Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The crime scene had been routine—a drug deal gone wrong in the kind of alley where hope went to die. She'd been photographing evidence, documenting the scattered bullet casings and blood spatter, when reality decided to crack open like an egg.

The portal materialized without warning, a wound in the brick wall that bled golden light and hummed with impossible energy. It defied every law of physics she knew, every rational explanation her detective's mind tried to supply. But in a world where superheroes and mutants fought aliens and villains every other week, she'd developed a healthy respect for the inexplicable.

She should have called for backup. Should have cordoned off the area and waited for someone with more expertise and better equipment. Should have done a dozen things that might have saved her from what came next.

Instead, she'd stepped closer, drawn by a curiosity that had kept her alive this long and was about to be her downfall. The portal's edges rippled like water, casting shifting shadows that made her eyes water. She'd reached out—not to touch it, just to test the air around it, to see if she could feel whatever impossible force was tearing through dimensions.

The puddle was small. Insignificant. The kind of thing she'd normally step over without thinking. But positioned exactly where it was, at the precise edge of the portal's influence, it became the pivot point on which her entire world turned.

Her foot slipped. Physics took over. And suddenly she was falling forward, through liquid light and the space between heartbeats, through the golden throat of something that shouldn't exist.

The landing knocked the breath from her lungs and the sense from her head. When the world stopped spinning, she found herself sprawled on familiar concrete, staring up at the same brick walls, breathing the same stale alley air. But the portal was gone, sealed shut like it had never existed, leaving only the faintest afterimage burned into her retinas.

And somewhere in the distance, she heard the murmur of a city—familiar, but not the same. The cadence of traffic sounded off-key, like a song she knew played in the wrong tempo. The low thrum of voices carried different accents, different rhythms. Even the distant wail of a siren seemed to rise and fall in patterns her ears didn't recognize.

The wrongness revealed itself in layers, each one more unsettling than the last.

She discovered the first crack when she went to what should have been her station. At first glance, it looked identical—same brick facade weathered by decades of city grime, same cracked concrete steps where she'd sat during her lunch breaks, same scuffed double doors that stuck in humid weather. But the moment she walked inside, the air felt different. Heavier. Foreign.

The desk sergeant looked up with mild curiosity rather than the usual grunt of acknowledgment. Officer Martinez walked past without his customary nod. Detective Chen emerged from the break room with coffee and didn't so much as glance in her direction.

"Excuse me," she said, approaching the front desk with her badge already in hand. "I need to check in with Chief Barnett."

The sergeant—Henderson, his nameplate read, though she could have sworn his name was different yesterday—looked at her like she'd asked for directions to Mars.

"Ma'am, there's no Chief Barnett at this precinct. Never has been. You might be looking for the 12th? They got a Captain Barrett over there."

Her badge felt suddenly heavy in her palm. She held it up, the shield catching the fluorescent light. "I'm Detective—"

"Ma'am." Henderson's voice sharpened, and she saw his hand drift toward his radio. "I'm going to need you to step back from the desk."

That was when things went bad. Fast.

Within minutes, she was surrounded. Familiar faces wearing unfamiliar expressions of suspicion and confusion. She knew these people—had shared coffee with them, complained about paperwork, celebrated arrests. But they looked at her like she was a stranger wearing a stolen uniform.

"I work here," she insisted, even as they guided her toward the interrogation rooms. "Check my locker—it's number 47. Check my desk. I've been here for six years."

But when they checked, locker 47 belonged to someone else. The desk she thought of as hers was occupied by a detective she'd never seen before. And when they ran her prints—her own goddamn fingerprints—the room fell silent.

"That's impossible," she heard Chen whisper to Martinez. "These prints... they match a woman who died three years ago."

The words hit her like ice water. Died. Three years ago. The version of her that had lived in this world was dead, and now they were staring at her like she was either an imposter or a ghost.

They moved her to Interview Room 2—the one with the broken chair leg that she'd always avoided. The irony wasn't lost on her. Here she was, finally sitting in the damn chair, but as a suspect instead of a detective. She tested the chair before she sat down in it. The broken leg was stable. 

The one-way mirror reflected her pale face back at her, and she found herself staring at her own features as if seeing them for the first time. Same eyes, same scar on her chin from falling off her bike at age seven, same stubborn part of her hair that never stayed flat. But somehow, she looked like a stranger to herself.

Detectives came and went—Patterson, who'd taught her how to read blood spatter patterns; Rodriguez, who always brought donuts on Fridays; Williams, who'd been her partner for two years. Each one studied her with the same mixture of confusion and suspicion, as if her very existence was an insult to someone's memory.

She gave them everything—her name, badge number, social security, the names of every case she'd worked, every partner she'd had, every scar and story that made up her life. All of it true, and all of it sounding like elaborate fiction when filtered through their disbelief.

Hours passed. Or maybe days. Time felt fluid in that windowless room, marked only by the steady hum of fluorescent lights and the occasional rattle of the ancient air conditioner. She'd long since stopped pinching herself, accepting that whatever this was, it wasn't a dream.

When the door finally opened again, she expected another detective with the same tired questions and skeptical eyes. Instead, a stranger walked in.

He moved with the careful control of someone accustomed to being watched, though tension coiled in his shoulders like a spring wound too tight. Not a cop—his clothes were too casual, too lived-in. Civilian, but not ordinary. The way the desk sergeant had practically saluted when he'd walked past suggested someone with serious pull.

He was a handsome black man, probably mid-thirties, with intelligent eyes that seemed to catalog everything they saw. When he looked at her, those eyes went soft with something that might have been recognition, or hope, or grief. Maybe all three.

The silence stretched between them like a held breath. She watched him settle into the chair across from her with the careful movements of someone carrying invisible weight. His hands rested on the table, knuckles pale with tension, and she found herself studying the calluses on his palms—the kind that came from gripping something regularly. Reins, maybe. Or rope.

Finally, he spoke. His voice was steady but quiet, like he was afraid of the answer before he asked the question.

"Do you know who I am?"

The hope in his voice was so naked it made her chest tight. She wished she could give him what he was looking for, but honesty was all she had left.

"No," she said, then added more gently, "Should I?"

Something inside him crumbled. She saw it happen—the way his shoulders sagged, how his breath left him like he'd been punctured. The careful composure slipped, revealing grief so raw it made her want to look away. But he held her gaze, managing a smile that was equal parts bitter and fond.

"Maybe not this you," he murmured, and there was a world of loss in those four words. "Was worth a shot, though."

Her brows drew together, frustration sparking hot beneath the confusion. "What do you mean, 'this me'? Look, I don't know what kind of game this is, but I'm a detective. This is my station—or it's supposed to be. I don't know what happened, but one minute I was processing a crime scene and the next there was this... portal, or whatever the hell—"

"Portal?" He leaned forward so fast his chair creaked, urgency replacing the gentle sorrow in his voice. "What did it look like? Exactly where were you when it appeared? Did you feel anything before it opened—heat, electrical charges, any kind of distortion in the air?"

The rapid-fire questions made her head spin. "I don't know! It just... appeared. Like someone had torn a hole in reality and filled it with golden light. It was humming, vibrating the air around it." She shoved back from the table, the legs screeching against linoleum. "Look, I don't know who you are or why you're asking, but I've had enough mystery for one day. Just tell me what the hell is happening to me."

He studied her for a long moment, his jaw working like he was chewing on words too big to swallow. When he finally spoke, his voice was careful, measured—the tone of someone delivering news that would change everything.

"You're not wrong. About this not being your world."

Her heart stuttered. "What?"

"You came through some kind of dimensional rift. It happens—rarely, but it happens. Sometimes the barriers between realities get thin, and things slip through the cracks." He spoke gently, but each word felt like a small betrayal of everything she thought she knew about the universe. "You've crossed into a parallel dimension. A world that's similar to yours, but not the same."

She stared at him like he'd started speaking in tongues. "Parallel dimensions? Are you out of your mind? You expect me to believe I just... fell through a crack in reality like some kind of science fiction nightmare?"

"I know it sounds impossible." His voice remained calm, patient—the way you'd talk to someone standing on a ledge. "But I've seen enough impossible things to know they're usually just improbable. And..." His eyes softened as he looked at her again, really looked, like he was trying to memorize her face. "You're not the first version of you I've met."

The room seemed to tilt. "Excuse me?"

"There was another you. Here, in this world." He paused, choosing his words with surgical precision. "She was... important. To a lot of people. To me. She was a good friend."

Something in his tone—reverent, aching, carefully controlled—made her stomach clench with dread. She swallowed hard, her voice barely above a whisper.

"What happened to her?"

For the first time since he'd entered the room, he looked away. His hands flexed against the table, tendons standing out like bridge cables. When he spoke, his words were weighted with the kind of grief that never fully heals.

"She died. Three years ago."

The words hung in the air between them like smoke, acrid and choking. She felt the world shift beneath her feet, reality reshuffling itself into patterns she didn't recognize. The fluorescent lights seemed too bright suddenly, the air too thin.

"No." The word came out sharp, defensive. She shot to her feet so fast her chair crashed into the wall behind her. "No, that's not possible. I'm right here. Alive. Breathing. You don't just get to have another version of me conveniently die before I show up. That's—" She barked out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. "That's fucking insane."

He didn't flinch, didn't move, just watched her pace the small room like a caged animal. His patience only made her angrier.

"Do you hear yourself?" She spun to face him, fury and terror warring in her voice. "Parallel dimensions? Different versions of me? That's comic book bullshit. I'm a detective, not some interdimensional traveler. You think you can feed me this story and I'll just... what? Accept it? Stop asking questions?"

She slammed her palms against the table, leaning over him. "Tell me the truth!"

He met her gaze without wavering, and his voice when he spoke was rock-steady, implacable as gravity.

"I am telling you the truth."

The conviction in his tone cut through her spiraling panic like a blade. She froze, chest heaving, studying his face for any sign of deception. But there was none—just bone-deep certainty and a grief so profound it seemed to have worn grooves in his features.

He rose slowly, closing half the distance between them—close enough to be reassuring, far enough to avoid seeming threatening. "I know how insane this sounds. I know every instinct you have is screaming that it's impossible. But I've lived through stranger things than you being here right now. And I'm not trying to trick you or manipulate you. I'm trying to help."

Her jaw clenched, but some of the fight leaked out of her voice. "Why should I believe you?"

He was quiet for a moment, seeming to weigh his words. Then he extended his hand—palm up, an offering rather than a demand.

"Because my name is Sam Wilson. And if you let me, I'll do everything I can to make sure you're safe."

Something in the way he said it—solid as bedrock, unshakeable as sunrise—made her anger waver. There was a quality to his voice that spoke of promises kept, of responsibility accepted and never abandoned. Without meaning to, she found herself believing him.

Sam Wilson was clearly someone important. She could tell by the way the precinct transformed around him. Officers who'd treated her like a curiosity or a threat suddenly straightened when he appeared, their voices taking on the particular tone of respect reserved for true authority. They clapped him on the shoulder, thanked him for unspecified favors, and more than one called him "Cap" as they headed out for patrol.

She studied him as they walked to his car, noting the way he moved—confident but not cocky, alert without being paranoid. Military bearing, but softened by civilian life.

"Cap?" she asked as they settled into his black sedan. "As in Captain?"

Something flickered across his face—amusement mixed with something heavier, more complicated. His smile was warm but tinged with melancholy, like a song played in a minor key.

"Something like that."

She didn't press, but the title lodged itself in her mind like a splinter. Captain. The kind of rank that came with weight, with responsibility, with the expectation that you'd carry other people's burdens as easily as your own.

He drove her through the restless pulse of New York, and she found herself cataloging the differences. The skyline was almost identical, but not quite. A building here that shouldn't exist, a street there that curved the wrong way. Like someone had rebuilt her city from memory but gotten some of the details wrong.

They stopped at a building that seemed to hum with unseen energy, its architecture somehow more alive than the structures around it. The man waiting inside introduced himself as Doctor Stephen Strange, the air around him shimmered with barely contained power.

Strange studied her with eyes that had seen too much, and she caught the flicker of recognition—and pain—when his gaze met hers. Another person haunted by a ghost she was apparently wearing the face of.

His examination was thorough, involving incantations in languages that hurt her ears to hear and geometric patterns of light that made her vision water. When he finally delivered his verdict, his voice carried the weight of cosmic authority.

"She's a dimensional variant. Another world's version of the woman you knew." He paused, his expression growing grave. "And the portal that brought her here... it wasn't random. She was meant to come through. Meant to stay."

The words hit her like a physical blow. "What?" She lurched to her feet, the chair scraping against polished marble. "No. No, I don't belong here! This isn't my world, my life. That portal was an accident. You have to send me back."

Her voice cracked on the last word, desperation bleeding through the careful control she'd maintained all day. She turned to Sam, searching his face for any sign that Strange was wrong.

"You said the other me is dead. But I'm not her. I have my own life, my own world. People who'll miss me. You can't just... you can't just expect me to replace her."

Sam flinched like she'd struck him, his gaze dropping to the floor. The grief carved into his features was so raw it made her chest ache with sympathy she didn't understand.

Strange's voice softened, but his words remained uncompromising. "I'm sorry. If there were a way to send you home, I would. But the forces that brought you here... they don't make mistakes. You're here because this is where you belong now."

The pronouncement settled over her like a funeral shroud. She stood frozen for a moment, every muscle tense with the urge to run, to fight, to somehow undo the cosmic joke that had torn her from everything she knew. Instead, she forced herself to breathe, to think, to survive this moment the way she'd survived every other impossible thing life had thrown at her.

"I need air," she managed, and walked out before either of them could respond.

The hallway beyond was lined with artifacts that seemed to hum with their own inner light. Ancient books, crystalline sculptures, weapons that looked like they'd been forged in other dimensions. She leaned against the cool stone wall, closing her eyes and trying to find her center.

That's when she heard their voices drifting from the chamber she'd just left.

"Have you told Barnes yet?" Strange's voice carried clearly in the empty corridor.

A long pause, then Sam's reply, heavy with reluctance. "No. Not yet. I don't even know how to begin that conversation."

"She's here for a reason," Strange said firmly. "The universe doesn't place people where they don't belong. He'll need to know. The sooner the better."

Another silence, longer this time. When Sam spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper. "Yeah. I just don't know how either of them will handle it."

The conversation ended with the sound of chairs scraping, footsteps moving. She pushed herself off the wall and composed her face just as Sam emerged, looking like he was carrying the weight of the world.

"Let's get out of here," he said gently, as if she hadn't overheard every word.

His brownstone was a refuge from the chaos of the day. Warm wood floors, lived-in furniture, bookshelves that actually held books instead of just decoration. Photographs covered the mantle and side tables: Sam with various people she didn't recognize, group shots that looked like they'd been taken after successful missions, candid moments of laughter and camaraderie.

She sank into his couch, exhaustion finally catching up with her. The adrenaline that had carried her through the day was fading, leaving behind a bone-deep weariness that went beyond physical fatigue.

Sam settled across from her, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped together. He studied her for a long moment before speaking.

"I guess it's time I told you who I am. My full story." He took a breath, as if steeling himself. "My name is Sam Wilson. I used to go by the Falcon—had a pair of mechanical wings, worked with the Avengers. But a few years back, Steve Rogers, Captain America, passed the shield to me. So now people call me Captain America."

The revelation should have shocked her, but somehow it fit. The deference at the station, the way Strange had treated him as an equal, the weight he seemed to carry…it all made sense now.

“Yeah, we…had a Steve Rogers in my world,” she murmured, playing with some loose threads between the cushions of the couch. “Had the Avengers. Mutants, too.” 

"The version of you that lived here," he continued, his voice growing softer, more careful, "she was part of that world too. An intelligence specialist who helped us track down dangerous people. She fought beside us, bled with us. She was..." He paused, searching for words. "She was family."

Family. The word hung in the air between them, loaded with implications she wasn't ready to unpack.

"And she's gone," she said quietly.

Sam's nod was barely perceptible. "Yeah. She's gone. But you're here now. And maybe—"

"There's no maybe." The words came out harder than she'd intended, sharp with frustration and fear. "There's no cosmic plan or grand design. Sometimes shit just happens. Bad luck, wrong place, wrong time. You're telling me that if you suddenly woke up in a different reality where everyone expected you to be someone else, someone dead, you'd just accept it? Roll over and play the part because strangers called it fate?"

Sam's expression hardened, but not with anger. With understanding that cut too deep. "You think I don't know what it's like to have everything you thought you knew about the world get turned upside down? To lose people who mattered more than your own life?" His voice carried the weight of hard-earned wisdom. "I've wanted to wake up in a different world more times than I can count. One where the people I've lost are still alive, where the choices I made turned out different."

He leaned forward, his gaze intense. "But that's not how it works. We don't get to pick the reality we land in. We just get to decide what we do once we're there. And right now, you're here. That's not negotiable. The only question is what you're going to do about it."

His words hit harder than she'd expected, cutting through her anger to something more vulnerable underneath. She wanted to argue, to maintain her fury because it felt safer than the alternative. Accepting that her old life was truly gone.

"So what, you expect me to just slide into her place? Live in some dead woman's shadow?"

"No one's asking you to replace her." Sam's voice was firm, brooking no argument. "You're not her, and we both know that. But like it or not, you're here now. And pretending this isn't happening won't change that fact."

"I don't belong here," she said, but the words felt hollow even as she spoke them.

"You don't belong there anymore either." The gentleness in his voice made it worse somehow. "If that portal brought you here, maybe it was because this is where you need to be. You can be angry about it—hell, you should be. But anger won't change reality."

The fight drained out of her slowly, like air from a punctured tire. She turned to stare out the front window at the head of the room at the unfamiliar-familiar city beyond, her reflection ghostlike in the glass.

Sam showed her to a small guest room with the same quiet efficiency he'd displayed all day. It was simple but comfortable. Clean sheets, soft pillows, and a window that looked out on a tree-lined street that could have been from her world.

"You can stay here as long as you need," he said, lingering in the doorway. "I'll work on getting you set up with your own place, new identity, whatever you need to build a life here."

The casual way he mentioned building a life here made the reality of the situation crash over her again. This wasn't temporary. This was her new existence, whether she wanted it or not.

"Sam?" Her voice was smaller than she'd intended. "Tell me about her. About... me. The one you knew."

Something in his expression shifted, pain flickering across his features like shadows cast by firelight. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, his gaze growing distant.

"She was brilliant," he said finally. "Sharp as hell, with instincts that could cut through any lie or deception. She specialized in intelligence work—tracking people who didn't want to be found, uncovering connections others missed. She came into our world during the hunt for the Winter Soldier, back when he was still... when he was still HYDRA's weapon."

Her stomach clenched at the mention of the Winter Soldier. A killer in her world, same as in this one, it seemed. 

"She was the one who helped Steve and Natasha track him down," Sam continued, his voice growing softer. "And when we finally found him, when we realized he could be saved instead of just stopped... she fought for that. Fought to bring him back from the darkness."

The name hit her like a physical blow. Bucky Barnes. The Winter Soldier had a real name, a real identity. 

"After that, she stayed close to the team," Sam went on. "Worked missions with us, became part of the family. She was brave, loyal, never hesitated to put herself in harm's way if it meant protecting innocent people or helping the team." His voice caught slightly. "She saved my life more than once. Saved all our lives."

The grief in his voice was palpable, a living thing that filled the space between them. She found herself holding her breath, afraid to disturb the weight of his memories but wanting him to continue.

"She mattered," he said simply. And yet, the effect — the emotion on his face — was devastating. 

She didn't ask how the other version of her had died. The pain etched into every line of Sam's expression was answer enough. Some wounds were too fresh to probe, even three years later.

Sam moved to leave, but her voice stopped him at the threshold.

"The Winter Soldier... that's Bucky Barnes, isn't it?"

He went absolutely still, tension radiating from his frame like heat from a furnace.

"In my world," she continued, forcing the words past the tightness in her throat, "the Winter Soldier died. Steve Rogers killed him during the fall of SHIELD. It was the only way to stop him." She hesitated, then added, "I heard you and Strange talking earlier. About... him."

Sam turned slowly, his expression carefully controlled but his eyes dark with something that might have been worry or fear or protective instinct. Maybe all three.

"It's better if you don't know," he said quietly, each word chosen with surgical precision. "Not yet."

The finality in his voice left no room for argument. He left her alone with her questions and the growing certainty that whatever connection existed between her and this world's version of the Winter Soldier, it was going to change everything. 

Why did the other version of her help him? What was different about their relationship that Sam seemed so on edge about? 

She sat on the edge of the unfamiliar bed in the unfamiliar room, staring out at the unfamiliar-familiar street, and wondered if there was any such thing as fate. Or if the universe was just crueler than she'd ever imagined.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sam was a good man, that became clear within hours of meeting him. The kind of good that ran bone-deep, expressed not in grand gestures but in small consistencies. He checked in without hovering, offered help without condescension, and by the third day had somehow managed to secure her an apartment only six blocks from his brownstone. When she'd asked how he'd pulled that off so quickly in New York's brutal housing market, he'd just smiled and said he knew people.

She could see why they'd chosen him to carry the shield. His moral compass alone was seemingly larger than life.

Still, living under his roof felt like wearing clothes that didn't quite fit. Not because Sam was unkind. If anything, he was almost painfully considerate, the way people are when they're afraid of breaking something fragile. It was the weight of expectation that pressed against her shoulders, the careful way he sometimes caught himself mid-sentence, as if he'd been about to say something meant for someone else.

Someone who looked exactly like her. Someone who was dead.

She threw herself into research with the desperate focus of someone trying to solve her own existence. Hunched over her laptop at Sam's kitchen table, she devoured everything she could find about this world's history. The Avengers Initiative. The Chitauri invasion. The fall of SHIELD and rise of HYDRA. The Sokovia Accords. Thanos and the Blip—five years when half of all life simply ceased to exist, then returned as suddenly as it had vanished.

The broad strokes matched her world's timeline, but the details were all wrong. Like looking at a painting that had been copied by someone with imperfect memory. Close enough to be familiar, different enough to be deeply unsettling.

What disturbed her most wasn't the differences themselves, but the growing realization that she wore the face of a woman who had lived through these events, who had bled and fought and sacrificed alongside Earth's mightiest heroes. Every record she found mentioned her. Intelligence reports signed with her name, mission debriefs that referenced her tactical assessments, personnel files that listed her as an active associate of the Avengers until three years ago.

And then, abruptly, the records stopped.

Sam's grief haunted the spaces between them like smoke. She'd catch him looking at her sometimes, as if he could will her to be someone else through sheer force of longing. When their eyes met, he'd remember himself and look away, but not before she glimpsed the disappointment that flickered across his features. Brief as lightning, but it left its mark.

She understood. But that didn't make it hurt less.

The day after she'd arrived, Sam's friend Joaquin Torres had shown up with a laptop bag and an easy grin that transformed the heavy atmosphere in the brownstone. Young, maybe mid-twenties, with the kind of boyish charm that made people trust him instinctively. More importantly, he looked at her without the weight of recognition, treating her like a person instead of a ghost wearing familiar skin. He hadn’t known her, the other version of her, Sam had told her. Much to her silent relief — a fresh human interaction was much needed. 

"Alright," he'd said, settling at the kitchen table and cracking open his laptop. "Let's get you a new identity. Technically, the old you is listed as deceased, which creates some interesting paperwork challenges. But nothing we can't handle."

His fingers flew across the keyboard with practiced ease, pulling up forms and databases with the casual expertise of someone who'd done this before. She found herself relaxing for the first time since falling through that portal, grateful to be treated like herself…whoever that was now.

By the second day, curiosity got the better of her.

"Did she, the other me, have any family?" she asked, trying to keep her tone casual while her hands twisted together under the table. "Husband, boyfriend, anyone who might be looking for me?"

Joaquin glanced up from his screen, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "Let me check... okay, parents died when she was eleven—" Her stomach clenched. Her parents, the ones in her world, had died around the same time. "—grandparents took her in but passed right before the Blip. No siblings listed." He scrolled further, eyebrows rising. "But damn, look at these connections. Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Sam obviously. Tony Stark had you on his personal payroll after the whole SHIELD thing went sideways in 2014. You ran in some serious circles."

He leaned back, scanning the screen with obvious admiration. "No marriage records, no registered domestic partnerships. But there's some interesting cross-references here..." His grin faltered slightly as his eyes focused on something specific. "Hey, did Sam mention Bucky? Because there's quite a bit of documentation linking you two, and I'm talking—"

He stopped. The words died in his throat as he looked up and saw her expression.

The confusion must have been written across her face in bold letters, because Joaquin's boyish enthusiasm dimmed like someone had turned down his brightness settings. His gaze flicked from her to the laptop screen and back again, and she watched understanding dawn in his eyes with all the subtlety of a freight train.

"Oh." The word came out small, uncertain. "Judging by the look on your face... Sam hasn't talked to you about this yet."

"No," she said carefully, studying his suddenly nervous posture. "He hasn't."

Joaquin shifted in his chair, angling the laptop away from her line of sight with movements that screamed guilt. His cheeks flushed pink, and when he spoke again, his voice had lost all its earlier confidence.

"Listen, if Sam hasn't brought it up, there's probably a good reason. Maybe it's... maybe it's not important right now."

The lie was so transparent she almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

"Something on that screen you don't want me to see, Joaquin?"

"No! Nothing like that," he said too quickly, his voice cracking on the denial. He clutched the laptop closer to his chest like a shield. "It's just... if Sam thinks you're not ready to hear about it yet, then maybe..."

He trailed off, realizing he was only making it worse. She let the silence stretch, watching him squirm, filing away every nervous tic and unconscious gesture. In her experience, people revealed more in their attempts to hide things than they ever did when trying to be honest.

Finally, she nodded slowly, as if accepting his non-explanation. "Okay."

But the damage was done. This was the third time Bucky Barnes's name had surfaced in conversation, always followed by the same pattern—hesitation, deflection, someone changing the subject or ending the conversation entirely. Whatever connection had existed between her dimensional twin and this man, it was significant enough that Sam couldn't even bring himself to discuss it.

The questions multiplied like cancer cells in her mind. Who had Bucky Barnes been to her? An ally? An enemy? Had they worked together, or had she been hunting him? Was he the reason she'd died, or was there something else she wasn’t seeing? 

The not-knowing was worse than any answer could be.

When Joaquin packed up his laptop that evening, giving her an awkward yet genuine goodbye, she remained at the kitchen table staring at the stack of files and printouts she'd accumulated. The apartment Sam had found for her was ready—bare bones, but functional. She could move out tomorrow, start building something that resembled a life.

But first, she had research to do.

She waited until she heard Sam's bedroom door close, then fired up her own laptop and got to work. If no one would tell her about Bucky Barnes, she'd find out for herself.

The internet was a treasure trove of declassified documents, survivor testimonies, and conspiracy theories that turned out to be disturbingly accurate. She cross-referenced names, dates, and events, building a timeline that slowly painted a picture of James Buchanan Barnes—friend of Steve Rogers, sergeant in the 107th Infantry, presumed dead in 1945.

Except he hadn't died. HYDRA had found him, broken him, turned him into their perfect weapon. The Winter Soldier had been a man stolen from time and stripped of his identity, programmed to kill without question or memory.

Her hands trembled as she read mission reports that detailed his crimes. Political assassinations spanning decades. Scientists who'd gotten too close to inconvenient truths. Whistleblowers who'd tried to expose corruption. All of them silenced by a ghost with a metal arm and empty eyes.

But the story didn't end there. In 2014, Steve Rogers had found his childhood friend buried beneath layers of programming and torture. Had fought to bring him back, to restore the man HYDRA had tried to erase. The process had taken years of therapy, rehabilitation, deprogramming. But it worked.

Bucky Barnes was no longer the Winter Soldier. He was an Avenger. A former Congressman. He had rewritten his own story.

Her breath caught as she found what she'd been looking for: a digital roster buried in the aftermath of the Sokovia Accords. James Buchanan Barnes – Status: Active. Affiliation: New Avengers Initiative.

He was alive. Reformed. Fighting for the good guys now, apparently.

The knowledge sat in her stomach like a stone. Here, according to Joaquin's nervous reaction, he'd been connected to her in some significant way.

The irony was so sharp it could cut. A brainwashed assassin from the 1940’s connected to her? Were they friends? Had he killed someone she knew? She had no idea. There were no records about his personal life online. 

She stared at the screen until her eyes burned, then made a decision that felt both inevitable and insane. If Sam wouldn't tell her the truth, if Joaquin was too loyal or too scared to fill in the gaps, then she'd get her answers from the source.

She was going to find Bucky Barnes.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Her new apartment felt like a train station, a place to exist rather than live between stops. The walls were still institutional white, the floors bare hardwood that echoed with every step. Sam had helped her haul in the essentials: a mattress, a couch from a secondhand store, a small table that wobbled when she put weight on it.

It should have felt like freedom. Instead, it felt like exile.

She didn't linger. Twenty minutes after Sam left, promising to check in tomorrow, she was studying transit maps and plotting her route to the New Avengers facility. The original Stark Tower had been sold, but the team had established a new base of operations in the same building, now deemed as the Watchtower. 

The evening commute provided perfect cover. Thousands of people moving with purpose, no one paying attention to one more face in the crowd. She joined the stream of humanity flowing toward the subway, her heart rate steady despite the magnitude of what she was planning.

Breaking into a superhero stronghold probably wasn't her smartest decision, but she'd made a career out of risky choices. This felt like just another case to crack, another locked door that needed opening.

The Watchtower rose thirty stories into the Manhattan sky, its glass facade reflecting the dying light of sunset. Even from the sidewalk, she could see the security measures. Cameras at every angle, discrete guards positioned at key points, biometric scanners flanking the main entrance.

She approached with the confidence of someone who belonged, shoulders back, stride purposeful. Sometimes the best disguise was attitude.

"Ma'am." A security guard stepped into her path before she'd made it halfway to the door. Young, alert, with the kind of bearing that screamed military background. His partner moved to flank her, casual but deliberate. "I'll need to see some identification."

She reached for her wallet, movements slow and non-threatening. "I'm here to see James Barnes. He's expecting me."

That got their attention. Too much attention. She saw the micro-expressions that flashed between them: surprise, confusion. The lead guard's hand drifted toward the radio clipped to his vest.

"You'll need clearance for that, ma'am. And I don't see you on any authorized visitor lists."

Behind them, the building's main doors hissed shut with hydraulic finality. The message was clear — she wasn’t getting in.

She maintained her smile, friendly and understanding. "Of course. My mistake. I'll just call ahead next time."

She turned and walked away, feeling their eyes on her back until she disappeared into the evening crowd. 

An hour later, she was back.

The Tower looked different at night. Imposing, fortress-like, its upper floors glowing against the darkness. She'd spent the time walking the perimeter, mapping service entrances and delivery bays, timing guard rotations and identifying blind spots in the surveillance coverage.

The rear of the building faced a narrow alley used for deliveries and maintenance. Less glamorous than the front entrance, but infinitely more accessible. She positioned herself in the shadows between two dumpsters and waited.

Patience was a detective's best friend. After twenty minutes, a catering van rumbled into the alley, its headlights cutting through the gloom. She watched the driver show his credentials to the guard, saw the heavy security door roll up to reveal a loading dock beyond.

As the van backed up to the platform, she moved.

She slipped alongside the van as the driver climbed out, using it as cover while boxes and trays were unloaded. The guard's attention was focused on his clipboard, checking items off a list with mechanical precision.

When he turned to examine a particularly large crate, she made her move. Three quick steps took her to the door, another two got her inside. The loading bay was cavernous and dimly lit, filled with the hum of machinery and the distant echo of voices.

She pressed herself against a concrete pillar, heart hammering as footsteps approached. A maintenance worker in coveralls walked past, whistling tunelessly, his footsteps fading as he disappeared around a corner.

She was in.

The Tower's interior was a maze of corridors and security checkpoints, but she'd navigated worse. She found a service stairwell — no cameras, minimal foot traffic—and began to climb. By the fifteenth floor, her legs burned and her lungs worked like bellows, but she pressed on.

The residential levels had to be near the top. That's where she'd find him.

Twenty-eighth floor. Twenty-ninth. Thirtieth.

The final door was different from the others. Heavier, with a biometric scanner and keypad that spoke of serious security measures. This had to be it. The private residential area where the Avengers lived when they weren't saving the world.

She stood before the scanner, knowing she had no way past it, knowing this was where her amateur breaking-and-entering skills reached their limit. But she'd come too far to turn back now.

"Who are you?"

The voice came from behind her, low and accented and sharp as a blade.

She spun, instinct driving her hand toward a weapon she didn't carry, muscles coiling for a fight that might be her last.

A woman stood at the mouth of the stairwell. Small, compact, with platinum blonde hair that caught the corridor's LED lighting. But it was her eyes that made the breath stick in her throat. Dark, calculating. This wasn't building security. This was someone far more dangerous.

The woman moved with liquid grace, each step deliberate and controlled. She wore dark tactical clothing that seemed to absorb light, and something about her posture—coiled, ready, predatory—set off every alarm bell in her brain.

"I asked you a question," the woman said, stepping closer. "How did you get past security?"

Her mouth had gone desert-dry, but she forced her voice to remain steady. "I could ask you the same thing."

The woman's lips curved in what might charitably be called a smile. It didn't reach her eyes. "Cute. Very cute. But I live here. You, on the other hand, definitely do not." Another step closer. "So let's try this again. Who are you, and what are you doing on a restricted floor?"

The accent was unmistakably Russian now that she heard more of it. Sharp consonants softened by years of speaking English, but the underlying cadence still there. The woman's stance was that of a trained fighter. She was balanced on the balls of her feet, hands loose at her sides but ready to move in any direction. Everything about her screamed potential danger.

"Look," she said, raising her hands in a gesture of surrender, "I'm just trying to find someone. I don't want any trouble."

"Then you came to the wrong place." The woman tilted her head, studying her with a vague intensity. "You look familiar. Have we met?"

The question sent ice through her veins. Another person who might recognize her face, who knew the woman she'd replaced. But this one's recognition carried a different quality. Not grief or longing, but something sharper. More analytical.

She didn’t know her. The old her. Not directly, at least. 

"I don't think so," she said carefully.

The blonde's sharp eyes never left her face, cataloging every feature with unsettling precision. "Hmm. You remind me of someone. I cannot place it exactly, but you have a very familiar face." She paused, head tilting further. "Are you a reporter?"

The question was so unexpected she almost laughed. "Do I look like a reporter to you?"

"Yes," the woman answered with complete seriousness. "Actually, you do. You have excellent bone structure. Very photogenic. Strong jawline, well-shaped eyebrows. The kind of face they put on Channel 9 news, no?" She gestured vaguely at her features. "Really quite striking, actually. And we get reporters trying to sneak in here all the time. You would not believe the lengths they go to. But none have made it this far before, which makes you either very skilled or very stupid."

Her mouth opened and closed wordlessly. Was this woman seriously critiquing her facial symmetry in the middle of what felt like a life-or-death situation? "...Thank you? I think? But I'm not a reporter."

The blonde hummed thoughtfully, those dark eyes scanning her from head to toe and back again with predatory interest. "I believe you, strange woman. Somehow, I do. But that makes this worse, doesn't it? Because if you are not a reporter, then why break into a tower full of superhumans and trained killers? Seems very..." She paused, searching for the right word. "Stupid. Or very desperate."

The weight of the moment pressed down on her shoulders. She could lie—make up some story about being lost, about mistaking this for a different building. But something about this woman's piercing gaze told her lies would be spotted immediately and punished accordingly.

So she chose the truth. Raw, unfiltered, desperate truth.

"Because I'm not from this world." The words tumbled out faster than she could stop them. "I know how insane that sounds, but apparently I'm from a parallel dimension—almost identical to this one—and a week ago I fell through some kind of glowing portal that spat me out here in New York. Sam Wilson found me, helped me out, told me I can't go home."

She ran a hand through her hair, exhaustion and frustration bleeding into her voice. "But the version of me that lived here? She's dead. Has been for three years. And everyone keeps looking at me like I'm her ghost, keeps mentioning James Barnes like I should understand what he meant to her. So yeah, I broke in here to find him. To get some goddamn answers about who I was supposed to be."

The confession left her feeling hollow, stripped bare. She'd laid all her cards on the table for a complete stranger who could probably kill her seventeen different ways without breaking a sweat.

Not one of her brightest moments. But somehow, it had felt right. 

The woman stared at her for a long moment, expression unreadable. Then something shifted in her features. A flicker of recognition, quickly suppressed but not fast enough.

"What is your name?" she asked softly, and there was something almost gentle in her tone now.

She hesitated for just a beat before giving her real name. Not the fabricated identity Joaquin had helped create, but the name she'd been born with.

The effect was instantaneous. The woman's carefully neutral expression crumbled, revealing shock, disbelief, and something deeper. A profound sadness that seemed to age her years in seconds.

"Bozhe moy," she whispered, the Russian slipping out unbidden. Her shoulders sagged as if an invisible weight had settled on them. "Yes... I know your story. All of it. Oh….this will not be easy. But he needs to know you are here."

She stepped closer, extending her hand with careful deliberation. "My name is Yelena Belova. I am... an associate of Bucky's. A friend. I can take you to him now, if that is what you truly want."

Her throat constricted as she stared at the offered hand. Every instinct screamed warnings, but she'd come too far to turn back now. She reached out, gripping Yelena's fingers.

"It's nice to meet you," she said, her voice barely steady. "Did you... did you know her? The other me?"

Yelena's smile was hollow, haunted. "No. But I know of you. We all do." The words carried the weight of a funeral dirge. "Come. I will take you to him. You’re on the wrong floor."

The elevator ride felt endless, each floor they passed stretching the silence tighter between them. Yelena stood with her arms crossed, staring at her boots with the intensity of someone trying to solve the world's most complex equation. Her bottom lip was caught between her teeth, brow furrowed in deep concentration.

The quiet became unbearable.

"You know," she said, clearing her throat, "everyone who seems to know about this other version of me... you all look at me like I'm some kind of ghost."

That pulled Yelena's gaze up, one eyebrow arching with sharp precision. Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "That is because you are a ghost. You are supposed to be dead here. Did you forget that small detail?"

The bluntness hit harder than expected, making her chest tight. "No, I remember. But it feels like more than that. You don't just look at me like I don't belong. You look at me like you're afraid."

Yelena's exhale was long and weary, her shoulders dropping as if she'd been carrying an invisible burden. When she spoke again, her accent thickened with emotion. "We are not afraid of you. We are afraid of what your being here will do to the people we care about."

"What do you—"

"You will see soon enough." Yelena's tone brooked no argument, but her expression softened slightly. She reached out, resting a careful hand on her arm, the touch cautious. "Just... be gentle with him. Please. He has been through enough."

The plea left her speechless, questions multiplying like cancer cells in her mind. All she could manage was a stiff nod.

The elevator chimed softly, doors sliding open with a whisper of hydraulics.

She followed Yelena into what was clearly a common area, all gleaming surfaces and floor-to-ceiling windows that offered breathtaking views of Manhattan. The space was dotted with comfortable seating, state-of-the-art monitors, and a conference table that could seat a dozen people.

Four figures stood around that table, all wearing matching tactical uniforms with red "A" emblems on their chests. Their conversation died the moment they noticed the newcomers.

The tallest of them—a blonde man with the kind of square jaw that belonged on recruitment posters—straightened immediately. His blue eyes narrowed with suspicion as they fixed on her. "Yelena," he said, his voice carrying authority and wariness in equal measure. "Who the hell is this?"

Before Yelena could answer, the large bearded man beside him stepped forward with a booming laugh that filled the entire space. His presence was overwhelming. all warmth and barely contained energy, like a bear-sized golden retriever.

"Ah, look at this! A new face, and such a lovely one!" He spread his arms wide as if preparing to envelope her in a bear hug, his voice thick with Russian accent and unmistakable joy. "Finally, some beauty around here to balance out all these ugly faces. You are... how do Americans say... a sight for sore eyes, da?"

Heat flooded her cheeks. She stood frozen, caught between mortification and the strange urge to smile despite everything.

Yelena groaned audibly, dragging a hand down her face. "Dad, stop."

"What?" The older man looked genuinely confused, then winked at her with shameless charm. "I only speak truth. Your mother, if she were here, she would agree—this one has excellent genetics. Very fine bone structure."

"Stop talking, Alexei," Yelena snapped, her tone sharp enough to cut glass. She turned back to the group, exhaling through her nose like wrangling her father was a full-time occupation. "This is—" She glanced back, seeking silent permission, then said the name quietly, as if she knew what was about to happen.

The effect was immediate and devastating.

The brunette woman—young, maybe mid-twenties, with energy crackling faintly around her fingers—went completely still. The shaggy-haired man in civilian clothes muttered something under his breath and took an unconscious step backward. Even Yelena's father sobered, his jovial expression fading into something more complex.

But it was the blonde man's reaction that made her stomach plummet.

His entire demeanor shifted, professionalism giving way to something colder, more calculating. He stepped closer, hands settling on his hips as he studied her like she was evidence at a crime scene.

Recognition flickered across his features as he processed her name, cross-referencing it with files in his memory. His expression shifted into something caught between a smirk and a sneer—the look of someone who'd just solved an unpleasant puzzle.

"I know that name," he said, his voice taking on a mocking edge. "Wasn't that the name of Barnes' dead girlfriend?"

The revelation hit her like a sledgehammer to the chest.

Dead girlfriend.

The words ricocheted through her skull, each repetition more devastating than the last. Not partner. Not colleague. Not enemy. Girlfriend. The other version of her, the woman whose shadow she was apparently condemned to live in, had been dating James Buchanan Barnes.

The Winter Soldier.

With a known killer.

The irony was so vicious it threatened to tear her apart from the inside. In her world, she'd spent years hunting down monsters, bringing justice to families destroyed by violence. Here, apparently, she'd been sharing a bed with one of the worst monsters of all.

Her vision began to tunnel, darkness creeping in at the edges like spilled ink. Her lungs had forgotten how to function, each breath coming in short, desperate gasps that never seemed to bring enough oxygen. The panic attack was inevitable now—her body's revolt against information too massive, too impossible to process.

Heat flooded her face, a burning flush of shock and shame and something else she couldn't name. Her hands began to shake, trembling at her sides as if her entire nervous system was short-circuiting.

"Hey." Yelena's voice cut through the static filling her head, firm but gentle. Warm fingers wrapped around her arm, anchoring her to reality when everything else felt like it was spinning away. "Breathe with me. Just breathe. In and out."

She shot a murderous glare at Walker, her voice cracking with fury. "Excellent timing, you absolute moron. Really thoughtful approach there."

Walker raised his hands in mock surrender, but his expression remained coldly entertained, like he was watching a fascinating psychological experiment unfold. "What? I figured she already knew! Isn't that the whole reason she's here?"

Alexei, blissfully oblivious to the emotional carnage unfolding around him, chimed in with maddening cheerfulness. "Of course she is the girlfriend! Look at her—she is exact copy of girl in photographs on Winter Soldier's nightstand. Very beautiful, very tragic, like heroine from Dostoyevsky novel." He beamed at her with paternal pride that made her want to scream. "You loved him deeply, da? Was passionate romance? He was good lover?"

"Dad!" Yelena's voice cracked like a whip, her glare hot enough to melt steel. "You are making everything worse!"

But Alexei only shrugged, completely immune to his daughter's homicidal expression. "What? I only speak truth everyone is thinking. And besides, is much better to be remembered as someone's great love than to be forgotten completely, no? It is romantic tragedy, like in great Russian stories."

The words were meant to comfort, but they only drove the knife deeper. Great love. Romantic tragedy. She was standing in a room full of people who remembered a version of her that had been intimately, desperately connected to a man who represented everything she'd spent her life fighting against.

Her hands clenched into fists, nails biting crescents into her palms as she fought to stay upright. The walls seemed to press closer, the ceiling lower, the air thicker. Everyone's stares felt like physical weight pressing down on her shoulders until she thought her knees might buckle.

This was wrong. Fundamentally, cosmically wrong. She shouldn't be here, shouldn't be wearing this face, shouldn't be expected to carry the emotional baggage of a woman who'd made choices that defied everything she believed in.

But she was trapped. Caught between worlds, between identities, between a past that wasn't hers and a future that terrified her beyond reason.

"What the hell are you people talking about?" she whispered, her voice barely audible above the thundering of her own pulse. "Is this some kind of sick joke?"

The pity in their faces was worse than cruelty would have been. At least cruelty would have given her something to fight against. This careful sympathy, these cautious expressions—they made her feel like a wild animal everyone was afraid might bolt or attack without warning.

Everyone except Walker, who continued studying her with clinical detachment, and Alexei, who kept rambling about the beauty of doomed love.

"You need to slow down your breathing," Yelena urged, gripping her shoulders with steady hands and forcing eye contact. "Focus on my voice. Just breathe."

But the command fell flat. The air had turned to concrete in her lungs. The room spun around her like a carnival ride gone wrong, and she could feel herself fragmenting, splitting apart at invisible seams.

She tore herself free from Yelena's grip and stumbled backward, her body moving toward the elevator of its own accord. Her chest heaved with each stuttering breath, vision blurring as tears she refused to acknowledge burned behind her eyes.

"Listen to me," she managed to choke out, every word sharp and desperate. "I don't know what twisted game you think you're playing, but whoever you think I am, I can't be her. I won't be her. I'm my own person, and I'm not from this world, and I've never even met James Barnes—"

Walker's eyebrow arched with infuriating calm. "Well, sweetheart," he drawled, "you're about to."

Behind her, the elevator gave a soft mechanical hiss.

The doors slid open.

She turned, ready to throw herself into whatever escape the elevator offered, ready to run until her legs gave out or her heart exploded—

And froze.

James Barnes stood there.

To her, he should have been nothing more than a name in old files, a face in grainy photographs, a shadow from history books. But in the flesh, he was devastatingly, undeniably real. Taller than she'd expected, broader through the shoulders. Dark hair fell in waves past his collar, shot through with faint silver that caught the light. His beard was neatly trimmed, dusted with gray that spoke of years and battles and sleepless nights. And his eyes — pale blue like a winter sky, sharp and intelligent. And currently wide with shock.

But it wasn't his appearance that stole her breath and left her feeling like she'd been struck by lightning.

It was the way he looked at her.

He'd been stepping out of the elevator, probably heading to some routine meeting or training session, and he'd frozen mid-stride. His hand was still braced against the elevator frame, knuckles white with tension. His chest rose and fell in sharp, uneven breaths, like someone had just punched all the air out of his lungs.

Those ice-blue eyes locked onto her face with an intensity that felt like being dissected, like he was looking straight through time and death and impossibility to see something that shouldn't exist. The expression on his face — raw disbelief warring with desperate hope, grief colliding with wonder—made something twist violently in her chest.

To her, he was a stranger. A name from her nightmares made flesh.

To him, she must be resurrection walking.

Her name fell from his lips like a prayer, broken and reverent and so full of longing it made her want to run screaming. His voice cracked under the weight of that single word, and his entire body seemed to lean forward, drawn by invisible strings.

He moved toward her slowly, as if afraid she might vanish if he startled her. Every step was careful, measured, like he was approaching something that might disappear any second. She wished she could right now.

His expression was torn wide open, every emotion playing across his features without filter or pretense.

She couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. For one suspended moment, she was caught in the gravitational pull of his gaze, trapped in the way he looked at her like she was the answer to prayers he'd stopped believing would be answered.

His hand twitched at his side, fingers flexing like he wanted to reach for her, to touch her face and confirm she was real and not just another cruel dream.

And then reality crashed back down on her like a tidal wave.

Her chest seized with pure, primal panic. Ice flooded her veins, her body's fight-or-flight response kicking into overdrive. She stumbled backward, shaking her head violently, trying to break whatever invisible connection had snapped taut between them.

"Don't—" Her voice shattered on the word. "Don't come near me."

He stopped immediately, but the damage was done. The anguish that flooded his features was unbearable, like she'd physically struck him. His lips parted, words trembling on his tongue, confusion bleeding through the desperate hope.

"It's okay," he said softly, his voice gentle in a way that made her want to scream. "It's me. It's Bucky. I don't understand what happened, how you're here, but it's going to be okay—"

"I don't know you!" The words exploded out of her, sharp and laced with mounting hysteria. She wrapped her arms around herself like armor, her whole body shaking with the effort of holding herself together. "I don't know who the hell you think I am, but I'm not her!"

He said her name again, softer this time, like he was trying to gentle a frightened animal. The sound of it in his voice, so full of history and intimacy, made her feel like her skin was crawling.

Before she could respond, before she could scream or run or collapse entirely, Yelena stepped forward. She positioned herself subtly between them, one hand raised in a calming gesture that encompassed both of them.

"She's not who you think," Yelena said quietly, her voice cutting through the tension like a blade. Her gaze flicked between Bucky's devastated expression and her trembling form. "She's not the woman you knew, Bucky. She's a variant. From another world, another timeline. She's not... she's not her."

The words landed like physical blows. Bucky staggered backward, his face cycling through disbelief, understanding, and a grief so profound it seemed to hollow him out from the inside.

But his eyes never left her face. Never stopped drinking her in like she might disappear at any moment.

She wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole. Wanted to wake up from this nightmare and find herself back in her own world, her own life, where none of this impossible situation existed.

"This is getting incredibly uncomfortable," the young man with shaggy hair muttered from somewhere behind the group.

And it was. The tension in the air was thick enough to choke on. The weight of everyone's stares, the pity and confusion and worry—it was suffocating. Worst of all was the way Bucky kept looking at her, like the sight of her was simultaneously healing and destroying him.

She hated it. Hated this twisted version of fate that had dropped her into someone else's tragedy. Hated being expected to carry someone else's love, someone else's loss. Hated the way this man, this killer she was supposed to believe had been redeemed, was looking at her like she held his heart in her hands.

She'd come here for answers, but the truth was worse than any mystery could have been.

So she did the only thing that made sense anymore.

She ran.

Her detective training had kept her in good shape, years of chasing suspects through back alleys and up fire escapes had given her speed and endurance. She used all of it now, lunging toward the elevator with desperate urgency.

Behind her, she heard voices calling out—Yelena shouting her name, someone cursing in Russian, the sound of movement as superhuman reflexes kicked into gear.

But she was already inside, her finger jabbing frantically at the door close button as if her life depended on it.

The last thing she saw before the doors slid shut was Bucky's face—devastated, lost, reaching a hand out toward her like he was trying to stop her from disappearing all over again.

The moment she was alone, the adrenaline that had been holding her together evaporated. Her knees buckled, and she slid down the elevator wall until she was sitting on the cold metal floor, her head buried in her hands.

And for the first time since that portal had ripped her away from everything she knew, she broke.

The sobs came in waves, ugly and harsh and desperate. They tore out of her chest like they'd been trapped there for days, weeks, a lifetime. She cried for the life she'd lost, for the world she'd never see again, for the impossible situation she'd been thrust into without her consent.

She cried for the woman who'd worn her face and made choices she couldn't understand.

She cried for the man upstairs who'd looked at her like she was his whole world coming back from the dead.

Most of all, she cried because somewhere deep down, in a place she didn't want to acknowledge, she'd felt something when their eyes met. Something that terrified her more than any truth she'd uncovered.

Recognition.

Not of him, but of the way he'd looked at her. Like she was home.

And she had no idea what that meant, or what she was supposed to do with the guilt that had made a home in her heart. 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sam showed up at her apartment a few hours later, and for the first time since she'd met him, he was furious.

"What the hell were you thinking?" The door had barely clicked shut before his voice cracked across the room like a whip, sharp enough to make her spine straighten reflexively. His jaw was clenched so tight she could see the muscle jumping beneath his skin, his shoulders squared and rigid like he'd been holding onto that rage through the entire drive over. She didn’t doubt it. "Sneaking into the Watchtower like that? I told you—I told you—to keep a low profile."

"Oh, so now this is all my fault?" The words launched out of her before she could stop them, her finger jabbing toward his chest like a weapon. Heat flooded her veins, her pulse already wild and erratic, her voice shaking with something deeper than just rage. Desperation, maybe, or the kind of fear that could only be fought with fury. "You expect me to sit here, smile, and nod at every half-assed, vague non-answer you people throw at me? Just twiddle my damn thumbs in a world where the other me is dead?" Her voice cracked on the last word, raw and jagged. "I'm a detective, Sam, not some helpless civilian you can placate with scraps."

For a moment, Sam blinked like she'd blindsided him with a truth he hadn't bothered to consider. The fire in his eyes flickered, uncertainty creeping in around the edges. "Okay. I didn't…" He exhaled slowly, his anger deflating slightly as understanding dawned. "I didn't think about it like that. But when you put it that way, yeah, it makes sense, but—"

"Oh, for God's sake." She groaned, both hands flying to her hair, fingers tangling in the strands and tugging until her scalp burned with the sharp bite of pain. It grounded her, kept her from flying apart completely. Her chest was heaving now, words tearing out faster than she could filter them, like a dam had burst. "Were you seriously not going to tell me that your version of me, that she…was with the Winter Soldier?"

The silence that followed was deafening. Sam's gaze locked on hers, heavy and unblinking, his expression shifting into something guarded and final.

"No," he said finally, the word flat and unyielding as stone. "I wasn't planning on it."

Her stomach plummeted, a cold wash of betrayal flooding through her. Her throat constricted. "What the fuck, Sam? Why wouldn't you tell me that?"

He threw his hands up in exasperation, the sound of his sigh filling the cramped space between them like a punctured tire. "Why would I? What possible good would that do you?" His voice climbed, defensive and sharp. "You never knew him in your world. All it would do is create exactly what's happening now. Chaos, confusion. Pain for everyone involved."

She felt her mouth fall open, the words catching like glass shards on her tongue, but he barreled forward before she could speak.

"And how would it help him?" His voice cracked this time, a raw edge breaking through the frustration like a fault line splitting open. His hands fell back to his sides, limp and defeated, like the weight of everything had finally dragged him down. "It would just rip him apart all over again. You don't understand…he never recovered from losing her. From losing you." Sam shook his head, swallowing hard, his Adam's apple bobbing with the effort. "And now? Seeing your face again, hearing your voice, watching you move like her but not being her…" His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "I can't even imagine what that did to him."

Her breath caught, sharp and ragged, like she'd just taken a sucker punch to the throat. Her anger stuttered and died for one disorienting second, replaced by something she couldn't name. Guilt? Sympathy? The strange, hollow ache of mourning someone she'd never been?

Her voice dropped, barely more than a whisper, fragile as spun glass. "Was he the one who called you? Told you I came to the Tower?"

Sam looked at her then, and there was no anger left in his face. Just a deep tiredness and something that looked disturbingly like pity.

"Of course it was him," he said softly, each word deliberate and weighted. "He's my best friend."

He let that hang in the air between them, heavy and damning, like a confession.

"And I know you didn't know," Sam added, his voice quieter still, almost gentle. "But I was just trying to protect him. I've watched him put himself back together piece by piece, and I couldn't…I won't let him fall apart again."

The fight drained out of her like water through a sieve. All the yelling, the accusations, the righteous fury, it all seemed suddenly hollow and pointless as Sam's words echoed inside her skull like a death knell. She collapsed onto the couch, her knees giving out beneath her, elbows braced on her thighs, hands pressing hard against her forehead as if she could physically hold the spiraling pieces of herself together.

The silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating.

"Okay," she finally whispered, the word trembling out of her like a prayer or a surrender. "Fine. You didn't tell me before. But you can tell me now." She lifted her eyes to Sam, and the weight of the question sitting heavy in her chest felt like it might crush her ribs. "What happened to her? The… me from here. How did she die?"

Sam froze, his mouth opening like he was going to speak, but no sound came out. His gaze flickered away from hers, darting toward the window, the floor, anywhere but her face. Like the answer was a wound he couldn't bring himself to reopen, a scab he refused to pick.

The silence stretched taut and unbearable, elastic and ready to snap, until a low voice cut through the tension like a blade.

"She died right after the fight against Thanos."

Her head snapped toward the door so fast her neck protested.

Bucky stood there, framed in the dim amber light from the hallway, his broad shoulders rigid as steel beams, his vibranium hand clenched around the doorframe with enough force that she could hear the wood creaking under the pressure. He looked like he was using it as an anchor, the only thing keeping him upright and steady. His eyes were locked on her, storm-blue and unflinching. So intense it felt like he was trying to memorize every detail of her face, as though looking away would destroy him all over again.

"Bucky—" Sam shot to his feet, tension coiling through his frame like a spring wound too tight. "I told you to wait in the car—"

Bucky didn't look at Sam. Didn't even acknowledge he'd spoken at all.

His gaze remained fixed on her, unblinking, burning through her like he could pin her to the floor with nothing but the weight of his stare. His voice, when it finally came, was steady but saturated with grief so thick and suffocating it seemed to bend the very air around them. He was still looking at her like she was a ghost made flesh, a cruel trick of light and shadow.

He stepped further into the apartment—one deliberate step, no more—like crossing that invisible threshold would mean too much, would shatter some fragile equilibrium he'd spent years building. Even this much proximity felt dangerous, charged with electricity that made her skin prickle. His eyes were sharp and hard as cut glass, but she could see the faint tremor of a storm barely restrained beneath the surface.

"It happened after we all came back. From the Blip. Fifteen days later, to be exact. Some nutjob — mad about the Blip and trying to take it out on the Avengers — broke into her apartment and…killed her. But you don't need to know the details," he said finally, his voice clipped and final. His eyes were damn near black. Hollowed out with grief.

The weight of his words hit her chest like a stone dropped from a great height. She stared back at him, her own words tangled in her throat like barbed wire. Sam shifted awkwardly between them, his expression tight and pale, like he was watching history about to repeat itself in the worst possible way. Maybe he was.

Her jaw clenched, forcing her voice out through the sudden tightness in her throat. "So now you get to decide for me?" The quiet venom in her tone surprised even her, cutting and precise. "You don't get to do that. Just because you knew me in another life doesn't give you the right to—"

"Stop." His voice cracked through hers like a whip, cold and brutal and absolutely final. It froze her mid-sentence, the words dying on her tongue. "I didn't know you. You're not her. You're just a woman wearing her face, carrying her voice, moving through the world like some cosmic joke." Each word was delivered like a physical blow, precise and merciless. "So no, you don't get the right to know how she died. You don't get to carry her memories or her pain or her love. All you should be doing is staying the hell away from anything that has to do with her."

Her stomach dropped to her feet, a cold wave of shock and hurt washing over her. She wasn't sure why his words sliced so deep—this man was a stranger, wasn't he? But the raw, bleeding wounds in his voice told her otherwise. Every syllable sounded like it cost him blood to speak.

Her chest burned with indignation and something sharper. Rejection, maybe, or the sting of being reduced to nothing more than a cruel facsimile. "I don't want any part of this world, Barnes," she shot back, watching him flinch—that subtle, involuntary recoil—when his last name hit the air like a curse. "But I'm not wearing anyone's face. This is me. My identity. My body. My life." Her voice rose, shaking with emotion she couldn't contain. "So I'm sorry your girlfriend died, but it's not fair for you to tell me I don't have the right to know what happened when I'm the one who has to live with everyone looking at me like I'm her ghost—"

"Shut up."

The words were a snarl, torn from his throat with a fury so raw and primal it made even Sam take a step back. His voice cracked like thunder, filling every corner of the small room. "Don't fucking say you're sorry. You have no idea who she was…what she meant, what she gave, what she sacrificed. You have no right to even speak her name, let alone wear her face and pretend you understand what any of us lost when she died."

Her chest heaved as white-hot anger surged through her veins like molten metal. "Why are you being such a complete jackass?" she snapped, her voice rising to match his, all pretense of composure abandoned. "You can't take this out on me! This isn't my fault! I didn't ask to be here, I didn't know what I was walking into, I didn't choose to look like her!" The words poured out of her in a torrent, years of frustration and confusion and fear crystallizing into pure rage. "You think I wanted to land in a world where I find out I was apparently dating a mass murderer? In my world, you're a war criminal! A terrorist!"

Something fundamental broke in him then. She could see it happen, the exact moment his carefully constructed composure shattered like glass.

Before she could even draw her next breath, he was there. Impossibly fast, covering the distance between them in a heartbeat. His face was just inches from hers, close enough that she could see the flecks of silver in his blue eyes, could feel the heat radiating off his skin. The air between them vibrated with the force of his fury, electric and dangerous. His eyes had gone nearly black, bottomless and wild, and when he spoke, his voice was molten steel poured over broken glass.

"You need to stop talking. Right now."

But her heart was hammering against her ribs like a caged bird, her throat raw with fury and fear and something else she couldn't name, and she couldn't stop. The words kept coming, sharp and cutting and designed to hurt. "What, does the Winter Soldier not like being reminded of the blood on his hands?" she spat, each word hitting its mark with surgical precision. "You think you get to stand there and act like I'm the monster when it was you? You killed for decades, Barnes. Innocent people. Children, probably. And now you want to be the judge of who deserves answers? That's rich."

His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath the skin, his metal hand curling into a fist at his side with a soft mechanical whir.

"You ruined lives," she pressed on relentlessly, her voice shaking with anger and hurt and the desperate need to make him feel even a fraction of the pain he'd inflicted on her. She didn’t know why. She felt horrible doing it, knew it would solve nothing but create more pain. But she was so mad. So frustrated that everyone was treating her like a scar that hadn’t gone away. Couldn’t they see how alone she felt like this? "Entire families. Hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent people who never even knew your name." 

She laughed, but it was sharp and bitter, more like a sob than anything resembling humor. "But I'm the problem here? Because I look like some woman you couldn't save? Because I'm a reminder that you failed to protect the one thing that mattered to you?"

"Stop." The word broke from him like something vital tearing, guttural and desperate, but she was too far gone to hear it.

"—at least I never became the boogeyman little kids had nightmares about. At least I never let myself become a weapon pointed at the innocent. You're a murderer, Barnes. A murderer trying to play saint, and you have the audacity to act like—"

"Stop it, babe —"

The word slipped out before he could catch it, automatic and devastating. His face changed instantly—shock and raw, bleeding pain flickering across his features like he'd just ripped open a wound that had barely begun to heal. His lips pressed together hard, his eyes wide with something that looked like horror at his own slip, but it was too late. The word was hanging in the air between them, heavy and intimate and absolutely forbidden.

Her stomach lurched violently. The sound of it hit her like a physical blow. Unfamiliar to her but weighted with an intimacy she didn't share, couldn't claim, had no right to. It was a glimpse into someone else's love story, someone else's heart, and she was nothing but an unwelcome intruder. She stepped back sharply, stumbling slightly, as if the word had burned her.

"Don't," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Don't call me that. I'm not her. I'm not—" But she couldn't finish, couldn't voice what they both knew: that she was a pale imitation, a cosmic mistake like he had said. A walking reminder of everything he'd lost.

Sam was there in a flash, planting a firm hand against Bucky's chest, shoving him back a step before things could escalate further. "That's enough," Sam barked, his voice sharp with authority, his eyes darting between them like he was trying to defuse a bomb. "Both of you. Stop this right now."

Bucky froze, his chest heaving with ragged breaths, but his eyes never left her face. He looked utterly shattered, like he wanted to reach for her. Or maybe like he wanted to run as far away as possible. She couldn't tell which, and that uncertainty made everything worse.

Sam's hand stayed firm against Bucky's chest, even as the soldier's breathing began to even out into something resembling normal. His gaze flicked to her — still standing there rigid and trembling, staring at Bucky like she didn't even know what she was looking at anymore, like he was some dangerous animal that might strike at any moment.

Sam made the executive decision first. "We're leaving," he said flatly, not taking his eyes off Bucky. He gave him a sharp nudge toward the door, and Bucky went without protest, his shoulders tense as steel cables, his jaw locked like stone. He moved like a man in a trance, hollow and mechanical.

Before following, Sam turned back to her one last time. His expression softened fractionally, regret shadowing his dark eyes like storm clouds. "I'm sorry," he said quietly, and she could hear that he meant it. Sorry for bringing Bucky here, sorry for the pain they'd both inflicted, sorry that any of this had to happen at all.

She didn't answer. Couldn't. Her throat was too tight, her chest too full of emotions she didn't have names for. She just stood there, arms wrapped around herself like armor, eyes burning holes in the floor as silence pressed in from all sides.

Sam lingered for a heartbeat longer, waiting for something, anything, from her. Some sign that she was okay, that they could salvage this situation, that the damage wasn't irreparable. But when nothing came, when she remained frozen in her protective shell, he nodded once—heavy and resigned and infinitely tired—and followed Bucky out.

She watched them go through the blur of unshed tears. The door closed behind them with a soft click that echoed louder than it had any right to, final and absolute. Bucky never looked back.

The apartment was suddenly too big and too empty, the silence pressing against her eardrums like deep water. And all she could hear was that single word still echoing in her head carrying a weight that wasn't hers to bear, a love that would never belong to her, and the devastating knowledge that she was nothing more than a cruel reminder of everything this world had lost.