July 14th, 2011. 3:26am. Stark Tower. Manhattan, New York City, New York.

The first time he woke up, there were bright, white lights shining in his eyes, blinding him, and he felt… he felt like he was weightless, floating in water, sound muffled and far away.

If this was what death felt like…

He'd not expected it to be quite so peaceful.

So lonely.

He shut his eyes and drifted.


The next time he woke, everything was loud.

He felt like he had right after the serum, when every sound had seemed like a bomb going off, when his senses had been dialed up to eleven and he hadn't quite learned how to manage it yet.

Something was screaming.

Something… someone… There was screaming.

His entire body was hurting and he was dizzy, the world spinning around him even with his eyes shut and only Hell could hurt this—

He drifted again.


There was… there was someone talking, the next time he drifted upwards into awareness.

He couldn't quite make out what was being said, couldn't quite focus enough to… to understand. He hurt, all over, and he wondered vaguely what had happened to the muted, lonely peacefulness of death that he had experienced before.

Why wasn't his mom here? Or Bucky. And Toni…

He'd been told, all his life, that soulmates were reunited in death, that those who fought valiantly and with honor were rewarded in Heaven, but…

Maybe… maybe the things he had done during the war… the atrocities he had committed after Bucky and Toni… the way he had responded to learning he had a second soulmate… maybe he'd not earned the honor to be with them in the afterlife.

Maybe that was his purgatory, his penance for a life of sin…

An afterlife of loneliness and pain.


When he woke for what felt like the… like the hundredth, the thousandth, time, his lungs burned with each breath and he was sure—sure—that he wasn't dead.

He couldn't be.

Even his bloodstained hands—his blasphemous, sodomizing soul; his entirely unrepentant being—wouldn't be condemned to a fate as bleak and forlorn as one without his soulmates. He remembered choosing, he remembered feeling lost and alone and empty and making the choice without qualms or regret.

It was a sin, he knew. Choosing death. He'd known, but he hadn't cared.

What had it mattered? His entire world had been crumbling around him, and he'd… he'd seen the end of the war, had seen the life he'd be forced into—had seen the act that he'd be forced to play for the rest of his days, and…

He couldn't do it.

He didn't want to do it.

Not without them.

Either of them.

So Steve had put down the Valkyrie, because it'd been the right thing to do, because it'd save lives, and because that's what Toni and Bucky would've wanted him to do, and when it'd been done—when the crash had reverberated into his bones and the icy water had sloshed around his ankles, numbing his extremities—he had laid down, pulled his shield close, and shut his eyes.

He'd not expected to open them again.

His body, though… his body hurt far too much for him to be dead—it felt too much for him to be dead. His stomach, ever the ravenous beast in the wake of the serum, growled and rumbled and clenched painfully, sharply. His extremities tingled and burned and—

And it was more than he'd felt at all since he'd lost Toni, since he'd lost—since so much of his own soul had been ripped away that there was hardly anything left at all.

Steve's skin felt like it was too tight, too hot, too small for his body—he was burning and freezing, choking on air and water that filled his lungs, and he must be in Hell, paying for the crimes he'd committed in his life.

He'd lied and he'd cheated, gambled and committed sodomy, had refused to believe that such a beautiful thing as his love for Bucky could ever be a sin—

He had killed and fought, had doubted his soulmate—his second soulmate, his strong and fierce Toni—when she came to them; he'd given into fear and been cruel, even when he'd not meant to be, letting her beautiful heart believe she wasn't wanted, that she would remain alone, even if those thoughts filled him with horror for the long months he'd thought she was forever lost to them.

And now he was alone. Now he was lost—and he didn't wish it on a single soul.

The mere thought that he was alone—completely alone, without either of them… it was why he'd put the Valkyrie down in the first place, rather than letting it see itself into the cold waters of the Arctic.

Surely, if he were dead, if he were allowed into the afterlife, he would have Bucky—he would have Toni.

Surely… Surely...


Someone… someone was talking.

Steve's head was swimming, and his entire body still felt… felt like it was on fire, but he…

He knew that voice.

He'd not heard it in months, had not thought he ever would again—had thought the voice and its owner lost to him forever, as penance for the sins of his mortal life.

He didn't know what had happened to Toni after the… the guy with the golden horned helmet and a penchant for green leather—Loki, he scowled—had snapped his fingers, after they'd disappeared into thin fucking air, but for all he and Bucky had known… for all they'd known she was dead, or back in her own time—

Which was essentially the same thing—she was lost to them either way.

Whatever had happened, neither she nor Bucky had the right to judge Steve for his choices—for the way he'd dealt with their deaths.

And yet… his forehead creased into a frown as he tried to make sense of the words.

Well, apparently Toni had decided to judge him anyway.

Or, at least, the stunningly precise figment of his imagination was judging him, so really it was him… well.

His lips twitched up into the tiniest of smiles despite himself, and he wondered for a brief, insane moment whether this was part of his punishment—

"—so not getting away with this, I swear to god, Rogers. Why'd you do it, huh? You're not invincible; you had to have known it would kill you. You could easily have used that big dumb brain of yours I know you're hiding in there to think of a way out of it. Not saying I would've done any better," she scoffed, "but everyone already knows I'm a goddamn hot mess and self-destructive to boot. Don't tell Rhodey or Pepper I admitted to that, because I'm pretty sure they'd totally blow it out of proportions and make me sit through an itemized list of every single action I've taken or thing I've said or suit I've crashed or just… really anything in my life, I guess. But you!" Her voice rose once more. "You, on the other hand, are—"

"'M I dead?" Steve mumbled. "D'I find you? Where's Buck?"

It took him long seconds to realize that the silence in the room was more than just him interrupting dream-Toni; it was the silence that somehow had a presence all its own, as if there'd only just been someone speaking, someone filling up the now-echoing silence.

He…

Steve frowned. He'd thought…

His eyes snapped open.

Steve caught the tail end of the rapid movement towards him, and then… there. There, standing over and staring down at him with the widest, most brilliant amber, most surprised eyes he'd ever seen—eyes he would recognize anywhere, right there with Bucky's and his ma's—was Toni Stark herself.

"Steve," she breathed, a puff of air teasing over the bare skin of Steve's chest.

It, more than anything, convinced him that this was real.

Whatever 'real' was—'real' could mean a lot of things.

"Toni?" he rasped, only just feeling the dryness of his throat. "Are we dead?"

She looked deeply conflicted for a moment before her eyes flashed and she growled, "No! You… You're so stupid! Why are you such a dumbass? He said you were bone-headed, but it's not like I believed you could be that dumb!"

"I was never the brains of the operation," he slurred, in what was certainly not his best attempt at humor. In his defense, he was still not entirely convinced he wasn't dead—that the way his body felt heavy and sluggish and the way his fingers, toes and ears and nose were burning wasn't part of punishment for his sins…

He stared at Toni in astonishment, drinking in the way her hair fell in glossy, messy curls and her skin was spattered with tiny drops of what looked like oil or grease and—and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Finally, they were interrupted by a voice he was familiar with, though now it was coming from all around and above him. "Miss, I believe the captain could do with some water."

Toni blinked before jolting up from her seat, perched on the edge of the bed. Within seconds she was back and letting Steve take careful sips from a bright pink straw sticking out of a coffee mug emblazoned with the words Stark Industries.

It also didn't escape his notice that she hadn't touched him directly even once since he'd woken up. But… well, he'd had more important things to remark on.

Like, for example, what exactly was going on.

It was only his exposure to Toni that made his next question not completely absurd, especially as he felt his brain slotting more and more readily back into place. A million and one details from all of his senses were starting to come together to form a picture that was not… okay, yeah, it was still pretty unbelievable.

Especially because he had eyes in his head... and what he saw around him in the, albeit sparse, room as he pulled himself up into a sitting position—body feeling entirely too much like a punching bag—only gave credence to what he suspected was the truth.

"What—what year is it? Is… is it just us?" he asked. His voice was entirely too calm, to the point that even he was disturbed by it.

The yawning chasm in the back of his head, the one that hadn't been bond-empty for longer than he cared to count—nearly twenty years—was starting to fill again with the demons that had been haunting him; the ones which had made him fly the plane into the Atlantic Ocean.

He'd been so alone

"2011," she whispered after a moment. "And… Yeah. Yeah, Steve, I'm sorry, it's—" She swallowed thickly, but refused to look away, instead holding Steve's eyes as she delivered the news he just knew was coming. "Steve, he's not here. I'm so sorry. It's just me. Just you and me."

He'd already been nearly 100% sure, but hearing it was just… hard.

"I—" He swallowed, not entirely sure what he should say next, not sure he wouldn't be violently sick all over himself if he did open his mouth. Instead, they stared at each other for long minutes, their breaths deepening and falling into sync with each other.

The aches, the hurts that'd been plaguing him since he'd first awoken felt soothed, felt better, felt less… less overwhelming—

He'd known it would be like this the next time he saw her; something about her just soothed his body in a way no one else could—it was different even than the way Bucky's presence affected him, and he Bucky.

"You must have so many questions," she finally said, voice breaking just a hint before it firmed up again.

Steve let out a bark of laughter that was entirely too brittle sounding, even to his own ears.

"Of course I do," he replied. "I have so many goddamn questions that I don't even know where to start, and I can't say with any certainty that I'm not mad. From grief, from war, from some Hydra scheme, or maybe I'm just crazy. Or dead. Dead might be nice. You sure this isn't purgatory? Sinner like me probably deserves that."

"Don't say that!" she snapped, reaching a hand out towards his where it was clutching the blanket over his legs so tightly that his knuckles were turning white. But she didn't make it all the way—not before she bit her lip and snatched her hand back against her chest, silhouetted against the bright blue glow of her arc reactor.

"Well right now you're sitting all the way over there and refusing to even come close to me, after I thought for two months that I would never in my life see you again, after failing Bucky—after I let him… I may as well be dead! I should be dead!" he snapped right back at her, body thrumming with energy he couldn't quite bring himself to call anger… but afraid to admit that it was probably grief, because then he'd have to think about… think about

"I didn't want to take your choice away," she whispered, though there was steel in her voice for all it was quiet.

Steve blinked, shocked out of his fugue. "What?"

"When I woke up, after I was whisked away all over again, I didn't have your mark anymore. Thought I was crazy for a bit until I really just couldn't avoid the facts, but I suppose it makes a frustrating amount of sense that our marks would disappear. Since we didn't have time to entrench our bond. I mean, if you take into account plus or minus sixty-five years…"

She gestured at his left wrist, eyes carefully avoiding his. "I know how much it bothered you to even initially bond with me last time, so I didn't want to take that choice away from you this time."

"This—I—" Steve's head was reeling as he lifted his shield arm, but everything came into focus hyper fast when he saw the black scrawl of words encircling his wrist.

Everything—okay, not everything, but everything he hadn't already shoved into the deepest part of him just to survive—clicked into place. The mark, her careful distance from him, her agitation and fear, and the chasm of nothing in his mind where Toni's bond with him used to be, unconfirmed and weak as it may've been in the '40s.

Adrenaline coursed through him, and he focused everything he could on Toni as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and pushed himself—unfortunately, rather shakily—up. He was a good head taller than her, even without his boots on. He was practically vibrating out of his skin, and he had so many questions to ask, but Steve wasn't a stranger to setting aside the emotions he couldn't channel into something useful, at least when it was important.

Bucky. His men. The heat of battle, usually. Toni's self-hatred.

Boy, had he and Bucky talked about that.

That, and what they'd say to her if they could again.

Unfortunately, Steve's words decided to fail him. All those words he and Bucky had spoken, all those words they'd written down just for Toni, all those things that Peggy had told him to avoid or include or bury deep… all that flew out the window when he saw the mask she was shuttering her features behind.

But instead of getting mad, Steve just… softened. His shoulders slumped and he glanced to the side as he lifted a hand to run it through his too-long hair. "Toni," he finally said, bringing his eyes back up so that he could drink in her expression as he spoke his next words, "How could we not want you?"

We.

Her shocked eyes cut to his, and neither of them spoke as Steve slowly lifted his hands until he was gripping her by the shoulders, black cotton impossibly smooth against his calloused palms as he himself carefully avoided her skin.

Finally she broke the silence. "Steve, three weeks ago you hated me."

"Toni," he frowned. "I never hated you. I was… rude, but I never hated you. I could never." He paused a beat, gathering his words. "Buck and I had a lot of time to talk about how you deflect anything you can, and how you think you can't have the good things."

A hint of apprehension started to edge into her gaze, but he took his time.

He wanted to get this right.

She mumbled something that even he couldn't manage to pick up. Heck, he wasn't even sure she had said anything. "What was that?" he prodded anyway.

"Didn't say I didn't want the good things," she repeated herself, staring him down in one of the steadiest gazes he'd seen from her.

"Then what's holding you back?" he asked softly.

"It's—"

"I'm not looking for any grand declarations, genius. I just miss you."

Toni looked one hundred percent completely floored by that, and so Steve said it again. "I miss you. I've missed you for two months, Toni. Maybe it was an instant for you, maybe not, but I do know for me it was two, nearly three months ago. And I felt every single goddamned day of those three months." Steve's breaths were coming just the smallest bit faster, and he felt flush, almost feverish.

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder," Toni tried to deflect; because of course she did. "You don't—"

"Do you want this?" he asked sharply.

Consent, she'd said.

"You know I do," she snapped back, fire in her eyes—likely thinking he was mocking her.

To hell with that.

Steve didn't even think; he just ran his hands up from her arms to her shoulders to her neck to where he could frame her jaw with his bare hands, connecting them skin to skin. In the very next breath, just as the bond snapped into place around them, he pressed his dry, cracked lips to the skin just to the left of her own lips, where that beautiful dimple of hers was. The one he'd seen almost constantly in his and Bucky's dreams.

Bucky.

Oh God.

It was like it hit him all over again—the utter and complete devastation that hit him when the metal rail had broken and Bucky's fingers had brushed past his when he fell—the shattering of their soulbond stealing the breath from his lungs—

"Oh God," he choked, and he could feel Toni echo his heartbreak, his hurt in their new bond, not needing words to understand 'I don't know how to be without him,' even as her mind curled around his like a new but already well-loved scarf.

Toni shivered in his arms, and he couldn't quite stop the wounded sound that fell from his lips, the tight muscles in his chest burning painfully, bunching together until it felt like a fist was squeezing his heart so tight he could barely breathe

He hadn't had a panic attack since before the serum, but he knew what was happening, knew that he hadn't ever told anyone but Bucky how to help him through one and—

And—he didn't have Bucky.

"How am I supposed to be—" he choked on his words and swallowed, trying again to desperately grab hold of the right words, "Toni, I don't know how to—how—"

His breath fell from his lips in short, sharp gasps that tore through his lungs painfully, and he could tell he was probably scaring Toni—she was quivering, hands flitting all over his bare skin, any place she could reach—but he didn't know how to make the ride stop.

Everything hurt.

"I've got you," Toni whispered, rubbing her hand in calming circles over his bare chest, warm palm seeming to finally chase away some of the ever-present chill in his chest as she pressed even closer to him than he thought possible.

Her proximity was—was helping. "We can figure this out," Toni told him calmly, although he could feel that grief—her own along with his—was hitting her just as hard, just as painfully. "We can help each other. We'll figure this out, Steve."

Steve took a shuddering breath and nodded, leaning forward to rest his forehead against hers. He'd lived through this before, but… but then he'd had Bucky, and a stable, long-term soulbond. They'd been able to rely on each other in a way he and Toni had yet to learn.

He supposed there was a sort of… twisted poeticism to his situation, though.

When they'd thought Toni dead, he'd had Bucky.

It was only fitting that when Bucky was actually dead, he had Toni.

They stayed like that for a long time, curled around each other, skin against skin, hands threading through hair, and fingers soothing.

He wasn't quite sure how long they remained quiet and entwined, but it was long enough that Steve was able to sort through some of his… easier emotions, at least, and to start piecing together all the other information he had at hand.

He deduced as much of the rest as he could as his eyes swept over the rather bare, but very nice, room he'd woken up in, seemingly for the first time, taking in the beautiful gold-beige of the walls, mahogany furniture and trim complementing the wall color—all far sleeker than he was used to, never mind the staggering cost, which was something he immediately shut his mind off from thinking about.

There was only so much he could handle at once, so Steve closed his eyes and inhaled the beautiful citrus scent he was only just noticing in her hair, letting his mind carefully blank as the minutes passed by, allowing himself to finally breathe more and more deeply.

Finally, when their minds were truly starting to quiet, Steve sought confirmation of his suspicions.

"So I'm in the future, huh?" He nuzzled his face down closer to hers, nudging strands of black curls out of the way so that he could feel even more of her skin against his than just her cheek and arm pressed against his bare chest.

A desire. An urge. A need.

He needed touch right now, and he could tell that so did she, so he tightened his arms around her, trying to be mindful of putting too much pressure against Toni's arc reactor..

Steve still couldn't quite believe, couldn't quite understand that Toni was here, in his arms, in reality and not the dreams that had turned sour in the two months where she'd been lost to him.

To them.

"Yeah," she breathed, just loud enough he could hear, and he quirked his lips up at the habit she'd learned from the Howlies. Bittersweet or not, it was a memory. Something he could share with her.

She continued in that barely there whisper, "I don't know how exactly, but I guess your survival had something to do with the ice and cold and the serum. Cryogenically froze you or something. Essentially."

Steve took a moment to digest what he could of that, furrowed his brow, and then punted it off for future Steve to worry and ponder over.

"And you?" he returned the question.

"Four days ago. Almost five. Ended up in my workshop over in Malibu, apparently minutes after I disappeared in the first place."

He didn't really know what to say, so his silence stretched on a little too long.

She glanced up at him. "You're taking this entirely too well."

"I'm really not," he said somewhat blankly, without even realizing the words had come out of his mouth.

"No, you're not," she agreed softly, compassion in her eyes as she leaned back in his arms to take him in more fully with her gaze.

"Neither are you," he accused after a second or two of contemplation, having taken in how run down Toni looked and felt within the bond.

Toni closed her eyes and hid her face against his chest, obviously thinking. He could practically see her thoughts racing by, even without her eyes to gaze into—not really, but her emotions were so visceral that he barely needed to guess a thing.

Finally, she mumbled right into his chest, lips against his skin very nearly distracting him entirely from her words, "You just had to fly that plane down, didn't you?"

Toni left it at that. She didn't really need to say much more.

He'd been waiting for her to get back to that, and was ready with the bare truth. He pulled her upright, sitting partially on his lap, so that he could look her in the eye and hit her with the full truth.

No lies between them. Not now. Hopefully not ever.

"What was I supposed to do without you two?" he whispered, not trusting the entirety of his voice at that moment. "I was just trying to get to you and Bucky. I couldn't breathe without you, Toni, and then when Bucky… when he fell—" He swallowed thickly, eyes finally spilling over with the tears he'd been trying to suppress. "When he fell I couldn't feel. There was just nothing. Nothing, Toni. Both of you, gone. Both of you, right in front of me. You…" He blinked heavily, blearily, staring into the distance over her head, feeling the weight of his entire world pressing in on him. "I'm just so tired, Toni. I don't know how to be without him. I've never been without him, I can't remember ever—I love him so much and now that part of me is gone."

Steve couldn't even sob in that moment. There were no more tears left, and Toni just knew. She knew what to do, and slowly tugged him in so that his face was pressed against her neck and she was breathing loudly and deliberately against his ear to get his breathing back to normal.

He hadn't even noticed the panic this time.

The panic of loss, of not knowing what to do without a part of yourself that was… that was supposed to be untouchable.

And yet…

"Shh, sweetheart, shh," she murmured into his hair, over and over again as she wound herself somehow even more tightly around him. From anyone else, even him, the movement would've been awkward, but Toni seemed to know exactly where to hold him as she pulled him down more fully onto the bed, pressing him back into the bed and tangling their limbs together, lips ghosting kisses across his collarbone. He pressed his own face into the tangle of her curls and just breathed, the citrus fast becoming his favorite scent—and it was lemon, his mind finally decided, happily latching onto that and many other thoughts about his soulmate.

His soulmate.

Time seemed to pass quickly from one blink of the eye to the next, Steve's entire world feeling as if it were a mostly-smudged drawing made out of charcoal. All he could do was focus on her, focus on the feel of her in his arms and he in hers, and hold onto the only piece of his world he had left.

He'd wanted her back… he just hadn't expected to lose what had, until recently, been his whole world, everything he'd known and loved, to get that wish granted.

He'd lost Bucky, and gotten Toni back.

But he could never ever fault her for Bucky's death.

For the apparent trade that no one had asked for.

"I didn't want it like this either," Toni said against his throat, and it was only then he realized he'd spoken that thought out loud.

"I know what you mean. I can feel it, you are aware of that," she finished a little wryly. "If I could've stayed with you in the past, I would've." She looked up at him with conviction in her eyes and she appeared more beautiful than ever in that moment. "I wanted to. So badly. I'd made up my mind that if I were given the choice, I'd stay. As much as I missed everything about the here and now, even my best friends… I'd found you. Both of you. Or, perhaps it's more like I found pieces of myself I'd never even known existed."

They were quiet for a long moment, long enough for the deep silence of the room to press in on Steve again. Steve didn't have the words, let alone the energy, to fill it, so he just pressed himself even more tightly against Toni's body.

She was warm, and he was so very cold.

"I don't know how you survived that, Steve. I don't. But I can't not thank whatever god on Earth or in Hell or Nirvana or… I don't know, I'm not good at religious shit. I don't care who or what it was, but I am so glad you're alive. It's so unbelievably selfish of me, because that means that you have to suffer with half your soul gone—" By the time he'd realized what she meant, she'd already forged stubbornly on.

"—but you're here, in my arms, Steve, and I just… I can't regret that, no matter how you came to be here. I just can't. I swore I'd hold on tight if I ever got another chance, and here I am, here you are, but it's not right. It's…" She broke off with a whine of frustration, right by his ear. She'd practically shoved her head to the back of his neck, which could not be comfortable, but he understood her desire to hide from, well, just about everything and anything.

"He's gone, Toni." The words felt wrong. So very wrong. But he repeated them anyway; he couldn't help it. "He's gone." The words were nearly a compulsion, itching to get out of his throat, to be heard, as if they didn't know that Bucky was dead, God damn it all.

Everything was gone.

Everything but Toni.

"I know." Her voice was thick with tears, and he spent most of his remaining energy focusing on her voice, using it as his tether to reality. He was feeling less and less stable, seemingly everything trying to pull him under.

"I know," she repeated, "but that doesn't mean—"

The exhaustion of grief, of fear, of anger with no direction to aim it, was pulling him under, but he needed to say one last thing.

"You need to know," he interrupted her.

She went still.

"You need to know that Bucky loved you. Loves you." Irrevocable truth. "Wherever he is, he's happy you found me." That he knew, even without Bucky having to say exactly that.

He had to have one solid truth he could hold on to from before, so that Bucky would stay real, and that truth was that Bucky loved Toni. Steve knew how he'd feel if he were in Bucky's shoes, looking down on them: he'd want Bucky and Toni to look after each other. But in that… even in that there would always be room for the dead.

"It's not that simple," she whispered, finally, nearly a minute later. "Healing doesn't come with magic words. I barely know him—not in the same way as you know him. I can barely wrap my mind around this, and I'm not… I'm not you. I just… shit. I don't know how to properly help you, let alone me, that's just a joke. I'm not equipped for this, Steve. Gimme something to shoot, fine. A corporate board to cow, not a problem. But emotions? Parsing out what's love and what's transference? Healing? Loss? Even I know this isn't the end, even I know that—'' Toni dragged in a shuddering breath, then raked a hand down her face to rub at her eyes and nose. "I'm just tired, I'm sorry."

"Sleep," Steve mumbled into her hair, feeling the call to sleep as much through her mind as through his body. "It's okay to sleep sometimes,Toni."

She grumbled into his throat, but her mind and body were screeching to a halt as quickly as his were. She relaxed, though, and Steve used the last of his energy to manhandle the two of them onto their sides, her back pressed in a long line down his front and his arms wrapped around her.

"Tell me more about the future, tomorrow?" Steve asked quietly as his eyes finally, fully shut. He felt a… little better. Empty, a little detached in a way that couldn't be healthy but of which he was too tired to give a hoot about.

"It's already tomorrow," Toni grouched into his shoulder—seriously, she moved around like a writhing octopus or something; there and gone from one moment to the next.

Did people put bells on octopuses? Octopi? Huh... Steve blinked long and slow, his thoughts finally stumbling to a near full halt as sleep started to pull him under even more firmly than before.

All of his thoughts except one:

At least this time he was warm as he gave in to the waves.