Chapter 4

Ok, so today Dani meets Bucky and next is the serum. I am updating Sundays now, every Sunday, and maybe an extra in between if I get ahead in writing. I do have chapter five written already and I don't know if I have the strength to hold out until next week... I am drawing a picture of her with her guy makup and with girl makeup (which she will wear eventually) and I'll leave a link in the next chapter. Disclaimer: I own nothing exept for my OC, Danielle White.

Dani woke up, unsurprisingly stiff, sore and damp. A lump on the ground had made her neck move to an uncomfortable angle in the night. She rolled from under her bush and stuffed her blanket into her purse as best she could. A glance at the sun showed that it was about nine o'clock.

"...Mom was right... you really CAN ooversleep in any situatuon... " she looked at the lumpy ground she had just been lying on. "I guess that IS some kind of super power". She wondered what exactly she was supposed to do now. She had no clue where to find her "mission", and Steve would be in school for a few hours. She decided to see if she could fiddle with her phone.

Sitting on the park bench from yesterday, bloodstains still on the weathered wood, she powered her phone on. Surprisingly it still had some battery left. Actually, it had full battery... and said it was charging..? Dani would not question it. She would use every bit of that battery. Shifting uncomfortably from the splinters digging into her posterior, she opened her browser. Heck, I might as well try to check my twitter. she mused.

And-

It worked.

IT WORKED.

Ecstatically, she whooped and stood up.

"YESSS! YESSSSS!" Scaring several pigeons off. This was amazing! She could contact her family! They would get her home!

She flipped through her twitter. And noticed something. And said some words that would make Steve cringe.

There were NO updated tweets, not since yesterday when she had been pushed into this movie. None. Any time Dani forgot to check twitter for more than a few hours, her timeline was chock full of tweets. That the tweets had stopped at the time she was pulled from her universe was unthinkable . She went to a news site.

Her fear was confirmed. The date on the news page was YESTERDAYS date. (Or almost a hundred years into the future, whatever.) She had all of the internet at her disposal, but it stopped at the day she disappeared. Angrily she threw the phone into a shrub. No, what are you doing, you can use that, she chided herself. She went rooting in the bushes for the phone.

It wasn't broken, surprisingly. She dusted it off and... realised something had changed. Shoot, wasnt it morning just now? She wondered. The sky had changed... It was evening almost, maybe an hour until sundown. How the hell...?

"Danny!" She turned to the voice. Steve was right behind her, smiling like he had won the lottery. "YOU CAME BACK!" He yelled, clearly delighted.

"Of course I 'came back', I was never gone" she said, dusting herself off. She noticed a tall kid about Steve's age behind him.

"But you were gone for six days, I counted" he said, sounding really sad.

Frick. That was a crazy long time to oversleep, even for her...

"Steve dragged me here every day to meet you" the kid begind Steve said. Something clicked in Dani's head.

"You're Bucky, right?" She asked. The brunette nodded and held his hand out. "Pleased to meet you" he said, very politely. Dani opened her mouth to reply in kind but Steve cut her off-

"Wait how do you know his name" Steve asked suspiciously". Dani's stomach dropped as she realized that Steve hadn't mentioned his name before.

"You told me yesterday" she said, in a convincing voice with a convincing smile.

"...You mean last week?" Dani cussed to herself. GET IT TOGETHER!

"Yeah, remember?" Steve seemed to buy it, as did Bucky.

"Oh yeah that's right" he nodded. "His name is actually James but I call him Bucky and so does his mom and my mom and his sister and-" Bucky cut him off.

"Steve how about we show him our hiding spot?" He asked. The skinny blond immediately broke out in an infectious smile and grabbed her hand.

"YES LETS GO" he practically yelled. Dani was dragged along, and for a few hours she managed to forget her predicament.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"WHY WON'T YOU SIT STILL" Dani screamed up at the sun. After she had left the boys, the sun had jumped back and the newspapers said it had been a few days.

"I'm NOT playing your game" she said loudly at the sky in general. More weird looks from passersby. She was getting very used to that. She stuck her tongue out at a man in a suit. He mad some shocked noise and kept walking. Dani plopped on the park bench. The blood stains had been washed away by rain. Pulling out her phone, she flipped the bird in the general direction of the sky.

"I'm gonna sit here and play candy crush until something improves" she said to the air. The battery was miraculously still charged and still had the little "charging" icon. As she was scrolling through her apps, she noticed that there was a new app she hadnt downloaded, that was just a black square. Opening it showed it had three timers. One was counting up, and it displayed 26 hours seven minutes. It was labled "time used".

Dang... that seems about how long I have been here... I bet this is exact! The next one had the date. She looked down at the last one, a timer that said "time left" and cussed.

"THAT IS ALMOST A HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS" she said, throwing the phone hard. The people dodged it and made angry faces at her.

Dani could feel her chest closing in. Is that how long I'm gonna be here...? No. No. That isnt even possable. Get your phone, stupid, its fine. She retrieved the phone, which was shockingly intact. Attempts to delete the app failed, so she put it in one of her spacious pockets, and set off to find Steve.

Dani was getting really, really tired of this. The timer said she had been here a week. The newspapers said it had been a year. She had used the remaining five dollars on herself and the boys, and more money had appeared as needed. But she had saved Steve from exactly seventeen fights, getting her strange "super powers" only while she was defending him. She had been badly beat up in several non-Steve fights and she was freaking sick of it.

Steve was happy, though. He thought she was the greatest, so did Bucky. The two, now thirteen, had become her best friends and she was theirs. They told her all their problems, and they had PROBLEMS. But she was missing bigger and bigger gaps in their lives now, sometimes she missed two weeks, and once almost three weeks. She had come up with the excuse "I have a job" but wouldn't tell them what it was. For crying out loud, what job makes you dissapear irregularly for weeks at a time?

Still, all three looked foreward to their time together. One week, and Dani already knew them better than she knew anyone at home. Steve flooded her with drawings, and her "magic purse" that never had any junk food in it managed to hold all of them. Bucky always wanted advice about girls... Dani thought it was hilarious that he had no clue the advice was working because it was FROM a girl. It was hard to keep a straight face telling him "dames like _" because of the serious look on Bucky's face. She was almost getting used to this life...

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"You gotta be kidding me" Dani griped, looking down at her phone. "1938? How is it 1938" she moaned. She had just jumped six years. SIX. YEARS. How the frick was she supposed to explain this to Steve...? He would be... she counted. Frick, he was older than her now, he was twenty! She had last seen him at age fourteen... She looked exactly the same, her timer had said she was only in this dimension for a month and a half...

Clothes. Change of clothes because he would question the fact that she was wearing the same freaking clothes. Her bag produced appropriate clothes, which she changed into under a bush. There was some makeup and a mirror too... she added some "stubble" and darkened her eyebrows a bit. The person in the mirror could kindof pass for a twenty-something year old. Dani shrugged.

"Alright, lets go find Steve".

XXX

A funeral.

Steve was at a FUNERAL.

His MOTHER'S FUNERAL.

She could see him across the cemetary, being very brave and not crying. There were only a handlful of people around as the coffin was lowered into the ground. Dani cursed herself. Of all the times to show up after six years...

She had found herself at the cemetery after applying the makeup. Attempts to LEAVE the cemetary had resulted in her being "teleported" closer to Steve. What a load of crap.

"You think he is going to be HAPPY to see me? He probably thinks I abandoned him and here I am at his mother's funeral!" She whispered/yelled at the air. Just then Steve looked up and their eyes locked.

Shiiiiiiiiiiit. He didnt move and neither did he. Bucky followed Steve's eyes and saw her too. Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. Steve started walking towards her as the people began to leave. Dani found that she was unable to move her legs. You gotta be kidding me. YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME. Steve kept walking towards her and Dani attempted to keep a straight face and not flip out. She WANTED to start screaming and flailing her arms until she could run away.

He was ten feet away.

He was five feet away.

He was... hugging her...?

He had grown a bit, and her eyes were now level with his forehead. Somewhat in shock, she put her arms around his shoulders. He was crying just a bit.

"You came back" he said in a sad voice.

"I'll always come back" she promised, hoping this was the truth.

Dani stood by and watched, as the "with you 'till the end of the line" from "Captain America 2" played out in front of her on Steve's doorstep. Bucky and Steve had taken her sudden reappearance very well... she still felt guilty. The war would start next year, she couldn't tell them that though. She had a feeling that things were about to get interesting