Time passes, and Steve keeps trying to enlist. He doesn't see Loki anymore and tries to be okay with the idea that he'll probably never see his weird childhood friend again. He goes on a couple of double dates with Bucky. The war in Europe intensifies, and Bucky leaves for basic training, and Steve tries not to think that everyone is leaving him, moving forward while he's stuck contributing nothing and getting his ass handed to him every time he tries to stand up to somebody bigger.

And then Bucky ships out to England, and Steve meets Dr. Erskine, and everything changes. There's Project Rebirth, and Peggy Carter (who sees him, like nobody ever does, and who is probably the fiercest, most amazing woman he's ever met), and Howard Stark, and HYDRA, and a brand new body with most of the old frustrations because he still can't do much to help. Then there's Bucky again, and Schmidt, and the real horrors of war for the first time, and he barely has time to think about anything else.

Or he wouldn't, except that the night he comes back with Bucky and the other HYDRA captives, he's exhausted but too wired to sleep, and for a long time he just lies awake staring at the ceiling of the tent he's temporarily sharing with Bucky and listens to his friend breathing, alive. When he does sleep finally it's restless, fractured, his head filling up with color and noise—

He jerks awake, gasping for breath, to see Bucky leaning over him and looking concerned (which is wrong, Bucky was just rescued, he shouldn't have to start trying to take care of Steve again, not already and maybe not ever).

"Breathe, Stevie," he says.

"I'm fine," Steve says. "Just a nightmare." He's not fine. He's shaking, actually, and his heart's pounding, and he doesn't even know why but this doesn't feel even a little bit like just a nightmare.

"Uh-huh," Bucky says, which means he's noticed the shakes but is choosing not to comment. "You wanna talk about it?"

"I…don't know." He's not even sure what he dreamed, just a tangle of sight and sound and raw emotion, anger and pain and fear so strong he goes almost dizzy just remembering. He tries to sort through it anyway, because it feels important, and fragments begin to take clearer shape in his head. Ice, a whole world of ice, full of monsters. A red cape. A vortex of light. Desert. An enormous golden hall—

"Asgard," Steve says, abruptly certain. "Loki was there."

Bucky frowns. "Is this the first time you've dreamed about him?"

Steve nods, his gut twisting uneasily as more threads of the nightmare come into focus, connect, begin to compose a larger picture. The golden prince in the red cape, blinding and bright, with a shadow no one ever notices. Cheers and thunderous applause (but not for the shadow, never for the shadow). His hand turning blue and ridged in the monster's grip, and horror freezing the breath in his lungs more effectively than the glacial cold. A glowing blue box radiates cold and his hands turn blue as he touches it monster monster monster and revulsion is so thick in his throat he thinks he'll choke on it. Rage and terror, rage and terror, no more than another stolen relic, claimed to love me, tell me tell me tell me, never wanted never loved never real and fear again. A corona of golden light. A spear and a throne and plans plans plans he will do it he will show them he is right, is worthy (is nothing but the monster parents tell their children about at night)—

Desert. Blood on the sand. A bridge. Battle, galaxies hanging suspended overhead. An explosion that sends him flying, his grip on the spear the only thing holding him above the abyss, but he has no reason to hold on and so he lets go and falls falls falls—

"—look at me," Bucky is saying sharply, hands tight on Steve's shoulders, and Steve blinks at him, disoriented. "Are you back with me yet?"

"'Course," Steve says. His voice sounds strange in his own ears. "I'm fine."

"Yeah, pull the other one," Bucky says. He lets go with one hand but keeps the other on Steve's shoulder, steadying. "Jesus, where'd you go? You were looking right through me for a good 30 seconds, are you sure you're okay? You've never had seizures before but that sure as hell looked like—"

"I think Loki's dead," Steve blurts out, and as he says it, he knows he's right—that's exactly what the dream means.

Bucky goes still. "That's what you dreamed?"

"No. Sort of. I didn't—I don't know." Steve rakes a hand through his hair, frustrated. "It's…not what I saw so much as it just gave me this—feeling."

"Magic," Bucky says, a little dubiously.

"Maybe. Probably."

"Dreams are weird," Bucky says. "Maybe it doesn't mean anything."

"Yeah, maybe," Steve says, but he knows that this one does.

Bucky falls and Steve can't catch him. Schmidt takes off with the Tesseract and Steve can't stop him. Instead he sits at the Valkyrie's controls and makes a date with Peggy that they both know he won't make and tries not to think that even as Captain America, all he can do is fail the people he cares about, over and over again. Tries, fruitlessly, not to spend his last moments wishing he had more time with any of them, and then he sends the Valkyrie into the water.

He wakes up in a world that looks nothing like the one he remembers. His mom and Bucky are still dead. Howard and Jim Morita and James Falsworth are dead. Peggy is old, her mind and body giving out, and he doesn't know which is more selfish, to go see her or to stay away. He hasn't come any closer to a decision when Fury comes to him looking even more grim than usual, telling him that the Tesseract was recovered years ago and SHIELD's been experimenting on it recently, until just now when an armed hostile came through the portal, stole the Tesseract, caused the destruction of an entire SHIELD base, and fled.

"We don't have a lot of information on him just yet," Fury says as Steve automatically opens the folder Fury hands him. "Calls himself—"

"Loki," Steve says, staring at the photo. It's not a good photo, pulled from security-camera footage at the SHIELD base, but Steve would know that face anywhere.

Fury doesn't move, but the sudden laser focus of his attention is like a physical weight. "Friend of yours?"

Steve has to laugh a little at the sheer absurdity of the situation. "We sort of grew up together. He was messing around with time travel so I first met him when we were both kids, and then he kept coming back. I haven't seen him since I was 18 and he was about 900, except for one meeting after the war started, and I was kind of starting to think I'd just hung onto an imaginary friend a lot longer than most kids."

"Huh," Fury says after a moment. "How do you feel about having a chat with your imaginary friend?"

"I'm happy to try." He takes a closer look at the photo, and his stomach twists. Since he last saw Loki, the serum's turned Steve from a 90-pound asthmatic to somebody with the physique of a bodybuilder, enough that anyone who knew him pre-serum would probably do a double take instead of recognizing him immediately. Loki, on the other hand, looks like he's been through a transformation in the opposite direction. He's not thinner, maybe—with the armor he's wearing, it's almost impossible to tell—but he's sickly pale with bruise-like smudges under his eyes, and he looks older and a hell of a lot harder, his face drawn and his expression almost feral.

Steve glances at the brief below the picture and frowns. "Wait, Thor crashed in New Mexico a year ago? Why wasn't I informed?"

Fury's eyebrow goes up. "You've been out of the ice for about five minutes, Rogers, and nobody knew you had some kind of connection with this psychopath. There was no reason to think it was relevant."

Steve transfers his frown to Fury. "He's not a psychopath. I don't know what's happened, but he was my friend. And anything involving the Tesseract is kinda relevant to me by definition."

"Which is why we're bringing you in now," Fury says, as if SHIELD hasn't been working with a Tesseract for a year, but Steve lets it go. "And now I'm thinking I better debrief you before I send you out. Any intel you might have on this guy can only help."

"Right," Steve says, feeling a weariness descend on him that has nothing whatever to do with his boxing practice. "Do I have time for a shower first?"

Fury eyes his watch. "Make it snappy."

The new suit is...strange. It fits perfectly, and there's enough kevlar in it that it's probably better armor than anything he used during the war, but he keeps wanting to tug at it like it needs adjusting. Captain America is still an important symbol, so of course they're going to give him something that stands out, but even at that it's awfully flashy, enough to make him think self-consciously of his time as a dancing monkey.

And yeah, thinking about that is a lot less uncomfortable than thinking about Loki. Fury gave him a tablet for the flight over with more info about the Puente Antiguo incident and actual security footage from the PEGASUS facility, and Steve can't stop seeing it in his head, over and over again: the metal monster on shaky cell-phone video, blasting its way through the little desert town, trying to kill Thor's friends, actually killing Thor (desert, and blood on the sand). Loki's arrival in the Tesseract chamber, looking sick and terrifying even before he erupted into violence that might or might not qualify as self-defense. Using that scepter to take over the minds of Dr. Selvig and those agents—and Steve doesn't know what turns his stomach more, the scepter's glowing gem that reminds him way too much of the Tesseract or the way Loki smiled as his new followers' faces went blank. There was nothing kind in that smile, nothing sane, nothing of the boy Steve knew, just a kind of exhausted, vicious pleasure. And then there's the way Loki stumbled and nearly fell on his way out with the Tesseract, his gait stiff and very slightly unsteady even after he recovered his balance.

God, Loki, what happened to you?

His nausea only grows when he gets to Stuttgart and takes in the situation. The chaos and screaming was bad enough, not to mention going after that guy's eyeball, but the terrified crowd kneeling in front of Loki is somehow much worse.

"This is as close as I can get you," Agent Romanoff says. "I'll keep hovering here as backup, but there's no room to land. And Rogers, I know you want to reason with him, but try to leave me a clear shot. Your friend might not even exist anymore."

"Noted," Steve says, and he vaults out of the quinjet. He hits the pavement in a tuck and rolls to his feet, shield at the ready, and sprints across the square.

"Look to your elder, people," Loki is saying, leveling his scepter at the lone old man still on his feet. His intent is clear, and his voice is chilling—familiar still, but utterly devoid of compassion. "Let him be an example to you—"

No time for finesse. Steve lunges and blocks the shot with his shield, and half the crowd scatters. Good, he thinks distantly, less chance of civilian casualties, but most of his attention is on Loki—who is watching him, lip curled. He looks physically healthier than he did on the PEGASUS tapes, or at least he doesn't look like he's about to keel over, but his expression is no less feral, the glint in his eyes no less manic.

"Ah yes, the soldier," he says, mocking, "the man out of time," and then Steve tugs off his helmet and Loki goes absolutely still, eyes widening. "You."

"Me," Steve agrees. Loki recognizes him, and that's something, but he can't allow himself more than a twinge of relief. He takes a risk and slides his shield back into its harness on his back ("Rogers, I hope you know what you're doing," Romanoff's voice says in his ear), then spreads his hands to show he's otherwise unarmed. Loki watches him, throat working, but he seems unable to speak. "What the hell happened to you?" Steve asks finally, and Loki—flinches.

"You are more right than you know," he says, voice hollow, and shuts his eyes. "Ah, Norns. Of course it would be you."

"You know I won't let you hurt these people," Steve says quietly. "But I won't see you hurt either, if there's anything I can do about it. Tell me what's going on. Let me help you."

"You cannot," Loki says. He licks his lips, swaying a little, and his grip tightens on his staff. "No one can."

A prickle goes down Steve's spine, but he carefully keeps his posture relaxed and unthreatening. Whatever Loki's gotten himself mixed up in, it's bad. "Try me."

"I am burdened with glorious purpose," Loki says, the exact same wording he used in the Tesseract chamber, "and I cannot stop what has already been set in motion. Not even for you."

"Okay," Steve says, "but you don't need all these people, right? Let them go and we can talk."

Loki just looks at him for a moment, his expression opaque, and then he makes a weary gesture and his doubles all vanish, the real Loki's horned helmet and elaborate cape dissolving as well. Several more people take the opportunity to flee, but the rest seem too scared to move until an amplified voice blares out, "You heard him, people, time to go. We've got this. JARVIS, repeat that in German, would you? Right, never mind, it's only Americans who don't bother to learn another language."

Steve glances up and sees Iron Man hovering above the quickly dispersing crowd, and he can feel himself get just a little more tense. If Stark was originally considered too volatile for the Avengers Initiative, he might be the type to start shooting before Steve can really talk to Loki. "Stark, follow my lead."

"Aye-aye, Captain," Stark says. He lowers himself to the ground a few feet away, standing ready but not actually pointing any weapons yet, and Steve allows himself a little more cautious relief. He still has a chance to salvage this situation.

"I had a dream about you," Steve says, and Loki breaks off from eyeing Stark and looks back at Steve, his forehead furrowing.

"Whoa, TMI, Pops," Stark says. "You know what TMI means, right?"

Steve ignores him. "What I saw…it seemed real, and parts of it match the reports from New Mexico. Was the rest of it real too?"

Loki says carefully, "That depends a great deal on what you saw."

There's a lot, nearly all of it deeply private (if not in the way Stark implied). He sorts through the tangle of images and emotions and finally says, "You fell."

Loki's chin dips in a barely perceptible nod. "Then you saw truly." He hesitates. "Did you…was there anything after?"

Steve shakes his head. "I woke up and I was sure you were dead."

"That was the plan," Loki says very quietly, and even Stark looks at him sharply. "Perhaps I was, for a time. Had I remained thus…" He opens one hand in a shrug, the motion tugging his sleeve up just far enough for Steve to glimpse what looks like a nasty burn around his wrist. "Well. Who can say?"

"Okay," Stark says, "I gotta ask, Fury only gave me the short version which was that you two somehow sort of grew up together. So this is some kind of wibbley-wobbley, timey-wimey bullshit, right?"

"Probably," Steve says.

Loki's eyes widen. "The Tesseract," he says, suddenly looking stricken. "Of course. That was the anchor."

"I never actually touched it—"

"No, but you were near it, multiple times. In the case of such a powerful artifact, that could be enough." He shuts his eyes briefly, and when he looks at Steve again, his expression is somehow even bleaker. "The Norns have made sport of me far longer than I guessed."

Steve folds his arms. "Well, I still don't believe in fate. You told me yourself that nobody really understands how time works."

"The anchor was in our futures," Loki says. "How can you possibly call it anything but fate? We are both here now because of the Tesseract, and I…" He swallows hard. "This was always going to happen. I was always going to fall."

Stark raises his hand like a kid in class. "I have questions."

"I don't buy it," Steve says stubbornly, ignoring Stark. "We all have choices, we have to, and even if you're right, doesn't that only bring us to today? If it was fate, if we didn't have a choice in whatever brought us to the Tesseract, that's already happened. It's done. You can choose now. We both can."

"I cannot," Loki says. "You do not understand."

"Probably not," Steve agrees. "But I know you, and I know you're not fated for Ragnarok. There's no giant snake now, and—maybe I wasn't there when you needed help. But I made you a promise once and I intend to keep it, because I'm here now. If you can't believe anything else, believe that. Trust me."

Loki inhales, shaky. He's wavering, Steve can tell, and he keeps his expression open as he looks back at him steadily, willing him to surrender. Loki takes a step closer, then another, eyes darting between Steve, Stark, and the quinjet. He's close enough to touch, and Steve almost does, but he holds himself still, hands at his sides, barely breathing.

Come on, he thinks. Come on, you idiot, stand down and let me help you.

And then Loki moves, quick as thought, already inside Steve's guard, and Steve has no time or space to block him (and barely the space of a breath for a rush of horrified betrayal) before the tip of his scepter is pressed to Steve's heart. Everything else disappears in a blaze of consuming blue light.