When Our Stars Fall Here
Warnings: Threesome/Poly relationship (don't like it, don't have to read)
Disclaimer: This is a soulmate AU of the story Perception. It can be considered a stand alone story; many characters and elements from the original are used in this, but it is not to be confused as the same story. The original character Rukhsana is mine, but everything else belongs to MCU.
Rukhsana has her words the very day she is born.
Soulmate lore explains that if one is born with their words, their soulmate is older.
Rukhsana has more than one set of words.
Soulmate lore has very little literature for those with more than one soulmate, because it is rare to have more than one.
Rukhsana has words that are faded at birth.
Soulmate lore believes that faded words mean death or near death.
Her parents look at the words on either of her shoulders with despair. There is a saying, "A stone thrown at the right time is better than gold given at the wrong time." (1) Their child is a blessing, and her words should be, also. But to be given words when her soulmates are gone or soon to be? That is cruelty beyond measure. Her life is already hard, and she is only just coming into it.
They resolve then to fill her life with as much love as they can, in hopes of compensating for it.
.
It isn't until she begins to go to school that she learns what words are. She's smart, she knows letters and what words look like, but she can't read yet. Still, she sees words on the skin of some of her classmates, and wonders. When she asks the teacher about it, the teacher tells her the words are to help tell you who your soulmate is. The way her teacher smiles, she assumes soulmates are a good thing. Excited, she pulls up her sleeves and asks the woman if she can tell her what hers say.
The smile on the woman's face falters.
In a shaky voice, she says Rukhsana should ask her parents about her words instead.
She wants to protest because she wants to know right then and there what they say and why she won't tell her, but her teacher told her to ask her parents. If her teacher told her to, then she has to listen. So she waits until baba (2) comes to pick her up and doesn't even let him ask her how her day was before asking, "Can you tell me my words?"
"Oh setareham," (3) her baba says, pausing their steps on the way to the car, "Yes I will. Let us get home first and then I will tell you."
Though she frowns at being told to wait again, she nods and they make their way home in silence. Once home, baba sits her down on the couch. Before she even reaches for her sleeves, he taps one shoulder and then the other, saying her words for her. Her joy at finally having her words told to her dims at the look on his face. It is sad, and she doesn't like that baba is sad. When she asks him why, he tells her.
And then she is sad, too.
Because baba tells her that soulmates are like gifts. They are people made just right for you, and you are blessed if you can find them. But baba tells her that she may never find her soulmates, because they are either dead or going to die. She's seen The Lion King. She knows what death is, and death is supposed to be sad. And it is. Because the people who were meant for her might be dead, might never know her.
She sobs and sobs into her baba's side for a long time.
.
As Rukhsana and her age mates get older, she starts getting asked about her words by adults and children alike. You have two? What are they? Can I see? She tries not to talk about it. But kids are pushier than adults, so sometimes, when they catch a peek of her words under her short sleeved shirts they are persistent. It's annoying to wear long sleeved shirts so often to keep them hidden. Especially in the summer. When she finds out about covers for words, she is ecstatic and relieved. She saves up her allowance to buy adhesive patches that match her skin tone to wear over her words.
The girl starts wearing sleeveless shirts for the first time in years.
.
One day, she feels an itch where one set of her words is. She's home, in her room, so there is no patch covering the words when she pushes her sleeve up to scratch. It is only luck that lets her catch the words in the mirror out of the corner of her eye.
The words aren't faded.
She yells.
Her maman (4) comes hurtling into her room.
"Rukhsana!"
When she points to her shoulder, her maman gasps in shock. She lets her run her fingers over the now dark letters, shivering as she does.
"They're not dead, Maman," she murmurs, moisture pooling in her eyes.
The woman's eyes are similarly wet, "It seems not, dokhtar. (5) This is good news."
"It is," she agrees, closing her eyes and letting the tears fall.
For the first time, she is filled with hope. One of her soulmates is alive. She gets a week of this happiness, this optimism.
And then the darkness of the one mark leaches out of it.
Her wails of grief are permanently etched into her parents' memories. The pain is permanently etched into her heart.
.
But several months later, there is an itch and desperate, she tears the patch off her shoulder.
The words are dark again.
She breaks down in hysterics in the middle of class. Her parents are called and her maman comes to get her. Maman understands the second she sees her clutching her shoulder but smiling wide and a little crazy.
"They must be sick," her maman theorizes as she, baba, and Rukhsana herself are all sat together that night talking this mystery - this miracle - over. "Cancer maybe? They were better but then relapsed?"
Baba nods along with this theory, not adding to it. He just holds maman's hand and keeps a comforting arm around the girl as she sips her sugar sweet tea. The girl herself mulls over what her maman is suggesting.
Sick. Not dead, just sick.
.
The words fade again days later. She mourns the loss of the boldness, but does not fall into misery now. Now, she is only filled once more with hope. And determination.
Dark. Faded. Dark. Faded.
There is no way to predict when and why the words change the way they do. The only pattern so far is that they stay faded longer and remain dark for only a short period of time. Baba and maman help her keep a journal of the changes.
For a while, she considers becoming a doctor. Talks it over with both of her parents. Maman is excited about the idea. Baba asks her questions. His questions help her come to the realization over time that though she desperately wants to find her sick soulmate and make them better, becoming a doctor is not what she actually wants to do. Technology, even at a young age, has fascinated her. She likes to find out how things work, take them apart, put them back together, take them apart again, and then put them back different.
"Become a doctor for yourself, not for anyone else, setareham," he advises her, "Become what you want to be."
So she decides not to become a doctor. Maman is disappointed, but embraces her decision to do something else eventually.
"It's still something in STEM," is what she finally says, though at that age Rukhsana has no idea what that means, but just nods along.
While she decides not to become a doctor, she does ask baba and maman to help her find ways to visit people who are sick and dying. It's odd sounding, but they understand where the request is coming from. And they remember their promise to help fill their child's life with love. If this will help, they will do it. Rukhsana gains a reputation at the local hospitals and in-patient hospice facilities as the kid who comes once a month every month to volunteer helping with and reading to the patients.
.
She considers her words every now and then. The set that fades in and out says:
I'm Bucky. So what are you?
The words make little sense to her. That is, until high school U.S. history. They're on the World War II unit, and her teacher decides to devote a day to talking about the legendary figure of Captain America and his Howling Commandos. The topic is a nice break from just learning dates and major battles. Her teacher tries to start a discussion on whether anyone thinks Captain America was real or just a pretty piece of propaganda. She doesn't get involved because her attention is on something else in the textbook.
Apparently, Captain America's sidekick and fellow Howling Commando was called "Bucky."
It makes her giggle later when she comes up with silly scenarios as to how she and this soulmate meet. Her favorite is a costume party at the hospital. If her soulmate looks even half as dashing as the real Bucky Barnes did in his uniform, she'd consider herself lucky.
The other words, well, word singular is:
Hello?
If this soulmate is alive like her other (she wants them to be so bad), then she prays she hasn't already met them. And that their words for her and their third aren't nearly as generic. Because it would be depressing if she's already accidentally missed them or will miss them because their first words to each other were greetings. As horrible as the thought is, she can still find it in herself to chuckle before replacing the patch.
.
Baba is on a business trip when the the longer set of words goes dark again. Rukhsana tells maman and they mark it in the journal together. She's excited to tell baba about it once he gets home.
She never gets the chance.
He dies on his business trip.
As if to spit in her face, the words fade again on the day of his funeral.
.
Life after is colored with intense grief and strain in her relationship with maman, who suddenly doesn't know how to relate to her without baba. She desperately needs something to go right in her life.
To her relief, several things do.
While half heartedly resuming her soulmate hunt, Rukhsana meets a woman with alzheimer's who asks her to call her Margaret. Never before has she met someone quite like her. Someone who is the strongest, most amazing person she has known, regardless of her failing health and mind. Margaret never treats her like she's stupid and seems to know exactly how to talk her through everything she is going through. And when she shyly shows her friend her words, they are accepted easily. The next time she visits, the woman even has a worn but well loved and cared for stuffed bear for the girl. A vintage Bucky Bear.
Margaret eventually has to be moved to an in patient hospice facility in Washington, D.C. that's closer to her family, but she tells the girl she can call her whenever she wants. So she does. The woman even writes a recommendation letter for her college applications when she asks. Her acceptance into college includes a special meeting with the dean of her college who tells her she has a very special friend, and she knows just who he is talking about.
Though her relationship with her maman doesn't go back to the way it was, it gets better. After two years of grieving, the woman meets her soulmate. At first, it's disheartening to find out baba was never maman's soulmate. But this man treats her well and makes her happy again, happier than ever. That's what's important she tells herself, even if she still wishes for the happiness of the past.
And while the girl is going through her first year of college, the most amazing thing happens. The one word on her other shoulder goes dark for the first time, and stays dark. Her other soulmate really is alive. They both are.
It feels as if things are finally looking up.
.
A beam of blue light pierces the sky, aliens rain down, and she is snatched up from the pavement.
There is an explosion.
She falls into the blue.
She dies.
.
She wakes up. However she is not alive.
Rukhsana is somehow a ghost. Somehow in the past.
Everything about this situation is confusing and terrible, but what truly eats at her is that for so long her soulmates fought to live - to survive, and she is the one who dies on them first.
It isn't fair.
.
Wallowing quickly loses its charm. She sets out to take some small advantage out of what she has become and explores the world. It helps make everything less awful. Soon, she starts to forget the pain she feels whenever she thinks about her soulmates.
She doesn't realize it in the years that pass, but she forgets her words.
.
At first, it seems like no one will ever know she is there.
And then she meets two little boys who do in her old neighborhood in New York
"Hello," she tries to say to the small blond boy who her hand doesn't phase through when she touches him.
"You can see me?" she asks the brunet boy whose gaze lands on her without passing over or through her.
They can't hear her though. But the small blond - Steve - offers her a soft, "Hello?" back.
"I'm Bucky," the brunet introduces himself, "So what are you?"
The words send a spike of emotion through her that she can't decipher, but she ignores it in favor of learning how to communicate.
A strange friendship is formed between the three of them that day. The two boys who only just met weeks before work to get to know each other and their new ghost friend better. Rukhsana doesn't know why, but a sense of wholeness - rightness - settles into her. She'd forgotten what it felt like to not be adrift in the world.
Being with them, it feels like hope.
.
The boys grow.
It isn't until a couple of years later that she finds out they are each other's soulmates. She catches the fond and adoring looks passed between, seen how much they touch each other constantly when they think no one's watching. But it isn't clear until the day she catches them making out when they think she's supposed to be away. They pull away from each other panting for air, and that's when Bucky spots her, and the blood drains from his face. Steve immediately knows what has happened because even if he can't see her, he turns to look in the same direction anyway with an identical look of terror on his face.
Bucky starts yelling, trying to say it's his fault, that he's the pervert, and to not take it out on Steve. The other boy starts sobbing out something similar. And then he says they couldn't help that they were soulmates, that they loved each other.
Rukhsana realizes that they think she will judge them, hate them, for this. She was never great with history, especially now that she has forgotten so much of it. Remembers now about the rights movements for soul mates of the same sex that would evolve into a fight for homosexual rights period. But even if she doesn't really remember her history that well, she does know that the 30s were a while before that. Same sex relationships, even for soulmates, are still taboo in this time.
Steve is still crying and Bucky isn't even looking at her anymore.
All she can do is float over to the smaller boy and pull him into her arms. He cries harder as she tries to soothe him, one of her hands running up and down his back while the fingers of the other card through his hair and scratch gently at his scalp. The other boy stares at the two of them with something like awe. She holds one hand where he can see it with all fingers extended out and then puts her middle and ring fingers down. (6) Instant recognition and understanding sparks in his eyes at the sign, and he's smiling wide even as tears drip down his cheeks.
She could never hate these boys. There's too much love in her for them to ever allow any hatred in.
.
It's like the last walls she didn't even realize were there come down. No more hiding, in fact, they include her in their most guarded secret. She is now their greatest ally and occasional lookout whenever they want a moment to themselves.
She feels at peace, knowing they can safely steal moments of happiness with each other.
But sometimes she feels a pang of sadness, remembering what she has lost in death. She hopes her own soulmates, whoever, wherever, whenever they are, find each other and find happiness and health together. And that they do not long for her as much as she still does for them.
.
A war brews.
Bucky volunteers.
Steve tries and fails to enlist.
Rukhsana holds the smaller man as he rages at the world for letting his soulmate go to war and not letting him follow. She listens when the brunet privately confesses his fear of dying and leaving his soulmate alone.
One night, they're all up on the roof together, and Bucky starts talking.
"I got this dream. You know, one of those ones where you get everything you ever wanted," he says to the starry night sky, "There's no war. I get a job as a mechanic, or a cop, or somethin'. Stevie's the best artist in the state. All three of us live together in a nice house. My family's livin' pretty an' they come to visit us every now an' then. Stevie gets healthier every year. I can-" His voice is thick with emotion. "-can hold his hand or kiss him an' no one looks twice or says a damn thing about it. Stevie's Ma an' Pa are still alive." He glances at the ghostly girl then back to the stars. "Ruxie's alive, too. An' she gets her soulmates. All of us are happy. That's my dream."
She doesn't know how to properly respond to that.
Thankfully, Steve does, when he reaches for both of their hands and says, "It's a good one."
It is.
.
That's the night she tries to remember, because thinking about the night before Bucky leaves makes her feel sick. The fight he and Steve have when the blond tries to run off to a recruitment office instead of spending their last night happily together is just awful. Both sides are out to hurt the other with vicious words, meant to hit where they're most vulnerable. It takes everything she has to make them at least stop and walk away without saying anything worse.
She goes after her brunet friend first, but he eventually sends her back to her other friend. Once she gets there, it's just in time to find out a miracle - disaster - has happened and he will be sent to war, too.
If she thinks she knew misery when the Bucky got his orders, it pales in comparison to knowing Steve would be going as well.
.
Rukhsana sticks with the smaller man on his journey to Camp Lehigh. The week long training is grueling on him, as sickly as he is. Sitting on the sidelines watching it is not for her. She is there in the mud with him and down the same path, pushing and pulling him whenever he comes close to complete collapse. Each day is like that, hoping he will make it through to the next.
Somehow, he does.
By the end of the week, the blond is chosen for the special secret procedure called Project Rebirth.
.
What happens next is crazy. It's hard to describe and she's a ghost that time traveled.
Somehow, Steve goes from a man made up of ninety pounds of skin, bones, physical ailments, and stubbornness to a towering mass of peak human perfection. He looks so healthy and strong, she could cry. If only Bucky could see it. Then again, he would've been slapping his soulmate up the head for enlisting and going through such a dangerous procedure in the first place. But once the anger fades, he would be just as emotional as she is and drag the now much taller man in for a searing kiss.
Of course, there is really no time to stop and take it in right then.
Dr. Abraham Erskine, the man who got him here and made this happen is killed right in front of them. Project Rebirth is abandoned. And Steve is left to strike a deal with a politician by the name of Senator Brandt. Her friend becomes the new propaganda sensation - Captain America - and gets paraded across the country to sell war bonds. All of this in exchange for a chance to be sent overseas.
Days of show tours and film shooting start to blur together. The newly christened Captain America grows more and more restless, waiting for Brandt to follow through. He does. Eventually.
But she and Steve only arrive to bad news.
Bucky's been taken captive across enemy lines. Her friend, his soulmate, might die.
The way things have gone since he signed up for Project Rebirth, she shouldn't be surprised at what comes next.
.
With the help of Agent Peggy Carter and a civilian inventor Howard Stark, Steve makes it behind enemy lines, breaks into the Hydra base there, and rescues Bucky and about 400 other soldiers. Rukhsana is along for the entire ride, fretting over every near death experience. Especially over her recently liberated friend who is weak from torture. She hovers near him the entire march back to camp and stays with him even after. He tries to get her to knock it off, but she won't.
"We could have lost you," she says out loud shakily, before repeating the same thing in sign language to him, "I don't want to leave you ever again."
He has the decency to let it go then and just let her hover after that. And since she's shadowing him, she's there to see him finally lay into Steve for getting himself into trouble again. However, he can't stay mad for long. His soulmate is with him, different but the same in every way it matters, and there are so many more important things to do than be mad at him.
"You're with me now," Bucky whispers reverently, pulling Steve closer.
The other man lets him, murmuring back, "Till the end of the line."
Once she's sure that where they are is private enough for where things are heading, she begins to excuse herself. It's their moment. They have earned it. She'll keep watch and give them the time they need. However, she feels Steve reach for he before she gets far and pull her back to join them in an embrace, Bucky looking on warmly. For some reason, this feels important. She just doesn't know why yet.
.
Steve gathers a group of men - The Howling Commandos - to lead in the war on Hydra. All of them are men he freed from that base. Bucky, of course, joins because only the combined efforts of himself and Rukhsana will keep his punk soulmate out of trouble. His words, I woulda worn them down eventually, (7) have been a constant reminder that Steve Rogers is a stubborn pain in the ass who would fight a brick wall until he collapses if he thought it the right thing to do. He absolutely needs both of them watching his back constantly.
They are the perfect team. When they fight together, back to back, they do it seamlessly. When Steve is on the field and Bucky falls back behind the scope, Captain America plows through enemies ahead of him as his soulmate takes out the ones who try to sneak behind him from afar. Not to be left out, the ghostly girl is there too, pulling the blond to safety when necessary and scouting ahead and flagging targets for the brunet when even he can't find them.
Her boys are untouchable, she thinks.
Until they're not.
.
The beginning of the end starts with the alps and a godforsaken train.
They are there to capture a scientist named Arnim Zola, second in importance only to the leader of Hydra, the Red Skull himself. This is not only a strategic move, but revenge as well. That man hurt Bucky when he was a prisoner under his care. Steve and Rukhsana would love to see him pay for that.
Everything goes wrong when her boys are separated. Both are forced to desperately fight for their lives. She tries to stay by Bucky's side. Just as the tide seems to be turning back in their favor and they're reunited, there's an explosion that blasts apart one side of the train car they're in and sends the brunet flying. He just barely manages to grab hold of the damaged side of the train, hanging perilously over the cliffside. His soulmate screams for him to hold on, reaches for him.
Rukhsana has a hand on Steve to help pull him back once he's gotten a hold of their friend.
Fingers graze each other for a second.
Then Bucky falls.
She would follow him down. But she knows that he is gone. And if he is gone, he wouldn't want her to leave his soulmate alone and likely to let himself be killed. He'd want her to keep the one thing he loved more than his own life alive. So the girl hauls her only friend left back to safety, both of them screaming.
It isn't fair.
.
After returning to camp with Zola - a cold, hollow victory - they sit together in a bombed out bar. Steve has her in his lap, curled around her, clinging to her like he'll never let her go.
"His words are faded," he tells her numbly.
She nods against his chest. Her hand is curled around the nape of his neck, thumb pressed to his pulse. Feeling the beats of his heart is the only thing that keeps her from screaming.
"Is this what it feels like to lose-?" he starts to ask before he cuts himself off with a shudder, "I'm sorry."
This time, she shakes her head into the juncture between neck and shoulder.
"No, Ruxie, really, I'm sorry," he repeats, "We never got the chance. We wanted to wait until the war was over, to ask you."
Pulling back, she stared at his face, gently squeezing his neck to continue.
"It's always felt like you were ours. That we were yours. We knew you lost your soulmates. We just wanted to try, to see if you'd give us a chance to be somethin'. To give you one, too."
Too much. It's too much. And so soon after Bucky.
It reminds her of that saying her baba used to tell her. "A stone thrown at the right time is better than gold given at the wrong time." She almost wishes he didn't say a word about it. That she didn't know what could have been. But she doesn't let herself keep thinking that. Just lets herself slump into Steve, shaking as she wraps her arms around his too broad shoulders.
They stay like that for a long time.
.
There is little time to mourn after. Hydra is about to unleash unspeakable chaos on the world. Grief must be reforged into something else. War and Hydra took Bucky from them. Ending this will be their vengeance.
Captain America storms the base head on astride a motorcycle, with only his shield and his faithful shadow right at his side. The confrontation within is fast. The one upon the plane faster.
This entire time as a ghost, she's been invulnerable. But like how she'd thought her boys untouchable and found out they weren't, she also finds there is something that can hurt her. Unable to explain why she is drawn to it, she reaches for the strange glowing blue cube at the same time the Red Skull does. The result is like fire. Her entire body feels like it is burning up.
Rukhsana looks to Steve and sees him staring at her and the red man in horror. She realizes that for the first time ever, she is visible to him. He sees her now. And now she's going to leave him like Bucky did.
She wants to say sorry. Somehow, she knows that for the first time, he'll be able to hear her, too. But she can feel herself being pulled apart, away. So she says something more important.
"I'll love you both forever," she tells him, looking straight into his eyes, "In this life and the next."
And in a flash of blue, she's gone.
.
A woman with bright red hair leans over her, her voice sounds far away.
"Requesting medical evac. Civilian, female, late teens to early twenties. Fell through tesseract beam, injuries unknown..."
She falls unconscious.
.
In the chair to her left is a large man with blond hair, fast asleep.
Resting on the pillow to her right is her Bucky Bear.
She drifts off.
.
When Rukhsana wakes up for good in a hospital room, her tired looking maman is there with her soulmate, Abram. The doctor, who introduces himself as Bruce Banner, explains that she was hurt badly in the attack and exposed to some very serious radiation. They're keeping her under observation until she makes a full recovery and they are sure there are no permanent or adverse effects.
Recovery takes a long time. The observation period even longer. They finally release her to maman with the strict conditions that she must visit once a month for at least a year or two to ensure she is all right. However, it's not a hardship. She makes a couple friends during her stay. Tony Stark of all people takes an interest when someone points out to him she's an engineering student who could benefit from an internship with his company. At first, she thinks it's Dr. Banner - who asks her to call him Bruce at some point - who makes this suggestion, but it turns out to be the other friend she makes while there.
The Captain America, is her first friend at the Avengers Tower. It's awkward at first, when he mistakes her for someone he knew. But now he helps her stave off boredom, saying that he liked having someone to talk to about technology and the future with. And he admits that he knows what it's like to be bedridden for so long. She's honored he chose to keep her company. Mr. Rogers shuts her down immediately when she starts self deprecating, wondering why someone like him would want to talk to someone like her. Also, he shuts down her calling him Mr. Rogers, insisting she should just call him Steve. By the end of her stay, it's like they've been friends a lifetime with inside jokes about Doctor Who and The Hobbit, knowing how the other takes their coffee, and having a special go to cafe for lunch.
When he has to head to Washington, D.C. for work, she's there with Mr. Stark - "Call me Tony, or I'll keep calling you girlie" - and Bruce to send her friend and a familiar redhead off. He sweeps her into a big hug that she returns with equal ferocity. She keeps waving long after he disappears into the quinjet and it launches from the helipad. Her mentor and the doctor eye her curiously - the billionaire blatantly while the other man tries to be more inconspicuous. Flushing, she heads back into the tower, trying not to think about what those looks are about.
.
With her observation over and Steve gone, she tries to slip back into her old life. It's both easy and hard. She's fallen behind in school, though Tony's fighting to have her internship work with him get count as credits for something. Everytime she tries to thank the man, he practically runs in the opposite direction to avoid the attempts and especially the hugs. It's only when she leaves a coffee from the best place in New York with a scrawled 'thanks' on it in his workshop and finds it empty with a tiny 'ur welcom' scribbled under that she considers herself successful.
Also, her maman and her soulmate get married. Abram really is a good guy and okay step father. It surprises her how little it hurts now to see someone other than baba with the woman. Maman's remarrying restarts her old hobby of visiting hospitals and facilities to find her soulmates. However, there are many new doctors, nurses, and patients to contend with. Not all of them are romantics willing to put up with an odd college student underfoot harassing their terminally ill patients. She also checks her words more frequently. She's relieved to find the Hello? still bold and dark. Her other set of words stays discouragingly faded after almost two years. But she still doesn't give up hope.
They're out there.
.
Besides the mundane stuff, really crazy stuff keeps happening.
Another alien attack happens in London, and Thor is rumored to be involved.
A terrorist threatens her mentor, his soulmate is kidnapped, and they both almost die trying to save the president of the United States. Thankfully, they both come back safe and alive. Tony is now even sans arc reactor and anxiety attacks which is good for him.
The next thing is what truly scares her. All she gets is a, 'Stay with Tony' text from Steve before suddenly Captain America is declared wanted by SHIELD. Tony immediately tries to get to the bottom of it and see if there is anything he can do for his teammate. It's a tense couple days, hoping that Steve is okay. Tenser when Hydra is revealed within SHIELD and the organization falls. Before the dust even settles, her mentor grabs an armor suitcase, tells JARVIS to clear his schedule and her to pack a bag, and then they're off to Washington, D.C.
.
Not once does she have time to notice that the longer set of words goes dark and stays dark while the single word flickers briefly.
.
They arrive at the hospital where Steve is being kept. Her mentor goes to talk to the tall brunette woman in charge. She takes the opportunity to go into her friend's hospital room, flashing the access badge the billionaire almost forgot to give her. They still seem to not want to let her by, one man's eyes lingering on her hijab with distaste. It makes her frown. Seeing her friend's state makes her frown more prominent.
There's a handsome black man in the chair beside his bed, who sits up when she enters. He takes one look at her and gives her a wide, tired smile.
"You must be the Ruxie."
Sam Wilson is the man's name, and he fought alongside Steve against Hydra. She immediately thanks him for having her friend's back. He waves it off, telling her it was the right thing to do. They chat, poking a little fun at their mutual acquaintance and discussing things they think he still needs to experience to get caught up with the 21st century. Somehow, they turn to talk of soulmates.
"He ran into his soulmate," he tells her, "Steve."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I maybe shouldn't be telling you this, but you're Steve's friend and you came with Stark, so you're probably okay. His soulmate is Bucky Barnes, from back before he was frozen. Somehow, he's still alive, and was being used by Hydra..."
Rukhsana is sure that he is still talking, some crack about how homophobic historians denying the Rogers-Barnes soulmate theory in favor of the Rogers-Carter soulmate theory would go nuts if they knew. But hearing the name Bucky Barnes makes her heart start pounding in her ears. It takes the other man calling her name multiple times and putting a hand on her arm to snap her out of it. She comes back to herself and realizes she has a hand on the shoulder with the words that were faded before all of this started.
Uncaring that the man is watching, she pushes up her sleeve and pulls the patch away.
I'm Bucky. So what are you? isn't faded anymore.
Glancing back at Sam's face, she can see him staring hard at her words. His gaze travels back up to her face. She isn't ready to answer the unasked question in his expression. Before he can open his mouth and say anything, she stands. The girl pauses, then reaches into her bag and pulls out the Bucky Bear she thought last minute to bring with her. Gently, she nestles it into Steve's side.
"Let him know I came," she tells him, one hand involuntarily going to her other shoulder where her other word is.
And then she flees.
.
Back to New York. To school. To her family. To her internship.
To everything that should be uncomplicated.
That way, she can avoid thinking of the blue tinted dreams of a small sickly blond and a rough but charming brunet. Seeing them grow up, being there with them. She doesn't understand why hearing the name Bucky Barnes brings this flood of - are they memories? But how could they be memories if it's impossible to have lived it? Also on the topic of Bucky Barnes, the idea that maybe instead of some guy pretending to be him, her there-and-gone-again soulmate was actually the now very alive man from WWII?
Crazy.
And if what Sam said is true, that would have to make Steve her other soulmate. The timing of when he was thawed and when her word flared up again is suspicious, but when they met at the hospital, his first word to her was, "Hi." Close, but not Hello? She isn't denying that she finds him attractive, that he isn't one of best men she's ever known. He's just her friend though, and not her soulmate. If Steve isn't her soulmate, then neither is Bucky. She's just some silly girl getting her hopes up about her two missing soulmates, and she's projecting it onto them.
It's simple as that. Not complicated at all.
The dreams continue to disagree.
.
Months pass. Rukhsana feels like things are starting to get back to something like normal again. If normal includes Tony Stark as a mentor. He keeps telling her to just quit school and upgrade her internship to full time position at Stark Industries. Her maman doesn't like this idea. Says she still needs to socialize with people her own age so she doesn't become too isolated. It's maman psychologist speak for warning her away from becoming an awkward engineer shut in whose only friends are weird older men. Nothing against Tony and Bruce or anyone else on the SI science team, but her maman kind of has a point. She still wants to feel like an average early twenty something college student in New York who goes to parties sometimes, pulls all nighters, and maybe tries the occasional extracurricular. Or as close to that as possible.
She keeps visiting hospitals and hospice facilities. Has dinner half of the nights in a week with maman and Abram. And she gets back in touch with Margaret, apologizing for not going to visit her when she was last in the D.C. area, to which Margaret says, "Well how about this weekend? I'm sure Anthony can fly you out."
It's surprising how unsurprising it is that Margaret somehow has not only been keeping track of her, but also seems to be familiar with Tony.
Steve texts. She texts back. He doesn't tell her what he's doing. She doesn't ask.
Sam manages to get her number though, and what her friend doesn't say, he does. Steve is searching for his soulmate. And he misses her. Sometimes the ex-pararescue snaps pictures for her. The first time she gets one of the blond sleeping with her bear, she laughs until she cries. But the pictures of the supersoldier's sketchbook give her pause. It is filled with drawings of her. And of a man that is unmistakably Bucky Barnes. The dreams she pretends she doesn't still have etch his features permanently into her memory, much like Steve's.
Whenever Sam asks if she's going to tell him, she leaves the question unanswered. What is there to tell, anyway?
.
Tony and Bruce are geniuses.
They are also idiots.
Both of them are called out for an Avengers mission, the details of which she isn't given. If a text from Sam doesn't already tip her off, she thinks that the mission and post mission party are a dead give away that Steve is coming. They manage to get back just as Dr. Cho, who handles her monthly checks ups now, finishes taking care of her. She hops off the examination table just as they bring Hawkeye in on a gurney to the lab.
"Hey, are you okay?" Steve asks when his eyes land on her.
"Yeah, just the usual check up to make sure there's still no side effects from the cube."
"That's good," he tells her with a relieved smile.
As unsubtle as a brick thrown through his glass display screens, Tony bustles by and knocks her into the supersoldier. He whistles as he continues on towards Bruce and the two bend their heads together, looking more like gossiping teenagers as they keep sneaking peeks at her and Steve.
"What do you think they're talking about?" he asks, bemused.
"A stupid pet project," she mutters in response.
His arm stays settled around her waist a little too long before he lets her go.
.
Steve being back is a distraction.
If not for him, she would have caught this sooner, and Tony knows that. He gives her a whole day off, too, and that's what really should have been suspicious. But this is the real reason why he and Bruce are idiots. Because the purpose of the mission was bring back some kind of sentient alien tech. Somehow, he and Bruce both think it is a great idea to put an AI and wildcard sentient alien tech together and are naive enough to think there was no way anything something can go wrong.
And nothing is going to, because she will put a stop to it right now.
JARVIS admits her into the workshop where they hunch over notes and flick through read outs and numbers on screens. Rukhsana throws the fit of the century. Calls them reckless and arrogant and stupid. Threatens to call Pepper and Ms. Hill. Swears she'll lace their coffee and tea with laxatives. Gesticulates wildly. And when they try to tell her she needs to calm down and move away from their work, she just gets angrier.
And then her hand lands on the scepter.
There's a high pitched sound and then she hits the floor.
Just before everything goes black, she realizes that sound is her screaming.
.
Everything is blue. Then yellow.
Through the haze of color, she sees many things.
A galaxy of stars, beautiful and then in ruins.
A large purple being on an imposing throne of stone, its terrifying features pull into a mad grin.
A red man with a glowing yellow jewel on his forehead.
Many other strange places and sights.
And then two faces she knows so well from her dreams. No, not dreams. More than that.
Memories.
.
The first thing she is aware of is that she has a monumental headache. Looking around, she realizes that she's in a hospital bed. Then she notices there are two men sitting at her bedside, staring at her in shock.
"Ruxie," the dark hair man breathes, his voice rough and shuddering.
She throws herself at him.
"You're alive, you're alive, you're alive," she chants into his hair, reveling in touching him for the first time ever.
"I-" he tries, his arms hovering over her form before settling uncertainly on her.
Pulling back a bit to stare into his stunned and wondering face, she places her hands on either of his cheeks and presses a kiss to his brow.
"Don't ever want to leave you again."
His eyes are shiny.
"You're with me now."
"You are such a sap," she says with a watery laugh, her forehead falling against his.
"You started it," Bucky whispers back, and she can almost feel his lips brush hers as he talks.
"Woah!" Someone yelps, and they break apart to face the door where Tony, Bruce, and a couple of the other Avengers are standing, a little wide eyed. "That uh, was not the happy reunion I expected to walk in on."
She glances at Bucky who has an arm wrapped protectively around her. Then at herself, practically straddling him in only a hospital gown. Then over at Steve in the chair just next to them looking overcome with emotion, joy most prominent and shock a close second.
Bucky helps her pull her hospital gown shut in back as she points a finger at Tony who still looks stunned and warns, "If you take a picture of this, so help me-"
.
Explanations are had after Bruce and Dr. Cho check her over.
They tell her that whatever residual energy of the tesseract that she has in her reacted poorly when she came into contact with the scepter, which held what Thor explains is another 'infinity stone.' So essentially, she had the sci-fi equivalent of an allergy attack when exposed to the other stone. An allergy attack that put her in a month long coma.
(Tony and Bruce apologize profusely under the glares of everyone.)
When they ask about how she knows the Winter Soldier, she and her boys share a look. Steve and Bucky end up taking over. It's not a bother. The coma has taken a lot out of her, leaving her kitten weak. How she got out of bed in the first place earlier is a mystery.
(Tony and Bruce theorize about the tesseract and astral projection in the background.)
Finally, someone, Agent Romanoff she thinks, asks why then and why would only the supersoldiers see her.
(Tony and Bruce have nothing this time.)
Steve makes a guess.
"We think," he says, sharing a glance with Bucky before staring shyly down at her, "It's because we're Ruxie's soulmates."
Sam, who has been listening quietly with the rest of the peanut gallery, speaks up.
"Okay, I think they need some privacy now."
Pepper and Bruce drag a babbling Tony out, Thor claps a hand on Steve's shoulder as he goes, Dr. Cho says to call if anything happens, and Agent Romanoff stares all three of them down and then slinks off. Sam is the last one left and before he goes he presents, of all things, a Captain Ameribear.
"Thought you'd need a replacement for your Bucky Bear," he says to her as he tosses it to Steve, "But considering you have the real thing, maybe not."
"Get out already, Wilson," the blond grumbles at the other man.
"Yeah, yeah. And congratulations."
Then, they're alone.
.
They talk. All three of them have a hard time confirming whether or not her and Bucky's and her and Steve's words are matches. Though they remember some, neither she nor Bucky's memories can be trusted to tell them whether they actually said You can see me? and I'm Bucky. So what are you? the first time they met in 1930. And her and Steve's words are so generic - Hello. and Hello? - that his perfect memory doesn't help. All they have is a feeling.
That is, until Rukhsana thinks to ask for her journal of the times Bucky's words faded then darkened. They call on JARVIS to compare the dates with Winter Soldier mission logs and everything lines up. It makes him hunch into himself and clench his fists, so she changes the subject to when Steve's word turned dark. This also matches with when he was taken out of the ice.
"So how did you start to realize that I was your…?" she eventually asks them, trailing off because she still can't say the word out loud yet.
Both of their faces darkened.
"After I first woke up, I noticed the new word but never really did anything about it. Wasn't ready for that," Steve explains to her, his hand drifting to where his word is, "Then it faded, when you touched the scepter. I felt it, but I didn't understand what it meant. Not even when Buck showed up. He felt it too, you words fading. He came to find me, begging me to help look for our third. But we still didn't think it might be you. Not until Sam said something."
"Sam," she murmurs, half irritated, half grateful, hugging the Captain Ameribear closer.
"So we've been here, waitin' for you to wake up sweetheart," Bucky finally speaks up, "To find out if we've really been yours this entire time."
"Well. It's starting to look a lot like you might be stuck with me," she tells them, daring to hope they're even half as eager as she is.
"With you…" Steve says, pulling the hand of hers he's been holding up to press a kiss to the back of it.
"Till the end of the line," Bucky finishes, doing the same with the other.
"We're going to be insufferable," she comments lightly, feeling like her heart is about to burst.
.
They are.
Sam and Tony complain the most.
.
Together, they build a life.
There's dinner with maman and Abram once every month when they can.
All three of them have nightmares, but they have dreams, too.
Dancing dates. Coney Island dates. Museum dates.
Sometimes fights, like when Steve refuses to support Tony, Bruce, and herself using the mind stone to make the red man from her vision a reality, and their third is forced to mediate.
The boys kiss her for the first time and it is like she is a star in the sky.
When she and Bucky convince Steve to tell her mentor the truth about December 16th, 1991 (8), and how the Winter Soldier's bloody past intersected with his own that night.
Bucky tries to leave whenever he thinks they'd be better off without him and they help him come home again every time.
Quiet days in, Rukhsana shows Bucky how to do maintenance on his arm while Steve sketches them.
Sat together in a pew at Margaret - Peggy - Carter's funeral.
Steve and maman cheer when she walks, receives her diploma, and turns her tassel, and Bucky waits for them with dinner and flowers at home.
The Infinity Wars.
It's not all good or all bad either. But she'd argue that it's better than she could have ever hoped for.
.
"A stone thrown at the right time is better than gold given at the wrong time," she murmurs.
"What's that Ruxie?" Steve asks, looking down at her from where he's sat up in bed with a book in his hand.
Her head is pillowed in his lap. Bucky's spooning her, his metal arm going over her stomach.
"Just something baba used to say. I think he thought it had to do with soulmates."
"And?" Bucky mumbles sleepily into her neck.
"I don't think it works. We're here. The timing wasn't really great, but we're together. That's all that matters." Rukhsana smiles. "That, and that you love me."
"And what gave you that idea?"
Steve sets the book aside, then moves her head onto the pillow and lies down facing her. His fingers trail up her arm to trace their other soulmate's words on her shoulder. A metal hand takes those fingers and settles their joined hands over the words.
"You're still here aren't you?" she prompted.
"We are," Bucky finally gives in, nuzzling into her.
"Forever," Steve continues, sliding closer, "In this life and the next."
END
AN: My darling Counting Sinful Stars and other readers asked for R/S/B in Perception, and I couldn't because that's just not how that story will pan out. But I didn't want to leave all of you with nothing and started writing and well, here we are. Officially my first ever soulmates AU, my first threesome/poly relationship, my first AU of my own work, and my first time writing slash in 4 years. (Confession: I don't even ship Stucky, but whatever.) I want to reiterate that while this fic uses content from my other story, this is not Perception, nor will Perception go in the same direction. In fact, look at this fic an indicator of what will NOT happen in the other story. Anyway, I hope all of you enjoyed!
Things:
1. Iranian proverb
2. Baba - Dad
3. Setareham - my star (hope I actually used/wrote this properly)
4. Maman - Mom
5. Dokhtar - daughter
6. American sign language symbol for "I love you"
7. Dialogue from Captain America: First Vengeance
8. The assassination of Howard and Maria Stark