Colors and promises
How to be brave?
How can I love when I'm afraid to fall?
But watching you stand alone
All of my doubt suddenly goes away somehow

Sam never needed a soulmate.

It wasn't that he didn't want one or that he hated the system of it, it had just never been at the top of his list. If it happened, it happened but he didn't mind seeing monochrome forever. There were worse ways to live. He supposed that made him strange in a world that was obsessed with finding the one who would make them see glorious color but Sam hadn't minded. He went through high school and a tour in Afghanistan without seeing color, he could survive without it.

When he met Riley that line of thought only increased. Sam didn't see color with him and that was fine, it didn't change how Sam felt about him and nothing that strong could be anything but fate. Riley already saw color. He started to see it when he was 12 and Alison Mooney sat beside him in class but Alison had married some wealthy businessman so she could get out of Alabama, leaving Riley behind who then joined the army and met Sam.

"Way I see it, people are thinking of this soulmate thing all wrong. It doesn't have to be your romantic partner, it could be a friend, a parent, a sibling, a teacher, hell just a regular Joe off the street. You get to see color and that's not a gift to take lightly but we make our own paths. If I'd have been with Alison now, I wouldn't be with you and there's no way that's right." Riley said one night as they were curled up in the barracks together.

"What happens if I meet my soulmate and he or she wants to take the more traditional route with me? What if they want to be with me? It might not be that simple."

"I'd have to tell them 'thank you kindly for the colors but this one's tied down already'."

"Is that what you'd say?" Sam asked with an amused smile.

"There might be a few more expletives in there but generally along those lines, yeah."

Riley never got the chance to embarrass Sam in front of his soulmate because Riley died and Sam felt like a part of him died too. He heard accounts of someone losing their soulmate akin to losing a limb. That's what it was like with Riley. Somehow, impossibly, he survived the loss. Not unscathed but he survived though he found that he stopped caring or wanting a soulmate or anyone for that matter altogether. With everything he was dealing with colors were the last thing on his mind. He found himself in his work, in helping his fellow vets to recover after their traumas and that brought him peace if nothing else.

Then he met him.

Sam liked taking morning runs. It cleared his mind of any nightmares he might've had the night before and helped him to focus on one single thing. He could be scatter-brained nowadays ever since the war, running grounded him. He was running adjacent to the fountain when something blasted past him so quickly he barely even registered it.

"On your left." The person called running ahead. Sam blinked ahead at the man's back, his eyes starting to itch. He ignored the man and swiped at his eyes figuring sweat had dripped into them. After a few moments the person passed again.

"On your left."

"On my left, got it." Sam replied. He noticed his vision was getting darker, the grayness seeping to black. He pushed through it to keep going. After a few moments the man passed again and now Sam was frustrated.

"On your left.

"Come on man, just-" Sam cut himself off as his vision all of a sudden went dark. He stopped in place, rubbing at his eyes and slightly panicking as all he saw was blackness. Then all at once he saw everything. The world was covered in colors that he didn't even know the names of but it was most certainly not gray. His breath caught in his chest as he looked around himself wide-eyed with wonder. He had definitely underestimated the brilliance of colors themselves, they way they all seemed to weaved together, the way they seemed to have layers which he could see in the contrast between the trees and the grass. The concrete was still gray but it was lighter gray and there was chalk on it in different colors that created a beautiful picture that he appreciated all the more that he could see it in color…

Wait.

He could see color which meant…

He slowly turned back around to the man who had been lapping him. The man was staring at him wide-eyed, standing frozen as if he were mystified and then he smiled the largest smile Sam had ever seen in his life. Sam felt his stomach drop to his shoes, he felt like he was going to throw up and his heart was hammering in his chest. He took a step back and the man's smile started to dim in its intensity. Sam took another step back and the man seemed to realize what Sam was going to do before he even did.

"Please don't." The man said in a slightly desperate tone but Sam had already turned and ran in the opposite direction before he was even finished talking.

Sam kept running and he didn't stop though it was hard not to because the colors he was seeing was overwhelming him, it was all too much to process and that coupled with his newfound soulmate and the hammering in his chest, he knew he was fast approaching a panic attack. He was originally going to run home but he course-corrected and instead ran towards his friend Mikiho's house. He nearly got hit by a car on his way there thanks to his disorientation but he made it and started ringing the doorbell to the point of annoyance but his hand was shaking so much he couldn't stop, he just wanted to be inside. After a moment an annoyed looking dark skinned woman with dreadlocks opened the door. Sam recognized her as Mikiho's fiancée but he didn't know her well.

"The fuck you doing, mate? Are you having a go at me something?" She said in an exasperated English accent. Sam stared at her shaking and her face fell.

"Miki, I need you at the door." Mikiho came to the door after a moment and took one look at Sam before pulling him into the house.

"Kemi, make some tea please." Kemi quickly scurried to the kitchen and Miki brought him towards the living room and sat him down on the couch.

"Okay, breath with me. In through your nose, out through your mouth, you know the drill." Miki breathed slowly and gently through her nose and held it before breathing out through her mouth slowly and deeply. It took a few breaths before Sam got it together enough to follow her breathing and even then it took a while before he was able to match it, it took enough time that Kemi had already made the tea. He felt a hand on his back and shoulders rubbing and massage his muscles. He focused on the sensation of the hands on his body, of his breath whistling through his lungs, of the smell of ginger and peppermint coming from the steaming cup of tea.

"Squeeze my hand." Miki said, Sam took as much control of his limbs as he could manage and squeezed Miki's hand.

"Okay, squeeze one more time." Sam squeezed one more time and Miki nodded with satisfaction before pushing the tea under his nose. He inhaled the scent but didn't drink it as his stomach was still roiling.

"Can you tell me the date?"

"It's April 12th, 2014. I'm in Washington, DC in your apartment."

"Good, you're safe and whole." Sam couldn't help but laugh then. He was more whole than he wanted to be. Miki let him get through the worst of his shakes and manage to keep down half of his tea before she spoke.

"Do you want to talk about it?" She asked. Sam opened and closed his mouth a few times before he finally answered.

"I just started seeing colors." Miki slowly started to smile at him.

"Congratulations Sammy. I know it can be overwhelming at first, especially for vets who didn't see them before the war. It was that way for me when I met Olukemi." Miki said, pulling Sam's hand into hers. Kemi sat on the table in front of him with a gentle smile, though her eyes showed excitement. Her eyes weren't quite black but they were pretty dark. He wondered what color they were.

"What's their name then?" She asked. Sam shrugged in response.

"I don't know." The two women looked at him in confusion.

"I ran away before I got it." He could see both Kemi and Miki's face fall but they didn't judge him or condemn him for it even though he knew he was going to beat himself up for this.

"How about this? Miki's gotta go to work soon but she can call the VA, get you the day off and you and I can spend that time learning all the new colors there is. Primary school would have you believe other than white, gray and black, it's just red, orange, yellow, blue, pink, green, purple and brown but there's so much more like coral, lavender, turquoise. You'll finally get to fully appreciate that blood orange meme. It'll be great." Kemi said, getting more excited with each sentence. Sam smiled wanly at her and nodded. He would do anything not to think of what had just happened.

It had been two weeks since he had met his soulmate and started to see colors and Sam had settled into it. It was still disorienting at times to walk out of his house because while he knew that grass was green he didn't know what green was until he was suddenly able to see it and it had taken on a whole new meaning in his mind. The shade of green the grass was, was different than Mrs. Palmer's car which was lime green and that was different from Miki's eyes which were emerald green and all of that was different from the highlights in Kemi's dreads which were chartreuse. It was dizzying how many shades of a color there were, how coral differed from rose, how orchid differed from lilac, how cedar differed from tawny. Even gray, white and black had different shades that he could now put names too that he hadn't appreciated before. And Kemi was right, the blood orange meme was funnier to him now.

But the more that he learned about colors, the guiltier he felt. He felt guilty that he was seeing colors and Riley was dead, he felt guilty that he had literally run away from his soulmate and left him to fend for himself, he felt guilty that he'd been basically avoiding the man, not even running by the mall anymore for fear of running into him. Sam was not the guy who ran away from his troubles and yet here he was.

"If this isn't your regular MO, and you know it isn't, why don't we go over all the reasons why you might be doing this." Sam's friend and part-time counselor, Clarence said from his side of the desk. Sam had booked an appointment with him after he had a nightmare of Riley drowning in a giant vat of rainbow paint.

"Obviously Riley plays a big part in this." Clarence said. Sam shrugged.

"Yeah, I mean he was it for me, you know. I didn't need to find my soulmate because I had him and then he was dead. He found his soulmate, you know. He said he didn't regret how things went with her because he got to be with me but if he hadn't been with me, he would still be alive today."

"You don't know that. You can't make that assumption."

"Well I know for sure I messed up with my soulmate. I literally ran away from him; he must think I'm horrible."

"You've been through a lot. Losing someone, soulmate or not, is always hard and you're still going through it. My concern is that you might think that if you move on with your life, at least romantically, that you're betraying Riley in some way, that you're leaving him behind." Sam sighed, looking down and away. Clarence nodded to himself at the quiet confirmation.

"Whether you pursue a romantic relationship with this man is wholly up to you but I think that you may be missing out on something great by blocking him from your life. It's up to you though." Sam nodded in understanding. He didn't know if he was ready to shack up with this guy but if nothing else he owed it to himself to at least talk to the man that fate decided was his missing half.

He started running around the mall again, hoping to see him but he never did and always found himself disappointed by it. He was leaning against a tree catching his breath when someone approached him.

"Nice day, huh?" Sam looked up to see a woman standing over him. She had flaming red hair straightened to perfection, he got slightly lost in the color before he noticed the stiletto boots she was wearing, they were sharp enough to cut. She smiled pleasantly down at him but something about her aura screamed danger. Sam stood up, not feeling comfortable with her towering over him. Her eyes sparkled with amusement at the maneuver.

"It's nice enough I suppose. Can I help you with something?"

"Yeah, actually." Sam tensed as the woman reached into her pocket and then relaxed slightly as the woman pulled a museum ticket out of her pocket. It featured the Captain America exhibit that had recently opened on it.

"Visit the museum today around 2."

"Why?" Sam asked, not taking the ticket from her. The woman shrugged in response.

"You never know who you might meet." Sam stared at her as she gave him a knowing smirk. Sam paused before taking the ticket from her and looking down at it. She turned to walk away before pausing.

"He's a good guy. I mean, almost annoyingly good. He can be a stubborn idiot but give him a chance." Sam nodded before he watching her turn on her heels and strut away. He looked down at the ticket and found himself smiling. It was still early, just 8 in the morning and it was his day off. Thankfully it was Miki's too and he called her over so they could pick out clothes together. Ultimately he landed on a purple checkered shirt with his good jeans along with a leather jacket. He looked casual but good.

"You're gonna knock him dead." Miki complimented.

"Let's hope not." Miki smiled at the dark humor. She approached him and pressed a kiss to his cheek before pulling back and looking into his eyes.

"Do me a favor? Be gentle with yourself today." Sam stared back into her green orbs before nodding.

The Smithsonian was packed as it usually was but most of the hubbub seemed to be concentrating around the Captain America exhibit. Sam had never been the hugest fan of the man. He read about him in his history book and he knew he had miraculously come back from the dead but he couldn't pick the man's face out in a crowd from anyone else's. He been more so into Batman or Superman growing up. He walked past the giant mural on the wall of Captain America saluting with the American flag and a bald eagle behind it and shook his head, could it really get any more American than that? He stepped into the exhibit, dodging children who ran around the main portion of the exhibition. His eyes were briefly drawn to the puppet soldiers dressed in the Howling Commandos uniform. Sam nodded a little in Gabe Jones' direction, he'd researched the man himself when they were learning about Captain America as his textbook's information on Private Jones was scant at best. He eyes roved over the memorial put up of Bucky Barnes when something caught his eye next to it. He walked over to the television mounted into the wall at the looping footage. It showed Barnes and Captain America strategizing together but that wasn't the clip that caught Sam's attention it was the second clip that showed the two men started next to each other. The Captain's face was uncovered and he was smiling brightly at whatever Barnes was saying. Sam's breath caught on the smile.

No friggin' way. Sam thought to himself.

"Hi." A voice said tentatively next to him. Sam looked over to see the man himself, Captain America, his friggin' soulmate, standing next to him looking at him cautiously. Sam, still not quite believing this turn of events, looked between the man beside him and the video trying to will his brain to come up with some sort of explanation besides the truth. When it wasn't looking like Rogers' face was going to shapeshift any time soon Sam stopped the assessment and let the reality sink in.

"My soulmate is Captain America." Sam mumbled to himself. Just saying that sentence out loud made him start giggling to himself. This whole situation was ridiculous.

"Um, is that a good laugh or a bad laugh?" Rogers asked from beside him. Sam sobered and turned to give the man his full attention.

"That was a laugh of disbelief because my soulmate is a 90-year-old man. You look pretty good for your age though, all things considered." Rogers blushed a deep scarlet at the compliment before clearing his throat.

"I'm Steve Rogers." He said, holding out his hand almost hesitantly. Sam clasped it in his own.

"I'm Sam Wilson." The other man still looked nervous, like Sam was going to bolt out of the museum which was a fair assumption given what little he knew of him. Sam flashed back to the way the man's smile slowly dropped from his face as Sam let him alone, the way devastation had slowly seeped through and then desperation. Sam was suddenly struck with an urge to make up for that in any way he could.

"Hey, you like Thai food?"

"I've never had it."

"Well, that's a travesty. We'll just have to fix that. If you want to, anyway." Sam's breath caught again as Steve smiled at him. It wasn't bright as the first smile he gave him but it was still something.

"I'd love to."