Chapter Text
People always forgot about you.
As soon as you left the room, as soon as you went beyond the edges of someone’s periphery, they forgot about you. It didn’t matter how long you knew them. People always forgot.
Nick Fury had remembered you long enough to enlist you in S.H.I.E.L.D. You were resourceful, after all; the bad guys couldn’t stop you if they didn’t know you existed just past their line of sight. He never remembered you until you walked into a briefing room with a mission report, and even then sometimes you’d have to convince him of who you were.
Tony Stark remembered you long enough to convince you to join the Avengers. A step up, he had promised you. He had JARVIS remind him of your presence in the compound every hour. JARVIS was the only one that never forgot about you.
Or so it seemed.
You had gotten your powers at a young age, so you had been given the time to accept them, to accept the fact that no one would ever truly know you. You were always met with flushed cheeks and panicked looks, apologies and requests for your name, the reminder that you would always remember, but never be remembered.
But there was one exception, one crack in the foundation that you couldn’t understand, and his name was Steven Grant Rogers.
Every morning, Steve went out for a run, and every morning right after that run, he would step into the shared kitchen. You were there on most days, peeking up at him from behind the back of the couch, careful not to make a sound. You watched him; you enjoyed watching people silently, getting to know them and their habits and ticks with them none the wiser. You really enjoyed watching Steve, though you always tried to ignore the heat in your cheeks when you did.
On those mornings when you were up by the time he got back, you watched him fiddle around the kitchen, making a cup of coffee or scrambling a few eggs. All the while, you were huddled in a far corner of the room, out of his sight, out of his memory.
Or so you thought.
The first time it happened, you hadn’t believed it. You thought you were dreaming.
You had been watching him in your usual hidden spot while he made one of those smoothies Tony insisted were cure-alls. He had frowned, stopped the blender, and called out your name. You had been so shocked that you didn’t answer him, not until he asked JARVIS if you were there and the A.I. confirmed your presence.
It went on that way for a while, you hiding and him calling out your name into the void of space, somehow knowing you were there, somehow remembering. You knew he wasn’t immune to your powers; he forgot about you too. But there were always those special moments in the mornings when he just knew you were there.
“How do you do that?” you asked him one morning, frowning at him with a hand on your hip.
He glanced up at you for a second before he continued to chop strawberries for his smoothie that particular morning. “Do what?”
“How do you know I’m here?” you asked, gesturing vaguely around you. “How do you even know my name? Do you have a secret earpiece that JARVIS speaks into? Gives you reminders like Tony?”
He chuckled, tossing a strawberry into the blender. “No, I don’t have a secret earpiece.”
“Then how?”
Steve paused, his hands resting on the chopping board, a contemplative look on his face. He shook his head slowly. “I honestly don’t know. I can’t really explain it,” he said frowning, grasping for the right words. “Sometimes…sometimes I just know there’s something missing.” He looked at you then, right in the eye. “That I’m missing something.”
You couldn’t breathe. Not when he was looking at you like that, not when he had just confessed to something so impossible, something you never imagined anyone could feel for you.
He missed you.
You didn’t know what you would have said in response, if there was anything you could have said, because Sam chose that moment to walk into the room.
“Hey Steve. Hey…” Sam trailed off, that tell-tale look on his face, the one that told you he was sifting through his brain for a name he’d never remember.
You were all too happy to remind him.