Note: ahahaha and you thought this would take another month, didn't you? :D


Dr. Stark,

First of all, I would like to assure you that your secret is safe with me and my knowledge—or rather, my strong suspicions based in fact—will be kept private on my end until the time that you choose to reveal it to others.

I will cut to the chase, as that is something you and I share a preference for.

I am certain that you are the 'Antonia' who was Steve Rogers' and James Barnes' soulmate in the 1940s. The one they spent their last months looking for. If this is truly the case, I am sorry for what you lost, for what you have been through.

I had my suspicions for years, being a prominent member of SHIELD and an expert in Captain America's life and history, but said suspicions were confirmed, at least in my eyes, when I came by your home on the 10th.

I know it's not really spoken of, but between seeing your mark (as those coordinates are part of a grid I have memorized by heart, I immediately recognized them, though I promise you it was not my intention to pry) and noting the fact, in the aftermath of that recognition, that you appeared slightly different in appearance (your hair is longer and you appear, pardon me, slightly older, as well as the fact that you used to have a scar on your right forearm that is no longer there), my mind immediately linked you to the countless times they mentioned their soulmate.

Much as that might be inconceivable to most, many years with SHIELD have allowed me to believe (and see) many inconceivable things.

It is not my intent to poke your wounds, and I sincerely hope that you forgive my rudeness. I simply wanted you to know, as what I saw I proved incapable of ignoring, both personally and professionally.

I will keep my distance, and I will do my best to grant you the space you and Captain Rogers will need to heal, despite the anticipation I feel to finally meet him. I will not ask Agent Romanov to report anything she might learn, and in fact will order her to keep it to herself, as I do not wish to ruin her chances at the happiness and trust and love that she deserves with Ms. Potts.

This is more than I would grant anyone else, Dr. Stark. It is my respect for both you and the Captain that is staying my hand, but I will warn you that I cannot keep this secret forever.

Neither can you, as much as you might (and likely will) try to. It will get out.

Let it be on your and his terms.

Sincerely,
Agent Phil Coulson
S.H.I.E.L.D. Assistant Director


July 12th, 2011. 10:40am. 60°58'22.1"N 41°13'59.4"W

Toni had noticed the letter immediately upon entering the quinjet. It hadn't been there when she and Rhodey had finalized their gear and then left the quinjet on top of the Tower so that they could change out of their grimy, sweaty clothes—Manhattan was more of a fucking bitch in summer than people thought, seriously—shower, and get ready to leave with any chance of making it to the geo-coordinates on time.

She'd had so much to do, more than she expected, and honestly? She couldn't have done it without the help of Pepper and Rhodey. Those two, and Jarvis, and the New York contracting team and personal decorators and shoppers—they were all getting bonuses, she didn't care if Jarvis ordered himself the gaudiest server case ever—had made it possible for her to make it to her rendezvous.

The letter? Well… Toni hadn't even bothered to ask how the hell it had gotten there, because for all she knew Coulson himself had dangled Mission Impossible style from a line out of a helicopter over her damn building. She definitely needed cameras up here, and was actually a little surprised they hadn't been installed yet. Then again, she had moved into the Tower nearly six months earlier than planned, so… yeah.

Probably her fault.

Anyway.

Toni had read it over a good three times before scowling and throwing it into the junk drawer the quinjet had somehow gained, and growling at Rhodey that she could handle S.H.I.E.L.D. later. Which she could. Coulson was displaying an impressive amount of reserve, and while that probably did not bode well for her—or Steve, once she brought him home—she was confident enough in her superhuman ability to avoid even those who knew exactly where she was. And besides that rooftop camera issue, she was sure that between her and Jarvis and the other security measures that would only be strengthened in the coming weeks… well, she was confident she could keep Steve safe and unbothered until the time that he chose to meet with them.

She wanted to believe his promises, because Agent Coulson did not make promises lightly—the last time he'd promised her something, it was to promise her that he'd lock her in her house until she figured out the cure to her palladium poisoning, and she was relatively certain he would've done it too.

But, well… It was inevitable at this point, Steve meeting with S.H.I.E.L.D., so she didn't even fight its eventuality. Between his ties to the agency's predecessor, the S.S.R., and Toni's seeming inability to untangle herself from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s grasp, he was bound to meet with them sooner than later.

If that was really him. If he was alive.

They'd prepared for both… eventualities. Life, or death. Warm body or cold, frozen block of ice. Toni hadn't wanted to even think about the latter option, but between Pepper, Rhodey, and her old friend Helen Cho—whom Pepper had invited over, bless that woman—they had bullied her into preparing like the goddamn boy scout they were about to go rescue. She'd seen reason in it, of course, but she wasn't firing on all cylinders it seemed, and Toni had needed help.

She'd accepted it, which she was pretty sure had surprised all three of them and Toni alike.

Helen hadn't been able to come with them—something about a surgery she absolutely had to handle herself earlier that morning—but she'd made sure that Toni and Rhodey knew and had everything that she could only guess they might need, and Toni could see the absolutely burning curiosity in her eyes about the man who was soon to become her patient, held back only through pure decorum on the doctor's part.

She would be able to see him for herself when they returned, she'd said. And they absolutely must return as soon as they were able, she'd underscored probably fifty times. Because Toni wanted to keep this absolutely need-to-know, she wanted only Helen to look after him.

It would be Steve's choice if or when he wanted more people to know.

So among a myriad of other things, they'd packed mounds of blankets and hot water bottles, a portable water heater, IVs and saline and liquid protein to speed regeneration.

Rhodey had been pretty confident she'd be in no condition to do a single thing that Helen recommended besides pile on enough blankets to suffocate Steve, so he'd made sure to brush up on his First Aid and CPR, and learned everything Helen had been able to teach him about the medical devices she'd lent them should the need arise for them.

Helen was assured enough in her optimism that things would go well, however, that it made even Toni feel better about what she'd find in the ice.

Slow warming was key, should the body be frozen, above all other things, and "Yes, Toni," Helen had said with a scoff before she'd even opened her mouth, "you can cut the ice off with your lasers, but please stop before you get close to his skin? I don't want to test his healing capabilities against modern lasers of all things. That is not what you are going down in history for, okay?"

The laughter had gotten her mind off the possibility of finding her soulmate dead—at least for a little while.

But with that letter, everything had come rushing back.

She'd shoved it all right back out of her skull, and had spent the remainder of the traveling time to Greenland thinking over the spare, and purposefully simple, suite she'd had thrown together for Steve on her personal floor—complete with even more medical equipment, because the medical ward hadn't been completed yet at the Tower, considering she was moving in half a year ahead of schedule like a jerk—and playing with the knife Clint had apparently gifted her. Well, gifted her fridge, but she was reasonably sure that it wouldn't mind her borrowing it.

But they were here. Finally.

Here in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Seriously, there was nothing for miles in all directions. Nothing from horizon to horizon to horizon but the blue sky and the white and blue of snow and ice and water.

Nothing as far as the eye could see.

But there was something beneath the surface.

The ice was shifting, roiling, peaking and disappearing beneath the surface of the water that was starting to break the ice sheet up into an ice field.

Global warming at its finest, everyone.

It wasn't a lot, and it was still fucking cold with tons of solid ice and firm footing, but it was starting to look a little… melted around the edges.

But underneath the part of the ice that looked the weakest, the quinjet's sensors had picked up the shape of a plane she knew far too well.

The Valkyrie.

And Steve.

She hadn't really expected this to be easy, hell no. She'd come loaded for bear, with all possible angles covered for extracting someone from ice and a sixty-five year old aircraft.

She hadn't really expected to encounter Option K though, which was the aircraft suddenly being shoved into the shocking cold of a Greenland morning as the ice heaved and shifted and groaned around it.

That was their cue.

Toni didn't even stop to think—she'd thought too much, done far too little, for far too long, and she was itching to do something.

She and Rhodey burst out of the quinjet, leaving it behind to hover and protect their six. And to keep pesky agents away from her business, not that she actually believed they'd be dumb enough to follow her here after Coulson had promised her privacy.

They didn't have much time, as the Valkyrie could be pulled fully into the depths at any moment. They had to be careful, both of them, as she didn't want to find her soulmate again—one of them, at least, her traitorous brain reminded her—only for her and her best friend to die with him.

They hovered above the Valkyrie for a long minute, searching for the right moment.

"I don't think we're going to get a better chance than this, Tones," Rhodey cut into the silence. Both of them could see that the aircraft wasn't stable, far from it, but they both knew that the time was clicking down towards her rendezvous—it was 10:45am according to the HUD—and the ice was shifting just enough, at regular enough intervals, that they were sure it wasn't going to settle.

Ice didn't freeze that fast, and the Valkyrie was starting to take on water once again.

Fucking move, Toni, she told herself.

Without a single word exchanged, the two of them set to cutting a hole in the part of the Valkyrie's hull that looked the furthest away from and the safest from the ice and water of the Arctic Ocean.

The dull, though rather gruelling, work allowed Toni's mind to wander a little, and she couldn't help but to feel excitement and anticipation welling up inside of her. For all her fears, for all that haunted her about the loss of her men—and more—she couldn't help but to give into the thought that this could be something good. And that hope, that little rosebud of hope that was being nurtured deep within her heart, would hopefully keep her fears at bay, or at least as close to her chest as possible, and allow her to remain grace under pressure.

The Ice Queen. The Iron Maiden, or Queen.

Iron Man, as the press had dubbed her.

She'd felt happier, more hopeful, more like herself than ever before these last four days—as close to okay as she had been in what felt like forever. It hadn't just been returning to her original time—though that certainly helped, especially in the wardrobe, cleanliness, and food categories—it had also been from her two weeks in the past, finding her soulmates, learning more about them, her past, the war… it had all hit home in a way that had shaken her to her very foundations, that had forced her to dig deeper for who she was, is, will be.

That was what was important.

And here she was, staring at the gunmetal grey hull of the infamous Valkyrie as it finally parted and opened before her and Rhodey.

She dared not—but couldn't not—hope that he was in there, somehow alive, somehow here in 2011.

She didn't know what to think, so she carefully did not think, and succeeded at exactly that for, oh, maybe the next two minutes as she worked shoulder to shoulder with her Rhodey.

Home. Sort of.

He was a part of home.

And then, they were inside.

It was immediately apparent that the inside of the Valkyrie had been ravaged by time. Twisted metal everywhere, wires and insulation and hoses littering the ground and dangling from the walls and overhang. It looked like something out of Abrams' Star Trek, honestly. It would've been a near perfect copy had it not been for the ice… which was everywhere.

Toni straightened up, taking a moment to let her sensors assess the situation. Stable, for the moment. Sort of.

It might not be for long, though, she thought as the ice and aircraft both groaned and shook around them.

"Let's move quickly," Rhodey said—rather needlessly, as Toni had already started angling her suit towards the front of the Valkyrie where she wasn't sure, but…

"Holy fuck," Rhodey breathed a moment later when they both stepped into the cockpit, his voice equal parts horror and awe.

She didn't know how she got there, but somehow Toni had gone from standing just inside the Valkyrie's bridge to standing in front of a dark corner far behind the pilot's seat.

Steve.

There was Steve, blue and white frost icing over top of pale, white skin—deathly pale, deathly white—only partially covered in the scraps remaining of his distinctive Captain America uniform, though the ice encasing him in many spots, and the water starting to lap at their feet, was distorting the view of the person trapped beneath.

Toni's eyes widened and she froze, unable in that moment to process a single thing other than the fact that there was Steve, in 2011, and he looked dead.

Dead.

She'd spent the last days convincing herself he had to be alive, but now, seeing him like this… his normally pale skin, where she could see it clearly, had turned ghostly, ghastly white, tinged blue in more places than she cared to count… his eyes not fully closed, staring almost sadly into the distance, nobody home, fuck, nobody home… one hand clenched tight, the other, unencumbered by ice somehow, reaching out in a familiar grip for a shield that was no longer there… as if he was trying to grip his shield one last time, as if he was trying to pull it close so that he could lie down, cover himself with his shield, and wait to die

Fuck.

It reminded her of the time she'd identified her parents' bodies, something no sixteen year old should ever have to do, their lifeless bodies laid out for her to see, lying naked and exposed for all that there was a sheet covering everything else, and just… just…

She felt her heart rate increasing, and fear and anxiety—her old friends—tried to rise up and choke her, to prevent her from making decisions, to prevent her from doing, from moving, from saving.

Toni stomped that anxiety in the goddamn face, and then heaved a big breath of air into her lungs, which had apparently been desperate for air.

The air helped. It rejuvenated her, and allowed her to crouch beside his lifeless form—don't think about it, don't think about—pull herself together, and then get to work using her laser to cut Steve free from the ice surrounding him. As best she could, at least, in what amounted to a quaking and rolling ship that was about to sink at any moment.

Hopefully without them in it.

A clattering noise shocked Toni enough that she was already in position, aiming and ready to fire her repulsor, but it was only Rhodey, metal gauntlets somewhat clumsily scraping against the dome of Steve's shield.

He'd found it, thank god.

Taking a deep breath, Toni lowered her arm, powering down, and turned back to face her soulmate.

Someone she'd waited a long, long time for, without ever having known it.

She desperately wanted to lift her faceplate, to get as close as she could get, to press her bare cheek to his, cold and unmoving and lifeless and covered in ice as it very well would be… but she forced herself to focus, murmuring a reassurance to Rhodey—what she or he said, she wasn't entirely sure—as she had JARVIS scan the body frozen before her.

He couldn't be dead.

There was no way he was dead. She had his mark. And she'd had it once before, before it'd been taken away from her. It had led her here, led her to a place on the ice shelf that had been wholly and absolutely unremarkable from every other square foot for miles and miles. The mark had led her here. Today. To him.

She glanced at the time in the bottom left of her HUD and felt her breath stilling completely in her lungs.

11:03am.

One minute after her mark, which she could just feel, know, was still there. Those marked always knew when they lost said mark.

Proof he was alive. Irrefutable proof.

In that same moment, JARVIS announced to she and Rhodey both, "Miss, I'm detecting what could be a very slow heartbeat, and I recommend he be seen by Dr. Cho as soon as possible. I have alerted her to—"

Acting as one, Toni pulled the 200+ pounds of stiff, frozen soldier into her arms as Rhodey deployed his canon to blast a hole in the hull and ice outside of the Valkyrie.

They didn't care about preserving the wreck at that moment; no, all they were focused on was getting one vulnerable man, super soldier he might be, to the relative warmth and comfort—and medical supplies—of the quinjet so that they could whisk him off to the Tower and Dr. Cho's expert hands.

He was their focus.

Steve.

Within minutes of landing back in the quinjet, the Valkyrie disappeared beneath the dark blue of the cold Arctic ocean, hopefully forever. It groaned and screeched louder than it had before, for long seconds as the water overcame it and the ice rushed in to fill the void it finally left.

Good riddance.

She hoped no one would ever find the damn thing or its weapons ever again.

Toni let Rhodey handle—not that she asked, or really even acknowledged his presence, Jesus she was a terrible friend, but she just couldn't focus on a damn thing other than Steve—the flight details and perimeter while she heaved Steve onto one of the seemingly magical medical beds Helen had loaned them; the one with the temperature controls and monitoring equipment Toni only just managed to turn on. JARVIS was keeping a constant flow of steady reassurance and instructions in her ear, keeping her going through the power of voice and command and comfort alone, and Toni happily gave into it for the moment because she trusted JARVIS. She and he had done this many a time, before and after the invention—the becoming—of Iron Man.

He and Rhodey had stood by her many times, just like today, and she would never forget that.

By the time the quinjet was twenty minutes in the air, arrowing straight back to New York City, Rhodey was carefully stepping around Toni as he worked through the list Helen had copied out for him by hand. Toni, not even really aware of Rhodey except for at the most basic level, had pulled off as much of the ice clinging to him as she could without giving into the urge to touch skin to skin, to feel the bond snap into place in a way that would soothe so many of her anxieties…

…but she couldn't take that choice away from him.

Instead, she piled blanket after blanket on him, glad for the gently heated bed cover beneath Steve's slowly defrosting form—muscles looser and skin turning pinker with each passing minute.

Instead, she let her suit disassemble from around her and set up in sentry form beside her.

Instead, she curled up on the floor at Steve's side because no seat was close enough for her to be able to drape herself over him like she desired, her black undersuit covered by a blanket she wasn't entirely sure she had placed over herself.

Instead, she curled there on the floor, one gauntlet remaining on her hand so that she could hold him, so she could hold his hand once again, under the blankets that were warming him bit by bit.

She wished she could touch him. She ached to touch him. Looking at him just wasn't enough, touching him through the gauntlet, tactile as it might be wasn't enough, though she would take what she could get because choice was important.

His choice for if he wanted this bond. His… and hers.

She was important in this, too, though the voice in her head telling her that sounded a hell of a lot like Steve and Bucky both.

Toni closed her eyes tight for a long moment, willing away the tears that were finally coming.

They needed to talk, she and Steve—if he wakes up, her mind whispered, but she shoved that aside just as she dashed the tears off her cheeks with her free hand—but until then, she couldn't help but marvel at the fact that the tension was easing from her body, from her mind, just at the sight of Steve. It didn't matter that she hadn't touched him skin to skin, hadn't confirmed the bond.

They had time for that, she knew.

It did matter, she was sure, that all the fears and anxieties she'd been holding at bay… or, at least, many of them… were falling away from her bit by bit, fully away, just at the mere sight and proximity of the man who was a third of her soul.

She had her Steve, and maybe… just maybe, she couldn't stop herself from thinking, from wishing… maybe Bucky was out there too.

Somehow.

Somehow.


Note: Next chapter should be up this weekend! Already done, just been editing it because like... Steve waking up can only be done once, y'know? My lazy perfectionism is driving myself and my beautiful (and so, so patient) beta Annaelle insane.