#Ghosts in DC being imperceptible to most people

[ailithnight]

Wait wait wait

The what that lets Nightwing what?

Danny, being a halfa, falls under the strange category of people who can converse with the dead and act in their names. Most mediums simply convey messages. It was rare for someone to be able to fulfill a ghost’s dying request and have that act tied to the ghost’s core.

Honestly it’s annoying.

He doesn’t get any alone time anymore for homework or hobbies. The dead are constantly pestering Danny to help with their desires - which, sure, it helps them move on which means they’re out of Danny’s hair, but come on!! Give a guy a break! Just because he doesn’t need as much sleep as a fully living person doesn’t mean he can go without entirely!

“No Scott,” Danny repeated for the fifth time, “I am not flying to California tonight. Do you know how far that is? Literally the other coast of this massive continent. Meet me there in August like everyone else on the list.”

Spending the first spring break of college creating a map and calendar for Last Rites was not something Danny expected when he moved to Gotham.

Why did this city have so many ghosts?! It was ridiculous. And he thought Amity Park was bad? At least the ghosts here were mostly Shades. Not visible to anyone unless they were also dead-adjacent or had The Sight or a bloodline curse or a magical amulet… you know what? There were enough of those in this curse ridden city, why couldn’t these ghosts go find one of those people instead? Danny was exhausted.

So exhausted he didn’t notice the vigilante dropping down from the rooftop.

“Hey there kid, you alri-”

“Yeah yeah,” Danny waved a hand dismissively at the voice without looking up. “Wait in line like everyone else. But honestly you’d be better off coming back tomorrow when I’ve had some sleep.”

“Think maybe you outta get started on that sleep now, bud?” the voice behind him spoke in a calm careful tone.

One Danny had heard all too often since dying.

His head jerked sideways to stare wide-eyed at Nightwing, who tensed just a little as if expecting Danny to run or fight. Instead he let out a groan and slumped onto the park bench, rubbing his eyes to ease the burn of fatigue. He’d been coming out to this park at the corner of campus each night to keep the Shades from mobbing him all day long in classes, but they’d spread the word around Gotham that he was here and his precious spring break had become a non-stop line of requests and arguments. Made sense he’d caught the attention of one of the Bats. Should have expected it sooner.

Danny ignored all the voices around him and looked at Nightwing directly as he prattled off his usual list when someone caught him talking to thin air.

“No, I’m not hallucinating. I got all my Rogue Gallery immunizations the day I checked onto campus. I’m not schizophrenic. The only meds I take are for adhd and the occasional Tylenol. I’m not a danger to myself or others. Unless they attack me first.”

Nightwing nodded along, but tilted his head at the end.

“I’m talking to the dead,” Danny answered the unspoken question in a tired monotone, waiting for the usual skepticism or plea for help with lost loved ones.

“Oh. Okay then.”

“What?” That wasn’t expected.

“No yeah, that makes sense.”

Danny was sure his jaw was on the ground. “You… you believe me?”

“Well sure,” the hero shrugged and chuckled. “I can’t see ghosts myself but I know a couple magicians who work with one, and my little brother Robin has a ghost on his team - she’s actually visible most of the time so I don’t know if that’s a special skill or something else going on. But I’m glad you’re okay and don’t need any emergency medication. I know a couple 24 hour pharmacies that would help but it’s nice when they’re not needed. We don’t get a lot of mediums around Gotham holding court at night so you really can’t fault me for checking in.”

Danny was still floating in the relief of not being questioned or doubted. That hadn’t happened since Jazz found out his secret. She’d had plenty of questions about his halfa status, of course, but never called him crazy for talking to things others couldn’t see. Even Sam and Tucker would forget sometimes and give him strange looks before realizing he was dealing with a Shade, Wisp, or Memory.

He didn’t realize he was wobbling until Nightwing’s arms shot out to stabilize him.

Danny blinked up at the pretty face that was trying not to chuckle, held by strong arms, and so far past tired he might be getting delirious after all because his brain seemed to have lost its filter and he said out loud,

“You actually believe me. I think I love you.”

Then the horrifying embarrassment hit at the same time as Nightwing’s laughter. Which… sounded delighted rather than mean spirited?

“Well now it’s your turn to wait in line, cuz that’s the fourth confession I’ve had this week!” They both devolved into snorts and giggles, Danny still relying on those arms for balance, but when they’d caught their breath the vigilante said, “Come on, you’ve really got to get some sleep. I’ll walk you back to your dorm.”

Ignoring the whispers and grumbles of the Shades was easier with someone walking beside him.

This is so incredibly cute oml. It’s so rare to see the bats actually go with the flow and god it isn’t done enough. 12/10 immaculate, glorious.

The entire plot I can see so clearly in my mind dude:

Danny chatting to Nightwing as they walk to his dorm

Nightwing asking some casual questions about ghosts and Danny asking about vigilante work.

Nightwing informs the Bats of Danny as he might be a valuable asset in the future.

Nightwing helps free shades with Danny and he realizes why Danny is so incredibly tired all the time.

Nightwing managing to stumble into Danny every day of his break, slowly getting to know each other more and more and becoming really good friends (perhaps lovers 👀).

Wonderful stuff man ty for the ask!

[leiascully]

Fic:  Lost Time

3000 words | pg | msr | no content warnings unless you hate foot massages  |  minor spoilers for various episodes | set in unspecified season 7

This is an expanded version of the story I wrote for the second Fic is Medicine prompt at @xfficchallenges.  Thanks to @mashnotesofthemythopoeic for the encouragement.  

There are times she wishes she could go back to Oregon, back to twenty-four-year-old Dana Scully with her hands braced on her hips like punctuation, her ponytail curling against the back of her neck in humid wisps.  Time is a universal invariant.  She would shake herself until her smug little teeth rattled like improbable dice.  Not in this zip code or any other, little agent.  

Time passes differently in airports.  Most of all it reminds her of the giant plastic funnel in the mall with its bold sign proclaiming THE COIN VORTEX in unbalanced serifs.  She and Charlie would run to roll pennies down its calibrated ramps.  Seconds skirl past as she sits by the luggage retrieval, chasing each other around and around the flue of her mind with leisurely gravity before dropping inexorably into some undiscovered well in her soul.  It's like she can feel the chink of each one as it impacts, individual moments sliding across the accumulated heap.  Clink.  Clink.  Clink.  In the background, the poorly maintained conveyor belt heaves and creaks under the weight of other people's luggage.  

She sits next to her tidy little bag and watches families haul past suitcases crammed with Disney merchandise and beach souvenirs.  The nametag from the conference at which she was speaking is still in her jacket pocket.  She pulls it out and gnaws at the tip of her finger with the alligator teeth of the clip.  

Mulder is late.  

She's not going to call him.  Clink.  Clink.  The seconds mound up inside her.  Clink.  Clink.  Clink.  When she shifts in the hard plastic chair, they scatter and rattle against her hipbones.  She feels heavier inside the longer she waits.  She had never plumbed the depths of herself before this job.  She has more strength and more capacity to tolerate the mysteries of the universe than she imagined, but her patience is not infinite.  Time still weighs on her.  

After half an hour, her hand slips into her other jacket pocket for her phone.  All unbidden, it presses the single digit that she has programmed in as a shorthand for his number.  For him.  Mulder is 1.  Tall.  Stooped to reach her.  No sense of balance.  Not prime but primal.  Her phone burrs in her ear.  The call goes to voicemail.  She hangs up.  She has her dignity.  

She sent him the information.  She left a printout on his desk, added the event to his calendar.  "Pick up Scully."  Mulder is always looking up.  It seems he ought to have seen her plane land.  

After forty-five minutes, she calls him again.  Same number.  Same blurred tone.  Same dead end.  She hangs up again.

After an hour, she stands up slowly, shifting the aggregate heft of the time inside her, and walks to the Metro station.  She'll have to call a cab, but a body in motion is happier than a body at rest, at least when that body is hers: the uncomfortable truths one learns after years in the Rube Goldberg machine of the X-Files.  She feeds bills into the machine and lets the machine print a paper ticket for her.  She has a permanent plastic card, but it's too much to think of fumbling in her wallet.  She wedges her bag under her knees and stares out the window at nothing.

She should be angry.  Mulder, for the some round significant numberth time, has ditched her.  There is no carriage for the lady.  Another sign of his unearthliness, his untethering from the petty concerns of the earthbound.  He drove her to the airport, cracking sunflower seeds between his bicuspids and weaving a narrative out of fifty different mystic threads like a taller Rumplestiltskin.  He promised to pick her up.  Instead the train rocks and rattles underneath her as it carries her through the underworld, the pressed sediment layers of history bored open for the convenience of the throngs.  Everything in DC is just short of well-maintained, including the government.  Even the Library of Congress, even the files she's meticulously relabeled: the sheer volume of history around her obfuscates its truths.  She navigates the city not by the stars, but by the clean lovely classic lines of monuments to men who owned people.  She plunges through the earth on rails laid over bones.  They are all habituated to walking through ghosts.  

She lets the motion of the car lull her and picks apart her own thoughts, slicing into her mind and propping its metaphorical ribs open.  The lack of ire at her perpetual abandonment is surprising, like a clean tox screen on a suspected addict, but she has to interpret the results she gets rather than those she expects.  What she is instead is wistful.  She wanted to see him.  She wanted him to come for her, to sweep her up in the swirl of his coat and stake her out her in view of the traveling public.  I am claimed.  

The warped and flickering reflection in the plastic window shows her lips parted in surprise.  She doesn't often indulge in thinking this way, imagining the public affirmation of Mulder's usually clandestine attentiveness.  Now, tucked into the third or fourth hard plastic seat of the day, all she wants is to be in his car, tipping her head obliquely on the headrest to trace his profile with her eyes.  

He's waiting at her apartment building when she climbs out of the cab she took from the closest Metro station.  He takes her suitcase from the cabbie, all solicitous grace.  Boyfriendly.  She suppresses the flutter of her heart.  Twenty cc's of common sense into the cardiac muscle.  Grey clouds jostle overhead, as frisky and balky as calves at a gate, peering at her.  She has emerged from the gentle oblivion of travel: overhead, underground, removed from the world.  She inhales the humid freshness of the breeze and lets it press the last traces of stale recirculated air from her lungs.

"How was the trip?" he asks.  The wheels on her bag press lines into the damp leaves on the sidewalk.  It's rained while she was in limbo, and the season has turned almost imperceptibly, shaking the boughs as it passes.  Stray drops patter down from the trees.  

"It was fine," she tells him.

"I'm sure they valued your expertise," he says, looking up at the gravid clouds as she punches in the code for her front door, as if he doesn't know it.

"They asked a lot of questions," she tells him as they step inside the building.

"Well, you've trained for that," he says with a wink.  

"I missed you," she says.

His grin is bright, conspiratorial, infectious.  "I missed you too.  Sorry I wasn't at the airport.  Skinner wanted something."

It is an apologetic non-apology.  Neither Schrodinger or Heisenberg could make much of it, unable to verify either the sincerity or the veracity of his excuse.  Still, she forgives him.  He is confessed.  He is absolved.  The rain will wash them both clean.  As she unlocks her front door, she can hear the dappling wet begin again.  The light in her apartment shifts as the clouds swell and drop.  Despite everything - the blood soaked into the pad beneath the carpet, the scratches in the paint on the vents from Tooms' incursion, the fragments of glass in the mulch underneath her window - the space is cozy, lightly scented with sage and lemon.  She has learned to claw back her things from the clutches of trauma: candles, her overstuffed couch, her bathtub, her partner.  Her life.  Her heart.

"Come in," she says, a foregone conclusion, but one that holds more promise now.  Time is not a universal invariant.  She can pull taut her tidy little stitches, all the moments she's saved over the years not being in love with him, and turn them into something lovely.  She can spend with profligate decadence from the hoard of moments that's dragged at her all day.  She turns as she pulls the key from her lock and he's watching her.  Out of season, something blooms inside her.

"All right," he murmurs, his voice scraping lightly against some prehistoric susceptibility still programmed into her medulla oblongata.  Respiration, circulation, her need for Mulder: all autonomic functions, beyond her conscious control.  She steps into the apartment and out of her shoes with a sigh, bracing one hand against the armoire.  Mulder presses in behind her, a one-man crowd still towing her suitcase.

She makes tea.  That's what she does when it rains.  Scale rattles in the bottom of the kettle as she fills it from the faucet.  She should clean it soon, replace the herbal scent of her candles with the bite of vinegar steaming through her kitchen, but she's weary, prizing comfort over scoured perfection.  She can hear Mulder hanging his jacket by the armoire and setting her bag by her bedroom door.  Funny how willing he is to cross all her metaphorical thresholds, but when it comes to the physical, he has cotillion manners.  He's been sprawled insensible in her bed, white gauze against his warm golden skin stopping up a wound she gave him and tended to, but still he nudges her suitcase until it rests delicately against her door and saunters back to her.

"Tea?" he asks.  She nods and reaches into the cupboard for a number of boxes.  

"Peppermint," she says, tasting the crispness of the consonants on her tongue.  "Oolong.  Jasmine.  Earl Grey."   She brandishes each one at him and sets them on the counter.  

"Peppermint," he says decisively.  "Although, technically, Scully, a blend that doesn't include the cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis bush is a tisane."

"We aren't all Oxford-educated psychologists," she says.  

"Celestial Seasonings is a cult," he tells her, sprawling into one of her kitchen chairs.  Mulder can sit straight as a ramrod and still sprawl somehow, but this is louche, possessive, his arm slung over the back of her Windsor chair.  He sits in her chair like he might invite her to sit on his lap.  She wonders if it's intentional.  Mulder doesn't always understand his effect on people.  Mulder doesn't always understand his effect on her, specifically, despite the overclocked interrogative processes of his mind.  

"Care to elaborate?"  She presses the knob in, turns it until it clicks and the flame ignites.  She half-listens as Mulder rambles on, dropping citations to esoteric publications, mentioning names she won't remember until some other fact tugs at the twanging filaments of her schema.  Working on the X-Files has given her a mind like a spiderweb: every idea filters through her, snagging against the relevant threads until she can apprehend it and sip it dry.  Meanwhile Mulder, neither noiseless nor patient, spins his yarns and weaves them around her until she's swaddled in his narratives, transfixed.

Scully leans against the counter.  She's sat too long today.  The longer she stands, the more she feels the leaden weight of waiting soften, melting down her legs and slowing her feet.  It feels as if she is reclaiming those moments; every task takes three times as long to do, borrowed back from her store of lonely minutes.  Rain lashes the window and drums on the roof.  The gravelly racket from the kettle is a fitting soundtrack to Mulder's tales of conspiracy and herbs.  He looks at her, expectant.  

"It makes sense," she says.  "No well-balanced person could concoct Raspberry Zinger."

"A delicious conspiracy," he intones solemnly, gazing at her with those bosky eyes.

The kettle whines.  It gives her an excuse to look away from him.  Surely immediate domestic concerns like water boiling override the temptation to let herself be captured in the fairy rings of his irises.  The kettle insists, the sound rising to a squeal as she snaps off the flame and pours the water into two cups.  The tea bags bob just beneath the surface, leaking ochre.  She nudges one toward Mulder, who rises from the chair and leans over her, a breath too close for professionalism, to retrieve it.  She cants her body to escape his orbit and retires to the couch.  Mulder joins her, lounging at the other end, the weight of him as palpable as the ballast of time she's slowly shedding.  

Scully laces her cool fingers around the hot mug.  Ever since Antarctica, she's relished the heat despite the way it stings.  Her baths are too hot, leaving her rosy with her hair in ringlets.  Her coffee scalds her tongue.  Mulder winces and sets his mug on her coffee table, then casually pulls her feet into his lap and kneads his knuckles along her arches as if it's something he does every day.  His fingers are warmer than usual as he presses into the complicated countertension of tendons and fascia, residual heat from the tea.  

"Mulder," she starts to say, but all that comes out is the em in a soft sound of pleasure.

"I know this doesn't make up for ditching you, Scully," he says, "but I promise this time it wasn't my fault.  Skinner trapped me in his office with some rookie who needed help with a profile.  I told him that I had to go, but he reminded me that my continued employment with the federal government depends to some extent on fulfilling his whims."

"Did you tell him you were leaving to pick me up?" she asks.  

"For some reason, that didn't compel him," Mulder says, digging into a tender spot until she gasps a little.  "I did catch him picking up his car keys.  Maybe he wanted to be the one rubbing your feet."

"I thought the massage was an act of contrition," she says.  

"If that were the traditional apology for ditching someone, I would have been kneeling at your feet years ago," he tells her.  "Maybe I should have been."

"Then why are you rubbing my feet?" she asks.

He shrugs and imprints circles around the bone of her ankle with the soft pad of his thumb.  "Indulging myself."

The afternoon drags past like wet silk, brushing over her skin instead of piling up inside her in a hoard of compounded disinterest.  Scully sips at her tea, or her tisane, or whatever the hell it is, relishing the contradictory fresh heat of it as Mulder smoothes the fatigue out of her feet.  The mesh of her pantyhose makes webs between her toes.  She is become a suburban cryptid, a soccer mom type with a secret.  Mulder purses his lips and blows into the interstices to make her shiver.  

"Indulgence isn't your usual modus operandi," she says at last, drowsy and refreshed.  

"Mm?"  He looks up at her.  "What are my regular symptoms, Doctor Scully?"

"Flagellation," she says idly.  "A guilt complex that verges on narcissistic.  Melancholy."

"Maybe I need my humors balanced," he quips.

"I can dig up some leeches if you're feeling bilious," she says.  

"All the more reason to do my penance," he says.  "Prostrating myself before you.  A thousand Hail Scullys and a few hours of foot rubs are a small price to pay for my mortal soul."  He ducks his head in contrition.  Dark stubble ruffles down his neck.  She wants to chafe her fingertips against it, or the soft skin of her cheek.  He's due for an appointment with the clippers.

"It's going to take more than a few hours of foot rubs to avoid the leeches," she corrects him.  

"Exact your toll," he says.  "Five minutes for every minute you've spent waiting for me sound fair?"

She snorts.  "You're negotiating yourself into a lifetime of indentured servitude at that rate."  

"There are worse fates," he says lightly.

"There are better proposals," she parries.  

"Are you asking me to marry you, Scully?"  His voice is low, the cadence of his words deliberately provocative.

"Of course not," she counters.  "I can't depend on you to pick me up from the airport, much less meet me at the altar and be with me for better or for worse."  

"At least we've already gone through sickness and health," he says, releasing her feet for long enough to rap on the veneer of her table and then resettling himself.  "But you have a point."  He strokes the tops of her ankles down to her toes, his long fingers grazing delicately along the slope of her foot.  "We'll have to settle for a lifelong bond less sanctioned by the priests of the world."

Outside it's still raining.  They are cordoned off from the rest of the world by grey and damp in a moment that will be dissolved, resolved, absolved.  Après ça, le déluge, and their confessions will evaporate like holy water, returning to some abstract plane.  Scully sets down her mug.  

"Is that all?" she asks casually.

"An eternity of contrition," he says.  "And my best attempts at punctuality.  Although between you and me, I think Skinner did it on purpose."

"Are you saying he's trying to come between us?"  She hums as he resumes his ministrations.

"He's been trying to come between us for years," Mulder claims.

"The true conspiracy," she says.  "The question is, which one of us is he after?"

"A conundrum for the ages," Mulder murmurs.  

Scully rests her head against the couch cushions, her eyes drifting over Mulder's face as he devotes himself to kneading her calves.  His downcast lashes smudge his cheekbones.  He is cast half in shadow by the rainlight, a moody portrait of devotion.  She lets herself be weary, lets herself be cherished, lets time slip past without marking it.  Some moments are eternity.  She will find all the minutes she has lost, someday, in this infinitely variable universe.  

[green-eyeddragonfanfiction]

Time: Chapter 3

Summary: Soulmate!AU/Reincarnation!AU. Female!Reader lives in a world where alien invasions and hordes of death robots occur and past lives and soulmates are very real. Like most people, she gets brief glimpses of her past. although a person’s past lives and their current life may have little to nothing in common, soul mates tend to transfer between lives, the core of a person staying the same throughout the eons. Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female!Reader, Steve Rogers x Female!Reader Warnings: Language, violence, blood/injuries Word Count: ~3,092 A/N: This actually started out as part of Chapter 2, but then I realized it was 5.3k words, so I broke it up instead <<;;

Masterlist // Previous Chapter // Next Chapter

You flicked on the TV, curious to see if the mystery danger would make it onto the news. You turned to a news station and were shocked to see Steve’s face plastered all over the screen. The reporter was outside of the Triskelion, SHIELD’s huge base on the Potomac, and claimed that Captain America was now a fugitive of the state and SHIELD. They said he had a part in assassinating SHIELD Director Nick Fury alongside a redhead you recognized as Black Widow. They urged the public to keep an eye out for these “fugitives” and send any helpful tips into the police. You turned the TV off and looked out the window, suddenly fearful for Steve’s life. You knew he didn’t do it, but the rest of the country probably wouldn’t be as convinced of his innocence as you.

“Oh, Stevie. What did you get yourself into?”

You awoke early the next morning. Today was your meeting with the ambassador. You hastily dressed in the nicest set of clothes you’d brought with you, slipping on stylish flats in lieu of heels. With the city in the state of chaos that it was, you didn’t feel like getting caught in a sticky situation in pumps. You made your way to the ambassador’s office. Luckily for you, it was within walking distance. You’d been able to save yourself some cab money. You arrived exactly on time.

You were directed into a small but nicely decorated office and sat down in one of the comfortable black leather armchairs. The woman at the desk across from you wasted no time. “Alright, let’s get this over with. SHIELD is unveiling something big today and I need to be there to witness it,” said the ambassador’s agent. She rifled through papers on her desk until she found the one with your petition on it.

“I see, Miss (Y/L/N). I regret that something this minor wasn’t dealt with at... lower levels. These people you’d be staying with are family on your...?”

“Mother’s side, ma’am,” you said quickly, not wanting to give the woman more reason to be short with you.

“Yes, the Ardeleans. According to this sheet, they’re a good family from around Bucharest. Your aunt married into their family, no?” she asked, eyeing you over the paper.

“That’s correct, ma’am,” you said, nodding.

“And your business in my country?”

“A mix of sightseeing, visiting family, and working for them for a few years before I return to the states,” you said earnestly.

She assessed you coolly over the rims of her glasses before she nodded her head almost imperceptibly. “Alright, Miss (Y/L/N). Consider your visa approved. I’m sorry for the delay this entire issue has caused you. I regret even further that it brought you all the way out to DC... and to me. No offense, but this was a waste of my time,” she said, smiling slightly at you.

You smiled kindly back, too happy that you’d finally been approved to be offended. “No offense taken, ma’am,” you said, standing and shaking her hand. You turned to leave her office but paused at the door. You turned to look over your shoulder at her. “Be careful out there today... and thanks again,” you said, giving her one last smile. She rolled her eyes at you good-naturedly and made a show of shooing you off, but happily wished you a good day anyway.

You were halfway to your hotel when you first saw them. People had stopped on the sidewalk to gawk and point. You followed the direction they were looking in and gasped when you saw it. There, next to where you knew the Triskelion to be, were three huge helicarriers. Even from here, you could see that they were outfitted with huge guns.

This must be what Steve had been talking about. You knew after one glance, though, that no building you would ever be allowed in could keep you safe from those things.

They rose slowly into the sky, harbingers of doom preparing for annihilation. For the second time in two years, you ignored all of your senses that told you to run away and, instead, decided to face the danger head-on. Or, more accurately, run straight for it.

You hailed a taxi and directed him to head towards the Potomac and the huge airships in the sky. Like most people, the taxi driver didn’t seem concerned that there were huge death ships floating in the sky above his head. That concerned you more than anything else. Was this the new normal for this day and age? You didn’t like it.

As you got closer to the Potomac, the streets got busier and busier. Before long you asked him to let you out, throwing a few twenties at him as you hopped out of the back seat and started running.

You hadn’t made it more than ten feet away from the taxi when you heard cannonfire and explosions above you. You looked up into the sky, shielding your eyes from the sun with your hand, and felt your jaw drop. The huge helicarriers had begun firing on each other.

“Steve,” you breathed, heart beating so hard you thought it might beat out of your chest. There was no doubt in your mind Steve was somehow a part of this, even if it wasn’t in the way most of society thought he was. You hoped against hopes that he wasn’t stupid enough to be on one of those helicarriers, but you knew he almost definitely was. Whoever was in charge of those things wouldn’t make them fire on each other unless something had gone horribly wrong, and being in the middle of horribly wrong situations was Steve’s specialty.

You watched in horror as the helicarriers blew each other to bits. One managed to stay in the air a little longer than the others, but eventually it, too, fell into the Potomac. You didn’t realize you were running to the river shore until you were already there. Across the river, the Triskelion was on fire. It looked like one of the helicarriers had taken a huge chunk out of it on the way down. You ran along the shore, trying to get a better view of the destruction from there. You hoped against hope there’d be a sign- any sign at all- that Steve was okay. You burst through a clump of bushes, cursing as thorns scratched your legs through your pants. Movement across the small riverside clearing caught your eye. Your eyes were drawn to something shiny. Metal. You realized it was, in fact, a person, and the metal thing you saw was the person’s arm.

“Hey, you!” you yelled at the person’s back. They- no, he, you realized it was a man- froze for a moment before he suddenly sprinted away from you, not looking back. You began to run after him, but a noise near the riverbank caught your attention.

“Steve?!” you said, alarmed. You ran over to the figure lying on the bank. It was Steve, and he looked mostly dead. He coughed up river water, rolling over on his side as he spat and gagged. “Stevie, god, you look awful. We need to get you to a hospital,” you said, hands hovering over him, unsure of what to do.

He finally seemed to finish clearing his lungs. He rolled back onto his back, still gasping for air. He almost didn’t seem to notice your presence, he was too busy searching the area around himself.

“Where is he?” he asked, voice hoarse, and attempted to sit up.

“Who?” you asked, alarmed at his behavior. You placed a hand gently on his shoulder.

He finally seemed to notice your presence. “(Y/N)?” he asked, even more surprised.

“Yeah, Stevie. It’s me. We need to get you to a doctor. You look like you went through a meat grinder,” you said, brushing bloody hair out of his face. You noticed that his uniform was soaked in blood. “Have you been shot?!” you asked in alarm.

“Yeah, couple times. Where did he go?” He asked, unwilling to be sidetracked from his line of questioning.

“Who, Stevie?” you asked, voice filled with concern.

You turned to stare at you, face unreadable, obviously thinking through something before he answered. “The man who saved me,” he said finally.

“He ran away as soon as I yelled at him. Why? Did he have something to do with all of this?” you asked, suddenly worried you’d just earned a place on the shit list of a very dangerous individual.

Steve’s face twisted in grief. “Yes and no. It’s just important that I find him,” he said, trying to stand.

“Jesus, Steve. You’re no in condition to do anything but rest right now. I’m calling an ambulance,” you said, holding him down as best you could with one hand while you dug your phone out of your pocket with the other.

“No, Rosie, wait-” he sputtered, alarmed. Before you knew what was happening, he’d pulled you down into a very wet, cold hug. “You can’t call an ambulance for me. Not right now. I’m still public enemy #1 in a lot of people’s eyes right now. I’d start an angry mob,” he explained, breath ghosting against your ear.

You sat up slowly, moving out of his grasp with worrisome ease. “Then what do we do?” you asked, worried about Steve’s worsening condition.

“Gimme your phone. Please,” he said, holding a hand out expectantly. You sighed, unlocking it and placing it into his outstretched hand. He dialed a number you couldn’t see. After two rings the person on the other end picked up. “I’m alive. Barely. I’m on the other end of the Potomac. I could use some help. A civilian is with me, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t accidentally shoot her thinking she’s a hostile. I know everything’s gone to hell, but sooner rather than later would be nice,” he grunted, grimacing with pain as his fingers probed his gunshot wounds. After a response from the other end he thanked whoever he’d been talking to and pressed the end call button.

“Hey, Rosie,” he said quietly. You were too concerned about him to correct him.

“Yeah, Stevie?” you asked, leaning so you could get a better look at his face.

“Remember how we used to sit when we were kids?” he asked, mind eighty years in the past.

“Yeah, I do,” you whispered. And you did. Rosie and Steve used to sit on the couch in her parents’ house together. She’d sit on one end of the couch, reading and he’d use her lap as a pillow, reclining as he doodled in a notebook. Occasionally Bucky would join them, sitting on the other end of the couch from her. Steve would put his scrawny legs over Bucky’s, and Bucky would rest whatever magazine or comic he was reading on top of them. The three of you would sit like that for hours until one of your got bored or it was time for Steve and Bucky to go home. You felt your eyes watering at the memory. It had been a simple but happy time for Rose.

Taking his not-subtle-request, you moved to sit perpendicular to him and lifted his head, placing it gently in your lap. His hair was went and cold, but his face was warm. You tried to ignore the way your heart fluttered when he wrapped his arms around your waist, nearly curling around you. You absentmindedly ran your fingers through his hair, slipping into a habit that wasn’t yours.

“Don’t go to sleep,” you murmured.

You felt more than you heard his hummed response.

“I mean it,” you chastised.

“Yeah, yeah. Got it,” he said, opening one bleary blue eye to look up at you.

A couple of agents that Steve trusted arrived a bit later. If they were shocked at the sight of the Captain curled up around a random woman, they didn’t show it. Together they managed to carry him off to an inconspicuous car without drawing too much attention. Most of the onlookers were too engrossed in the destruction across the river to see the drama unfolding right in front of them. You insisted that you go with Steve, not trusting that they’d keep him safe. They looked to Steve for confirmation. He gave them a faint nod and off the car sped, away from the Potomac.

An hour later you were in the waiting room of a hospital. As soon as you saw the Black Widow, you’d finally trusted that Steve was safe- at least, safer than he’d be in your hands. Still, you didn’t want to leave before you got more news on his condition.

A tall man in a black hoodie and leather jacket sat down in the empty chair next to you. You glanced at him out of the corner of your eye. It was odd that he chose to sit next to you; Most of the chairs in the waiting room were empty. You spotted the telltale bulge of a concealed gun on his hip. You felt yourself tense up. There weren’t a lot of people around, and he was close enough that he could kill you before people could stop him.

“Relax, girly, I’m not here to hurt you,” he said, gruff voice low. You looked at him, then. He picked up a magazine and pretended to be interested in it while he talked. “We appreciate you finding the Captain for us. He may be a super soldier, but the tough bastard’s not invincible. I think he forgets that sometimes,” he said, glancing over at you.

You noticed that, behind his sunglasses, one of his eyes was scarred a ghastly white.

Holy shit, I’m talking to Nick Fury, you thought to yourself. He’s the spy. Why the hell is he here in disguise and talking to me of all people. You coached your thoughts into something resembling coherence before you spoke.

“Steve knows he’s not invincible, sir. That’s what makes him a hero. He knows he could be killed doing what he does, but he does it anyway because it’s the right thing to do. The serum may have made him super, but he was always a hero,” you argued, giving the intimidating man stubbornest look you could muster. Inside, you were sweating.

He looked at you out of the corner of his good eye, giving you a slight approving smile. “You’re sure talking like you know him,” he said, smirking at how your face fell at the accusation. “I don’t mean anything by that, of course. What you did in your past life with Steve is entirely between you two,” you balked at that last statement. He let out a single huff of a laugh before continuing. “I’m just here to warn you,” he said, staring at you seriously now. “You’re not going to be safe if you stay near him. I know leaving your soul mate behind can-”

“I know, sir,” you said, cutting him off. He leaned back in his chair slightly, assessing you.

“You know?” he asked, eyebrow peaking up over the rim of his sunglasses in disbelief.

“I’m leaving the United States for the foreseeable future. It’s been a plan of mine for a long time. I won’t put myself or Steve in danger by staying here. The world can’t lose Captain America,” you said, smiling faintly.

Fury looked you up and down as if seeing you for the first time. “I don’t know what I expected from Steve’s soulmate, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you’d be as selfless as him. Damn stubborn, too”

His words twisted the dagger in your heart, and you nearly winced from the pain. He noticed your reaction, but just then a nurse came up to talk to you, saving you from his torrent of questions.

“Are you Miss (Y/L/N)?” she asked, looking at you past her clipboard. You nodded an affirmation and she smiled. Weight you didn’t even know was weighing on your shoulders suddenly lifted and you breathed out a sigh of relief. “His condition is stable and he’s going to make a full recovery. He’s healing remarkably fast, too. He’ll likely be out within the week,” she said, smiling down at you.

You smiled back, almost giddy with relief. “That’s fantastic news,” you said.

“He’s asking that you come and visit him. He’s doing so well we’re allowing visitors one at a time,” she said, frowning slightly at the way your face twisted from happiness to regret and sorrow.

“Sorry, no. I need to be going now,” you said, standing.

“But he was quite insistent-” she said, but you’d picked up your things and were already walking towards the door.

“Sorry, no,” you said again, pulling your jacket on as you walked. The nurse looked confused, but walked back into the long white hallway in the direction you assumed Steve’s room was in.

To your surprise, Fury joined you outside as you waited for the taxi the valet had called for you. You let out an audible groan.

“Well sorry, princess. Just had a few more questions,” he said mockingly.

“Of course you do. Couldn’t you just find the answers with your infamous intelligence network?” you asked scathingly.

“Well seeing as SHIELD was just destroyed from the inside out, I’m a little out of the loop these days,” he said, the edge in his voice getting harder. His good eye narrowed dangerously behind his sunglasses.

“Fine, fine. Shoot,” you said, groaning internally at your word choice.

“Where are you going?” he asked as he leaned up against the hospital’s cement wall.

“Will you tell Steve?” you asked, eyeing him.

“No,” he said, voice flat.

“Can I trust you?” you asked, raising an eyebrow.

“In general, no. In this case? Yes,” he said, staring at you evenly.

You rolled your eyes. “Romania, around Bucharest,” you told him. Even without the resources he once had, it wouldn’t be too hard to find out where you’d gone. At least his way he might be able to throw Steve off your scent. “Got family there,” you explained, fiddling with the buttons on your jacket.

He nodded, studying you closely.

“You have another question,” you stated.

“Are you Steve’s soul mate?” he asked, as though he was asking what the weather was like today.

“Excuse me?” you asked, taken aback. You hadn’t expected him to be so direct about it.

“Are you Steve’s soul mate?” he repeated, good eye boring into yours.

Just then your taxi arrived, honking impatiently at you.

“Another day, then, Mr. Fury?” you asked rhetorically before you started walking towards the car. You got a few steps, then stopped. “Keep him safe, alright?” you asked, eyes pleading.

“Agent Romanoff and I will keep an eye on him,” he assured you. Somehow, having two of the best spies in the world keep an eye on your most important person in the world both comforted and frightened you. You nodded a goodbye to him before you clambered into the taxi.

You felt his gaze from one of the hospital rooms. You looked up through the taxi’s window as it pulled away, eyes instantly locking onto his. His face was unreadable as he watched your taxi leave the hospital parking lot. Just before the taxi turned the corner, drove out of sight, and blocked your view to his window, you swore you saw him turn and head farther into the room, face set in determination.

You hoped Fury could keep his promise.

Chapter 4

This series is finished, but if you want to be tagged in my other fics, check out this post! Sorry, but responses to this post asking to be tagged will be ignored, so send me an ask or like one of the taglist posts!

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