Disclaimer: The MCU is property of The Walt Disney Company.


Till time tear us apart


There should be something somewhere, something that she keeps missing when recounting the events that lead up to this morning. However, yesterday was quite a normal day for her. Toni made some progress on the bot she has been working on for sometime now, the programming being the most problematic because the bot is more a dummy than an actual artificial intelligence, and then there was Rhody's visit. They have been planning it for the last week, just some hanging out and showing around the makeshift workshop she made out of one of the many laboratories MIT has. The sighting of the comet just happened to coincide on their schedule.

The plan was to have some actual dinner —because the army hardly serves good food and Toni may had been forgetting to eat on her inventor rush—, and just relax on her dorm's roof while seeing the espectacle. If she just so happened to receive a call from Howard scolding her, because she has been doing some corrections to blueprints of weapons she shouldn't know about, and then decided to just fuck it all and have some fun at a bar while Rhody probably waited and called for hours to her door… well, she already know she could be an asshole most of the time.

She just needed a night for herself, without the distraction of her projects or having to put up with some of the idiots at the lab that still underestimate her for being a woman. It was just supposed to be music, some nice vodka, and her own self-pitiness. The sex was a nice plus, it has been some time since she last got laid.

"What ya' thinking Steve?"

Toni looked up to the guy sitting across from her on the table. He looked confused and maybe also a little bit worried, plate of soup long forgotten. She then noticed that at some time on her self-reflection she stopped eating altogether. However, she couldn't help it, for it was getting lost on her thoughts or trying to make some small talk. And she has a gift of talking without thinking.

"Uh, nothing really just…" trying to solve a time-travel-body-changing-problem, "When was the last time you got, went, out on a date?" she blurted out the first thing that came to her mind, just stopping herself on time from saying 'got laid' rather than 'on a date'. People were quite conservative around these times, weren't they?

The guy almost choked on his own saliva, and that was entertaining to watch until it seemed he really was choking to death but luckily it didn't last for long. His eyes were wide on an expression full of disbelief and surprise.

"What?! Did you just asked for my love life?"

Toni rolled her shoulders, "We are friends, aren't we? We live together and all" or maybe she is reading wrong and they are more than friends, but taking in mind the time and age that is a can of worms better-off unopened.

He still looked her on disbelief but a smile has broken out on his face, "But you never ask that kind of stuff, not offence mate, but you are more of a prude than most dames."

"I am?" She asked scrunching-up her nose in some disgust. That is the type of people she can't barely stand, they tend to have a stick shoved all the way up their asses. And now look at her, she is that stick shoved all the way inside little Steve, oh the irony.

"Steve, what happened to that one girl that tried to kiss you?"

"...I don't know."

"Exactly!"

Something tells her there is a juicy story she would like to know for blackmailing purposes. Not that it would help her out of this body, anyway so she resumed eating.

"Just for the record, the last time I had a date was yesterday. You know, our double date in the bar, before you went full Steve mode on those guys"

"Steve mode?"

"This thing you do when someone piss you off. You got this look on your eyes and throw the first punch, consequences be damned."

So Kamikaze mode, got it.


"So, where is it?"

The question pulled him out of his mini-panic attack, still the feeling was overwhelming and threatening to crush him with all its force any time now.

Steve breathed in, and tried to make sense of the world around him, again.

"It… was here" here, where instead of a apartment building all what they can see is a very neglected parking lot, "I… I live here" or so it was.

What the fuck happened?

"Toni-I mean, Steve… I don't want to sound insensitive, but this… this is a parking lot. How in the world do you live in a parking lot?!"

This is wrong, hell, everything is wrong. While driving the taxi all the way here he was already seeing so many changes, like how all the buildings looked older than what they actually were, or how the people were wearing even more informal clothes… he thought that was a Boston thing. For a moment Steve took it as if they were going through another part of the city that he has never seen before, but there was no mistake.

This is the same street where he grow up, but different, so similar and different at the same time that it hurt. And to think that even the whole building is gone… What happened? Where is Bucky? Why everything is so different?

"Where am I?" he asked with a little voice, looking helplessly at James, who clearly was also confused and freaking out because they were supposed to find Toni here but they didn't, so now they don't know where she is or what is happening and Steve is freaking out too.

James exploded.

"What? And now you don't know where we are?" the viciousness in his tone and even the sharpness of his words is something that Steve can understand, they rode an airplane here and now the only clue of Toni's whereabouts is gone. Steve can relate, if Bucky was missing because of some stranger he would be mad too, "Does Brooklyn, or even planet Earth ring a bell?!"

Steve averted his eyes to the floor, "I am sorry, Sir. But I don't know much about what or why this is happening."

He knew as soon as those words left his mouth that that was the wrong thing to say, but Steve couldn't take responsibility of something that isn't entirely his fault, if not at all. He is a victim too, but this is hardly any street fight where the bully is clearly noticeable.

James snorted, "Sure, you know nothing" the mockery in his voice made it clear that he thinks that is a lie, "Answer me this question, why would anybody want to take over the body of Natasha Stark? The daughter of Howard Stark, owner of Stark Industries, a multimillionaire company. Does that ring a bell now?"

No, it doesn't, but now Steve knows that James has more than one reason to not believe in him. That doesn't means that he isn't going to try, "I know that this isn't believable, but I do want to get my body back." He said with sincerity and a kicked puppy look on his (her) face. Sure, Steve has asthma and passes more days than not confined to bed because of his proficiency to get ill. However, this is not how he imaginated getting a normal life, not by stealing someone else's life.

James nodded, and then nodded some more as if trying to affirm himself.

"Okey… let's just, talk about how exactly this parking lot is your home."

Steve signed, "I swear that yesterday it used to be an apartment building."

"...that makes no sense"

"That is how I have been feeling all this day."


Sometime after deeming this trip to Brooklyn useless, both men —in heart— went into a dinner to get some decent food in. Maybe Steve didn't feel hungry until now because of Toni's insanely unhealthy stamina, but Rhody was more than ready to eat an hamburger and then a second one.

He noticed that the man —if he can even call him that now— had been quite distracted during most (if not all) of the time. He has this look on his, well, Toni's face, saying that he is lost. As if he didn't recognize this place at all, the misplacement of his apartment just proved it. Also, it is still weird to see Toni making all those new expressions, even if he knows it is not Toni.

Rhody doesn't think that Steve made all of this out of trying to get some profit out of kidnapping Toni, the guy is too nice for that, but something is clearly wrong here. And it has nothing to do with the body swap, no, this is something else.

After renting a room in an Hotel for the night —because there is no way he is taking this stranger to the Stark real estate or to his own apartment—, Rhody left Steve (he played some extra cash to the receptionist on his way out to keep an eye on him) under the pretense that he needed to contact some of Toni's friends to see if any one of them has heard about her. The truth is that —other than Rhody himself— Toni doesn't have friends, at least not in the sense of shit-has-hit-the-fan-and-I-need-help-friends. So what James wanted to do was ask around and get Steve's back story straight.

Back then, when discovering that Steve's apartment has been turned into a parking lot, they asked around a little bit and gathered that the old building was demolished a couple of years ago, or maybe more, people usually doesn't keep track of this things nowadays. It is common to demolish old infrastructure when the owner doesn't have the money to do the respective repairs, being more safer that way. Most of these buildings have been around for at least seventy years, enough time for the wood to rot.

The information was like a punch to Steve, and he claimed that the building surely didn't have more than fifteen or, at the most, twenty years of being built. However, a look around the neighborhood showed that most of them did seem older than what Steve remembered, so there was that.

Rhody already had his suspicions but the idea was even more crazier than this whole Toni is not Toni business, so he prefered to just dismiss his gut feeling and all those science fiction movies.

"Steve Rogers?" Asked a teenager attending the counter of an electronics store.

"Yes, have you heard or meet him before?" That is pretty much the same question he has been asking around for an hour now, going from store to store, but up until now there has been no luck whatsoever.

"No, I have not hear of it… Wait, I think I have."

"Really?! Where?!"

"My grandma sometimes talked about the time she was part of the USO shows, she also used to say that she should had married Steve Rogers instead of my grandfather. You know what, there are too many Steve's in this world. Sorry, I don't know that guy."

And here he thought he had something, "No problem, thanks anyway" It would be easier if Rhody had a photo to show around because it is truth that Steve is relatively too much of a common name. But he can't go to the guy and demand a physical description without giving up some of his intentions.

He could try and look it up on a database but for that he needed to go back to base… or have Toni do the job, which wasn't an option anymore. So he needs to go back to base if he wants to find something. The problem is that he can't leave Steve alone for days in Toni's body. He supposes that the safest thing for now is going back to Boston and then find someone that can help keep an eye on him.

"Just out of curiosity, who is this Steve Rogers your grandma refers to?"

"Captain America himself, or so she says. My grandfather used to get jealous because he didn't get to meet him."

"I didn't know that Steve was Captain America's name."

"Everybody from around here knows it, there is a statue and all if you want to confirm."

Rhody did go to see the statue. The figure was that of a tall and muscular man holding a shield with an honored and serious pose to it. The description read "To the memory of Steve Grant Rogers and all our fallen loved ones".

He stood there for a minute, seeing the features on its face before sighing in defeat and returning to the hotel. Better take care of Toni's body than going after a dead end.


Sorry! Last week was pretty hetic for me in collage and I didn't have time to finish writting it. So this chapter is just a bit longer than usual and I am planning on uploading another one sometime tomorrow to make up for it.

Thanks to the follows, favs, and reviews! RoxanneRay that is something that I can NOT forget to add. Maybe from here in two o three more chapters, just wait patiently ;)

For any other thing that you may want to see you could write a review for making suggestions. I am not promising I will take all of them but I am open to try fun stuff.

See you soon!