the room and shut the door behind you. “It’s obvious you’re not planning on going to New York, which is the only other place in the world you should be.”

He shook his head. “No. I shouldn’t be there. Not after— You were there. You saw what he— what I did.”

A twinge. A knife. The hurt of it sawed at your ribs. “It might have been you, but it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t ask for your darkest days to be given superpowers.”

His lips twitched. “Didn’t I?”

Stephen would have parroted something about informed consent, but you had long ago coaxed him into getting adequate sleep instead of wasting more of his time on the lost cause you had become. Still, it would have been a good point to make. Bob had not signed the dotted line on a paper that indicated he might end up with the ability to plunge people into their own personal hells just by a brush of skin.

“I don’t think so. Sounded like you just wanted to be… better. I know what that’s like. I just had the better luck of landing here.”

You had been a child, had just discovered you had abilities beyond your wildest imagination, and you’d been running from SHIELD. The Ancient One had found you, whether by fate or pure coincidence, and had become the mentor you needed to control not just what you were born with, but what she had wielded herself.

He was squinting then, searching in the depths of his own mind. “That was the… the bald one, right? She found you.” Bob looked at your face, took in something that must have read clear as day. You’d never told him about that, and she was long dead before he’d even stepped foot on the continent. “Sorry, I—”

“When Bucky said,” you began, then trailed off. It was hard to summon your thoughts. He’s been dreaming about you. You had thought it all memory of his own, the part you played with Void repeating over and over in his head on loop. You’d not anticipated he was seeing your past. “I didn’t think he meant like that. He said you were dreaming about me but I…”

Bob grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

“Well,” you said heavily, “we should have guessed you might be able to see into people like that.”

He shook his head at that. “Not people. Just you.”

The silence that followed was heavy. Impossible to break. Impossible to breathe through. Just you. Somehow, Bob was combing through just your memories in his dreams. Whether he was watching a supercut of your worst moments, of which there were many, or if he was seeing all the good too, it struck you as odd. Borderline scary. You wondered exactly how much of you was laid bare for him to see.

“Sorry,” he apologized again. A habit you were beginning to tire of. One that had been hard broken in yourself years ago. “I know it’s weird, but I don’t know how to stop it.”

Your mouth felt try, tongue heavy, throat swollen around nothing, lungs in a vice. The emotion itself hurt. The punishment for feeling it was only double. You forced speech past aching vocal cords. “Did you tell Stephen?” Bob shook his head again. You tried to scramble back to the absence of emotion. “You should… we should. First thing in the morning.”

Your only goal in the moment became a mad dash to exit his room. He was apologizing again, reaching out to try and cling, to make you listen. You didn’t have it in you to soothe his anxiety when your own was fighting out of you and turning your insides to ribbons. But his grip was stronger than you figured he intended it to be when it landed on your shoulder. It practically burned through your shirt, not just from the pressure but from his body heat. You had expected ice like before, but he was all fire now.

“It’s okay,” you managed, though it was not. You placed your own palm on his hand both in the hopes he might take the hint to withdraw and to try and make your words seem that much truer. “It’s fine. First thing, okay?”

Bob just nodded again.

You would likely have been ashamed to admit that you slept outside his room that night just to make sure he stayed, but there was no admission needed. The wake-up call you received was Stephen shaking you awake and looking at you as though you’d lost your mind. You offered him no explanation. Instead, you’d surged up with sudden energy and knocked a little too loud on Bob’s door. He opened it so quickly you nearly knocked directly on his chest next.

Much to his chagrin, Stephen was not allotted any time for such blasé things as morning coffee or breakfast. You, jittery with anxiety though suspiciously knifeless feeling, moderated a particularly intense discussion between him and Bob about what exactly such dreams might have meant. To your great frustration, Stephen seemed to make a point to keep a strict poker face the entire time. You could not have told anyone who asked if he was horrified, mesmerized, or somewhere in between. Even when Bob finished his explanation with great hesitation and a not-insignificant degree of mortification that had him blushing from the base of his neck all the way up to his forehead, Stephen said nothing of note.

I’ll look into it.

I’ll look into it.

And then he left like it was nothing of concern. You stared open-mouthed at the place he’d previously taken up. You could not have felt more frustrated if you tried. Bob was apologetic once more, taking your silence as opportunity to plead your forgiveness at the great invasion of privacy that neither of you had asked for. You just slumped, forehead to table, and found to your immense astonishment that you were nearly experiencing frustrated tears, all without the added pain from the inside out.

You shot out of your seat and left Bob with no explanation, chasing Stephen down the hall. He was walking at a leisurely pace. Waiting for you. He was a rat bastard and you were going to kill him. Another emotion you were experiencing without blinding pain in your chest. You grasped at him, stopping him in his tracks as you looked at him furiously. Still, somehow, you felt lighter than you had in months.

Not a question, but a fact. “You knew.”

“I had my suspicions,” he stated. “Needed you both here to know for sure.”

“Well,” you began, tears welling once more. You had seemingly become ill-equipped to handle any emotion at all in your months without much of it availed to you. Still, you feared there would come a rip through center mass, severing all of your organs as punishment for feeling anything at all. “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

It had been the very first, most ancient suggestion of them all. The first answer anyone had found that seemed it would cure you completely. You still remembered it, clear as day. The earliest days where you could still feel mostly like real people did, when it only hurt a little to laugh or to cry. When it was no more than a prickle in the very center of your being. This one says you just need to find your soulmate, Stephen had said to you. You had cackled in his face and responded, What am I, a Disney princess? 

Back then, neither of you had taken your affliction too seriously, assuming that with time you would find a more suitable answer. He’d brought it up again when you got worse, a more serious suggestion this time. There were ways you could try. He suggested that America might punch him into several hundred universes until he found someone you seemed to consistently fall for. When you shot that down, he’d suggested a dream journal where you meticulously recorded every man you came across, looking for a statistical likelihood, and you’d broken the news you weren’t dreaming at all anymore. Even then, he’d moved onto more serious ideas. Now he was telling you he really thought that was what would put you back together. The real-life, flesh and blood counterpart of a near-demonic shadow you’d met shortly before eating concrete on fifteenth avenue. 

Still, you were horrified. It was not the suggestion of a soulmate. It was not even the suggestion of Bob being yours. Instead, it was the suggestion that you’d be asking a man who’d been through so much to stitch your soul whole.

“I can’t,” you said. “I can’t do that to him.”

Stephen sighed frustratedly at that. “So self-sacrificial.” He looked you straight in the eyes, hands braced on the sides of your arms. “It all seems to be proximity. He only needs to be nearby, as far as I can tell. There’s no saying it needs to be anything more than what it already is.”

Wasn’t there? The implications of soulmates were clear. Under normal circumstances, it might not have meant making you truly whole, but all the myths were clear: his soul would call for yours, and yours his. Like calls to like, you’d heard before. Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same. All rooted in hundreds and thousands of years of myth, legend, and folklore. All implying that Bob might not just repair what was broken in you, literally, but that he also might be the love of your life.

“It can be whatever you want it to be,” Stephen insisted. Ironic from the man who you’d watched utter the words I love you in every universe. “But between you and I, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for you to be loved the way you deserve.”

Things were not so simple. If you had once avoided Bob in general, you now avoided him like the plague. You weren’t sure how to look a man in the face and explain that you were afflicted by an ancient curse and he was seemingly the only cure. It was impossible to swallow the idea that you were destined to love someone who you’d hardly even felt a twinge of friendship for. In another, better version of events, you might have found yourself accidentally cured long after you’d already fallen for him. Instead, you seemed to perhaps do things in reverse order, even for how much Stephen insisted it did not need to be that way.

Unfortunately, word had reached both America and Wong via the way of Stephen’s loose lips, and they both had begun to interfere. Portals appeared out of nowhere, sending you crashing straight into him, leaving you floundering for an explanation after the third or fourth time it happened. To his credit, he was taking it like a real champ. He cracked a confused smile most of the time, not questioning why you were suddenly unable to form any meaningful sentence. Still, it was impossible to miss the vague air of disappointment that settled every time you found a new excuse to head in the opposite direction.

He smiled tightly through it until the seventh time you’d found yourselves transported to each other. You had been in the library, manually combing through to find any books that even seemed to mention the vague notion of soulmates when you took one wrong step and ended up smashing into him, sending volumes tumbling to the floor. He looked at them curiously, which would have likely been fine if one particularly recent book was not simply titled Soulmates in the Modern Era. You heated from head to toe and wondered if he could feel it.

“Research,” you chirped quickly, reaching to take it. He jerked back before you could even brush the spine, reading the cover and then flipping it open one-handed.

He skimmed the table of contents with great interest, then looked at you. “Interesting research.”

“Yeah,” you admitted, hoping he would just hand it over. “I have this… thing.”

You waved it away like it was nothing, like you weren’t actively trying to sever your connection to spare him from having to fix you. From being stuck with you. Maybe then he wouldn’t be plagued with your memories as dreams, and you could quietly slip back into the abyss you had grown so accustomed to.

“Doctor Strange said you were sick, is this…?”

Though you cringed at both at the revelation and the way Bob referred to Stephen, you nodded. “It’s related research, yes.”

He looked at you like he was trying to read into your very bones and you were not entirely assured he wasn’t. Still, you staunchly resolved that you were not going to elaborate. It appeared Stephen had already been loose-lipped enough for the both of you. It was meant to be a push, you bet. You were sure the cogs had turned in that insufferable brain of his, and he had determined that if Bob learned the truth he would resign to it. Which, of course, was the complete opposite of what you wanted.

Bob still had a firm grasp on the book, though it was now tucked safely behind his back. It would take a tank or some magic for you to get it back. Unfortunately, you had no access to the former and had only just begun refamiliarizing yourself with the latter. He didn’t seem to be playing keep away to frustrate you, but you certainly thought it was a ploy of some sort, you just weren’t sure what.

“Is it infectious?” he asked, quietly. “Is that why you’ve been avoiding me? Because I can’t get sick, I think. Not anymore.”

If that didn’t crack you in two, you weren’t sure what would. It wasn’t like you had assumed he hadn’t noticed, but you didn’t know it had been whittling at him so badly he had resorted to hypothesizing. 

“No,” you said quickly. “No, it’s not that.” The speed with which you had responded seemed to cut equal to the answer. “I’m just— I’m really busy with all the research.”

“Oh,” he said thoughtfully. “For a cure?”

You tried your best to fake a very convincing smile. “Something like that.”

“Sorry,” he said, retreating to apology again. “I’m being… I feel like I know you, even though I don’t. All the dreams.”

It wasn’t that you had forgotten about them. You knew he’d had them, you knew he was still having them. But you hadn’t considered the fact that someone viewing your life while sleeping might get to feeling like you were a friend. A piece of them, even. You hadn’t considered that, especially for someone who seemed to be destined for you, it might be a version of waking hell to wake up and feel like the meant nothing at all. 

“Don’t apologize,” you said, sharper than intended. He almost winced at it. You softened immediately. “I just— you’re right. You’ve been forced to know me, and I know almost nothing at all about you. I forget, sometimes.”

You watched him almost apologize again, but he seemed to catch himself.

“I think maybe I would like to get to know you,” you added. “Once my research sorts itself out.”

Bob smiled. You thought you might drown in it.

You stopped avoiding him far earlier than anticipated, both intentionally and unintentionally. Your research had stalled out. There was nothing you could find that even suggested a way to severe that type of connection. You needed more time, which meant you needed Bob. Proximity, and all. It felt dirty to use him in that way, made you feel sick to your stomach because his mere presence allowed you to feel at all. Unintentionally, you found he was a very good cure to boredom and a truly fascinating individual, even pre-Sentry project.

It hurt getting to know him, knowing what your intentions were. It hurt to learn his every expression, hurt to watch him strain with every fibre of his being to try and coax his abilities into being helpful instead of harmful. The irony of feeling so deeply only at his allowance was not lost on you. If he pulled away, decided he was done with your constant push-and-shove, it would be the most fatal double-edged sword you ever encountered.

Weeks had passed since your last manufactured collision, after which you’d promptly chewed both America and Wong out so bad they’d ceased immediately. You had buried yourself in your research after, only to stall out after mere days. Since then, you had been nearly glued to Bob’s side entirely of your own volition. Horribly, he seemed to enjoy it, which made everything all the more crushing. 

There was a strange comfort in failing together, though. Bob had still made essentially no progress with his abilities since arriving, and you were no closer to your own answer than when you’d begun. Just a couple of abject failures wandering around the most mystical place on the planet, learning together everything except what they should have.

Stephen had nearly lost interest in Bob, now that he’d solved the real problem he’d been gunning at. Really, you should have expected it. He was fascinated with what he was fascinated with, cared about what he cared about, and could not be bothered for much else. If Bob became a real threat, he might bring himself to actually be concerned, but for the moment he seemed unamused. He held on for your sake, because of the sharp look you gave him whenever he became exasperated, but you knew that Bob was catching on too.

He admitted it to you finally after a particularly grueling three hours trapped in the mirror dimension. Stephen had stalked off like the toddler he so frequently behaved, Bob had found you reading under a large tree and you immediately recognized the look on his face. It was the same one you had seen the first night you truly talked to him, when he thought he’d escape to anywhere but here or New York. Resignation. A bone-deep tired. He laid down next to you and stared straight up at the sun, a habit you would have chastised him for if it had actually mattered.

“Jealous,” you muttered, nudging his foot with yours. “We lesser beings can’t do that.”

“Not much to see,” he said. “Just habit.” Then, after a deep breath. “You sure there’s not a spell for that, anyway?”

If there was, it was the furthest thing from your mind. “Maybe. Might be my next project.”

But you knew there would be no other projects, and you sensed that he was coming around on that fact too. He nudged the cover of the book you were reading, only to be met with some long-dead language he couldn’t hope to understand.

“How’s this one?”

“Hopeless,” you admitted, slamming it closed and tossing it to the side. A less bitter you might have been worried about how such an old book would fare on the grass, but you were feeling particularly spiteful. Powerfully spiteful, thanks to extended and close-quartered exposure to your deeply affectionate medication. “No closer than I was when I started.”

It seemed to surprise him. “You seem better, though.”

That was one particular thing you didn’t know how to truly explain, so you simply said, “You know, magic.”

He reached over you for the book despite all concepts of it being lost on him. All he really knew was that you were buried in the same subject you always were. Soulmates. You never told him why, never told him that it was the opposite of a cure you were looking for. He was fascinated all the same, despite how in the dark you kept him. Usually, it was enough to placate him when you just declared you were getting nowhere, but as of late he’d been getting more and more interested.

“What is it with soulmates anyway?” he asked, flipping through the book as though it was a question he was only asking casually. Certainly a hard thing to do when you knew damn well he had no clue what he was looking at. 

“What do you mean?”

“All of the research,” he said. “How does it help you? Are you just trying to find them before you…”

Bob had been concerned about you dying, as of late. You guessed that Stephen was dropping more and more hints in the hopes of escaping the vague mentor-mentee thing they had going on. If that taught you anything, it was that you needed to get Bob back into the hands of the New Avengers quickly if you ever did succeed in finding a way to cut your fated thread. You shuddered to think what might happen if you succumbed and Bob was still at Kamar-Taj. Stephen would reveal everything you had been intent on hiding, whether from rage that Bob had not worked it out himself, or out of spite at you. And Bob… you were beginning to think something like that might really cause another New York level incident. 

“No,” you said, fighting to keep your tone light and breath even. “No, I— It’s more complicated than that.”

It ultimately became clear he had been pushing you even when he already knew the answer. Your blood ran cold at the phrase I had a dream. Something surged in your ears and you missed much of his next sentence. He only caught on that you either were not listening or could not listen when you looked at him with an anxiety-ridden expression and said nothing. But then you were also beginning to think it must not have been the memory you were worried about, because he was not looking at you like a bomb had been dropped on his head.

“You were laughing,” he said, once you had sat up. He followed suit. “So I wasn’t sure if it was really a suggestion, but if you’re doing all this research it must be real, right?”

“It’s not supposed to be like this,” you said quietly, pulling up blades of grass. Bob didn’t say anything, only urged you to continue with eyes alone. “It’s not supposed to be a thing that fixes you. It’s not— that’s not how it works, for most people.”

“So you don’t think,” Bob began, then cut himself off. He looked pointedly at his shoes. “You don’t think something like that would fix me?”

The very breath was punched out of your chest. You wanted to reach out for him but that hurt you too. It always did. It was not the Void that scared you away from any brush of skin with Bob, it was the very idea that one day you would never want to stop. You ached for him in a way that you were beginning to think extended far beyond the simple repair of your actual soul. Some days, you thought your blood, bones, and every nerve ending sang for it. Each day, you denied them. But it was different when now it seemed like it was for him, like he was the one who needed it.

Heat and static radiated though your fingertips and down your arms when you guided his face to just look at you. “I don’t think you need fixing.” You recognized a yearning in his face that you had seen mirrored in yours before. “And it’s not— it’s an awful feeling to want someone, even in part, just because you know it might fix something in you.”

“But wouldn’t they want to?” he asked. “Isn’t that the whole point? Someone who wants you, all put together or not?”

You didn’t have an answer for that, and you had the very sobering thought that you were getting far too close for comfort. So, you let your hand fall away from his face and began to plan a very heart-wrenching escape route from the grave you’d dug too deep. 

At your lack of an answer he said, “Is there any other way for you? I’ll do it, whatever it takes.”

The problem was that this echoed a very similar conversation with Stephen that you had adamantly refused to take any further. The problem was that your heart wanted to stutter to a stop and give out entirely at the thought that Bob was telling you he would do anything, and you were spending all your time trying to find a way to make sure he couldn’t.

“Please don’t,” you all but gasped out, pushing yourself up and out his reach. “Please don’t say things like that. Please.”

It was foolish to think you could move faster than him. He was grasping at you. Not hard, but firm. Rooting you in place. A furnace against you, tears glistening in his eyes. “I can’t lose you, don’t you get that? I want to be what you need, so tell me there’s some magic way to make it happen.” From his mouth, your name sounded more like an invocation than anything. It took everything you had not to fall apart right there. “You’re all I dream about. You’re all I want to dream about.”

“Bob, I—”

“I’m in love with you,” he said. “Can’t that be enough?”

He was searing against you and you lost all capability for human language. His forehead against yours, eyes shut, holding you like he thought he could keep you tethered to life just with his own force. But it was as far as he allowed himself to go, even with the so-obvious ache you could see on his face. The smallest twitch of his lips from the effort of keeping himself from pressing them against yours. You damned yourself for it, but you did the work for him. You felt the full body warmth of him. It felt all at once like there was not a centimeter of your body he wasn’t touching. You were surrounded by him entirely.

“It feels right,” he said, still so close you could feel his lips move to form the words. “Why isn’t it?”

“It is,” you promised. “Of course it is. I’m sorry.”

He was on you again, all heat. It clicked inside your chest full and heavy, just like a puzzle piece slotting into place.

“To recap,” John Walker said, looking simultaneously fascinated and annoyed, “you were literally wasting away, killing yourself trying to destroy the one thing you needed to keep living, all because you didn’t want to be a burden?”

You nodded. “Yeah, pretty much.”

He rounded on Bob. “And you, you were ready to do, and I quote, whatever it took, to save her and you didn’t stop to think for one second that you were actually soulmates?”

“Also yes,” Bob admitted.

John slumped back on the couch like he’d just taken a beating. “I think I hate you both. And I mean that genuinely.”

“I think it’s downright adorable,” Ava remarked, but you were fairly certain that was just to piss John off.

Yelena was digesting the information and unnecessary commentary, stroking her pet guinea pig the entire time. Bucky, several minutes ago, had thrown his hands up in exasperation and decided he was done listening to the story of the two of you hopelessly pining like idiots. Alexei, to his credit, was enraptured and taking nonsensical notes the entire time.

“So, basically,” Yelena began, and you nearly groaned at what you assumed was going to be another unnecessary recap, “you are mystically married now?”

It was not the question you had been expecting.

“Oh,” Bob said. “Yeah, that too.”

“It’s a binding ceremony, actually,” you added. “A little more involved. Quite literally tying our life forces together. But sure, I guess you could call it that.”

“Outstanding,” Alexei remarked. “Would make fascinating rom-com.”

Frustrated still, John exclaimed, “Did you even learn anything about your actual superpowers?”

Bob shook his head. “No. Still can’t be the Sentry without the other guy.”

“My god,” John dramatized, “I think you’re giving me a stroke. I’m a super-soldier and I think you’re giving me a stroke.”

Everyone else ganged up on him, from threatening to actually call 911 just to make a fool of him or actually somehow inducing a very real stroke. You leaned back into Bob, muttering lowly, “I love you, but are you sure you don’t want to go back to Kamar-Taj?”

It had never truly been decided amongst you, Bucky, and Sam whether John had been picked partly because of you (John himself would insist it had nothing to do with it). Bucky was one-hundred percent convinced it had been done on purpose. It’s easier to swallow, he’d said, because people know how close you were with Steve, and since you and Walker have… a past.

Calling it a past was generous. You’d dated in high school, when you were a little dumber and he a little less obnoxious, then he’d enlisted and you’d gone off to college. It was an almost entirely expected and underwhelming end to what had been a classic high school relationship. It was hardly a past, it had really just been growing pains. With Steve, however, it was an on-again off-again situationship that felt far too juvenile at your big age, but had gone unexpectedly public.

So now you were the woman who had dated not one, but two Captain Americas, even if you were quick to insist that John had been little more than captain of the football team at the time. The general public had eaten it up when John was given the shield and still now, while Valentina was parading around her so-called New Avengers. A grave misnomer, you thought, considering this wasn’t exactly your rookie year. It was a hard pill to swallow.

Yelena insisted that you all as a team owned Valentina. You thought it felt a little bit like the other way around. At the same time, you knew it would take all of five seconds for you to tear the entire charade apart. As withdrawn as you were from, well, everything since Thanos, you knew you still held enough public interest that you could get on a stage and rip Valentina to shreds and end it all. But you couldn’t. There was just something about the strange little group that tugged on your remaining heartstrings.

It had been a fight, at first. Sam had been furious, but it had weighed far more heavily on Bucky than you. At the very least, you could look Sam in the eye and remind him that you had been around before the Avengers were even really a team. You’d been part of Nick Fury’s cobbled-together collection of misfits that could hardly be called a group, let alone a team. Sam might have been Captain America, but you were essentially the only original left. Tony and Natasha were dead, Steve was old, Clint and Bruce had families, and Thor was somewhere of in space doing… well, whatever the hell he wanted to, you supposed. You remained, heavy with loss and silently happy to see another group of misfits learning to stitch themselves together. Even if this time it was much, much messier.

Still, you resented the government control, and that John was involved.

You took it upon yourself to constantly remind him that he was only still around because you tolerated it, which he hated. It wasn’t that he was your ex, though you loathed to call him even that. It was that he’d take Steve’s legacy, tried to turn it to dust, and was still clinging to it. He insisted he was doing what he could with what he had, you insisted he could do better, and so the carousel turned.

The only argument he ever won, not that you’d ever admit it out loud, was when he reminded not just you, but everyone that he’d had you first. There was no argument against the truth. Even if you could insist that you were more serious with Steve (you weren’t), or that you’d loved Steve more (you weren’t even sure you’d been in love with Steve at all), it all circled back around to an undisputed fact: John Walker bested Steve in approximately one race and it was having you.

He had brought it up again, and you knew it was because he was feeling sensitive about something. You were fed up, and had snapped back a scathing remark you’d only ever thought before. You know, you keep bringing that shit up and someone might start to think you’re in love with me. You hadn’t said it because you thought there was any truth, but because you knew it would piss him off, because you were taking the one thing he could hold over your head and turning it back around on him. Bucky had openly laughed, which certainly hadn’t helped things, but John didn’t give into the fight you were expecting.

It gnawed at you all night and then began to worry you in the morning. You’d only ever known him to snap and give into baser instincts. Even in high school when he could have been called more mellow he’d always been ready to throw a punch or two. No response you’d ever seen from him consisted of steely silence or any kind of restraint. Though you wanted to take it as a sign of personal growth, you were more inclined to think it was something much worse. You imagined a brewing rage eating away at him like acid, and you had to wonder when it was going to boil over.

It wasn’t until Bob, sweet and generally unconcerned with John, mentioned it that you decided it was time to do something about it. Haven’t seen Walker all day, he’d remarked about the second most loud and imposing member of the team. Ava remarked that she was pleased with the development, but even Yelena looked disturbed. Alexei could not have cared any less as he shoveled Wheaties into this mouth, but Bucky… Bucky had leveled you with a look that suggested he thought something needed to be done too. That was the straw, you supposed. You might have been able to fight your own instincts about it, if Bucky had not looked at you like that, like he thought this might really become a problem sometime soon. 

You sighed heavily and lifted yourself off the couch with a dramatized effort. Bucky indicated downstairs in the direction of the gym rather than above to the quarters where you all had your personal spaces. You briefly wondered if you could convince Bucky to have a man-to-man conversation with him rather than leaving you to make nice with your most irksome teammate. Ultimately, you realized that Bucky likely would rather put himself in the ground. Annoying, emotionally-constipated super soldiers were really fucking your life up.

(Pot, kettle, Bucky would probably insist, even if you were more super and less soldier.)

Inside the gym, you found yourself realizing that other than you, John and Steve had something else in common. They both liked to treat punching bags like they’d been done great personal offense by every one of them. Even in his occupation, you knew he noticed you. Or, at the very least, he’d noticed that someone had joined him.

“Your absence is troubling Bob,” you stated simply.

He didn’t pause his assault on the bag, but he did choose to switch sides to look at you. “I doubt it.”

“He said he hadn’t seen you all day. Mentioned, therefore noticed, therefore…”

“Therefore you drew straws and you’re the unluckiest of the bunch?”

You wished you’d drawn straws. “If only that had been part of the equation. No. Believe it or not, I figured this is mostly my problem.” You left out the fact that Bucky had too. John didn’t have anything to say about that, but he did pause and begin to unwrap his hands, preparing for what you also imagined was going to be a very tedious conversation. One that, apparently, you were going to have to take the reins of. “I’m more than willing to fight this out, but just know I’ll wipe the floor with you.” He didn’t take the bait. “Seriously, what the hell is going on? You’ve been on my ass since day one about what feels like fifteen million years ago, but I make one comment and you’re— you’re…” You had no clue how to finish that sentence, but you certainly weren’t going to apologize for anything. 

He finally opens his mouth to actually say something, but it’s far from anything you’d have expected. “Does it really bother you that much? Thinking about back then?”

It was a pivot you hadn’t been expecting and it left you floundering for something to say. Did it bother you to think about? No. No, what bothered you was that it was constantly brought up in the context of being a thing to have been had, or a measure by which to pick who could have the shield. What irked you, was that John kept bringing it up like you were some kind of trophy rather than a person. Otherwise, as just something that had happened, as a relationship you had, there were fond memories if you didn’t apply the present-day John Walker of it all.

“It’s not important,” you decided to say, rather than admitting that he was constantly tainting what had previously been a genuinely pleasant example of what a first love could be. “It was forever ago, but you keep bringing it up like it’s another medal on your chest.”

And of course he zeroed in on what affronted him most. “Not important.” He was muttering to himself, mostly, but you heard it. “Just, you know, half of the sum-total of all my relationships in life. Not important.”

And that irked at you, when he’d gone onto have a wife and a kid and a brief white-picket-fence life that you’d probably never get to see because everyone in the world looked at you like some kind of commodity. A weapon to save the world, a face to plaster on tv and advertisements, a figurehead to say hey, look, this group must be good!

“My god, John,” you snapped, “you have a family. What the hell does some bullshit high school girlfriend matter? We were both nobody back then.”

“Because the family thing worked out so well for me,” he retorted.

“That was your own fault and you know it.”

A low-blow and you knew it, but you’d never be able to understand why he wasn’t constantly fighting tooth and nail to get back to them. You knew he missed his son, often caught him looking at photos that he’d gotten from somewhere. You weren’t sure if Olivia was doing a kindness and sending them, or if he was finding them by less-than-legal means, but you knew he looked at them longingly and still did nothing about it.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, always fucking everything up.”

You exhaled frustratedly through your nose. This was not going how you’d planned. It had gotten far more hostile than you’d intended. “I’m not trying to dog on you.” Though it would have been so much easier, if you were being honest. Which, you weren’t being, you knew. Being honest would have meant just telling him that you were tired of being a referred to as a possession, and how every time he brought it up, it felt like a reminder that even your pathetic high school partnership was the closest to serious you’d probably ever be able to get. “But you’re the one who brings it up like it’s a joke, not me.”

His head snapped to you, gaze torn away from the mindless packing of his gym bag. “I’m the one making a joke out of it? You’re the one who wants to act like it never even happened.”

“Because you’re the one ruining it.” You weren’t yelling, not really. But the whole thing was striking a sensitive chord that you’d never intended on even acknowledging. “You’re the one acting like I was a trophy you had and then threw away. So excuse me if I’m not looking back with fondness at being a thing.”

“I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.”

If he was being serious or purposefully obtuse, you weren’t sure. Realistically it could have been either. He might have trying to turn the tables on you, to move away from his nearly twenty-four hours of petulance that you were supposed to have been addressing. Or, maybe he really didn’t know that he’d been biting away at decently pleasant memories ever since he decided to try to be Steve. Maybe he was just that ignorant. And maybe you were kidding yourself in thinking he hadn’t been your first love, even if he hadn’t been the great love of your life. Yeah, you would perhaps admit in the deepest recesses of your mind, maybe that was a big part of it all. 

Regardless, it was becoming exceedingly clear that perhaps neither of you were in the proper mindset for this conversation to go anywhere. John’s ego was clearly too bruised from your brief ribbing to think of anything beyond how things affected him, and you were just… well, you supposed you’d been hurting too much about everything for far too long. 

At least you could tell Bucky you’d tried.

Another team was falling apart before your eyes, which meant you weren’t sleeping. Or, at the very least, sleeping as little as you could without being plagued by memories turned nightmares. So maybe that was why you were particularly sensitive, which was perhaps why you felt like bursting into tears all the time.

It had been a shit week, though, so you were giving yourself some grace. You’d allow yourself tears if they really wanted to come, if you even had any left. 

The tension with John had gotten worse, and now there were sides to it all. Bucky was on yours, unequivocally, always. The rest of the team flip-flopped back and forth depending wholly on mood or which one of you had pissed them off more that day. Bob was the only one who sat entirely neutral, though you were certain that the whole thing was stressing them out. And all of it was, albeit on a much smaller scale, reminding you of years ago which made the whole thing more unpleasant.

In the end, it made you wonder if you were still cut out for this.

Losing another team would break you, you were sure of it. Even if it was a patchwork team filled mostly with people who grated on your nerves like it was a full time job, losing it would break you. So, you were kind of thinking it was time to remove yourself from the situation. Retirement wouldn’t have looked so bad, if you weren’t going to be alone in all of it. 

That all being said, it had not been a good decision to think about it all in Tony’s old tower, looking to space from the spot he’d built to land the suit. Valentina had called it good optics, but you thought it was more bittersweet memory. Things had been good here, then bad, then good again, and then nothing. Now it was… well, you weren’t sure what the hell to call it because everything reminded you of something else. Everything reminded you of them and it damn near tore you to shreds.

Yeah, you were really beginning to think that you weren’t cut out for this anymore.

Bucky appeared from a dark corner as he so often did, and you weren’t sure if he was trying to joke when he asked, “Do I need to be worried about you?”

Either way, you knew it was a lie when you said, “No, just can’t sleep.”

When you looked at him, you knew that he knew you were full of shit. So, it was like that then. He sighed heavily and stretched out on the floor next to you. 

“I’m going to stay here until you talk to me.” You knew he was serious, unfortunately. You’d uttered the same words to him years ago when Steve had you and Sam chasing his tail. “Or until we decide to kill Walker.” You looked at him sideways. “I’m mostly joking. But I did catch him drinking milk out of the carton again, so.” He shrugged as best he could while horizontal.

“This is not John,” you said. At least, not entirely. Sure, the tension still grated on you, but it only really served to point out how much everything started to bother you when a single element went wrong. One piece out of place and all you could think about was everything you’d lost. “It’s— it’s this whole fucking place, Bucky. I don’t think I can be here anymore.”

“This doesn’t work without you,” he says firmly. “You leave, this whole thing falls apart like a house of cards. I’m sorry, but it’s true.” You couldn’t help but think that was bullshit, and the way you looked at Bucky conveyed as much. “I don’t do this without you. Already told you, where you go, I go.”

The worst part was you knew he would. If you left, he’d follow just like you’d stuck to him like glue after Steve left to chase happiness. Steve might have said until the end of the line, but you and Bucky were the ones holding the rope. But even though you thought the team could pull themselves together without you, you also knew they had no hope of doing the same without him. 

“I can’t lose another team,” you admitted. Even with the admission you held back. Your natural, instinctual follow-up was that it had almost killed you last time, but you knew from your time in Bob’s void that it all still haunted Bucky. He still blamed himself for splitting the Avengers. “This is too good for you— all of you, for me to ruin it with all my bullshit.”

It almost looked like Bucky was considering it, the way his brow knit together and his eyes squinted ever-so-slightly. So, it took you by surprise when the man who’d been flying by the seat of his pants so recently looked you dead in the face and said, “If you’re willing to hear me out, I have a plan.”

You did not think Bucky’s plan was a good one, nor did anyone else. When he remarked vaguely about switching some things around and off-handedly mentioned bonding, you had not expected to end up here. This was what you got for hearing him out. Goddamn fucking nonsense.

“This is elaborate joke, yes?” Alexei asked.

“I look like I’m joking to you?” Bucky asked, frowning.

“I think we all wish you were,” Ava retorted.

Yelena nodded and added, “This is going to get someone killed.”

If Bucky’s plan was to unite you all against his asinine games, he’d succeeded. Nobody was sure how he’d convinced Valentina to fork out the funds to reserve an entire camp usually used for corporate retreats, but he’d done it. It was a forked tongue of an idea, really. It got you out of the government-funded press tour that was previously scheduled, but it also meant a week with only each other doing trust falls or whatever other crap white-collar idiots did to encourage teamwork.

Despite all complaints and reservations, you all piled into the car and allowed Bucky to cart you off to the middle of nowhere, albeit entirely silently. A butterfly landing could have frayed your last nerve, which was exactly what happened when you saw a file marked cabin arrangements. It had to have been a sick joke. You had half a mind to casually remark, hey, if you wanted me dead you should have just told me, but you didn’t think he’d have taken kindly to that and you weren’t in the mood for an involuntary psychiatric hold. 

Instead you told him, “I think this violates the Geneva conventions.”

“You and Walker have the most issues,” he responded. “And you said you’d hear me out. I really think this is going to work.”

Yelena was right, this was going to get someone killed. It didn’t matter if there was an assembled team of professionals waiting to teach you how to play nice with each other, either you or John would be dead come morning. Everyone else would just have to spend the rest of the week with the corpse. At least then there’d be an even number.

Only out of respect for Bucky did you swallow your pride and stomp off to your assigned cabin with John following close behind. Otherwise, you might have started a fight then and there, but he was right: you’d promised to hear him out, even if this was the last time you’d do it. 

Your so-called cabin reminded you more of a dorm room than a woodsy vacation. It was closer-quarters than you’d been with anyone since being on the run. It was just one room with two beds on either side that you likely could have reached at the same time if you stood in the middle and stretched a little. The only comfort was indoor plumbing. You might have become immediately homicidal if there had been any mention of an outhouse.

“Gonna kill him,” John was muttering as he unpacked.

Part of you wanted to tell him to get in line, but a much bigger part of you wanted another hours-long stretch of silence. This was your life for the week, whether you liked it or not, and you wanted to keep the baseline peace for as long as possible. It was hard to do, though, when the second you’d unpacked your own belongings and decided to relax on the bed, someone was knocking at the door. A voice you didn’t recognize cheerily announced that you were to meet at the fire pit for introductions. You plotted Bucky’s slow and painful death as you forced yourself to follow orders.

Ten minutes later, you were all gathered around the unlit fire-pit looking at not just each other, but four very normal people who looked nervous just to be there. How they were supposed to help you all get chummy when they could barely look you in the eyes, you had no clue. It was the woman who you suspected had also been the one to summon you that clapped her hands together and declared you would get started. Though she seemed to be putting her best foot forward, you saw the light in her eyes dim when Yelena drily marked there was no reason for introductions because you all knew each other already.

“Well, okay,” she said with her forced smile, “how about, a fun fact about each of you!”

You could think of a glorious list of fun facts entirely centered around the torture you had in store for your so-called best friend, but you didn’t say that. Which, of course, was not to suggest that the “fun facts” to go around were not equally horrifying. Little miss sunshine was more unsettled minute by minute, and her own staff looked ready to bolt. You reiterated to only yourself, this was not going to work.

It was not working when they put you in their “state-of-the-art” escape room which lasted all of two minutes before John kicked the door open. It was not working when they had you doing child-level arts and crafts on an assembly line, which ended promptly when Ava put scissors through Alexei’s hand. And it was definitely, most certainly, absolutely not working when you were eating lunch and Bob accidentally started a food fight, not in the fun way. It was a lost cause, and it harrowed the staff.

The cheery instructor was holding on by a thread when she declared that she thought some self-reflection time was due and so sent you all off to your respective housing. You swore you saw Bucky’s eye twitch as he headed off towards his own, blissfully single accommodations. Only a few hours in and the plan was falling apart like a child’s blanket fort.

You showered mashed potatoes out of your hair, beating John to the bathroom by seconds to his great frustration. You were not reinvigorated when you emerged clean, but you at least felt less heavy. As John brushed past you on his way to his own shower, you breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of a few moments truly alone. Three hours and you were already tearing your hair out. 

For Bucky, you wanted to put your best foot forward. He was serious about leaving with you, if that was the choice you made, but that pained you. He had found something here, something that could be important and do good, and you weren’t sure if it would kill you more to stick around miserable, or to tear him away. Still, you had told him the truth that night, you weren’t sure you could do it anymore.

Miserably and embarrassingly, a dam broke inside and you burst into tears at the exact moment John exited the briefest shower in human history. He looked at you alarmed and you promptly squeezed your eyes as tight as you could. Perhaps if you couldn’t see him, you could pretend it wasn’t happening at all. If he hadn’t been there hovering, waiting for who knows what, you maybe could have, but he did. John stood there statuesque in exactly the same way he had when you were teenagers, always unsure what to do when you cried. 

“Jesus,” he breathed. “The hell did I do now?”

You wanted to scream that not everything was about him, that you’d been miserable long before he ever reentered your life but there was no space in your lungs left to do so. Which meant you just sat there heaving sobs in front of the last person you ever wanted to show a vulnerable bone in your body. If he wanted to see you beaten down by life to feel good about himself, you were certainly giving him the show.

He took you back to high school again, which was both humiliating and a horrifying comfort. He’d never known what to do while you cried, but he’d certainly had a routine for after. You weren’t sure where he got the water bottle that he thrust into your hands ten minutes later, nor did you notice him disappear into the bathroom again for a toilet-paper sub for tissue, but he had. The whole time you shook while you cleaned yourself up and rehydrated so thoroughly you felt like puking, he sat on the floor with his back against your bed, radiating body heat against your leg without touching.

Then he asked you what he always had, and it still sounded like it pained him just like before, “Do you want to talk about it?”

No. You thought you wanted to die, really. You thought that maybe Bucky had needed to worry. And you were thinking that John was still a better man than you gave him credit for, despite all the space and time. Horrifying discover after horrifying discovery. Why you admitted the truth to him you’d probably never know. Why he shared the same would always make you wonder.

“I think I don’t want to be here anymore,” you said, cracking through chesty mucus that had settled in your lungs. The look on his face suggested he knew you didn’t just mean the cabin or trip. Soft eyes, like the very idea of it haunted him even though he shouldn’t have cared any less. It wouldn’t have removed the feather of you from his cap. He still could claim it: I had her. What a shame things went the way they did… It should not have mattered to him. He’d never given you any indication it would.

“I think,” you continued, “that almost everyone I’ve ever loved is dead or gone, and I’m wondering why I didn’t end up there too. So fuck you for thinking it’s you I’m crying over. I was miserable before you. I’ll be miserable after.”

He invoked again through a sigh and rose. “I’m going to go get Bucky.”

Your hand shot out and gripped his wrist as tight as you could. It wouldn’t bruise a super-soldier but he got the point. “You get Bucky and I’ll kill you, John.”

That would be the last straw. Bucky saw you like this and everything would be a goner. He was your best friend, and he’d do anything in the world for you, which made it so damn hard for you to do everything in your power for him. Bucky would never know.

“You’re goddamn demented, you know.” He relented despite what seemed to be protestation. “Fuckin’ crazy. Threatening to put me in the ground for trying to help you.”

“Fuck you,” you repeated, heatless and bland but all you had. “You aren’t helping shit.”

“Yeah, well, I’m trying here, baby.”

If you had anything left to give besides the barest of oxygen in your lungs, you might have cried all over again. You could imagine clawing at him for having the audacity to call you that, accident or not, but your very bones denied it. Something must have leeched the calcium right out of them, the way you might have buckled if you had been standing. All while your blood was turning to sludge in your veins, John Walker muttered the first apology you’d maybe ever heard from him. Force of habit, he added, like the last time he had any right to say something like that wasn’t years ago.

There was a stretch of silence that could have been hours for all you knew. There were knocks on the door that you both ignored for some reason you’d never be able to explain. There was probably a search party underfoot, but it all seemed deeply inconsequential. At some point, you’d drawn your knees up to your chest, and he’d ended up next to you. Just the barest brushing of skin.

“I want this to work,” you admitted against all better judgment. “For Bucky. For me. I miss having people to rely on. I always liked having people in my corner.”

“I’m getting divorced,” he offered, a piece of his hurt for yours. “Liv might let me see my son. She had some real choice words when I called. So, I guess it would be nice to have some people in my corner, too.”

A real pretty picture to paint, to be sure. Far from being possible just because you decided there was really nothing left to lose. Even so, there was nothing left to do but try. 

So maybe Bucky Barnes was some kind of closet genius.

It was a bit like puzzle pieces clicking when you decided to give it a real go. You still wanted to kill John sometimes. A lot of the time. Maybe even most of the time. But you’d looked straight into each others’ gooey centers, and that would have changed things for anyone.

When you asked where the hell a plan like his had even come from, Bucky admitted it had been far more Sam than it had him. Couple’s counseling, he’d remarked which had explained a number of disappearances he’d previously left up for debate, we’d been going for a while, and when I was telling him he said it was too bad I couldn’t make everyone go. So I found a way. You’d just smiled and said, Fucking weird plan, Buck. You couldn’t deny the results though.

The next time you caught yourself gazing up at the stars recounting what you’d once had, it was John that joined you instead of Bucky. For the first time in a long time, it didn’t leave you with a bone-deep pain to talk about what had been. You grew to understand how Bucky held no resentment to Steve for chasing his own peace, even if it meant leaving forever. It didn’t freeze you to the bone to tell someone, even if it was him, that Yelena was reminding you more and more of Natasha with each passing day. It no longer felt like pulling teeth when you admitted that sometimes when you had a drink at the bar you thought about Tony. Now, when you looked at the sky you wished Thor only the best, rather than cursing him for leaving you for so long. Sometimes, John would tell you about his son and you’d smile for Bruce and Clint. 

Part of you recoiled when he echoed Bucky’s words to you. “I need to be worried about you?”

“Nah,” you said, the truth this time. “I’m… solid. Putting in the work. Therapy, medication, all that jazz.” It being mandatory now was only about half the reason you still visited a professional weekly. “I’m doing good, I think.” John repeated good several times as he nodded mostly to himself. You turned it on him. “I gotta be worried about you?”

At that, he shook his head. He echoed your sentiment about putting in the work at mandatory therapy. He was solid too, good even, practically verging on great. His fingers brushed yours as he explained he was having his first unsupervised visit with his son. Not at the tower, nowhere near the tower if he could help it. Not that it was a trust thing, he made sure to add hastily. He thought that maybe there would be a day he could show his son what “work” was now, just not so soon. You were genuinely glad for him all while ignoring a pesky blooming warmth in your chest at a tentative grasp of hands.

John Walker still had roots in you, that was certain, and you had a feeling you had a home somewhere in his ribcage too. 

“We were best friends once,” he remarked sometime after your pulse had stopped thrumming in your ears. “Think it could happen again?”

A small smile broke through very thin resistance, and you hummed for what seemed to be dramatic affect. “Spot’s taken… think I might have something else in mind for you, if you’re up for the challenge.”