Post-Winter Soldier and -Thor the Dark World. Post ME 3. Infiltrator, Colonist, War Hero, Paragon Shepard (with Renegade tendencies). Not canon compliant.

Disclaimer: Neither Avengers nor Mass Effect is mine.

"" – talking

'' – inner thoughts

She'd been stuck on this pre-spaceflight knock-off of Earth for almost a year when she first met him.

Shepard had been reading up on historical discrepancies between her home and this world for the umpteenth time at the library when the man walked in. Despite his casual if haggard appearance Shepard immediately pegged him as dangerous. She could spot at least three well-concealed weapons through his jacket and observed as he catalogued every exit around her corner of the library before his eyes snapped to her.

A sudden thrill of warning chased down her spine as he evaluated her in a matter of seconds, briefly lingering on the outline of the sheathed knife under her sleeve and the burn scar peaking out from the collar of her shirt and hugging the underside of her jaw. This man actually felt like a threat. She'd barely felt anything more pressing than mild concern for her safety since arriving in this Reaperless world. 'What the hell was a guy like this doing in the middle of bumfuck nowhere?' Shepard wondered in concern.

She tensed almost imperceptibly when he began to cautiously approach her table. He stopped across from her and stood awkwardly with his shoulders hunched and hands in his pockets. A worriedly blank face stared down at her from underneath the brim of a generic baseball cap. If it weren't for the obvious lack of Reaper tech and the way his icy eyes were practically boring into her soul, she could have easily mistaken him for a mindless husk. Shepard was understandably concerned and wary.

"Can I borrow that?" he interrupted her train of thought while pointing at one of the history books lounging by her elbow on the table. His voice was raspy, as if disused to speaking.

Nonplussed, Shepard nudged the book in question toward the unkempt stranger and made a noise of affirmation. "It is a library," she drawled somewhat bemusedly, "borrowing is kind of their thing."

"Right." He sheepishly dropped her gaze as he grabbed the book with his right hand, leaving the left in his pocket.

He proceeded to settle in at the next table over from her before cracking open the book and mechanically working his way through the pages. Shepard discreetly kept an eye on him over the course of several hours as she flipped between multiple historical texts and made note of any obvious divergences between her world and this one. It was still mind-boggling to see so many real paper books in one place. Almost everything she was reading may have been available digitally, but she'd always had a weakness for good ole' fashioned printed books and wasn't one to waste an opportunity like this. Having ready access to physical texts was one of the few upsides to this backwards world that she enjoyed wholeheartedly, paper-cuts and all.

As far as she'd been able to discern, all serious deviations in this timeline stemmed from the existence of people with extraordinary abilities, both genetic and scientifically engineered. And wasn't that an uncomfortable pill to swallow, that people with the goals of Cerberus were legally encouraged and supported in their forays into human experimentation. She shuddered to think of what any of the various alphabet soup organizations floating around would do in order to procure a 'successful' specimen such as herself.

On her bad days, Shepard questioned whether she was even human anymore with her body being more cybernetics and spare parts than flesh. She idly wondered if any of the artificially enhanced individuals running around right now possessed similar doubts.

The soft thud of a book closing snapped Shepard from her morbid mental wanderings. It appeared as though her armed and dangerous history buddy was done reading. With palpable reluctance, he approached her table once more and gingerly set the book next to one of her currently unused stacks.

"Thanks." He mumbled through teeth clenched so tightly she swore she could hear his molars grinding together. Without waiting for a response, he turned on his heel and prowled towards the library exit.

Well. That certainly ranked among one of the most awkward social encounters she'd had since her arrival (or ever, honestly). They'd each spoken less than ten words to each other too. Must be a new record. "Well done Shep," she snarked to herself under her breath as she dove back into research.

The next several days each saw Shepard back in the furthest corner of the library drowning in a sea of conflicting sources and hagiographical accounts that could scarcely be counted as history for how obviously biased they were. It was fascinating, frustrating and above all, distracting. In other words, exactly what she needed.

Equally, if not more distracting was the fact that her socially incompetent and still armed stranger had come back to the library every day since he'd first shown up. And every day he was once again forced to come over to Shepard and uncomfortably request to borrow one of her books. She almost felt bad for hoarding all of the available history texts from the dinky little library. On the fifth day that he showed up with no obvious intention of deviating from his new pattern, Shepard put her foot down.

"Look," the Commander said in her most reasonable tone as McStranger Danger stopped in front of her table again, "we're both clearly looking into the same information here. Why don't you just join me at my table so you don't have to come back later to borrow something different." She kicked out a chair to the side of the table in unsubtle invitation while staring him down.

The poor guy looked like a murderous deer in the headlights, all frozen muscles and wide eyes. 'Honestly,' she thought with a huff, 'he was even worse than Garrus had been when she first met him and the guy didn't even have the excuse of knowing he was talking to an alien.' The thought of her best friend sent a sharp pang through her partially mechanical heart, but she didn't let it show on her face.

Moving slowly, as if afraid to startle her with too sudden movements, the man sat down at the right side of the table. He remained poised as if ready to jump up and run at the slightest provocation. 'Spirits, was she that intimidating? Was she subconsciously channeling her inner krogan or something? Jesus.'

Recognizing the wary state of her new tablemate, Shepard made sure to telegraph her movements as she gingerly extended her right hand across the table. She'd noticed the unnatural stiffness of her companion's left arm, and refused to make him anymore uncomfortable by forcing him to reveal his prosthetic. So, right-handed shake it was.

"The name's Shepard. Sorry for stealing all of the history stuff, didn't expect to find any other fellow enthusiasts in the area." She explained ruefully.

Finally unfreezing from his impressive impersonation of a statue, the man extended his left hand as carefully as Shepard had and briefly clasped her palm before dropping it like it was aflame. "Call me James." He said after a second of hesitation.

"Well, you've certainly got the muscles to be a James." Shepard mused with a grin, eyeing the impressive outline of the newly dubbed James' arms through his sleeves. Eyes flicking back to James' slightly mystified face, Shepard's grin widened. "I swear I never met a person more in love with their own muscles than Jimmy Vega. I bet he'd be green with envy if he could see the guns you're toting' around there."

Once again, James tensed up. Belatedly, Shepard remembered that at least one of the outlines she'd spotted through James' coat looked distinctly blocky and gun-shaped. Based on that reaction, he probably didn't have a conceal-and-carry permit either. Quickly shifting gears, she bulldozed through the sudden tension by throwing herself into the first topic that came to mind with all the subtlety of a thresher maw.

"So I noticed that the stuff you've been interested in mostly revolves around WWII. Any interest in Captain America and the Red Skull?" Shepard asked hopefully.

It was apparently the worst possible question she could have asked, judging by the now eerily blank expression gracing James' face. 'Smooth, Shepard,' she could practically hear Garrus drawling in her ear.

"Yeah."

Shepard stared blankly for a second, momentarily thrown that the obviously displeased man had deigned to answer her question. "Really?" She replied with more enthusiasm than was probably warranted.

"Yeah, but…" here James hesitated as he stared with frustration at the books in front of him, "it doesn't make any damn sense. All of the accounts say different things and the rest is basically propaganda. Where the hell is the real Captain America and Rogers in all this garbage? Where are the Howling Commandos?!" The last bit was said with almost enough volume to attract the ire of the wandering librarians. James put his head in his hand, a frown of vexation on his face.

Damn. That was certainly more emotional investment that Shepard had anticipated from her line of questioning.

"Well, if you're going for realistic accounts, you're definitely looking in the wrong places."

James snapped his head up so quickly she could hear his vertebrae pop. "What?"

Unknowingly adopting the air of an experienced lecturer, Shepard said, "For one, you're mostly looking in generalized sources which are great for getting the overall picture but terrible for ferreting out specific details. And this library is too small to have anything more than the bare basics." Not to mention that half of the tomes had been painted over with American patriotism so thoroughly they may as well be fiction. She'd spent many a night hacking into old and still classified files from her bed with her omni-tool to fact-check various points of interest she'd found in her research. It was quite enlightening.

James' eyes continued to bore a hole into the side of her skull as she grabbed a loose sheet of paper lying on the table and wrote down the names of several different titles and authors. Ripping off the corner adorned by her chicken-scratch writing, she slid the list over to James saying, "Your second mistake was that you looked at secondhand sources written long after the war was over by authors born post-WWII. If you want solid information on the Captain and the Commandos, you're gonna want to go to the sources themselves." Here she pointed to a couple of different names on her list. "Gabe Jones, Jacques Dernier and Jim Morita all either published memoirs of their time in the Howling Commandos, or had family that organized and published their personal journals after they died. Most of these also include correspondence to and from other members of the Commandos, including Captain America himself. All of these can be found online for free, which is lucky for you because this library doesn't carry any of these books." Pointing to the front of the library, Shepard continued, "They've got some computers up front if you wanna look 'em up."

When she glanced up at James again, she was surprised to see something uncomfortably close to awe on his face as he stared down at the list gripped tightly in his hand. Seemingly possessed by a sudden burst of mania, James jumped up from the table and stuttered, "I, uh, yeah. That. That sounds good. Great. I'm gonna do that. Now." And with that he rushed off, presumably to find the nearest online connection.

Shepard gave a small, crooked smile, eyes crinkling wistfully. He might not have said it, but Shepard could read the unconscious gratitude in James' reaction clear as day.

With James' barely-there grin in mind, Shepard went back to work with a hint of brightness to her thoughts.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I decided to break up this story into chapters. I also went back through and edited the whole thing, so a few things are different and hopefully improved. Enjoy.