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Sharon Carter is born with a soulmark in between her shoulder blades, and always knows who it belongs to. It’d be hard not to; her Great-Aunt Peggy has the same mark, two concentric circles around a five-pointed star, just above her left breast (though hers is faded where Sharon’s is crisp and sharp).
Sharon never minds having the same mark as Aunt Peggy when she’s a child. She’d share everything with Aunt Peggy, after all, her favorite person in the world. They may be sixty years apart in age, but Aunt Peggy is her best friend and everything Sharon wants to be when she grows up: strong, brave, capable of bending the world to her will. Young Sharon takes their mirrored marks as a sign that she’s just like Peggy, just like she wants to be.
“You know what that mark means, don’t you?” Peggy asks when Sharon is very young, young enough for it to be one of her earliest memories. “It means someone is going to love you very much, one day. More than you can ever imagine, and when it happens, you’ll feel so very lucky for it.”
(It’s not until much later, when Sharon is at the cusp of puberty, that she stops to think about the implications of it all - that Aunt Peggy’s soulmate is long gone, dead in a plane crash, but Sharon still has the same mark that bound the two of them. The mark can’t be wrong, but it can’t be right, either - and even if it was, Sharon doesn’t know how to feel about the idea of sharing a bond with her aunt’s soulmate. It feels like theft, in some sort of cosmic unexplainable way, and Sharon’s never wanted to take anything away from her aunt - only to share a little bit of her wonderful glow.)
———
Sharon grows up, goes to college to appease her parents, and promptly joins SHIELD before the ink is even dry on her diploma. It’s all she’s ever wanted to do, after all, even if her family had hoped differently. There will be those who think she’s only here because of her connections, Sharon knows, and she could make it in any other intelligence agency she pleased, but she chooses SHIELD anyways. It feels right, like a birthright that’s been waiting for her: something for her to earn, not something that’s owed to her. Anyone who believes otherwise - well, she’ll prove them wrong, in the classroom and on the range and in the field.
There’s a note in her file about her soulmark, and it had certainly raised the doctor’s eyebrows, but she otherwise keeps it to herself. That’s not why she’s here; Sharon’s goal in joining SHIELD has always been to nurture the agency her aunt created, not because of any man.
Besides, it’s a moot point; Sharon has the same mark as her aunt, and Peggy has the mark of a dead man. It doesn’t matter for anything, except to give her the confidence to pursue relationships wherever she pleases.
———
And then, in 2011, a SHIELD research ship pulls a World War II aircraft out of the Arctic ice, and Steve Rogers along with it. Still breathing. Still stubbornly, inexplicably alive.
———
“You know, I’m sure I could arrange an introduction, if you like,” Aunt Peggy says when Sharon drops by her care home to share the news. It’s a good day today, one of the slowly disappearing few; after nine decades of life, Peggy’s once crystalline mind has slowly, inevitably, irreversibly begun to betray her, and there are too many days where she only remembers that she should remember Sharon. It is a death in slow motion, painful to watch, but Peggy has always been Sharon’s best friend in the world and now is no time for that to change. “I’m sure I must still have some clout with Nicky and that bunch of pompous suits.”
Sharon is sure she does; after so many years under her steely gaze, no one is in the habit of denying Director Carter much of anything. But Sharon isn’t ready yet to meet Steve Rogers, not when she’s spent a lifetime knowing he was dead. If he’s alive, then there’s a whole new world of possibilities - but there’s a whole new world of complications, too, and Sharon isn’t certain if she’ll ever be ready to face that.
———
Six months pass.
Sharon is stationed in London when aliens invade New York, and watches the battle on a live newscast with the rest of the world. Maybe it’s because they still haven’t met, but she doesn’t feel any more concern for Rogers than she does for the rest of Fury’s motley crew of heroes, and she wonders what that says about her.
———
They do meet, eventually, thanks to Fury’s machinations. The one-eyed bastard’s probably laughing at the whole thing, though Sharon knows he’ll never say.
Steve is perfectly friendly and polite when they meet, and Sharon instinctively likes him, but there’s not anything extraordinary that happens when they first introduce themselves in the narrow apartment hallway. Sharon grew up hearing that meeting your soulmate is something special, that she’d feel things that can’t be explained but only felt, and she’d know in that moment that she’d met her match. What happens with Steve is just… a handshake. There’s butterflies in her stomach, and something shy about his smile, but it’s nothing like what she expected, even with proof positive etched atop her spine.
It must be because she’s not really Sharon when they meet, she tries to justify. Fury needed someone looking after Rogers, and Steve doesn’t seem much inclined towards more agency interference in his life than strictly necessary, so she’s living next door under the persona of Kate, a single nurse. Kate’s sweet and friendly, and it’s not a hardship to slip into the persona whenever they meet in the halls, but an insomniac aunt is just about all they have in common. If she’d been able to walk up and declare Sharon Carter, Agent 13, nice to meet you, I’ve heard so much about you , it would have been different, certainly. There’s no other explanation.
He does find out her real name eventually, of course, but by that time it’s the least of their problems. Fury’s been shot in Steve’s apartment, and the assassin is fleeing across rooftops, and Steve’s tearing off after him with his shield in hand. And then Fury is dead, and Pierce is looking for Steve, and -
Well, needless to say, they never find those sedate, idyllic conditions in which to make their introductions.
———
When all of it is over, when SHIELD lies in ruins with all its secrets plastered over the internet, Sharon stops by the hospital to check on Steve. It still doesn’t work out; Steve is unconscious in a hospital bed when she arrives, and he’s not alone, either. There’s a man at his side reading a book as 70s funk plays softly through phone speakers, and something about the way he’s holding vigil just makes Sharon feel like even more of an intruder than she already is. Sharon only stays long enough to flash her badge at the front desk and get an update on Steve’s condition before slipping back out into the sunny spring afternoon.
(There’s something about that other man that piques Sharon’s interest, though; something intriguing that she doesn’t have an explanation for. She contents herself with knowing that Maria Hill wouldn’t have let him anywhere near Steve if he hadn’t already been carefully vetted, and leaves it at that.)
———
Sharon lands with the CIA after the collapse of SHIELD. The entrance exam isn’t difficult, not after SHIELD’s rigorous standards, but there’s a lingering suspicion that follows all of the former agency’s agents - that maybe one of them slipped through the cracks, that their new employers have no evidence of wrongdoing but what if? Sharon throws herself into proving herself, determined to get her career back on track, and rarely bothers to look back.
There are exceptions, of course - mostly, periodic lunches with Maria Hill whenever they’re in the same city, where Maria half-heartedly tries to recruit Sharon for whatever the Avengers are pretending is an actual organized agency instead of a Stark-funded vanity project.
“We could use someone like you - you know, an actual competent adult,” Maria says for the millionth time around a bite of her sandwich. “Pepper helps, but she’s got an actual company to run and I’m getting tired of herding cats. Or, you know, superheroes. And Stark.”
“I’m sure he loves that description.”
“Yeah, well, he set his lab on fire last week, so he deserves it. C’mon, Sharon, help me out here. You won’t even have to deal with Rogers, he’s off gallivanting in Europe with Wilson.”
Maria knows, of course; Maria reads everyone’s files as a matter of course, so of course she knows about Sharon’s soulmark situation.
(In the aftermath, Sharon had caved and tracked down Steve’s SHIELD file where it was floating around the internet. She’d wasted no time scrolling through to documentation of his medical exam, and there it was: listing of his soulmark, with photo attached. A series of four radiating lines on his left pectoral, like the bullet scars on his shield, in the same place as Aunt Peggy’s mark.
There’s no documentation of any second mark - no impression between his shoulder blades destined to match her own.)
(Maybe anyone else would sink into a spiral of research and gloom about single-sided soulmates, but Sharon has always been made of stronger stuff. The one-sided soulmate problem is a niggling question at the back of her brain, while the loss of SHIELD and her aunt’s legacy and her own future feels overwhelming. Besides, she’d grown up watching her Aunt Peggy and Uncle Daniel, who’d both lost soulmates but loved each other with the joy and determination of two people who woke up every morning and chose to do so. Somehow, she’s confident, it’s still going to be okay.)
Sharon ignores the implication that she’d want to avoid Steve - mostly because she’s not sure whether or not she does - to focus on the other half of that statement. “Who the hell is Wilson?”
“You know, Falcon. The guy with the wings. He helped Steve out during that whole clusterfuck and has now appointed himself as some kind of sidekick.”
It sparks something in the back of Sharon’s mind. “Was he with Steve in the hospital?”
Maria shoots her a pointed look. “You went to visit Rogers in the hospital?”
Sharon rolls her eyes. “Just answer the question, Hill.”
“Fine. Yeah, that’s Sam. Wilson. You know, you’re more fun when they let you out in the field, Carter. You could have that again, if you want to ditch the spooks and come work for the Initiative.”
“I’ll take actual job duties and job security, but thanks for the offer.”
( Sam Wilson , she thinks, turning the name over in her head. Well, that’s one mystery solved.)
———
Sometimes over the next couple of years, Sharon gets invited to Avengers functions. Sometimes she even goes, when her job permits. It’s mostly Maria’s doing, she thinks - though Romanoff always manages to look like the cat that got the cream, like she’s read Sharon’s file and is determined to do something about it - and mostly then to have some company amongst the superheroes. Or, on more formal occasions, to represent the shadow of what SHIELD should have been. Maria’s always had complicated motives, like her training as an agent has permeated every facet of her life.
The functions do, by nature, bring her back into contact with Steve. He knows her by her real name now, and there’s still not that spark Sharon always expected to feel but she does genuinely like him, the way she always thought she would. She could even see herself loving him, given a little prompting, but Sharon’s long since accepted that her mark isn’t bringing any magic moment, any happily-ever-after. Maybe sometimes, soulmarks can be wrong. It’s still fun just to hear Steve’s stories about the 1940s, and Peggy, and trekking across the globe searching for Barnes. Sometimes, he’ll call Wilson over, and the two of them will recount some misadventure like a well-rehearsed stage routine before the three of them circulate back into the room again, Wilson tossing a wink her way as Steve rolls his eyes fondly and throws an elbow into the other man’s side.
Nothing about it is a hardship, even if Sharon hadn’t expected things to go this way.
———
When Aunt Peggy dies, it falls to Sharon to notify Steve - because she’s the only one left, and because she’s the only one who knows him. He was Peggy’s soulmate, and he deserves to know, regardless of Sharon’s own confusing feelings about their own connection - or lack thereof.
“I was lucky just to have known her,” Steve says later when they talk on the phone, Sharon calling to confirm the service details once she has them. “I know we didn’t have that long together, and we should have had more, but God, she was the kind of woman you counted your blessings just to be in her orbit. I never felt more alive than when I was following her lead.”
“Yeah,” Sharon says. “Yeah, she was like that. Always the best. Made you want to be more than you ever thought you could be.”
They don’t talk about the soulmate-shaped elephant in the room; they never have. Sharon doesn’t think he even knows, because Steve isn’t the type to read other peoples’ files. But he talks about Peggy now the way her aunt had always talked about Steve - like there was something special between them, something that couldn’t be described but was always there. Something that Sharon and Steve just don’t have. This call isn’t about the two of them, and Sharon never expected it to be, but this is just more proof to her that maybe, her own soulmark is wrong, or maybe just one-sided. Steve was Peggy’s from the moment they met.
(Three days later, he’s impossible to miss in the cathedral pew, but he’s not alone either. Not for the first time, Sharon finds herself noting Sam Wilson’s presence for no reason she can identify. Whatever the case, it’s kind of him not to make Steve face this alone; at a time like this Rogers needs reminding that he’s not alone in what must still seem like the unfathomable future.)
———
Maybe it’s wrong, but when Steve calls asking her for the kind of favor that will implode her career, Sharon doesn’t hesitate. No matter what the CIA or Tony Stark says, it’s the right thing to do to steal the shield and Sam’s wings. It’s what Peggy would have done, Sharon thinks - damn the consequences, and stand up for what’s right .
That kiss in the parking garage, though - maybe she should have hesitated a little bit more.
She could blame it on the timing, if she wanted - so soon after Peggy’s death, and with Barnes’ life and freedom on the line - but the truth of the matter is that there’s no spark. The kiss is fine, but that’s it. None of that chasing energy she’d heard about from Aunt Peggy and her friends with soulmates, or even the chemistry she’d experience with some of her past boyfriends. Steve Rogers is a perfectly nice man, and a perfectly nice kisser, but soulmark or not, that’s all he is.
“That was…” he starts, before Sharon interrupts.
“Something we should have done a long time ago,” she says. And then we would have known years ago , she doesn’t say, and saved me all this hassle .
(Before she walks away, she spots Sam in the passenger seat of the cramped little Volkswagen sporting an amused little smile. A stray thought pops into her head, about whether it would have been different if he was the one she had kissed, but Sharon dismisses it. She barely knows the guy; where did that idea come from anyways?)
———
While the former Avengers fight it out at a German airport like a bunch of destructive children, Sharon runs. No doubt there’s a warrant out for her arrest after stealing the shield and wings out of custody, and the CIA isn’t much known for being forgiving. It’s time to hunker down and go to ground where no one will find her.
After bouncing around a series of safehouses, aided by Fury, Sharon finally settles into Madripoor. Operating as a black market art dealer isn’t what she ever envisioned for herself, but U.S. authorities won’t dare set foot in the country - at least officially - and dealing in artwork is the best of a variety of bad options. This way, at least, no one will get hurt, and if she keeps good enough records, maybe some of these masterpieces will find their way back to proper homes.
(Besides - it’s finally a good use for her dusty minor in art history, something she’d enjoyed in college but had left to languish as soon as she signed the papers with SHIELD. Agents don’t often have reason to discuss the difference between a Monet and a Manet, not when world security is on the line.)
Steve doesn’t visit, doesn’t even call or drop a line, but Sam does. Sam seems to find his way to Madripoor more than she’d ever expected, actually, more than even the demands of the job. There’s times where she’ll hear a knock on her door and he’s just there, leaning against the frame, acting like he’s got every reason in the world to be in this place despite all the reasons Sharon knows that’s a lie.
“Needed a change of scenery,” he says, sauntering into her apartment like he belongs there (and as time goes on, he just might). “Besides, I owe it to you to check up on you every so often after what you did for us.”
It’s almost funny, how he’s the only one who seems to remember that.
The thing is, though, as the months creep by and threaten to turn into years, that Sharon enjoys these little visits. Sam’s good company - funny and a good conversationalist and always willing to pitch in on the dishes. He’s a good partner in combat, too, on those rare occasions Fury calls for backup and they both get roped into whatever bullshit that the former director has found himself in the middle of.
“This better not get filmed!” she snaps during an all-too-public firefight in some tiny Cambodian village. “I’m supposed to be some kind of smuggler, they’ll fucking kill me if I go back to Madripoor and this hits the internet!”
“I’m on the run too!” Sam calls in rebuttal. The whole thing is rather undermined by the way he whoops as he ducks and spins around gunfight, safely ensconced underneath the metal of his wings. “You think this is helping my situation?”
“Maybe not, but being seen with you is actively hurting mine.” As another HYDRA recruit pops up far too close, Sharon opts to wallop him with a loose pipe in her spare hand. No sense wasting ammunition when they’ve got a limited supply, and the way Sam whistles in appreciation is a nice bonus. “People still expect you to show up for superhero shit.”
“Alright, fair enough.”
(Maybe it’s wrong, but all in all - she’s had worse days.)
———
A lot of times, when Sam drops by, it’s for much less eventful reasons. In fact, if she had to hazard a guess, he must enjoy her company just as much as she enjoys his, because he’s got a way of showing up for no particular reason at all.
“Do you believe in soulmates?” she asks him one night, both of them stretched out on her couch and a little drunk. They’d put a photostatic veil on Sam and hit the clubs for the hell of it, both wanting to escape the realities of whatever their worlds have become for a few hours, and stumbled back to her place with more drinks in them than she’s indulged in a long while. Sharon’s always been an irritable drunk, but Sam gets ponderous, as it turns out, prone to grand declarations and big questions.
“Do I believe they exist?” he asks. “Sure I do. Same way I believe in air, and the stars, and all kinds of other things I’ve got proof of.”
“No, that’s not - I’m not an idiot , Sam.”
“Never thought you were.”
(The little part of her brain that’s still drunk, but not angry, melts a little at those words - but it’s always been easy to ignore that corner of her mind.)
“I mean, like - do you think soulmates are the be-all, end-all? Like you can’t be happy if you don’t find your soulmate?”
Sam hums thoughtfully and takes a sip of his whiskey - the good stuff, the stuff Sharon’s been saving for something but never knew what until tonight seemed like a good enough moment. Like she’d been waiting to share it with someone rather than waiting for any kind of occasion. The edges of Sam’s mouth curl minutely upwards every time he has a sip, so she thinks he’s enjoying it as much as her. “I don’t know about that. I think… there’s no denying that soulmates are a thing, right? And that that kind of love is real. But I gotta believe that’s not the only kind of romantic love a person can experience. You and I, we’ve been waiting thirty-some years for our match to show up, and - I don’t know about you, but I’ve had other relationships. Fallen in love and all that. I don’t think that love is any less real just because we weren’t soulmates, you know?”
“Yeah.” Sharon takes a swig of her own drink, savors the burn of the alcohol and the way it cuts through the haze in her head and her heart for a minute. “I thought I knew who mine was.”
“Yeah? Didn’t work out?”
“No. I mean, maybe he’s mine, probably, but I’m definitely not his.”
(And she’s accepted that, mostly, recognized that the spark just isn’t there and that’s alright, but it’s a certain kind of hurt to say that out loud. Admitting it, in a way she’s never had to when the person she’d have wanted to talk about this with is gone.)
“It’s not the end of the world,” he tells her gently.
“No, I know. I know. This just - isn’t how I thought my life would go.”
“What, on the run and selling stolen art in a lawless society? I thought that was every little girl’s dream.”
“Oh my god, shut up.” His teasing works, though - the bitterness is set to the side long enough for her to remember that she isn’t as unhappy as she maybe ought to be. It’s not so bad, here at what could be the end of the world, with a friend to get drunk with.
———
(She’ll realize, later, that she should have kissed him then - that she thinks he would have welcomed it, and she thinks she would have liked it. But maybe it’s better this way. Drunk actions are sober thoughts, but Sam deserves more than some morose makeout session.)
(Sharon deserves that too, though that’s harder to admit in the face of all she doesn’t have and can’t ever have.)
———
When Thanos begins his attack on Earth, Sharon can’t do anything but watch from a distance, searching the internet for any trace of what’s going on. The attack on New York is undeniable, pictures and video of the floating ring of a spaceship plastered at the top of every news site, but there’s rumors from what remains of her network about activity in Wakanda like the whole country is bracing for something worse. Amidst everything else, the reports of an unexplained altercation in Edinburgh catches Sharon’s eye. Nothing’s confirmed, but what few witnesses there are report a petite woman and a man with bracers on his arms, almost like shields, and something too large to be a bird soaring over rooftops.
It’s Sam, she knows, and Romanoff and Rogers, and that means that something big is going down. Something that could change the world, or maybe break it.
Sharon knows this is important, knows she needs to get to Wakanda, but getting her gear together is one thing while getting halfway across the globe is a far bigger ask, and Fury’s not picking up his fucking phone, and she’s trying to track down a mercenary aircraft somewhere when —
———
(Afterwards, there’s people who swear they met their soulmates in the five years of dust, somehow drifted together in a vast expanse of orange to connect like they never got a chance on Earth, but it’s not like that for Sharon. One moment, she’s there and fighting through her fear to try and do her job, and the next - nothing.
Which is worse - the delusion, or the blank space she’ll never fill?)
———
The world starts again on a Tuesday, when Sharon comes gasping back to existence on the floor of her loft. The place has clearly been looted, drawers pulled open and furniture shoved every which way or missing and even foot-shaped holes in her walls, but she’s the only one here except some spiders, at least. Whoever’s been in here didn’t manage to find her vault, and they even did her the favor of stealing perishables from her fridge.
The latter fact seems an especial blessing when Sharon finds out how long it’s been.
Five years.
When Sharon finally manages to get her hands on a new tv, she discovers the world she’s lived in since Germany has changed. Stark is dead, and Rogers and his team of outlaws seem to have been pardoned and welcomed back into the fold with arms wide open, if the number of public addresses she sees Steve and Sam giving are any indication. Where Sharon stands in that all is a little less concrete. She may have thrown herself in with their lot, and gotten an arrest warrant for her troubles, but she’s not an Avenger who the world wants to love and forgive. She’s an agent, a tool of SHIELD no matter the letters on her badge, invisible by nature. The heroes may be pardoned - but is she?
It takes nearly another two weeks after that for Sam to show up in Madripoor. Sharon’s got the worst of her place cleaned up, utilities turned back on and housewares replaced where needed, and is turning her attention towards patching drywall when she spots a tell-tale glint of metal wings cutting through the sky. By the time she makes it to the roof of her building, he’s coming in for the landing, wings flared out like a steel angel against the late-afternoon sun. It’s not until he touches down that she spots another accessory - the shield on his arm, braced there like it belongs and setting off a whole choir of maybe s in Sharon’s head.
(The thing is, she’d never stopped to think that her soulmark could mean anyone else - because she shared it with Peggy, because the real shield has always been so undeniably Steve’s . But if Sam has the shield -
Sharon’s mind reels with all the different things she never paid attention to because she never thought they were possible, and it makes her heart leap and her mind sing with the very possibility - )
“What the hell, Wilson?” she calls across the roof, already striding in his direction. Maybe it’s about his surprise appearance, and maybe it’s about the shield, and maybe it’s about both of them. Sharon’s far too discombobulated to tell with any certainty.
Sam grins as his wings collapse back into his pack, right between his shoulder blades, right where - “What, too much of an entrance?”
She shoots him an unimpressed look. “This is Madripoor. Swooping in here in some superhero getup is a great way to get yourself shot.”
“No offense, Carter, but after last week? I’ve officially survived worse.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Sam shrugs with that contagious ease, the one that always manages to loosen her own tightly wound anxieties and oh god what if she’s just been blind this whole time - “Maybe I wanted to show off for a pretty girl.”
Sharon can feel herself blushing like some simpering schoolgirl, like the kind of romantic she’s long since given up on being, which is just - blushing.
(And Sam fucking sees it too, if that pleases little smirk is anything to go by. Bastard.)
“Anyhow,” he continues, fishing in his pocket to pull out an envelope. “Turns out that Steve’s been a busy boy while you and I were dust in the wind. Managed to secure pardons for everyone, so you’re in the clear.”
Sharon only looks at the enclosed papers long enough to verify that they are the promised pardon; there will be plenty of time to read the legal details later. “And this needed to be hand-delivered?”
“I mean, I can pretend that we didn’t know if you were still at this address, but mostly I wanted to see you. Say hey, see how well you made it through the last couple of weeks. That alright by you?”
Sharon can’t help but smile. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. It’s… it’s nice to see you too.” Emboldened by his words, she dives towards the questions that need answering. “What’s with the shield?”
“Ah. That.” Sam smiles a little as he looks down at where the shield is still strapped to his arm. “Steve has decided he wants to retire. Run off into the sunset or something. So, he… gave it to me. Wants me to be the new Captain America or somethin’.”
And it just - it makes so much sense, not just from a soulmark standpoint but because Sam, with all his compassion for those around him, should be Captain America. “You’re gonna be great.”
“I don’t know about that,” he says with the sort of modesty that would seem performative on anyone but Sam. “But someone’s got to step up, right? Someone’s got to look out for the little guy. I figure I can give it a shot.”
Sharon reaches her hand out to brush her fingers across the shield, lingering an extra moment on the spots of too-smooth metal where she knows Aunt Peggy’s bullets struck. She’d grown up with the impression of this shield, and seen it in action as an adult plenty of times, but this moment feels like what her mark has always been leading to - something private, and something shared, despite the shield being such a public symbol.
“Might need some help,” Sam continues. “Think you could bring yourself to leave your smuggling life and lend a hand?”
“Yeah, I think we can figure out something. I’m ready to get out of here.” Standing next to him like this, asking feels like the easiest thing in the world. “Hey, you never told me what your soulmark is.”
If Sam’s surprised by the non sequitur, he doesn’t show it. “It’s typed out roman numerals, right between my shoulder blades. The number thirteen. Why, Carter - you got somethin’ to tell me?”
Thirteen. How perfect.
Sharon lets herself smile and steps into her future. “You know what Wilson? I just might.”