Disclaimer: The Avengers, its characters and The Marvel Cinematic Universe belong to Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company, among many others. I'm only a fan, writing this for love of this film franchise and personal pleasure.

A.N.: Okay, so I knew that the moment I watched Avengers: Endgame I'd become obsessed with it (as I usually do with things I care way too much about), so now I've already watched it twice and spent over a week thinking about nothing but the movie and Romanogers and everyone is doing it, so this is my version of a Fix-It story, which almost turned into a study on why Nat is so awesome and of their story together through Steve's eyes.

Lights Will Guide You Home

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you
-Coldplay, "Fix You"

Taking Mjolnir and the case containing the Infinity Stones, Steve Rogers stepped up to the platform of the time-traveling device they'd invented only a short while ago to embark on a journey that, as Banner explained, would take as long as he needed to restore the Stones back to the past, yet only five seconds of their time in the present. He was to travel alone, as he considered this his final mission to put it all back to its rightful time and place after everything the war had taken from them.

Both Bucky and Sam had offered to take the journey with him, as they would. If he followed the plan carefully, it would take a while but there shouldn't be a lot of problems with getting in and out of the different times and places, though there was always the chance the unpredictable would interfere with their plans. He was well aware of that, and for as much as having backup was always advisable, he wasn't willing to risk anyone else for this final task. He'd already lost too much.

Truth be told, there was also another reason he'd wanted to take this journey alone. Although both men were like brothers to him and he'd always trust them with his life, he felt like he'd lost his one true partner, the one who had been with him since he'd abruptly woken up after spending decades lost and frozen in the arctic ice, suddenly thrown into a new time, a new world where little made sense, everything was changed and everyone he'd known was gone.

Natasha Romanoff and the partnership they'd started tentatively and, really, out of necessity at the Battle of New York City against the Chitauri just a couple of weeks after he'd woken up in the 21st century had been one of the main things that had kept him sane in this new life─

"You wanna get up there, you're gonna need a ride."

"I got a ride. I could use a boost though."

"You sure about this?"

"Yeah. It's gonna be fun."

─Of course, when he'd officially started working with her at SHIELD he wasn't so sure about it at first, as he'd had to adjust to partnering up with someone who'd spent a lifetime working as a secretive, manipulative spy─

"What's on it?"

"I don't know."

"Stop lying!"

"I only act like I know everything, Rogers."

─but in time they both learned to open up, to share their truths, their fears and their regrets. They learned how to trust and even depend on one another─

"Who do you want me to be?"

"How about a friend?"

─and as she slowly tore away at the walls so carefully built around her in order to let him in, he was surprised to realize that he'd been building walls of his own─

"If it was the other way around, and it was down to me to save your life, now, you be honest with me, would you trust me to do it?"

"I would now. And I'm always honest."

─to protect himself, without conscious thought, in this strange new world, especially in dealing with so many secret agent types like Fury, Hill and Natasha, which was so different from his days back in the Army with Colonel Phillips and his squad of commandos.

When he'd met her, she had been so unlike all the women he'd ever known. Never mind the women from the 1940's, which was a given that she would be nothing like them, but she was so unlike even the women he'd seen walking around New York in this 21st century. Everything about her seemed to be about pulling you in yet keeping you out, an enchantress who would cast a spell on you and drag you to your knees while keeping you at arm's length, like an alluring, beautiful and deadly trap. So much like a spider's web from the real black widow.

He'd also been privately quite embarrassed when he'd first seen her battle uniforms, as he was definitely not used to women wearing such tight clothes back in the day. He'd even wondered at the practicality of wearing something like that, but that thought went out his head as soon as he saw her in action. Alluring, beautiful and deadly, indeed.

Working with the Black Widow was also a strange new experience as he'd never been in so close contact with a woman on a daily basis before. Even after the serum, becoming Captain America and fighting in WWII, he'd still been terrible at talking to women. At first he had no idea what to expect of working with her, but it wasn't long before he realized he felt as comfortable with her as if she were one of the guys. Right from the start she had loved to tease him mercilessly─

"Hey, fellas. Either of you know where the Smithsonian is? I'm here to pick up a fossil."

"That's hilarious."

─and it wasn't long before he learned to pay her back in kind and, after a few bumps in the road, they became real friends and partners. He found a side to her that existed under the armor of the Black Widow, the real Natasha Romanoff, who was warm, kind and soft while also remaining fiercely loyal and protective of the ones she loved.

The way they fought together during battles was also something else. Although they did have very different battle techniques, they seemed to complement each other and she also taught him some moves once they'd started training together. He was surprised with how easily and almost instinctively she'd learned to work with his shield, so their moves in the battlefield were at times like some synchronized dance choreography.

The time they spent together training the new recruits for the Avengers at the compound in upstate New York strengthened their bond like never before. He counted on her, his right hand, for everything, as his second in command, as the one whose opinion mattered the most to him, as the heart and soul of the team. Even when they disagreed about the whole Sokovia Accords debacle, they'd still managed to be there for one another─

"I'm sorry, Nat. I can't sign it."

"I know."

"Well, then what are you doing here?"

"I didn't want you to be alone."

─and respect each other in a manner that he and Tony never quite managed to achieve, at least not until recently. It had killed him to think he'd have to face her at the airport in Leipzig and even though he'd worried of what would happen to her, he was glad he never had to engage her in battle (one motive being that he knew she could kick his ass, if she so wanted to) and that she'd actually turned around and helped them get away.

He was also extremely grateful when she'd sought him out and together they managed to break out their imprisoned friends from The Raft. He would've eventually managed to do it on his own, of course, but her help made things go way faster and much easier. They spent nearly two years on the run, hiding away from the government yet trying to help other people along the way. It was a godsend that she'd joined them, as he doubted they would've been able to elude the authorities without engaging in unnecessary scuffles for so long if not for her knowledge and skills, since he and Sam had never been very good at laying low and there was only so much Wanda could do with her powers while she still needed to learn to control a few aspects of it, not to mention the times she'd sneak away to be with Vision.

And then New York had been suddenly attacked, Tony was rumored to have simply vanished in a spaceship and Steve's cell phone rang. Banner, of all people, was calling him for help. It was time to suit up and stop hiding and once more get into battle to protect their planet and loved ones. The battle had been brutal, their enemy seemingly unstoppable, even with unexpected and welcomed reinforcements in the form of Thor with a new hammer and more fighting companions.

And with a snap of the fingers and the following deafening silence the world had seemed to crumple around them.

What should have brought him and Natasha closer together only seemed to pull them apart for the past five years, as they simply couldn't move on. They'd tried, at first, clinging onto each other with a desperation born out of hopelessness. But his pain would resonate with her own and maintain this ongoing, never-ending cycle of something so bittersweet that hummed just beneath their skins, in their bloodstreams with every heartbeat. For the two of them, surviving had been a blessing and a curse all on its own. Unlike Tony and Pepper, they couldn't find solace and be grateful that they still had one another because they still felt all they'd lost, so fresh, so raw, every single day while they lived in that giant compound with the empty rooms of their missing comrades and with the incoming reports of Clint's vigilante acts all over the globe and the many crises they'd tried to solve as governments fell while rebel, opportunistic and oppressive forces rose and whole countries had to be rebuilt from scratch.

They'd tried to keep going, as best as they could. Natasha took it upon herself to run the Avengers Initiative with help from their friends on Earth and Rocket with Nebula and Danvers, mostly, liaising with other planets. Even though Tony said he didn't want anything to do with the Avengers anymore, he kept on funding them; his own way of trying to help while he and Pepper whisked off to their house in the country to raise their little girl and concentrate on the many other business aspects of Stark Industries and how they could help their scarred world. And Steve… well, he wasn't Captain America anymore. He would help with the operations, as Nat mostly stayed in HQ commanding everything while he would occasionally go out in the field. But he also chose to spend more time away, helping out at the VA in Brooklyn and doing things on his own, whatever he could do to keep himself occupied and trying to assuage his consciousness, thinking he was helping somehow.

On that fateful day, when he'd made his way through the compound and sought Nat out, Steve had been thinking on what it meant to move on. He'd come from a meeting at the VA where someone had shared a recent attempt at moving on by meeting someone new─

"I keep telling everybody they should move on. Some do. But not us."

─and as he sat across from her, talked to her and looked at her, thinking of how she'd managed to remain so strong and so broken at same time; how she refused to stop trying to help the world, still seeing red on her ledger even after so many years; how she'd taken the weight of the Avengers upon her shoulders when no one else, not even he would; how she never cut her hair, keeping the blonde from the days they'd been on the run under the violent red; how tears gathered in her green eyes as she talked about how she'd found her family in them and she was still trying to be better and…

He'd suddenly been filled with an almost overwhelming want, this need to just make her happy again. He'd been about to say they should give this a try, to see what moving on could mean for the two of them and maybe it wouldn't hurt so much if they could be there for each other, like they'd always done before and maybe even be so much more, together─

"I think we both need to get a life."

"You first."

─when suddenly Scott Lang appeared on their front door and the impossible didn't seem so impossible anymore.

They'd gone on this crazy, a-billion-to-one, last ditch attempt, whatever-it-takes Hail Mary of all Hail Marys, because it was the only thing they could ever do now. They owed it to the rest of the world and to the half that had been wiped out of their lives so suddenly. He remained optimistic to the end (at this point, it really was like a character flaw) yet he didn't actually dare dream of what could happen if they managed to pull it off, but a part of him wanted to pick up on that conversation afterwards, when the possibility of seeing her happy again would be within reach of his hands─

"See you in a minute."

─and he didn't think it was possible that Fate would be so cruel to him yet again, but he might also be living proof of the old saying: Man Plans, and God Laughs. And now after everything they'd been through she was gone, too.

He really might just be the world's leading authority on waiting too fucking long. Loki's words also taunted him, an echo that had been resonating inside his head for too many years now. The man out of time; and the Asgardian deity had been spot on. He'd never fit in his time, whichever one he happened to be living in. He was either longing for a future that would never come or thinking of a past he had been robbed of, without ever fully realizing that the one time that really mattered was the present and what he did with his life now─

"We have what we have when we have it."

─and Natasha had told him that once, when he'd been wrecked by grief and a nearly unbearable sense of loss after Peggy's funeral, thinking of all the might-have-beens that filled his mind if he'd just managed to get back to her after the war─his first war. And she'd been right, both Nat and Peggy had been right; that was all any of them could hope for. Peggy had gone on to live her life after he'd gone down; she'd carried on, she'd helped to build SHIELD to try to protect the world, she fell in love, she got married, had kids and had truly lived. What right did he have to begrudge her that happiness and a life fulfilled? After all, that was all he'd ever wanted for her. And she'd been happy, even if he hadn't been by her side.

After The Snap and for the past five years, he'd been trying so damn hard to help people move on and do the same when in reality he hadn't really been doing it. Even before Thanos had come, he'd still been feeling like a man out of time.

It seemed like no matter how much he suffered, he never truly learned his lesson. For so long he'd just tried to do the right thing, be the right man─

"Figured I'd wait."

"For what?"

"The right partner."

─find the right partner. And it'd turned out he'd had her by his side for over the past decade now. But once more he'd only realized it when it was already too late.

He'd been thinking of all of this, memories of his moments with Natasha coming to him, unbidden, while he executed the plan carefully to return the Infinity Stones back to their previous places to avoid the creation of branches in the flow of time. He'd first returned the Time and Mind Stones to New York in 2012, with a little help from The Ancient One. Then he returned Thor's hammer and the Reality Stone to Asgard in 2013 before moving into space to Morag in 2014 to return the Power Stone. As he saved the Space Stone and the case for his last stop, now he'd come to Vormir, home of the Soul Stone, which was the farthest destination in his itinerary and the one he'd been dreading the most since he'd started on this journey. He didn't want to let it─to let her─go.

Vormir seemed like a barren planet, a desert landscape of sand dunes interspersed with sheets of water under a lilac sky and a seemingly perpetually eclipsed sun hanging low on the horizon. He'd first come upon somewhere on this desert at the foot of what looked like the highest mountain there. As he made his way up, the air got colder, thick dark clouds gathered above, concentrating over the twin towers that spiraled up to the heavens as snow coalesced and fell around him. He knew from what Clint had told him that he needed to get to the top of the mountain just under the towers.

As he finally approached it, a dark, cloaked figure floated out just before his eyes, almost as if it blended out of his very surroundings to greet him. He thought this would be the red, floating guy that Clint had mentioned, but the voice he heard then sent chills down his spine, as it was something that had been buried in the very recesses of his mind yet that still brought nightmares to him, a memory of a time he now likened to his distant past.

"Ah my old friend, Captain America." The wind blew the hood of the cloak aside and as the light reached it he could see the glowing, skeleton face of the Red Skull.

"Aw, Hell no!" Steve exclaimed, his jaw tightening up in tension and his grip on the case that carried the two remaining Infinity Stones turning his knuckles white. "You have got to be shitting me." He murmured, mostly to himself, as he stared up at his old nemesis.

"Welcome Steven, son of Sarah." The Red Skull floated down, seeming to touch the ground just before him as their eyes leveled on each other.

The polite, softly spoken greeting and mention of his mother only served to incense him further. "What the fuck are you doing here?" He demanded through gritted teeth.

"I am the guardian of the Soul Stone," the Red Skull proclaimed as calmly as before.

Steve let out a short bark of humorless laughter at this. "Of course," he said harshly, shaking his head slightly to himself. "How fitting that the keeper of the Soul Stone would be the ghost of a soulless monster."

The Red Skull merely narrowed his eyes at him and glanced at the case in his hand. "I see you have them both, the one who banished me and the one that binds me here."

Steve jutted his chin out in defiance at him, narrowing his own eyes back at him as he thought back on the words Clint had told them and how they'd needed to pay a price in order to get the Soul Stone. "Tell me what you told them," he commanded, keeping his tight grip on the case.

The cloaked figure paused for a moment before relaying his message. "To ensure that whoever possesses it understands its power, the Stone demands a sacrifice. In order to take the Stone you must lose that which you love," he said, gesturing out at the cliff on the edge of the mountain, staring out into the distance as he paused once more. "A soul for a soul."

"A soul for a soul?" Steve repeated, his mind working furiously as he thought on the implications of those words. "So what happens if I return the Soul Stone to this place now?"

The Red Skull tilted his head slightly to the side, his lips pursed as his narrowed eyes focused back at Steve's face, looking deep into his blue eyes. Something flickered in the Red Skull's yellowed eyes and Steve noticed it and knew what he needed to know, even though the floating creature hadn't said anything in reply.

"I want her back," he said, his voice growing stronger then. "That's the deal, right? A soul for soul? If I give the Soul Stone back to this place, then I want that which was taken from me, the one who sacrificed herself so that we could get this Stone. I want her back."

"That is not how this works," came the softly spoken response.

"Bullshit," he countered immediately. "You said it yourself. A soul for a soul. I want her back."

"That is impossible."

"I. Want. Her. Back."

They stood staring each other down, neither willing to give what the other wanted. A few moments passed as they remained in this stalemate until Steve let go of this as a thought distracted him in another direction.

"You said the Stone demands a sacrifice, so that whoever has it would understand its power," he said slowly, his eyes never leaving the Red Skull's face and watching attentively for any reaction. "What exactly are the Soul Stone powers?"

The Red Skull seemed taken aback at this question. "You cannot hope to wield the power of an Infinity Stone."

"That's not what I asked," Steve countered firmly and he repeated himself. "What are the Soul Stone powers?"

The cloaked creature seemed to almost sigh exasperatedly before he said, "Whoever controls the Soul Stone can potentially affect all living or dead souls."

"What else?" Steve asked, sensing there was something he wasn't telling him.

The Red Skull narrowed his eyes at him again. He'd forgotten just how insufferably stubborn Steve Rogers could be. "The Stone also houses the Soul World, the final resting place for all lost souls."

"And what constitutes a soul?" He asked as a new gleam could be seen in his blue eyes.

"Did you come here to have a philosophical and theological discussion with me, Captain Rogers?" The cloaked figure countered, his frustration showing in his voice and in the furrowing of his brow.

Steve heaved a quiet sigh of his own. "What I want to know is if a soul is something that every sentient being has."

They stood in silence once more, staring at each other until the Red Skull finally answered. "Yes." At this, Steve narrowed his eyes once more and a rueful, triumphant smile seemed to tug at the corners of his mouth. Seeing this, the Soul Stone's Guardian huffed in disbelief. "You cannot be serious that you'll attempt to wield an Infinity Stone."

"No," Steve replied, the gleam in his eyes becoming brighter with determination. "I'm going to use two Infinity Stones."

"It will be your demise," came the prompt reply, just as he'd expected. "The power of these Stones is far too great for your meager hands."

"Maybe," he answered, one eyebrow flickering up momentarily. "But I'm willing to bet my life on this."

A few years ago, Steve would've promptly agreed to this assessment. Even with the super soldier serum, who was he to control power of such magnitude? He'd seen what using the gauntlet and all six Infinity Stones had done to Thanos and Banner even with the Hulk's powers, and how it had killed Tony. Yet he'd been able to wield Mjolnir, Thor's mighty hammer that should be out of reach of mere mortal hands. And Thor's brother Loki had been able to use both the Space and Mind Stones without coming to any harm, as did Dr. Stephen Strange with the Time Stone. Even if there was only the slightest chance that this would work, he had no other choice but to take it.

He'd said it before, and he'd say it again: Whatever it takes.

Carefully, he opened the case and reached in for the two remaining Infinity Stones he still carried, holding one in each hand. He closed his eyes, his fingers enclosing the Stones and he could feel the power they possessed, vibrating and humming against his skin, sending involuntary shivers down his spine. Then he concentrated on what he wanted the Stones to do.

Please, bring them back.

Steve felt power like never before surging through his body. Not even taking Mjolnir and bringing forth lightning like the god of thunder had felt like this. His bones were on fire and his very soul seemed to sing as his skin glowed an intense blue that faded into orange at the edges of his body. There was a sudden flash of light on the stormy sky above, multi colored streaks that rippled and reached out across the universe, cutting across time and space, a force greater than nature shifting and changing the reality of what had been their existence until but a second before.

The lightning disappeared at the corners of sky on the horizon and as the glow receded Steve could feel his heartbeat slowing down and the power he'd wielded seemed to return to the Stones in his hands. As he opened his eyes, he could see the Red Skull had been regarding him with quite a shocked expression before he returned to his previous unfeeling mask.

"Very well." He merely said then with a slight nod of the head.

Steve raised an eyebrow at him. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"You shall get your wish, Captain Rogers," the creature replied evenly.

For a moment, Steve wondered if this was a trick, somehow, and if he was about to be attacked. As the Red Skull merely gestured at him as if to say, 'carry on', Steve returned the Space Stone to the case, sealing it shut carefully, before holding it tightly in his left hand as his right hand still held the Soul Stone.

"You may drop the Stone over the edge." He said, making a sweeping gesture at the cliff.

Steve once more narrowed his eyes at him. "How do I know you're not tricking me right now?"

"You don't," the Red Skull answered. "This would be your proverbial, ah, leap of faith."

Knowing he had no other choice, Steve approached the edge of the cliff and looked down for a moment. Opening his palm turned up, he looked at the Soul Stone one last time, before tilting his hand and watching it fall down the cliff, finally disappearing from sight. The clouds above him suddenly swirled and gathered, forming a tunnel of light above the twin towers as thunder crackled and sounded all around him. A great flash of light seemed to descend upon him, and it became so bright that he needed to close his eyes.

When he opened his eyes again, Steve realized he was lying down somewhere under the same lilac sky he had first seen when he arrived in Vormir, yet the thunderous clouds seemed now to be far away. He noticed how he seemed to be in a shallow pool of water, yet the feeling that came foremost to his mind was that there was something in his right hand. Not just something, but someone's hand was tightly grasped in his.

"Natasha!" He gasped, sitting up too quickly and going a little dizzy at the motion, but nothing else seemed to matter because lying down beside him was Natasha Romanoff, her red-blonde hair braided and she was dressed in the same suit as when they had first traveled back in time. "Oh my God, it worked. Nat!"

"What?" She furrowed her eyebrows even as Steve pulled her up to a sitting position. She finally opened her eyes and looked at him, alarm taking over her features. "Oh no, oh no. What happened? Why are you here?"

"I came to save you," he simply said, grinning like a fool at the sight of her.

"No, no, no!" Natasha continued to fret, growing anxious as she thought something must have gone wrong. "What did Clint do? I was supposed to be dead!"

"You were," Steve said, his voice growing serious and he talked quickly, trying to explain everything to her. "Nat, we did it. Thanks to you, we got all the Infinity Stones and we got everyone back and Thanos is gone. Now we just need to go back to our present."

"What? Are you serious? But then how─?" Her green eyes went wider still as she tried to make sense of his words.

"I'll explain later, I don't think we have a lot of time left. Here, let me put in the new time coordinates," he reached for her wrist, inputting the time he'd left his present plus five seconds in her time-traveling GPS, as Tony had called it.

He just had time to do this and was still smiling like an idiot at her when her time device activated itself and she vanished away.

"Okay, one last stop," he whispered to himself and punched in the time for his last destination to take back the Space Stone to 1970, then he also vanished away from Vormir.

"Five, four, three, two, one…"

Banner, Bucky and Sam had been standing by the platform, counting down as Steve had just vanished from their sight and anxiously waiting for his return. There was a sudden blinding flash of light and a sound of thunder on an otherwise clear blue sky and when they recovered their sight, the three men noticed that there wasn't only Steve on top of the platform, yet two people on it and two more people sprawled on the ground before them.

"What the hell?!" Sam was the first to recover his voice and express any reaction to what was happening before their eyes.

Standing on the platform was Steve, as they'd expected, yet he had his arms in a tight embrace around a shocked Natasha. Lying on the ground and staring dazedly up at the sky was Tony Stark and the human guise once worn by Vision.

"It worked," Steve laughed, still clutching Natasha to his chest, and then he actually lifted her up in his arms and twirled her around once. "It really worked!" Then he released her and jumped down from the platform, his hands reaching out to Tony to pull him up to his feet.

"What the hell did you do?" Banner questioned, his eyes wide as he looked at the three people that should not have been there with them.

"I used the Soul Stone to bring them back," Steve explained, now reaching out to Vision and bringing him to his feet.

"What?" Bucky raised an eyebrow at him.

"How? I mean, how?" Sam asked, still uncomprehending.

"I just tried it," Steve answered with a simple shrug, as if the whole matter had been as simple as that. "I got to Vormir and I got to thinking, what exactly were the Soul Stone's powers? So before putting it back, I tried using the Stone to get everyone we'd lost back to life."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Banner protested with a frown as he came down from the platform to join them at the ground level. "I tried to bring Natasha back when I undid the Snap, but I couldn't do it."

"That's because she didn't just die, her soul was trapped inside the Stone," Steve explained it. "So when I put it back to its original place, I traded it back for her. You know, a soul for a soul."

"You did all that without knowing if that wouldn't kill you in the process?" Natasha lifted her eyebrows in surprise at hearing this, as she also jumped down to the ground to stand next to him.

"The thought did cross my mind, but I didn't think too much about it." Steve admitted with a quiet smile.

"And there goes the stupid," Bucky smiled, gently shaking his head at what he knew would've been his answer.

"Are you insane?" Tony asked then, a rather furious expression on his face as he rounded up on Steve with a finger pointed accusingly at his chest. "You have no idea how you could've monumentally messed things up. What if you'd brought us back to life back in 2014? You could've altered the flow of time!"

"Hey, I was very careful and specific about what I wanted," Steve countered with a raised eyebrow and crossed arms over his chest. "If you got back to life exactly the same time as I got back in time from taking the Stones to the past then there shouldn't be any problem as I wouldn't be altering anyone's past. I thought you would be glad I brought you back, Tony!" He furrowed his eyebrows softly at him.

"I am glad, believe me, I am," Tony lifted his hands in a conceding gesture, as his furious expression melted into a mellowed frown. "But I'm still so, so confused. How is Vision here?" He gestured with a hand at the android disguised as a human, who just stood there quietly with them during this whole thing.

"He is a sentient being, therefore he has a soul," Steve explained with a nod of his head. "His body and systems had been recovered in Wakanda by Shuri's team, so he could be brought back to life as well."

"But didn't he need the Mind Stone to well, you know, exist?" Sam asked then with a bewildered gesture of the hands. Wasn't that why they'd gone through the whole battle back in Wakanda?

"Not after Shuri's team modified his synaptic connections," Steve carried on with his explanations. "They did that back when we were still thinking we could've recovered the Infinity Stones from Thanos right after the Snap. So when I used the Soul Stone, I also used the Space Stone to get Vision's and Tony's bodies back to this location."

"You used two Infinity Stones at same time?" Natasha asked, her eyebrows once more nearly reaching her hairline and her voice going up an octave.

"My God, you're an idiot," Tony declared, just barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes at his friend.

"Or you might be the luckiest son of a bitch ever," Banner said, pushing his glasses back up his nose.

"I figured the universe owed me some luck back, you know," Steve said, with a casual shrug and a rather foolish grin. "Trapped in the ice for nearly seventy years and all of that."

Suddenly Vision moved for the first time since Steve had pulled him up to his feet after he'd suddenly appeared at the clearing in the woods by the Avengers compound, which was undergoing a massive and complete reconstruction after being utterly destroyed in the battle. All the others stopped and watched as he stood before Steve, and the next moment he reached out and enveloped his form in a fierce hug.

"Thank you, Captain Rogers," Vision said, his voice thick with emotion.

Steve smiled and patted him on the back. "You're welcome, Vision."

It was the push they had all needed to get past the arguments and start joining in the celebratory hugs. A while later, they were all gathered at Tony's country house. Pepper had nearly had a heart attack when she'd seen him descend the ramp of the Quinjet, but then she recovered and ran towards him, throwing her arms around him and hitting him on the back as she cried and told him this was it, he was done, no more pulling any crap on her. Tony simply smiled as tears also ran down his face and he agreed with every single word out of her mouth. Then Morgan also ran out and reached them, and they both knelt down and hugged their daughter fiercely while Rhodey and Happy stood around them in a little cocoon of happiness.

Soon others joined them in this impromptu celebration. Clint came on another Quinjet with his whole family and Wanda, who had been staying with them after Tony's funeral. The Barton kids latched themselves onto their aunt Natasha while she and Clint could only look at each other with tears in their eyes. With one arm around Laura and his throat tight with emotion, he could only nod at her and Natasha nodded back at him, one of her arms around Lila and the other over Cooper, little Nate grabbing at her legs. For now, they didn't need any words to express what they meant to each other.

Impatient to even walk, Wanda lifted herself in the air with her powers and landed gently in front of Vision, her eyes wide and her hands tentative as she touched his face delicately. He covered her hands with his own and slid one of her palms to his mouth in order to place a kiss on it, and then she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly to her, tears streaming down her face and an impossibly bright smile taking over her lips.

A while later, Peter Parker arrived with his aunt May and the kid couldn't stop crying and laughing and hugging Tony as he blabbed on about anything and everything and they all laughed and cried with him and the house looked so alive that it was almost impossible to think a funeral had taken place a short while ago.

So many people had come and hugged Steve for this incredible and wonderful surprise that he'd pulled on everyone, it was a while before Bucky was able to sidle up to his best and oldest friend for a more private word. Steve was standing by the kitchen counter with a beer in hand and Bucky stood next to him with a bottle of his own.

"I must be losing my touch," Bucky said then in a would-be-casual tone. "When you hugged me before going back in time with the Stones I was pretty sure you were going to pull out quite a different surprise."

Steve glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, a smile tugging at his lips as he thought about Bucky's whispered words on how he'd miss him. "To be honest, I think I was," Steve admitted softly then. "I was thinking about going back and staying in the past. Finding Peggy, living the life I missed all those years ago. But then I found the Red Skull in Vormir and thought how I didn't want to live in the past anymore, you know? I wanted to be here, in the future, with everyone I love and this life we all got to build together..." He trailed off, as his eyes sought out all the people around them. He looked at Tony, so impossibly happy to be with his family once more, at Vision and Wanda, who were off on one corner of the couch all on a world of their own yet sharing in everything with their friends, at Natasha who was talking and laughing with Laura and Clint and the kids.

"I'm glad you came back, punk," Bucky said, punching him lightly on the arm as he smiled at him.

"Me, too," Steve smiled back and clinked their bottles together before taking a sip of his beer.

Hours later, night had fallen and Steve had been sitting alone outside on the porch steps overlooking the lake when he heard the door open and shut behind him.

"Hey, there you are," Natasha said and walked out to join him, sitting down next to him and hugging her knees up to her chest. "I've been looking all over for you."

"Oh yeah?" He asked quietly, turning to her with a smile.

She just looked at him for a moment, her green eyes taking in his features and finally concentrating back on his blue eyes. "I don't think I got to actually thank you yet, for what you did."

"You would've done the same thing," he said dismissively with a slight shake of the head.

"Still," she shrugged her shoulders quietly as she reached down and took his right hand in her left one. "Thank you, Steve."

He squeezed her hand lightly in response as they just kept smiling at each other. After a moment, she let out a quiet laugh and said, "I can't believe you managed to use two Infinity Stones on your own. And what's this I hear about you using Thor's hammer? I wonder what finally made you worthy." She raised an eyebrow at him in a teasing tone.

"I did it for you," he said softly, the words escaping out of his lips before he could really think about them. Her eyes widened a little at this and he continued talking before she could say anything in reply. "I did it all for you. When we were fighting Thanos, I just couldn't let him win while thinking you'd sacrificed yourself so that we could do this. I thought of you and then the hammer was just flying to my hand."

"Steve…" She could only whisper back at him, tears gathering in her eyes as she kept staring at him.

"And I couldn't see myself living in any version of a future without you in it, Nat," he told her. "You're my partner." He abruptly stopped talking, swallowing hard as his throat constricted with too many emotions.

"I know," she smiled at him, blinking her eyes and trying to keep the tears from spilling over.

"I love you, you know? I think I'm in love with you," Steve said then, the words coming out of his mouth as he was afraid he'd never say this if he stopped talking now. "I don't know when it happened. Maybe I've always been in love with you and I was just afraid to admit it."

For a moment they could only stare at each other as the words he said almost hovered over them like a physical presence. Then she leaned forward, her free hand going up to caress his cheek as their noses touched and their eyes closed, their lips meeting in a kiss that was meant to be soft and gentle, yet at the first contact they both felt a spark that fueled some previously unknown desire deep in their guts. He pulled at her waist to get her closer to him and his other hand weaved gently through her hair and she relished at his touch, biting his lower lip and deepening the kiss as her hand clung to his shirt as if her life depended on it.

"Okay, wait," she broke the kiss, pressing their foreheads together as she kept her eyes closed and struggled to put some order in her thoughts. "Let's not get carried away here. You literally just brought me back from the dead and all." She took a deep breath in and out, and he did the same. "Are you sure about this?"

"Yes," he told her firmly and without hesitation, his voice leaving no room for argument. He pulled away a little to look at her and noticing her still unconvinced frown between her eyebrows, he said, "Nat, I was going to ask you out on a date before Scott showed up at the front door of the compound and we got into all of that mess."

"You were?" Her eyes sparkled at him as a smile tugged at her lips.

"Yeah," he laughed a little, suddenly feeling giddy that he was actually having this conversation with her. "What would you have said?"

"Depends," she smirked that little smirk of hers at him. "Where would you take me?"

"Anywhere you'd like," he said, grinning like an idiot back at her. "I have a few places in mind, but I'm not sure any of them are open right now."

"You can take me some other time," she said, her smirk melting into a gentle smile. "Right now, there's nowhere else I'd rather be."

He smiled at her, leaning forward once more to capture her lips with his own. As she snaked her arms around his neck and ran her fingers through his hair, she decided to amend that statement. "Actually, you could take me back to your place in Brooklyn," she said, murmuring the words against his lips, not quite breaking their kiss.

"Humm, that's a good idea," he said, also murmuring against her lips. "It looks like you'll be out of a home for a while until the Avengers compound is reconstructed."

She murmured her agreement and then got back to kissing him until they were both quite breathless. "Steve?" She said, pausing for a moment to catch her breath. "I love you, too."

He smiled and perhaps for the first time in his life Steve Rogers felt like he was truly home.

A.N.: I know we're supposed to be happy that Steve got his happily ever after with Peggy, but blame it on my heart being set on Romanogers (CA:TWS was the first movie of the franchise I ever watched, so I never got over their chemistry and how they were just perfect together) and in my opinion that was just a cop out; I felt cheated that he would go through everything in the past decade just to get a do-over and forget about everything else, leaving Bucky and Sam and the others in the future and potentially jeopardizing the timelines by interfering with the past (why do they create some time travel logic only to completely disregard it at the end?). Don't even get me started on Nat, her sacrificial death (which, okay, was awesome in its own way, but I was heartbroken), the nonsensical/botched romance with Banner and how the whole franchise was so unfair in their treatment of her (I'm still waiting for my Black Widow solo movie, you bastards!).

Anyway, sorry for the long-winded author's notes, but I just had to get this off my chest. I still think Endgame was an amazingly epic final chapter to a most wonderful adventure and I understand the value and reasons why things ended the way they did; but at same time I was so pissed off and I just couldn't help myself and I had to write this. Hopefully other Romanogers/Black Widow supporters out there found some solace in this little fanfiction of mine, as I've found in some out there.