A/N: This is actually a spin-off from Brock x Skye. Hence the different naming. The nurse who is Steve's soulmate who died in the war. The idea got stuck in my brain. So here it is.
She was dressed in a bright red dress, hands smoothing down the invisible creases. Steve doesn't know if he had seen her as dazzling as she was now. His breath catches and he struggles to remember why he had came into the room.
"Hey there. I'm almost done. Got the rings?" She smiles.
The rings. Yes. They were about to head down to the courthouse to get married. He forces his hands to still, fighting the urge to run his hands through her braided hair and kiss her breathless.
His soulmate. His wife.
"I love you," he bumbles, resigning himself to a chaste kiss on her temple.
"I love you too." She presses a kiss onto his lips, sending a surge of warmth all the way to his toes.
"Let's go," he hoarsely says. "So I ravish you thoroughly when I get back."
She laughs and puts her small hand in his.
Steve wakes in the middle night, remembering Nichole.
He remembers her soft lips, the way his hand seemed to fit her waist. She loved red lipsticks and black dresses, she loved watching the night sky. He remembers holding her in his arms with a blanket wrapped around them as they stargazed. She didn't know much of the star names but that was fine, Steve had memorized it all for her. Sometimes she would talk about her best friends, Chase and Karolina but when he asked why she hadn't introduced them, she always had that sad, resigned look that Steve eventually stopped asking.
Those were the nights that Steve always ended up in the communal living room. Watching late night television and trying to numb the memories. Bucky and Brock on more than one occasion joined him.
"Remember that night Nichole beat all the commandos out of their savings?" Bucky turned, lips pulled into a wry smile.
Steve remembers it all. He remembers meeting her. Her back to the light, her dark wavy hair spilling down her shoulders.
'It's only called losing when you give up.' Those were her first words to him, words he lived by from the day he got them. He had always thought it had been a reference to his sickly self. Turned out it was a reference to him constantly getting beaten up.
"Remember how she beat up Joe?" Steve laughed a single hard, mirthless laugh. She was strong and fearless, always going toe-to-toe with anyone who even thought of underestimating her. It was her wills that bought her the respect of the army doctors despite being of Asian descent.
He misses her so bad and sometimes he wonders if she would be old, grey and still alive had he forced her to stay in Brooklyn. It was his fault that she was dead. He hadn't protected her enough. He had brought her to the front lines. He allowed himself to be persuaded to allow her to tag along.
"I'm not going to let you leave me alone here!" She folded her arms and glared sternly at him.
"I'm just… going to be a dancing monkey." He doesn't want her to see that for all his efforts, he was only worth to be a singing, dancing monkey. It's pathetic.
She stares at him, a strange haunted look in her eyes. Her sad expression when she watches him leave like she'll never see him again. "Please don't leave me here alone." Her voice is heartbreakingly quiet. "Steve…"
He wipes the tear that had escaped her eye and kisses her. "Okay."
Kids trying to be superheroes. Steve scoffs at them. He doesn't underestimate the kids and it's not that he thinks that they can't do good. Kids should be kids. They should be out playing hopscotch or whatever it is that kids do nowadays for fun, not fighting villains and certainly not risking their lives.
His heart gets caught in his mouth as the girl leader of the wannabe heroes turns around. The smirk on her face is identical to hers. The dark wavy hair, the liquid chocolate eyes; they're all hers. But she is not her. She is too young to be her.
"Go home kids." He tells them, trying his best to ignore the all-too familiar stubborn look on her face. Bucky gapes at her then gives him a sidelong glance as he brushes past Bucky. He hears Hawkeye ask what was wrong with him but he finds he doesn't care enough.
It is late at night when Brock finds him staring blankly at the empty TV. He doesn't say a word, Brock doesn't need to. Unlike Bucky who had never lost his soulmate, Brock understands. There is no amount of time that can erase that gaping hole in their soul. It throbs, it aches. It feels like his lungs forget how to breathe sometimes and he sits there, struggling for a gasp of air.
Steve traces his greyed out words and holds them close to his heart.
"How did you 2 meet?"
Steve smiles. "I was skinny and short and getting beaten up in the alley. She broke the guy's arm when he tried to touch her. I couldn't believe such a dame like her was marked by someone like me."
Brock chuckles, his hand too lingering on where his soulmark is. "I thought the same thing too when I saw Skye." He hands him the bowl of mix, the mix that Nichole had mentioned she missed eating. She always talked about it.
"Pecans, raisins, pistachios, cashews, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds and yummy sunflower seeds." She gave a mournful sigh. "What I'd give to eat it again."
He laced their fingers together, kissing her. "We'll get them after the war and then you can eat it until you get sick of it."
Cupping his face, she laughs a melancholic laugh. Her lips press softly onto his; a slow, sad kiss like she knows something that he doesn't. "I love you," she tells him. "I love you far more than you can imagine."
She clings onto him tightly as though she thinks he'd disappear if she lets him go. He brushes her stray black hair away. "I'm a super-soldier, remember?" She knows but it doesn't stop her from fearing.
It's funny how she was always afraid of him dying, how she was afraid of being alone again and it was she who left him alone.
The mark burns and itches. Despite Bucky's urging, he fears looking at it. He had seen what it did to Brock. He doesn't want to look at it and see a different handwriting on his ankle. He sees it eventually by accident. The handwriting is the same and so are the words but it isn't greyed out any more. It's blue - the colour of one who has met their soulmate.
It isn't possible. That kind of hope is too much for Steve to even bear.
She is standing at the receptionist desk dressed in that dark dress that Steve had last seen her wearing. Her hair is no longer wavy the way she wore it in the 1940s and she looks drained and weary but apart from that she looks exactly the same. Exactly the way he last saw her at camp before he departed for a mission.
"Hey C.A." She waves then runs a hand through her hair. "So you know it's a pretty long story that involves time travel. Apparently my powers sent me back to 1930s where I met you and I couldn't go home until a Hydra weapon hit the base and-"
He doesn't care. She never died. She just went home, back to him in the future. He pulls her in tight, arm round her waist, hand spraying out and fitting perfectly on her hip. "I missed you so much, Nichole." He whispers to her between their kisses.
"Sorry C.A. My real name is Nico." She chuckles, returns another kiss before continuing. "Nico Minoru. Who is supposed to be still sixteen."