**A/N&TW** I'm in love with this chapter, thank you to those who are reading your kudos, and comments make my day. Special thanks to ChivalrousAssassin for all of your help, I couldn't do it without you. TW for sexual content and violence.

Five years Before

"Toni, you have to help us," my voice was filled with raw emotion, it poured from me, I just hoped it would be enough. I would beg if I had to. I would get down on my hands and knees before her if only so I could be sure we could count on her to help us. I knew we could do this. I knew we could defeat Thanos, but we needed to do this together.

We needed her.

I would put all of my silly pride aside just for her to see things my way.

"I won't do anything for any of you, especially not you," she glared at me her honey brown eyes were lit with fury, "Once I considered you a friend Evelyn, a confidant even, but you could do nothing but look me right in the face and lie to me, over and over again." She stepped towards me pointing a perfectly manicured finger in my face. Her dark hair fell over her forehead from her once perfectly coiffed chignon, but now that I had brought her here, cornered her even everything seemed to be falling apart. "The very minute you looked at me, and saw the pain that I was in, over everything and you chose not to say anything, to do anything..." A sneer fell upon her lips, the vibrant red of her lips made her teeth look so white when she bared them in my direction, "that was the moment you should have known you could never ask anything of me, that is the moment I knew that you were never my friend."

I shook my head, "That's not true, Toni and you know it."

"Do I?" She held my gaze, and I could see the fury making her shoulders tremble, "All I know is that you and your boyfriends, need to stay very far away from me. The only reason I chose to meet you is because out of all of you, you were the one I respected the most, you are the one that as far as I'm concerned went through the most. You are the only one that could understand what it's like to be in this position as a woman, what it's like to have to prove yourself twice as hard as everyone else just to get a modicum of the same respect."

She shook her head and began to walk away. Without a thought I reached out for her arm my hand grasping too tightly around her bicep, I needed to get her to help us, I had to. I had come here to her because I knew she would not have even seen me if Steve or James was with me. Not free what happened.

Toni had been my friend once, and I thought that it would make it easier for her to see things my way, but when she turned and without a single thought in my head, I felt the heat of the blast of her weapon to my chest knocking me yards away.

"Don't you get it?" She screamed, "I can't."

I let my eyes crawl towards her to the way she stood with a hand over her abdomen, protecting it from me, from danger.

"You're pregnant." I said my heart hammering in my throat. A thousand thoughts that had nothing to do with Thanos burned through my mind. I stood quickly and started to move towards her again, but I stilled when she raised her hand again, the weapon on her palm glowing, ready to blast me away yet again.

She didn't reply she only offered me a look of utter rage.

"Don't you see Toni," I had to make her see, "this is all the more reason for you to help. Your son or daughter needs a world to live in, a world that isn't possible if we don't put an end to this threat." I could barely swallow down all of the emotions coursing through me.

She rolled her eyes and scoffed in my direction, "You are as dumb as the pair of puppies that follow you around, aren't you?"

"I know we can do this, but we have to do this together." I could feel the emotion tearing through me because I so badly wanted to see the other side of this battle but without our teammates, I just knew we would fail. We would try as hard as we could but... I looked up my eyes locked with hers and she saw the truth just as I did, but she could not concede, it was a matter of pride and Toni's had been damaged beyond repair.

There was a heavy beat of silence between us.

"You should have just told me Evie, and none of this would have happened." Her voice was laced with pain, pain of my betrayal.

I shook my head knowing her words were just to make one of both of us feel better, but it did not.

"It wouldn't have mattered, would it?" I asked, "You made up your mind the minute you realized."

She glared at me.

"I never pegged you as petty but asking him to do what you did..." I could see the tears building in her eyes and I found myself looking away. I was a fool to think that this just had to do with what had happened to her parents all those years ago. There was so much more to it than that.

"He is mine," I felt my chin quiver, "no matter what games you tried to play Toni," I grit my teeth, "They both are."

"You are all fools, doomed to die because none of you were brave enough to make a choice."

I made to charge in her direction, to make her understand that this was so much more than what had happened between all of us, but before I knew it, she was encapsulated in that iron suit. She blasted into the sky, the one place that she knew I could not follow.

Fuck.

Present Day.

Happy ran his fingers through his curly greying hair and he sighed, "Wow, that's a lot to take in."

I offered him a bland look and started moving towards the car, "Who is Pepper?" I ignored his comment.

"His wife, Tony's wife." He offered, "She wants to talk to you."

I looked over my shoulder to the bridge worry coursing through me, "Why?"

"If I knew why then she wouldn't want to talk to you," he said. We stood beside the car now and it trilled as he unlocked it. He opened the back door for me, "hop in."

I hesitated for a moment before I relented and climbed into the back of the air-conditioned vehicle. I was surprised to find it empty, and I narrowed my eyes as I met Happy's through the rear-view mirror.

"She's not here but I'll take you to her." He said.

I wanted to argue but there was no reason why I should. I left, rather I was leaving, why shouldn't I go see this Pepper person.

"So," Happy began to speak filling the silence in the car, "your name is Evelyn."

"Yep." I replied popping the p at the end of the word.

I could feel his gaze once again through the rear-view mirror as he began to drive. "Evelyn Rogers."

"Yep." I said again.

"You are Captain America's wife." It wasn't necessarily a question.

"I was."

He was silent for a moment before he began again, "I am sorry for your loss. We lost a lot of folks around here too. "

"I lost everyone." I held his gaze again before I looked away when I saw the way his eyes looked at me with pity.

"Right, I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by it you know?" He kept looking between the road and me through the mirror, "I didn't mean to make your pain seem any less than ours."

I shook my head, "It's fine Happy." I felt comforted slightly by his rambling.

"I think you and Tony, our Tony, would have gotten along." He said.

"I don't think so." I said my voice hard.

"No really he was a stand-up guy, he put the whole world before himself."

"I really don't think so Happy." I said again my shoulders tensed.

"He sounds nothing like the Toni from your worl-"

I cut him off, "I killed Howard and Maria Stark alongside the Winter Soldier."

Silence.

That shut him up.

He coughed and started to speak again, "So, when did you and Cap get married?"

Sigh.

*~*~*

The ride was silent after that, and Happy didn't try to start any more conversation, but he did keep looking back at me through the rear-view mirror. I could practically hear his thoughts, his questions and how could I really blame him. I knew that I had dropped a bomb on him.

We drove for a long time, the day turning slowly to night, light still glowing through the trees. I could see that the city gave way to the country and tree lined roads. He turned off of the narrow highway onto a dirt road and still we continued to drive through the trees.

I could hear the crickets and frogs begin their song as he turned off the air conditioner and opened the windows. The cool evening breeze tangled through my hair.

"We're almost there," he said, "And for what it's worth Evelyn, I know that you didn't do it because you wanted to."

He was right but his words didn't hurt any less, because the truth was just that. There was no choice. But the fact of the matter is that it still happened. I ruined Toni's life, I ruined the lives of so many because of what I did under Hydra's thumb and there was no way to get away from that.

I offered him a weak smile.

Through the trees I saw a house on the edge of a lake, it was beautiful, secluded, and perfect. He stopped the car and got out, but I was frozen. I didn't move a muscle until he opened the door to the car and looked at me, "Pepper, is waiting for you."

I swallowed thickly and stepped from the vehicle the earth crunched beneath my boots as I stepped onto it. I pulled my backpack over one shoulder and followed Happy as he walked towards the house. Before I knew it there was a small blur that burst from the wooded house and towards us.

"Uncle Happy!!" A small, sweet voice shouted with joy.

"Hello, sweet girl how is my favourite niece!" He knelt down and picked her up in his arms swinging her in a circle.

My mouth went dry as a pair of honey brown eyes turned to me, her heart shaped face was set into an expression that screamed Toni. Her eyes trailed from my toes to the top of my head, "Did you know my dad?"

I blinked.

"No," Happy answered, "She never knew your daddy."

Her eyes flicked back to Happy, "why is she here?"

She must have been no older than four or five, but she sounded far older, intelligence screamed from her expression, and I felt my heart clench in my chest.

"Don't mind her," a female voice called from the front of the house, "She has seen so many of Tony's friends come around that she assumes the only reason any of them come around is because of him."

I turned to look at the woman, she was tall. Long strawberry blond hair fell midway down her back. Her blue eyes looked haunted, dark smudges beneath her eyes told me everything. She had to be Tony's wife. She strode towards us a hand extended, "I'm Pepper Potts."

"Evelyn Rogers," I grasped her thin hand, it was cool beneath mine.

"I have been eager to meet you." She gave me a friendly look before she turned her eyes to Happy and the little girl, "You have already met Happy and this sweet girl is Morgan, my daughter."

"She is beautiful." I said.

"She is trouble and most definitely her father's daughter." She smiled fondly turning back to me, "I've made some lemonade, come sit with me. Happy can you keep Morgan occupied?"

Happy nodded and whispered into the child's ear, a peal of giggles burst from her and they made their way into the house.

I sat in a chair as Pepper passed me a glass of lemonade and sat herself taking a glass in her own grasp, "You must be wondering why I wanted to see you." She said.

I took a deep breath holding the cold glass, and met her eyes, "I have learned to try to go with the flow of things the last few years."

She nodded.

I took a sip of lemonade, the sweet and tart liquid felt nice in my dry mouth.

"I'm sorry for your loss," she said, and I met her icy blue eyes.

"I'm sorry for yours." I said, "I must confess I don't know very much about this world, only that I am making everyone's life more difficult than it already is."

"I'm sure that's not true," she set the glass down on the table with the lemonade pitcher.

I smiled weakly.

"Let me be transparent with you, I did ask you here for selfish reasons." She folded her hands in her lap.

I raised a brow and tilted my head to the side, "What reasons are those?" I asked.

"In your world, you were unable to defeat Thanos." She said and I nodded, "Why?"

I chuckled setting my glass down too, "That is a loaded question."

She was silent waiting for me to continue. I took a deep breath, "There were many factors and like I said I can't say for certain the differences between this world and my own but there were three major factors."

"Like?" She urged me on.

"Like my husband was most definitely not the same Captain America from this world, time and time again he chose me over everything else," I looked away from her towards the rippling lake, "Second, there was me. I don't exist here, and maybe those two things are tightly entwined. Without me there would have been a Captain America that always chose the greater good rather than his greatest love."

"And third?" She said almost eagerly.

"Third," my heart picked up speed, "third Toni Stark disappeared with her unborn child."

I saw Pepper's throat bob. "Her?"

I nodded and she squeezed her eyes closed. "So, you can say that without Tony's sacrifice there was no way you could have won."

I looked back at her and I reached over and placed my hand over hers, "I know that surviving without the one you love is hard. But I promise you it is not better to see him again. It is confusing and heart breaking and filled with a thousand other problems."

Her eyes widened, "Oh my god, that's right." She had only just realized that I was here now with the twin of my dead husband. Who was not my husband at all?

I pressed my lips together and cast my gaze to the ground between us.

"Evelyn," she leaned closer to me placing her hand over my own, "Stay here with me, stay here and take some time. Coming here and dealing with all of this on top of... everything..."

I looked to her now my eyes meeting hers.

"I could use the company if I'm totally honest." She smiled warmly at me.

"I couldn't impose on you Pepper," I began my throat tight, "This is all very surreal, Toni and I didn't see eye to eye for a very long time. There is too much to go into tonight."

She nodded understanding. "I want you to take some time, gather yourself. You went from the frying pan into the fire."

My heart clenched because she was the first person that had really given me a moment to breathe, a single second not to have to contemplate new feelings new sensations and an entire new world without the expectations of moving forward.

"Thank you." I could barely get the words to come out, they were laced with emotion, and she didn't push me any further.

She leaned back into her seat and picked up her glass and looked out to the lake a serene look on her face. I followed suit and followed her gaze out over the water. This was the sort of life that I dreamt about, even when I was a little girl. A place away from the city, away from the noise, nestled in a home with my husband and my children, to love, to live and to fight and play until the end of our days. This place reminded me so much of that and it made my heart ache. Even the porch we sat on reminded me the one from back home that Steve had built for me. If only an attempt to give me what I so desired that we knew we could never just take. All we wanted was a place in this new world, a place that didn't seem so different from the world we had been borne to. A place that didn't need us more than we needed it.

"I like it here." I said my voice felt too loud suddenly and I felt her gaze, I couldn't meet it, if I did, I knew I wouldn't be able to stop the torrent of tears that were sure to come.

"You can ask me anything Evelyn, I will tell you, I'll show if you want, Tony had cameras everywhere, in his suits in all of the technology." I felt the ache in her voice, and I could tell she needed to show me almost as much as I needed to hear it.

"Show me everything."

Steve POV

It took all of my will power not to strangle the man before me but the only information that he could give me was that he had no fucking clue what I was talking about.

"Come on Strange," I clenched my fists at my side to curb the need to throw him against the wall, "You have to know more than you're saying, you always know more than you're saying."

"I'm glad you have such faith in me Captain Rogers, but I can't tell you what I don't know, no matter how many times that you ask me."

I could feel the muscles in my jaw tense tighter as he spoke, it took all of my will power not to punch him in his arrogant face.

Strange offered me no other explanation, "I told you I would look into it, and I can hardly do that with you standing over me the way that you are. When I find something, I will let you know." I dragged a hand over my face and stepped away as he spoke again, "If there is another Mordo in our universe I swear to you that I will make sure that I find out everything that we will need to know, one of him is more than enough." With that he turned and left not before calling out, "You know where the exit is."

I frowned and turned away making my way from the building and onto the street. A feeling of dread pooling low in my guts, I had hoped that I would find more, I had hoped Strange would be able to shed some light on the situation unfortunately he was not and now there was nothing left to do but go back and tell them that I had no more information than when I left.

By the time I made it back to the apartment a few hours had gone by, and I was eager to get back to them, to her. When I opened the door and entered the security flagged me over, "This has been here for a few hours," he gestured to the pizza box on the desk, "No one had come to collect it, and I've called up a few times, but no one is answering."

My pulse quickened, "How long?" I asked.

"Like I said a couple of hours," He frowned telling me there was something else.

"What?" I asked him knowing that he wanted to say more but was concerned that he should not, "Evelyn left a few hours ago too. By herself."

My stomach dropped, "What?! Why didn't you stop her?" I knew it was fruitless to ask, he wouldn't have been able to stop her any more than he would have been able to stop me. "Where is Bucky?"

He shook his head and wet his lips nervously, "I didn't see him."

I slammed my fist down on the desk a dent left behind in the metal. I don't even remember getting on the elevator or getting off. When I breached the door, the lights were off, and it was quiet.

"Buck?!" I yelled out, I could hear my heartbeat in my voice, "Bucky! Where are you?"

My voice was loud and reverberated off of the walls. He appeared from the hallway his eyes were hard, and his tone was clipped. "What happened?" he asked.

"Evelyn is gone what did you do?" I couldn't keep the accusation out of my tone.

He scoffed, "What did I do?" he shook his head and folding his arms across his chest, "Maybe I should be asking you that." He paused for a moment before he continued the anger in his tone surprising, "You couldn't let me have this one thing, could you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You know fucking well what I'm talking about," he had his feet planted seemingly unconcerned that Evelyn was gone, "You know I had feelings for her, and you just couldn't keep your hands off her."

"Come on Buck," I turned away from him and headed straight to her room. I should have felt bad, but I didn't there was this inherent need within me to claim her as mine and I wouldn't put myself aside any longer. Not after everything we had lost, not anymore.

He followed me, "No, you don't get to brush me off."

"I'm not brushing you off, I need to find her," her door was still in shards across the room, I could see she left draws open and clothes were half hanging from the drawers,

No.

"Explain to me what you said to get her to leave!" I couldn't help the anger that laced my words twisting them with accusation. This conversation was starting to get loud, very loud.

"What did I fucking say?" his tone was filled with astonishment. "You both broke my fucking heart. You took the one thing that might mean I could have a normal life!"

I couldn't help myself and I laughed in his face, "There is nothing normal about you, there is nothing normal about me, if you want something you have to fucking take it." I yelled back.

"Did you even fucking ask her?" He spat fury lighting his features.

I let a smirk spread on my face, "I didn't need to ask her, I could see it in her fucking eyes, she never told me to stop, in fact she was quite eager for it." I imagined her flushed, clinging to me as I made her cum around my fingers. The memory set all my senses alight.

I should have seen it coming but I didn't, his fist slammed right into my jaw knocking me backwards, I didn't hold back either I reared back and slammed my fist into him and before I knew it, we were rolling around on the ground amongst the shards of broken metal pounding the living shit out of each other.

Evelyn POV

It was well into the night, and I was certain that the sun would be rising over the lake within the hour. Pepper had left me in Tony's office hours ago, watching the history of this world. All of the familiar faces and stories and I wasn't sure how much more of it I could take. At this point there wasn't anything about this world that I didn't know. I knew all of it. It was so different than my own yet still there were those that succumb to their fate.

Those who were blipped...

I learned how they came back and how some of them died. In the end their complicated journey through fucking time itself had panned out, putting them in possession of the Infinity Stones. I learned that Tony's obsession with making things right in this world had been his final downfall. How that obsession had made it possible for this world to be safe from Thanos, how all of those blipped returned and fought hard to ensure their future right alongside him until he made the final snap to rid the world of Thanos and his army.

I felt hollow.

I stood and made my way from the room, from the house needing air, more air than my lungs could gobble down. I stood at the edge of the lake watching the mist curl from the waters as the sun climbed the horizon. I buried my face in my hands and allowed myself to shed tears for the lives lost to free the world and for those left behind to deal with the ramifications. My whole body felt like it weighed ten thousand pounds with the weight on my shoulders. The heaviness of guilt that pressed in on me for having failed my world, for the lives that were lost because we couldn't seem to put our differences aside. Because we couldn't see past our own pride.

"Evelyn," A soft voice spoke beside me, and I turned to see Pepper, her face lined with worry, "Are you alright?"

I wiped furiously at my tears, "No."

Pepper placed an arm around my shoulders pulling me into her and I let myself fall apart. "I'm so sorry," I said through my tears, "I'm sorry for everything that you've had to deal with, what you had to see, losing the one you love and knowing that there was nothing you could do to stop it."

She hushed me and pulled back taking my face in her hands, "I'm not sorry, I'm glad that Tony was able to do it. Our daughter will grow up knowing her father was a hero, that he was able to save all of us from a terrible fate."

I tried to calm my tears, "You are a better woman than me."

She shook her head, "No, I'm not."

I pulled my face from her grip, "I am, here you are mourning the love of your life and here I am running away from a love triangle and my husband is barely cold in his grave."

She blinked and tilted her head to the side in confusion.

"James and Steve, there is just something between us that I can't turn away from, maybe it is the comfort maybe the familiarity... maybe I've looked at the whole this as a way to move forward... or to forget...  Why do I deserve to?" I stepped closer to the lake the cold water washing over my bare feet.

"Stop Evelyn," Pepper's voice was cool like the water at my feet.

"I'm telling you that should a Tony from another world burst out of a portal right now, I would do my best to make sure that he was mine." Her words shocked me into silence, my tears dried up and I spun towards her.

"You would?"

"Damn right I would, there is no one in the world for me but Tony. In this world, of any world for that matter. I don't blame you for looking to Steve and seeing the man you love, the man you've always loved."

"What about James then?"

"Did you love him?" I knew she meant in my world.

"I did," I replied, "I do."

"What stopped you from being with him rather than Steve?" she asked her tone gentle.

I looked away and to my hands, "When we were captured by Hydra all we had was each other and we needed each other to stay sane.  Neither of us could really remember our own lives before Hydra other than our connection and we were pushed together, maybe by fate maybe by Hydra." I took a deep shaky breath, "We were a team, on mission and on base. The love we had was something else entirely, I've never experienced passion like that."

Pepper put her hand on my shoulder, and I looked at her again, I could see she wanted to hear, and I just knew that she would never judge me so I continued, "He was my fortress, he had my back whether it was from an enemy mark, or from our relentless captors, "We were unstoppable. But when we were rescued from Hydra, and we regained our memories I think we were both ashamed."

"Why?" she asked her tone soft.

"The things we did." I looked down to my hands to find them trembling, "I think apart of us remembered Steve all along, that we knew that he was still somewhere, alone. But when we came out of it James expected things to stay the same way, for us to be together. Steve expected things to go back to the way they were before."

She turned us back towards the house, my feet ached from the cold, so I allowed her to guide us back, "What happened then?"

"For a while James and I tried to keep it a secret what we had done, all while still doing it. When we were the Winter Soldier and his Thaw, we were sadistic, raw and fucking violent and we debased each other in every possible way and there was no shame between us. But in the end, I think that why we grew apart, because outside of Hydra, things like that we not normal."

"What do you mean?" she opened the door and led us into the kitchen and started brewing coffee.

I didn't feel shame over the things we did, not anymore but there was a part of me that was unsure of how to explain it in words to Pepper, a woman I just met. "We were insatiable, after a mission was complete it wasn't uncommon for us to..." I coughed, "Right then and there. We allowed other people to join us, we allowed people to watch us, we hurt each other and not just mentally, physically too. It wasn't a normal relationship it was debauchery at its finest."

"So, when you came back to normalcy." She began, understanding dawning on her, "You were ashamed."

I nodded.

"And how could we explain that to Steve, that man was so innocent in the way of things. If there was a man that was the epitome of the nineteen forties it was him. He barely touched me until we got married." I recalled that day with a heavy heart, "After we married, James wasn't the same."

"What happened?" she asked eager to hear what was next.

"I poured myself into that marriage, maybe as a way to atone for what I'd done as Thaw, as the Winter Soldier's partner. I became the housewife my husband wanted. I became the woman who stood proudly by Captain America's side doing everything in my power to make up for those awe full things. And James... James could only watch, and he resented me after a while." She passed me a mug of steaming coffee and I held it between my hands sucking all the warmth out of it into my freezing fingers, "Antonia Stark was as quick as a whip, nothing got past her, she saw right through me and for a time we were so close, she was my best friend and confidant." I took a deep breath, "Because she seemed to know each and every thought that burst in my mind, she saw the way James and I would look at each other across a room, she saw the way I tried so hard to be the perfect wife. She called me out on it, and I couldn't do anything but feel the relief that there was someone that I could finally talk to about it."

Pepper sat on one of the breakfast bar stools and leaned forward eager to hear what I had to say.

"But I should have known that she never did anything that didn't work in her favour." I set my mug down and swallowed thickly, "She wanted what I had."

"What do you mean?" Pepper asked her blue eyes wide.

"She wanted Steve." I said sadly

"But you were married to him by then?" I nodded and looked away back to the lake.

The walls to Stark tower always made me uncomfortable the building was too tall too ostentatious, too futuristic, the name Stark printed at every turn only to remind me of its namesake.

Howard.

Toni had sent me a message earlier to meet her in her lab, that she had something to show me. When the elevator doors were open, I was met with loud music which wasn't uncommon for the inventor. She was always working on something to do with the Iron Lady suits or the Starktec that was in pre-production.

I didn't see her in her usual spot in front of the large display screen, but I could hear noises from the back room, so I made my way towards them. I should have been paying closer attention to what I heard but what I saw, I never expected to see in a thousand years.

Toni and James.

She had her skirt pushed up around her hips and the blouse she worse was torn open her ample breasts free for all to see. Pounding into her was James, his jeans sliding down his legs his shirt discarded, he held her up with his metal arm, a position I had been in more times than I could count. Over his shoulder I saw Toni make eye contact with me and her grin grew, and she threw her head back crying out louder in ecstasy.

My stomach hit the floor and insane jealousy tore right through me.

"What is going on!" I shouted and James faltered his head whipped around his steel eyes met mine and I could see the regret in them instantly.

"Evie," Toni cooed in my direction, "Right on time."

"It's not what it looks like," James said at the same time.

"It looks exactly like what it looks like," she smiled at James who was tucking himself back into his pants. Then she tossed him his shirt.

"You did this on purpose didn't you?" I couldn't help the hurt that laced my words.

Toni only shrugged as she began to tidy her hair, "It wasn't on purpose per se."

I wanted to hit her, in fact I lunger for her but was caught around the waist by James when she was nearly in my grasp. "Calm down Evie," James spoke into my ear and just like his voice always could it calmed me, and I was like a wilted flower in his arms. His arm stayed around my waist pinning him to me, I could feel his still hard cock pressing into my lower back. His nose pressed into the hollow of my neck, I felt him breathe me in, but I couldn't help the rage that boiled out of me.

"You did this when you knew how I felt!" I pointed my finer in her direction.

"Oh? And how is that?"

"You know that I still have feelings for him! You know I still love him!" I felt James tense at my back, and I heard the sound of something falling to the ground behind me.

I spun my head just as Toni spoke, "Captain Rogers, how punctual."

The look on his face was pure devastation as he looked between me and James.

Pepper's eyes were round, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, "She did that?! Why?"

"To hurt me, to try and take Steve from me," I shrugged, "She had only befriended me because she wanted what was mine. I can't say for certain, but it only got worse when she realized that it was James and I that..."

"Killed her parents?" she offered, and I bowed my head in shame.

"Yes," I took a deep breath and met her eyes, "I'm sorry."

"I knew that it was hard for Tony when he found out, but even though it took him a long time to see it, he understood in the end that it wasn't done by choice." She placed a hand over mine where it sat on the countertop.

"How did Steve take it?" she asked, and I felt relieved if only for a moment that she changed the topic.

"Not well," I pulled my hand from beneath hers and balled my fists on my lap, "He tired, he did he wanted us to work, he tried to let me share something with James but in the end, it wasn't good for any of us and by the time Thanos came around I hadn't seen James in months."

"Where did he go?"

"I don't know," I said solemnly, "I will never know."

"And you and Steve?"

"Toni tried to push her way between us, to get her claws into Steve but she never took into account how loyal he was, to both me and James," I smiled lightly, "It was hard for a while but once he realized it would just be him and I, we fell more in love with each other and then it was only him and I in the end. Our punishment from Thanos, to live in a world that we could not save, even if it was by accident."

She looked puzzled.

I took a deep breath to clarify, even though it was going to be an over simplified explanation I told her, "When Thanos made his final snap, a snap to rid the entire planet of human life, we had happened to be protected in a pocket realm by Doctor Strange. He pulled us there to avoid an explosion, but when we returned only moments later there was nothing and no one but the Mad Titan himself. He laughed in our faces and told us that this is what we deserved. To live in the world we had failed, that we had run from like cowards. Not that it stopped him from allowing his armies to torment us for the next five years until he'd had enough and blew our planet to smithereens."

"I'm so sorry Evelyn, that's awful." She stood from the stool and enveloped me in her embrace, the soft scent of her perfume filled my senses.

"Call me Evie," I said as I hugged her back, "My friends call me Evie."

Bucky POV

To say that I was furious was an understatement, I was hurt, and fucking pissed, but with each blow I struck my friend made my heart feel even heavier. Each blow he landed made me feel even worse, it wasn't about the pain. It wasn't that I had felt so betrayed it was so much more than that.

"Stop!" he shouted, "Buck stop!" With a heave of strength, he flipped me onto my back and pinned me down with his knees.

I was breathing heavy, and my heart jackhammered within me, but I relented.

"This isn't doing anything!" his breath came fast too and for a flicker of a moment I saw the same hurt burn out of his eyes that filled my own. I let my muscles go slack, and he moved off of me falling back to the ground, Evelyn's room was trashed. The metal bed beyond recognition much like the door and the rest of the furniture strewn about the room in shambles.

"We need to find her, to make sure she is safe," he huffed out from where he was standing up. He stepped to the doorway and leaned down to pick up his phone where it had fallen from his pocket and began typing furiously at the screen. I envied him then, how he had been able to take to this world so quickly. I could barely work my phone without help.

Guilt swept me up suddenly, Evelyn had left, no matter how angry with her I was I hadn't wanted her to leave. If something happened to her it would be all my fault.

Steve's phone was ringing in his hand, but I was so caught up in self-deprecating thoughts that I couldn't really gather what he was saying. I stood up brushing debris from my clothing as he hung up the phone.

"Pepper said she would help," Steve stiffed his phone back in his pocket, "she said she would let us know when she finds anything."

I nodded feeling suddenly guilty that I had let my own hurt and pride get in the way rather than protecting her, "I'm sorry Steve." I said.

"Don't be sorry yet, I swear to you Buck if anything has happened to her, I will never forgive you."