A/N: Just in case you ignored my wordy little disclaimer, this preface will include spoilers for the end of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier". It's essentially a Guardian-style missing scene from the movie. Don't say I didn't warn ya...

#

Steve Rodgers opened his eyes to a world that was...a little blurry. He was on his back, resting on a bed of gravel, looking up at what he could only assume was the sky. Plus, he was soaking wet. Where am I? he asked himself. What happened...

And then he tried to move. *Everything* hurt, from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. The pain brought his memories back in a rush of emotion. Which only seemed to magnify the pain.

He should have died. While the unique structure of his body might have been the reason that he didn't die instantly in the impact from falling from the helicarrier, Steve remembered his last few moment before he lost consciousness. Underwater. Sinking to the bottom of the Potomac.

The river should have been his watery grave. So why was he where he was? Steve gasped as the answer came to him in a rush. Bucky. The 'Winter Soldier' was the only one who could have seen his fall *and* done anything to help him. He remembers me, thought Steve, his heart soaring with the revelation. He remembers me, and he saved my life. I gotta find him...

The second attempt at moving his battered body went no better than the first. Steve closed his eyes and sighed with the frustration of having his body betray his mind for the first time in a very long time.

When he opened his eyes, though, the sight filling his vision couldn't have been more pleasant. "Hey there, old man," his girlfriend teased. "Have a nice swim?"

"Lex?" asked Steve, surprised. "What are you..."

"I never took off that tracking spell," Alexis replied, cutting off Steve's question before he asked it. "Sorry it took me so long to get to you..."

Steve rolled his head, trying to blow off the apology. "S'alrigh..."

It wasn't hard for Alexis to catch the weakness of Steve's voice. "Can you move, hon?" she asked.

Steve shook his head. "Not so far."

They were gone before the superhero had a chance to explain any further.

#

Twenty minutes later, Steve was in a hospital bed in New York City, facing two of the women he most cared about in the world. And neither of them looked particularly happy. "Well," Lanie exclaimed with a sigh, "that's one expression I should probably never use again."

"Which one?" asked Steve.

Lanie replied, "just when I start to think I've seen everything..."

Steve blushed, knowing exactly what the healer was trying to tell him. "I never wanted to see this happen, either," he agreed. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not the one you should be apologizing to," Lanie countered. "I'll leave you two alone to get to *that*." Turning on her heel to leave her office, Lanie grumbled, "and take the damn coin already, would you..."

Steve chuckled, shaking his head as he accepted the last thing that Lanie had 'told' him. His face fell immediately, though, when he saw the relief and leftover terror fighting to control the expression of his 'best girl'.

Alexis was in no mood to joke. "Steve, I..."

"I never wanted you to see me like that," Steve admitted quickly, cutting Alexis off. "I'm sorry I had to put you through this."

"That's not the point and you know it," Alexis spat back in argument. "I get why you wanted to protect me from SHIELD. And now, with everything that's happened, I am *so* happy that you kept me as far away from them as you did. But I could have helped you out there. You were so busy 'protecting' me that you shut me out when you needed me most. And you almost *died* because of it." She let out a sigh born of pure frustration. "Steve, *when* are you going to stop doing that?"

Steve squeezed the hand that seemed to be holding onto his for dear life. "You're right, Lex," he admitted. "You are just as capable of saving the world as I am. Maybe more so." The smile the last comment elicited from his beloved lightened Steve's own mood a bit, and he found himself able to return the expression for a second before he continued. "It's just that...I've lost so many people, Alexis. People that I cared about as much as...I don't know what I would do if I lost you, too."

"But you're not *going* to lose me, Steve," Alexis countered. "You know that. If anything, I need to be much more worried about losing *you* than it going the other way around. *Especially* after today."

She's right, Steve finally admitted to himself. Ever since he stepped out of Erskine's and Stark's machine and became Captain America, he had felt invincible so much of the time. "When I...woke up in SHIELD and realized where I was. And *when* I was," Steve explained, "I just...I guess I came to believe that I was just living on borrowed time. I would do my job and live my life day by day because...well, because I should have been dead twenty years ago. Maybe even before that. Until I met you I didn't even really have anything to live *for*. It's kind of hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that you'll outlive me."

Alexis pulled one hand away from Steve's to caress his arm. The more she touched Steve, the more Alexis relaxed, reassured that he was still there. That he survived. This time. "You know, it doesn't have to be that way."

Steve nodded. "The coin."

"You always told me that you thought you didn't need that extra level of protection," said Alexis. "Still feel like that?"

Steve shook his head. "No, I don't."

Alexis pulled the medallion out of her pocket, using both of her hands to place the necklace in Steve's hand. "Then will you *finally* take this thing?" she insisted. "So we can stop worrying about each other and start working as a *team*?"

Steve wrapped his fingers around the talisman sitting in his hand, pulling it up to examine it a little more closely. "This thing really is ugly," he commented quietly.

"No one ever has to see it but us," Alexis insisted. "And it doesn't have to be pretty to do its job."

Steve nodded, sighing as he realized every argument he had made against taking the coin just didn't apply anymore. He slipped the chain over his head, pulling his body armor out as much as he could so the necklace could rest out of plain sight. "Happy now?" he teased, acting less exasperated than he felt.

"Yes," Alexis exclaimed, her relieved smile radiating the emotion throughout her entire being. "Yes, I'm happy."

When Steve accepted the sincerity in his girlfriend's comments, his heart melted. "Good," he agreed with a smile. Their lips met in a gentle kiss that gloried in the implicity promise of an eternity together.

Alexis was the first one to break away from the kiss as a question popped into her mind. "Steve?" she asked.

"Yeah?"

"Not to make light of your injuries or anything...but how did you get up on shore? From what Lanie said I probably should have been fishing you out of the bottom of the Potomac."

Steve's eyes lit up as his memories from the shore returned and inspired him. "Did I ever tell you about my best friend Bucky?"

Alexis raised a wary, but curious eyebrow. "Bucky? No, I think I would have remembered *that* name..."