Our Version of History

The world changed; time took a new path towards a better future but closed the door to one happy ending. Without Civil War, the Avengers never disbanded. The Sokovia Accords were signed by all. What happened next? Steve/OC, follows the WIAS/RITD AU.

An alarm goes off.

'Good morning, Captain Rogers', a tinny voice calls through a small speaker. 'The car is coming to pick you up at eight fifteen to take you to the cathedral to avoid London morning traffic.'

Already mostly awake, the man is quick to rise from the soft hotel bed, carding fingers through sleep-tousled hair. "Thanks, Friday," he answers the computer operating out of his phone.

'You have missed messages,' the computer reports.

"Play, please."

"Oh Steve," a warm woman's voice sighs through the recording. "I'm so sorry about Peggy. I hope you don't mind some company, because we're about to get on a plane. I… I don't think you should be doing this alone. Call me, if you get this. Or I'll try you when we land. Or text me. Someone showed you how to text, right? Did I forget to-" the message cuts off as the speaker runs out of time.

He sighs. "Next message."

An irritated man grumbles, sounding quite tired. "Cap, pick up the phone; these roads are all wrong and we can't find the hotel, and I'm gonna kill Barnes if he doesn't stop kick-" the caller abruptly stopped speaking, and the message grew muffled as he had to assume the phone got dropped.

He can hear arguing along the lines of 'kick my seat one more time and I'm deporting you' and smiles to himself. "Next message."

"We found the hotel. Everyone's in one piece," a calm but mildly amused woman reports. "Meet you at the cathedral in the morning."

An alarm goes off.

A very sleepy woman rubs at her face, trying to return to her dream. In it, she was dancing. In her dream, the sky was blue every day, and the buses always ran on time.

"Time to get up if you want time to shower before the service," a voice calls through a thin door. Without a reply, the knocking continues, more insistent now. "Mab, are you up?"

"I'm up," she calls, voice slightly muffled through her hands. She coughs, but tries to suppress the sound. She takes the first of her deepest shallow breaths for the day. She coughs again as her weak lungs protest.

"Do you…" the voice hesitates, "do you…need help or something?"

"I've got it," she answers. The woman stands slowly, keeping a grip on the bed in case the world goes blank. "Thanks, Uncle David."

"I can bring the chair up if you need it," the voice answers, trying to be helpful in the new and uncertain world.

"I don't need it until we go out," she answers, sitting up but holding herself steady by gripping the bed's headboard. "Not yet," she adds quietly to herself.

An alarm goes off.

A heavy hand slaps at the snooze of a clock radio, silencing the talk-show host's enthusiastic morning greeting. A sigh of relief in the darkness, and possibly returning to sleep, is cut short by a bedroom door opening and throwing harsh fluorescent light over the bed.

"Paul – you have to get up or you're going to miss the train." His wife seems angry with him this morning.

"I can sleep ten more minutes," he replies, pulling the covers over his head.

She pulls them down and away from his face. "No, you can't! You said it yourself; there's pre-shift training today and you can't miss that – if you get fired because you can't work the lift I swear to God, Paul-"

"Alright! I'm up!" he declares, giving in.

His wife seems less angry now. "There's coffee going in the pot, don't forget to take that new medicine the doctor prescribed-"

"I know, Janice-"

"-because you're so forgetful in the morning-"

"I know, Janice-"

"-and I don't want you dropping dead on the subway!"

"I said I know, Janice!" he barks, and his wife leaves him to finish waking up, though leaving the door wide open to keep him from falling back asleep.

A sleepy mother wakes in the night.

She rolls over and pats the empty side of the bed, sighing and wishing her husband stopped working nights. But she is confused as she reaches across the bed, as an odd sensation touches at her hand. It almost tickles, like a spider caught along the sheets. She swats at it, and a burst of light hurts her eyes.

She cries out against the sudden brightness, shielding her face. She blinks against the light and shrieks in horror. Her curtains are on fire.

Someone pounds on the wall of the apartment building – her neighbors are so close, and the walls are so thin. "Keep it down! Some of us are trying to sleep!"

"Fire!" she yells back. "Fire!"

She leaps from bed, slipping her feet into the house shoes she keeps neatly tucked under the bed, but as she touches the doorknob, the thin hollow-core door bursts into flames. She recoils, holding her hand to her chest as if burned.

But it hadn't felt hot, she realizes. She reaches out slowly, taking hold of the doorknob. The flames licking their way up the board tickle her skin, like a delicate feather duster.

An alarm goes off.

A/N: Very rough introductions here, just a little bit of intrigue. I'm still working out bits and bobs and, you know, the entire plot, so don't expect an update any time soon. Mostly using this to see if there's interest in a Steve/OC story within the WIAS/RITD alternate universe.

Talk soon.

Ad Astra,

Aria