Summary: Flower, gleam and glow, let your powers shine. Make the clock reverse, bring back what once was mine. Heal what has been hurt Change the fates' design. Save what has been lost. Bring back what once was mine, what once was mine...
Originally Published - July 14, 2022
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"I know you," Wanda whispers, eyes narrowing at the former Winter Soldier.
"How? How do you know him?" Steve questions.
Wanda turns to Steve and her head turns in confusion mixed with vague recognition. She shuts her eyes and tries to remember the flickers of your memories. Her eyes whirl open and Steve is no longer just Steve.
She's never put the two together, but Steve's face is still the same as it was in the 1940's.
"I don't - I don't understand. How?"
"How, what, Wanda?" Steve asks, a hint of urgency in his question.
"How do you think you know me?" Bucky simultaneously demands.
"Perhaps we give her a moment?" Vision suggests, a worried expression painting his face as he watches Wanda's face contort trying to reason whatever she'd just recognized.
"I never realized before." She looks to Steve. And she's right, he's not just Steve anymore. It's almost like she unlocked a new, deeper understanding of Steve Rogers. "Your face. It's still the same."
"My face? Wanda, please, just try to explain," Steve gently urges.
"I don't know her name. She knew you two. She knew you well," she explains, her eyes flickering to meet Bucky's hardened stare.
"Who?" Bucky quietly seethes, his fist clenching under Wanda's scrutiny.
"I don't know her name."
Her name, is all Steve hears.
Despite finding and getting Bucky back, Steve's refused to hope that you'd come back too. That wasn't how the world worked, he couldn't have two miracles.
It wouldn't happen.
Just because he lost you two in the same place didn't mean you'd both get to come back. He refused to believe, to let that hope rise in his chest. But for one short second, his will power breaks and he's hoping again.
"Wait here," he commands, before quickly rising out of his seat and wordlessly bolting to his room.
He takes a deep breath as he opens his door and immediately looks to the box underneath his desk. He feels an immense guilt that the only commemoration of your life resided in a small box gathering dust in his room. Not even Bucky knew about the box.
He was to blame for the world not knowing about you, for there not being anything to honor the amazing life you'd lived.
He gently dusts the lid before carefully opening the box. There's a frame at the very top - the last picture of you he recovered, also the last one you'd ever taken. There weren't many things that survived once he went into the ice, and even fewer photographs. Most of you and Steve together. Some with Bucky. And a few alone.
In spite of all the guilt and sorrow, he smiles thinking about you.
--
You're standing in an alley, pressed against the exposed brick wall by a man you were speaking to in the diner.
The man approached you inside and showered you in uncomfortable, borderline inappropriate compliments and talked to you for quite some time. You were really just trying to be nice, but the man was clearly not taking the hint that you just weren't interested. Not as you try walking away. Not as you subtly push his hand away from you for the dozenth time. Not in the tight smile he keeps asking to see.
