Chapter One: The Girl

Her story had always been a bit complicated and she would be the first to say that she had always sucked at uncomplicating it. She would start somewhere in the middle with an explosion and keep going, and then be interrupted by people asking why? who? how? Or might fixate on really pointless parts, like how she got really good at charades. Or touching people without their permission.

Knowing how wrong she could tell it came from experience. People have always told her that she should mention before she even started that the story involved time travel, and war, and superheroes, and assassins and spies.

Oh, and not to forget about gods, aliens, glowing cubes, and airships, either.

So her story was about all of that stuff.

But before she could even get to all of that, she's been told it was always best to start from the beginning.

Which actually did have explosions in it, now that she thought about it.

She was a college student, that much she remembered. That was another reason why telling her story was kind of tough. She had these, memory gaps. A hundred years could do that to a person.

Yeah, yeah, ahead of herself again.

She was a college student, and she was pretty sure that was why she was in New York when it happened. There was nothing noteworthy or memorable about the day everything changed for her at the start. It wasn't until, like she mentioned earlier, frickin' explosions disrupted everything that things got noteworthy and memorable about that day.

Some kind of creature, an alien whose species someone much, much later told her was Chitauri, grabbed her, hauled her onto its crazy flying device, and then took off. The creature had flown high, circling the large building that was spitting a beam of light into the sky. At the time, she had been screaming herself hoarse, clinging frantically to her hijab so it would not fly off in the raging wind. Out of nowhere, the opposite of salvation came in the form of an arrow - an honest to goodness arrow - flying right at them.

And, of course, another damn explosion followed that brought the pain.

Of all of the things to not forget, she could never forget that, the pain. That and the flash of blue light. She had only had enough time to feel herself thrown and fall, and then she was gone.

At least, that was what she was sure had happened, after examining and re-examining it. That the arrow had killed the creature and her along with it. And as quick as it had been, death had hurt as much as it could in the second it took her to die.

After that, though, she'd woken up. Which was confusing because even before examining and re-examining it, she'd already been sure about being dead. Dead is dead. Waking up implied somehow, a person was alive-ish. And that wasn't right either.

Whatever she was, she was confused, and had ended up in a church somewhere where it seemed no one understood English.

Though whether they understood English didn't really matter because they couldn't hear her.

Or see her.

Or touch her.

All of that was evidenced when a man walked right through her without batting an eyelash, even as she cried and begged him for help.

Years, long years, passed.

She had lingered a while in that church, in that village she discovered was named Tønsberg. Unheard, unseen, unfelt.

And after a while, when the confusion and fear faded, she decided to see the world outside of that church, maybe try and find some answers. It had certainly come as a surprise when she passed through more modern cities, countries, and found them… not so modern.

So, time travel. Time travel had happened to her. She'd thought she'd just been some sort of ghost, but it turned out that she was also a time traveling ghost.

How was this her afterlife?

It was easy, for someone who no longer felt hunger or exhaustion, to travel long and far. She saw much of Europe and Asia and had made it a point to go to Iran at least once, just to see it like she had always promised baba she would one day. However, she didn't stay long, even though she wanted to do just that. War came and Iran, like other countries, found itself swept up into the conflict. She couldn't bare to watch it, and so she looked for a new place. West was the direction she chose, and when Britain failed to be far enough away, she followed a ship across the Atlantic to America, to New York.

More precisely, to home.

Maybe she'd been avoiding it at first, afraid of what she would see. It wasn't quite her New York yet, but enough to feel familiar, something she had been missing. She would greet Lady Liberty every morning like an old friend. Cross the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset. Some days, she'd try to pass by all the other big places that made it to the 21st century. And other days, she'd pass by the places that would one day be the ones she remembered.

More years passed that way. It surprised her, how little she felt the need to wander once more. Every now and then she'd consider seeing the West Coast, traipsing up to Canada, maybe a jaunt down to South America, but it was comfortable where she was. She may have been alone, but at least she had her landmarks, her routine, to keep her sane.

And it stayed comfortable, until the second most noteworthy and memorable day of her life happened.

There were no explosions, or aliens, or thrice-damned arrows.

Just a boy.

A skinny little thing, eyes glued to the pavement and laboring for breath as bumped into her. Bumped into her. Not walked through her.

He hadn't even looked up when it happened, hadn't even realized how he changed her world with just a little bit of unexpected physical contact. All he had done was mumbled a soft, breathy, "sorry" as he weaved around her and continued on his way.

"Wait," she whispered, unused to speaking for any other reason than to mutter to herself.

And then she ran after him.

Next

Chapter Two: The Boy

AN: It's official, I don't know what I'm doing with my life anymore, and I have more SIs and OCs than I can shake a stick at. But whatever. It's fun.

Also, full disclosure at the gate: Not sure if anyone picked up on it, but the OC of this story? She's Iranian American. And I'll admit, I am not. I just want her to be Iranian American, okay? Most SIs and OCs I write are cool Women of Color, because there should always be more cool Women of Color in everything. If I get any tidbits of Iranian culture wrong, let me know in the future so I can fix them. Be warned, this fic will probably come with sporadic updates.

Question: Does anyone know the specific ages Steve and Bucky were at when they first met?