"I'm flattered Goldilocks, but I still have to ask. Why us? Wasn't there someone back in Asgard more qualified to deal with this kind of thing?" Miserably, Steve wondered if Tony's voice had always been this irritating. His head was pounding as he walked into the kitchen. His morning run had done nothing for his headache. If anything the pain had only worsened from a slight ringing in his ears to a full blown, almost nauseating headache. Thankfully there was a pot of coffee still half full sitting on the counter. Steve poured himself a cup still half listening to Tony and Thor's conversation.

"Perhaps" said Thor thoughtfully, "But I remembered how Dr. Banner was able to track the radiation during the invasions. Dr. Selvig and Jane were also most interested in…"

"Aha!" cried Tony, making Steve wince. "You just wanted an excuse to come see your girlfriend is that it?" Thor frowned.

"I admit that the thought has crossed my mind, but there truly have been strange energy fluctuations and I"

"I knew it." Tony was obviously no longer listening, "You know, if you moved into the tower you could see Dr. Foster whenever you wanted."

Thor sighed, "I have already told you many times"

"Good morning." said a cool voice from directly behind Steve's shoulder.

"Hello Natasha." Steve said, feeling unreasonably proud of the fact that he hadn't startled. "How long has Thor been here?"

"He arrived this morning" said Natasha looking at him more closely, "Are you alright? You look terrible."

"Thanks." Steve sighed and rubbed his forehead, "It's probably nothing; I just have a really bad headache this morning."

Now Natasha looked worried, or as close to worried as Natasha ever looked.

"Is that even possible? I thought you didn't get sick."

"I don't know." Steve felt confused now, why hadn't that occurred to him? "I've never gotten sick before, but I could have just been lucky." Thinking about it made his head hurt more, his thoughts felt slow and fuzzy. "I'm sure it's fine."

Natasha looked at him, assessing. Steve knew he was a terrible liar and expected her to call him out but to his surprise she only nodded before turning to get her own cup of coffee.

"Fine" Tony was saying, sounding slightly defeated, "I'll call a meeting."

Thor nodded, apparently satisfied, and wandered out of the kitchen. Tony followed him still trying to convince him to move in. "I mean come on; you spend practically all of your time here anyway."

Steve smiled, and then winced again as the pain in his head flared suddenly. He should go. Yes, he needed to go… somewhere. He had to go… shower. Yes that was it. He dumped his still full mug of coffee into the sink and left to go clean up, ignoring Natasha's questioning look.

A little while later, Steve, freshly showered, was sitting in the conference room trying his best to focus on what Thor was saying. He could hear the words Thor was saying but focusing was very difficult and he could only manage to grasp a little bit at a time.

"Most troubling… Nothing like this has… Investigate…" A strange noise seemed to be filling Steve's ears drowning Thor out. He wasn't sure why they were all there, or what was going on. His head hurt worse than ever.

"Steve?" said a voice breaking through the cloud that seemed to be filling his mind. He looked up, willing his eyes to focus. The rest of the Avengers were staring at him with looks ranging from annoyed (Tony) to mildly concerned (Bruce).

"Well?" asked Tony "Are you coming? Or would you rather just stay in the conference room and daydream?"

"Hmm?" said Steve vaguely. He was aware that he needed to say something but his tongue felt heavy in his mouth and he couldn't seem to make his lips work. "Sorry, yes."

"What?" said Tony looking a little confused. Steve sympathized. "Whatever, let's just go."

Grateful that he no longer had to be speaking, Steve stood up and followed the team out of the room. Despite the fact that his brain seemed to have become incapable of holding a thought, he was able to walk perfectly. He couldn't really see where he was going and had only a hazy impression of the others walking around him. When he tried to focus on any of those concerns however, the thoughts seemed to flit away and melt into the fog that seemed to have filled his entire mind. The more they walked, however, one thought did become clear. Wherever they were going he needed to get there. And fast. After some amount of time, they arrived at some place and everything snapped suddenly into place. He could see again and his eyes focused immediately on a glowing blue cube in the room. His ears were filling up again with white noise and he knew with utter unshakable certainty that what he absolutely must do right now was go over there and touch the cube. Something was happening. He could just barely sense a commotion going on somewhere far away, but it was unimportant. All that mattered was getting to the cube. He was aware of someone attacking him but he threw them off easily, he was nearly there, yes just one more step, he reached out and then

Steve woke abruptly in the middle of a battle. He was disoriented and had no idea how he'd gotten to, wherever he was. He did his best to assess the situation. He was wearing his uniform, and he had his shield, and all around him were the sounds of fighting.

He pulled his shield up just in time to stop a bullet from hitting him in the chest. He flung his shield in the direction of the shooter and dove onto another attacker. The next few minutes were spent fighting off his attackers and doing his best to understand what had happened to him.

It didn't take long for his memories of the morning to come back, and it took even less time to realize that he had been mind-controlled somehow. That left him to figure out where he was and what was going on.

He recognized the uniform. It was his old uniform, the one he had worn during his time with the Howling Commandos, bright red stripes and all. He also couldn't help but notice that the people he was punching looked an awful lot like the Hydra goons from the war. So that left a couple of explanations.

One, he was still being mind-controlled and/or vividly hallucinating. Two, someone had gone to great lengths to recreate Steve's experience in the war for some reason. Or and this seemed the most unlikely, he had actually travelled to the past. There were a few more explanations that he could think of, but they seemed even more unlikely than time travel. With a final kick, he realized that he had taken out the last of his attackers. He waited a few moments, scanning the area to make sure that no more were coming. He could hear someone coming from behind him and he tensed, readying himself for another round of fighting. Instead, he heard someone clapping. Confused he turned around to face whoever it was.

"Wow Cap. You really outdid yourself."

Steve looked around and realized he was surrounded by dead and unconscious bodies of Hydra soldiers. Then the words hit him. He turned back sharply to stare at the face of Gabe Jones, not looking a day older than he had on their last mission.

"And without using his gun too" pointed out Dum Dum, nodding to the ground. Steve turned and for the first time noticed a pistol lying in the dirt.

"I gotta say Cap, that was pretty impressive. Never seen you fight like that before."

Steve tried to think of something to say, but the appearance of his former teammates had thrown him. Well, he could rule out explanation two now, unless they were clones or robots.

Frankly, anything seemed likely at this point. Gabe and Dum Dum were still staring at him expectantly. Steve frantically tried to think of a reply. He knew that his fighting had improved as he'd learned how to better control his body. He enjoyed pushing himself to the limits and finding out exactly what he was capable of. Fighting with the Avengers and Shield agents had taught him some different techniques as well. Deciding that he could no longer stand there silently staring, Steve shrugged.

"I've been practicing."

Dum Dum snorted, "Sure Cap, you've been practicing. Let's go find the others."

Finding the others didn't take long, they hadn't taken more than a few steps before Bucky burst through the trees into the clearing they were standing in.

"Hey Sarge" said Dum Dum easily, "We found Cap. He's been practicing his fighting."

Bucky glared at Steve with an extremely venomous look and pointed his gun straight at Steve's head.

"Who the hell are you?" he hissed, "And what have you done with Steve?"

Steve froze. He knew he was bad at undercover missions, but it turned out he couldn't even pretend to be himself for more than five minutes without being found out.

"I am Steve" he protested, "What are you talking about?"

"You may look like Steve Rogers, but you're not." Bucky looked even angrier than he had before, "I saw Steve get shot only a minute ago. Now if he's still alive you tell me where he is right now. And if he's dead then you're gonna follow him real soon."

Steve put his hands in the air. He didn't have any idea what to do. Gabe and Dum Dum had looked between Bucky and Steve and seemingly sided with Bucky. He wondered idly if it had anything to do with his suddenly improved fighting skills. Lying would probably get him shot; but so would telling the truth. Well he wasn't the best liar when he already had a cover story, and he certainly couldn't pull a lie up from nowhere, the way Natasha could.

"Look," he said placating, "I don't know what happened to your Steve, or how I got here, but I'm not the one who did it to him."

"What do you mean our Steve?" said Bucky, the gun still pointed steadily.

Well, in for a penny in for a pound.

"My name is Steve Rogers" said Steve calmly, trying his best not to sound like a crazy person, "And this morning I was in New York City, in the year 2015."

"So you expect us to believe that you touched some sort of magic cube, the one that's been powering all of Hydra's weapons, and that somehow sent you from seventy years in the future to here?"

"Well, I assume that's what happened. I honestly have no idea." None of his old teammates seemed very inclined to believe him, but Steve hadn't been shot so he supposed this was going pretty well. He couldn't blame them really; even he didn't completely believe what was going on.

"If you really are who you say you are, then tell us something that only Steve would know."

"Um" Steve did his best to think of something that would prove his identity that wasn't too embarrassing, "How about that time that you made me ride the Cyclone at Cony Island and I threw up?"

Bucky stared at him suspiciously for another moment before lowering the gun.

"Fine" he said, "I'm not saying that I believe you, but you can come back to camp until we figure this out."

Camp as it turned out was another clearing in the woods, nearly identical to the one Steve had woken up in. With a sigh, Steve sat on the ground while Jones and Dugan explained what was going on to the others. Bucky stayed with him watching him warily.

"Do you have any idea what happened to the real Steve? I mean the other Steve." He corrected himself, "It's just I saw him get shot. With that blue stuff in Hydra's weapons and he just vanished. You know what happens."

Steve looked at him. He knew all too well what it looked like when someone was disintegrated by the Tesseract weaponry. No wonder Bucky looked so shaken and angry. Steve remembered how it felt when he'd seen the Winter Soldier for the first time. He'd had time to grieve though, and had sort of come to terms with Bucky's death. Everything had happened to fast for Bucky to really have time to do either of those things. He was probably still in shock.

"I don't know." Steve said, wishing he had a better answer. "I don't understand what happened at all. All I know is that I was being mind-controlled to touch the Tesseract and then here I was. Maybe he and I switched places."

"Mind controlled?" Bucky asked.

"The Tesseract can manipulate minds." Steve said, "Although I don't know if it was the Tesseract controlling me or someone else. Or who would want for this to happen anyway."

Bucky stared at Steve for a little longer.

"So" he said, rather awkwardly, "You're from the future right? What's it like there? Does everybody drive flying cars?"

"No" Steve wondered if there was any problem with talking about the future to someone from the past. A few of the movies that Tony had forced him to watch had featured time travel, and the characters were always worrying about changing the timelines and creating paradoxes. The explanations in these movies were often hard to follow especially with Tony loudly complaining that the science was complete nonsense and that he could build a time machine easily if Pepper would let him. Well there couldn't be much harm in talking about things as long as he wasn't too specific. "Although one of my teammates has this metal armor that can fly, but it isn't really very widespread technology. For the most part people just fly in airplanes."

"Your teammates?" asked Bucky a strange look on his face. Steve regretted having mentioned Tony. Bucky and the rest of the Howling Commandos were his teammates at this point and he didn't want Bucky to feel like he'd replaced them.

"Yes, I have a team in the future."

"And one of them can fly?"

"Well, three of them can, but the one I mentioned uses technology the most like flying cars. Also, if anyone was going to invent a marketable flying car it'd probably be him."

"Three of your teammates can fly?" Bucky looked incredulous now, "How many people are on your team anyway? Is flying something soldiers do in the future?"

"Not normal soldiers." said Steve. "My team is a bit specialized."

"What does that mean?"

"Well they're all a bit like me; we're sort of like extreme special forces."

"All like you? You mean they were all lab rats?" He gestured at Steve.

"I am not a lab rat! And no, everyone is different and has different abilities. Four of them are just normal humans who are just the best at what they do, or have special equipment. The other two are different."

Bucky looked at him expectantly but Steve didn't really know what else to say. He could talk for hours about the Avengers of course, explaining their powers and their strengths and weaknesses, but that seemed kind of impersonal. The reality of the situation was finally starting to sink in; he realized that he was having a conversation with Bucky again. He had almost forgotten, this conversation felt forced and uncomfortable, something he had never felt speaking with Bucky.

"So there's just this team of Captain Americas running around in the future? I can't imagine the kind of enemies that would need a whole group of crazies like you to stop them."

"I already said that we're all different, it's not like they're all copies of me." protested Steve, deciding to ignore the crazies comment for the time being, "And we only work as a team for the really big world ending kind of emergencies. Most of the time we each have our own missions, or are partnered in smaller groups."

"World ending emergencies?" asked Bucky, "How many of those have you had to deal with?"

"More than you'd think." Steve grinned, "Would you believe we stopped the planet from being invaded?"

"By who?"

"Aliens." Steve did his best not to laugh at the look on Bucky's face.

"You're pulling my leg, Aliens don't exist."

"I'll have you know there's an alien on my team." Said Steve in mock offense, "And I doubt he'd appreciate you talking about him like that."

"What?! You seriously have an alien on your team? Even if aliens were real didn't you just say they tried to invade the planet?"

"How do you know it wasn't a different kind of alien? Maybe the kind who invaded comes from a different place that the one who's on my team."

Bucky narrowed his eyes; he clearly didn't believe a word Steve was saying.

"Well? Is he a different species?"

"Actually his younger brother led the invasion force." Steve was quite honestly beginning to enjoy himself, even if it made him think about how ridiculous his life sounded when he talked about it out loud. Whatever reply Bucky was going to make was cut off by a sudden rustling noise and the sound of running footsteps. He raised a finger to his lips so that Bucky wouldn't speak. Bucky turned to look as well as a woman suddenly burst into the clearing.

AN: I decided after watching the Civil War trailer and realizing that I was probably never going to see Bucky and Natasha be friendly in canon. Then I decided to write this. It was supposed to be short but it kind of got away from me. Special thanks to my best friend who helped me edit this.