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Though it was not a truly physical thing, you now knew where the human soul resided. You had never truly wondered, but were now sure it slotted itself somewhere between stomach and lungs. You knew this because yours was being slowly shredded and you could feel dull, throbbing ache of it every minute of every day.
What bothered you most was not the physical pain, but the way you could feel everything you cared about slipping through your fingers like water. Nothing pleased you much, anymore. You used to smile when America made progress with her own sorcery, under the watchful eyes of you and Strange, but now it barely made your lips twitch upward. You were not yet a full shell of your former self, but you could feel it creeping in. Eventually, you would be empty.
It had happened through no fault of your own, truly. Really it had been no one’s fault at all, but Stephen was taking it on as his own and you did not have enough in you to fight it. He was running himself ragged trying to both mentor America and find a cure for you all at the same time. Flatly, you had commanded him to stop, but he had only looked at you with sharp eyes that told you he was going to do whatever it took. It almost seemed to be tearing him apart more than you, but you supposed that came with the territory of being able to feel without inhibition.
Emotion was a double-edged sword. When you did feel it, which was rarely now, it only served to pain you further, like you were being torn apart faster as punishment for humanity. So, mostly, you avoided it. You avoided people you knew you cared about, or had cared about, just to escape the small chance you might feel a twinge of anything at all.
Stephen was a problem about it. He sought you out almost daily, spellbooks in hand and his mind full of theories on how to piece you back together. Once, he had suggested an ancient binding ceremony that would tie you to him for the rest of your lives. You’d felt a knife-like presence in your chest and heat behind your eyes and that had been the day you decided you could no longer stay at Kamar-Taj, lest he suggest or try something far more radical than he already had. He cared too much, and you knew it would only kill you faster.
That being said, you weren’t sure if you were truly dying or just emptying. It was a far more ancient magic than either Stephen or Wong had ever encountered that had afflicted you, and neither knew exactly what the end would be. The two most likely options were that one day you would die, or one day you would be a shell of yourself wandering the Earth until your physical body gave way. You could not be certain which would be worse.
Wong caved and allowed you to call New York Sanctum home for whatever remaining balance of time you had. Though it was still Stephen’s domain, even he swore he would only make an appearance if strictly necessary. Still, it was hard to be there all alone with no powers or Mystic Arts to call upon. It appeared along with your soul, all of your abilities both inherent and learned were leaving you too. Thus, you spent much of your time wandering the streets of New York where it wasn’t so hard to be soulless. Almost everyone else was too, in a way.
Perhaps that was why, on one cool, breezy day when the darkness took you, you were not scared or surprised. At least, not until pure shadow turned into an unfamiliar cold, steely, and sterile lab that you had never seen before. Abandoned workstations, collections of half-broken beakers and rusted metal components. Shadow distilled down into marks on the walls and a man with pinprick white eyes looking through you.
His head cocked each way several times as the pure white bored into you. Cold creeped down your through like ice, but nothing more. He was somehow nothing and everything as he took you in silently, as though deliberating. You were not sure if he was truly a person or not, or if this was your adventure into some kind of afterlife and he was the Grim Reaper come to collect.
Time was uncertain and unfamiliar wherever you were, but he spoke after some measure of it. “You’re empty.”
You decided then that he must have been trying to collect a soul you did not have. “Sorry to disappoint.”
He continued as though you had not spoken at all. Circled you like a shark. Assessing. “I don’t know what to do with you. Where to put you.”
Had your tongue not frozen to ice in your mouth, you might have offered a few suggestions simply for the sake of speeding things along. You did not enjoy lingering in your strange Limbo with your odd man of pure shadow who behaved like he had never encountered someone in your condition. You wished he had a face for you to analyze as he was yours. Wished he was more than a black hole of nothing while all you had left was laid bare. If this was how you were dying, you would have liked to see your ferryman.
The room before you flickered so briefly you might have thought you hallucinated it if he’d not let loose a hum that sounded like a wicked smile. For a moment, you saw Titan. Stephen at your side dusting and leaving you behind. Someone begging, pleading that he didn’t want to go. Tony Stark’s haunted face. It was gone the next instant. The cold in your chest turned to fire and ache. Your throat closed around the memory you never wanted to relive.
Your ferryman’s frustration returned as it vanished. “Let me help you. You’re almost there.”
So, that’s what it was. He wasn’t here to gather your soul, he wanted to ruin what was left of it. It was almost a comfort. The end was here. No more avoiding, no more slowly wasting away. If he wanted to break you, you were going to let him. You closed your eyes, took a deep breath, and waited. A hand closed around your wrist. You expected to be sucked away from everything and into nothing at all, but it only remained there heavy, freezing, and with a softer grasp than you’d have anticipated.
You wanted it, but you would not beg. You would not ask to die, you could still feel enough pride for that. Ice snaked through your blood and seeped into your bones but still you remained. He wasn’t draining you, but freezing you. You wondered if this was the true end of your curse, not dead and not fully empty but half-alive and frozen until the end of time, your only company a man of pure shadow. If you had it in you to cry you might have, but you were also sure the tears would freeze before falling.
What you assumed was his forehead pressed against the side of your face. “Why do I know you?”
His confusion in turn confused you. Until now, you had assumed this was employment or cosmic purpose for him. Now you wondered if he was just as frozen in limbo as you were. Maybe to him, you were shadow too. Your eyes and mouth opened simultaneously, but a great many things happened in quick succession. Before you could manage words, you were no longer alone together. He froze behind you, entirely unmoving.
An unfamiliar woman uttered, “I’ve been here before.”
You recognized the voice of the next man who spoke because the very same one had just been whispering in your ear. “This is where it all started.”
You were beyond confused now, and turned to look at the group that had invaded your purgatory. You recognized none of them except for Bucky Barnes. It took him a moment to put your puzzle pieces together. You looked different now, sunken in and void of light after your months of being put through the mystical garbage disposal. He surged forward as though intent on grabbing you, but the room expanded almost exponentially right in front of your eyes. Shadows held you firm.
The same voice spoke to you from two places, one muttering in your ear that you belonged here, that he was trying to help you. The other came from across the room, apologizing, nearly begging, telling you he had only wanted to do better, be better. Someone else asked who you were, Bucky responded so low you couldn’t hear him. You were sure whatever explanation he was offering was wrong.
“I know her,” the simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar one muttered. He looked at you then, muted blue eyes that sent a shiver down your spine. “I— I know you from somewhere.” He moved on from your eyes to his counterpart. “Let her go.”
“No.”
The room gave a great shudder as metal ripped and wound itself around everyone in the room except for you, the shadow man, and the very real flesh-and-blood version of him. Adrenaline coursed through you, but you were held fast by an impossibly strong arm wound around your middle. Breath became a near-impossibility but you had grown used to pain.
The blonde woman who had spoken before said urgently, “Bob.”
The sweater-clad man in front of you looked back at her for a moment. Bob. An unassuming name for who you once might have figured to be an unassuming man. You were learning differently, though. He drug his eyes away from her and spoke more firmly to the man holding you. “Let them go.”
You heard the shriek of metal as it wound tighter.
“You think they care about you?” spoke the shadow.
His hold on you released but you still stood firmly rooted to the spot. You knew deep down you should have tried something. Anything. But what could you do? What would sparks to do an entity who had crushed, at the very least, a known super-solider with metal beams and had held you so tightly you almost couldn’t breathe? You were functionally useless, just an audience for the chaos in front of you.
“You don’t matter to anyone.”
“That’s not true—”
She, the most vocal of them all, was nearly garroted in the next instant. A violent energy seemed to pulse through the room. You could feel it rattle your bones. Bucky called your name, and he met the same fate.
“Stop,” you said, uselessly, fatally. You would have assumed your plea fell on deaf ears if they had not both looked at you.
It seemed for a moment they had simultaneously decided you were the most interesting thing in the room. You had no clue where to look, but you settled for the antagonist of the situation. You began to see the similarities even when one was pure silhouette. A negative of the same man commanding for his friends to be left alone.
“He’s you,” you said, barely a breath. It was almost astounding. You’d have assumed some sort of astral form if not for the feeling of his hands on you.
“I’m sorry,” Bob said. Real, physical Bob. Not the shadow-self you had been first introduced to. “I’m stronger than him, I’m—”
“We’ll see about that,” his other-self nearly demanded.
Flesh, blood, and bone was on the echo of himself in the next moment. The violence thrummed not just inside the room but inside you. Dread settled deep in your gut. You were feeling, without pain, more deeply than you had in months. It was a great wonder and horror all at once. There was a part of you who wished you could spend the rest of your life here if only just to feel real. The part of you that had made some semblance of a hero before knew you wouldn’t. Your fingers sparked, feeling deeply unfamiliar after months of absence.
The room expanded impossibly once more, distancing you from the war waged only in selves. Metal groaned your way and your hands flew up, stopping it in its tracks. It burned away with some effort, oddly stenchless, but you supposed natural rules did not apply in such a space. Nothing more flew your way, so you set off running. Perpendicular to you, the seemingly very nimble woman was dodging flying desks with the same intent.
Darkness was crawling up the very real Bob’s body. He was destroying himself. Spitting mad and throwing punches wherever they could land, not realizing he was only satisfying the embodied emptiness. He was still being taunted, but you couldn’t tell if he was really hearing at all.
You reached them—him—first. Your hand slammed into his shoulder, something that should have shoved his astral form out of his body, but nothing happened. He rocked briefly backwards at it, but continued to shred his own knuckles trying to harm himself. It seemed even with your powers you were useless here.
“You have to stop,” you commanded, trying to be firm, trying to not sound like you were begging. But you were, and you knew it. Because he was going to kill himself and trap them all in eternity.
She joined you then, eyes flickering only briefly to yours before she was trying to physically pull at him. She muttered something so quietly you could not hear, right in his ear. He ignored that too, just like he had you.
“Please,” you said, joining the effort to remove him from himself with force. “You’re tearing yourself apart.” You pushed while she pulled, but it seemed all for naught. “He’s part of you. Your soul. You have to stop.”
Everyone else had pulled free of their restraints too, rushing to Bob’s aid. You still talked incessantly, not thinking of most of your words. You knew what it was to be torn apart from the inside out, even if you had not watched it in front of your eyes. You were a lost cause, unable to stop what was happening in you, but Bob was not. Bob was not yet consumed into whole darkness, still had light and, it seemed, very real friends to fight for.
“Just let go,” you told him, still pushing at his shoulders with all your might, wrists aching every time he drew back to bully on himself again. “You’ll be okay. You can stop this.”
You looked into impossibly wild blue eyes once more and then you were falling. Tumbling. Forward and forward. Right into a mouthful of New York City concrete.
⊛
Bucky Barnes appeared on your doorstep five days later. Since your last meeting, he had been branded a New Avenger, and you’d begun to have nightmares. A particularly impressive feat given you’d not dreamt at all, happily or otherwise, since the day you’d been cursed.
“Bob keeps asking about you,” he said, without preamble. You both appreciated and cringed at his directness. You had been trying to ignore and forget about the entire debacle. “Everyone keeps nagging me because I’m the only one that knows you.”
Except you don’t really, you wanted to point out. You’d spent a grand total of maybe two hours together, in battle and out. Thanos for the second time. Tony’s funeral. You chose not to include what you had ambiguously dubbed The Incident.
You stood silent, gripping onto the door. You weren’t sure if you were going to invite him in or slam the door in his face. He looked different than you had known him to, both from before and from his incredibly brief stint as a politician. And, given what he’d walked into at your last meeting, you weren’t sure you much cared to know what he and his rag-tag group of mostly-not-superheros were up to.
“Five minutes,” he bargained quickly. “All I need.”
A little busy, you wanted to say. It was mostly true. Before he’d begun to knock incessantly at the door, you’d been trying to coax Stephen away from tomes and scrolls and into at least a nap. You’d accidentally sent him into a spiral when you revealed you were having nightmares and you were certain he’d not slept in three days. Unfortunately, your valiant efforts to interrupt his intense research were mostly met with him locking you out with magic you were currently incapable of undoing.
“I can wait here all day,” Bucky pointed out.
He meant it, and you knew it was true regardless. You had witnessed him tireless in battle, so you had to imagine he could handle a doorstep for more than a few hours. He entered as soon as you pushed the door aside, slipping through just as you’d withdrawn your arm.
“Don’t waste my time,” you chided as he admired the architecture. “You’re on a clock. Five minutes.”
Bucky turned back to you, looking almost amused. Like he knew you had both an unlimited amount of time but also none at all. It, in turn, did not amuse you. It would likely not have amused you even with a full breadth of emotion available to you. You didn’t often like people invading your personal space and time without notification or reason.
“Bob’s been asking about you,” he repeated. He was trying to whittle at you, that much was clear. He intended to goad you into asking why, into perhaps revealing some secret card he must have expected you were carefully hiding in some secret pocket. You offered him nothing, mostly because you had nothing but also because you did not appreciate games.
“So you said,” you acknowledged. “Would you like to waste your five minutes on repetition?”
His eyes narrowed at you. Challenging, but also curious.
“He doesn’t remember it,” he continued cautiously. “The Void.”
So, that was what they were calling it. An apt descriptor for the complete nothingness of Bob’s other self and the hell-like dimension he’d taken you to.
“Has no clue what went on in there, but remembers you clear as day. Enough to ask who you are. How I know you.”
It might have been smarter to deflect. It might have been wiser to make a smart comment about being memorable, or saying you had that affect on people. Instead you remained in steely silence, letting it sink in. He’d called you familiar. Said he knew you. Now you were the only thing he remembered from what should have been a particularly harrowing experience that should have left you only a minor detail.
Bucky continued after you met him with silence, “Coming from someone whose brain’s been in a blender, I can tell you it takes quite the person to break through all of that.”
“What is this?” you asked finally. “I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve never seen him before in my life.”
“I don’t know much about your mojo,” he admitted. “I’m just wondering if you might’ve done something in there. Something that can keep helping him.”
Ah. So that was it. He thought you’d left a mark on Bob magically or mystically. Perhaps something that could prevent him from going full Void again. It teetered on amusing. He’d witnessed how utterly useless you had been even with your magic, you wondered what he’d think when he found out you were without it.
“I’m afraid I won’t be much help,” you explained. “I’m somewhat… indisposed, at the moment.”
You were expecting disappointment and instead met with suspicion. You couldn’t blame him. Something about the Void had shifted things, made you more useful than in the real world. It had breathed power right back into you for your short stint. In response to his raised eyebrow, you offered him the barest of sparks from your fingers. They fizzled sadly into nothing before even falling to the floor.
“I’m not being obstinate. I truly have nothing to offer you.”
“That’s not,” Bucky began, choosing his words very carefully. “It’s not the only reason I’m here.” You nodded, urging him to continue. “He wants to meet you. Bob. He says… he says he’s been dreaming about you.”
Well. That was certainly interesting. You opened your mouth to respond, but Stephen appeared seemingly out of nowhere. He looked haggard. Harried. Frantic. He ushered Bucky away through a hastily conjured portal that slammed closed in your face the second you tried to follow. You were left alone and vaguely frustrated.
You didn’t have it in you to seethe, so you made yourself too much coffee just to feel something and waited semi-patiently for them to return. The ticking of the clock was almost soothing. Metronomic as you sipped your hot beverage and allowed it to burn at your palms. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty.
At minute twenty-eight a portal reappeared in front of you and Stephen reappeared with Bucky and two additional guests. Bob, looking absolutely awe-struck at what was happening in front of him, and, glued to his side, the woman you recognized from the Void.
“Hello,” you said, mostly pleasantly. You weren’t thrilled at having Bucky whisked away mid-conversation only to be further intruded upon thereafter, but you allowed Stephen his reasons. After all, he was practically killing himself trying to save your soul.
Bob stepped forward first, directly between Bucky and Stephen like they hardly mattered. The portal closed as soon as his companion followed. He was looking at you, drawing closer and closer like he was going to reach out just to make sure you were real. You retreated as far into your plush chair as you could. You watched the realization of his mistake flicker in his eyes. Literally. The blue that seemed suddenly so familiar flickered into hot gold and then back again.
“Hi,” he said, straightening. His companion watched him worryingly. “I’m—”
“Bob,” you interrupted. “I know.” Your gaze flickered to the woman at his side. “You, I don’t.”
“Yelena,” she offered simply, not divulging further. You didn’t blame her. She seemed about as uncertain about this entire situation as you did.
Stephen looked at you pointedly. “You’ve been keeping secrets.”
Not really. Sure, you might not have divulged that you ran into the former Captain America’s best friend in a seemingly alternate dimension controlled by a deeply unstable shadow-self, but you’d given him the barest details. The relevant details. The rest of it seemed unnecessary. It wasn’t like you could take him back to the scene of the crime, so to say. After all, when you’d come to with a broken nose and a mouthful of blood there were no New Avengers to be seen.
“Hardly,” you responded. He was not amused.
But he gave you a look that suggested it was your best bet not to argue, so you didn’t. He took the opportunity to explain that he and Bucky had talked it out. (Yelena seemed to sour at that, but also did not open her mouth to plead any case.) Apparently, it was for everyone’s best interests that you return to Kamar-Taj to see why your ailment had suddenly seemed to improve. (You wanted to argue that it certainly had not, but admitted that a nightmare was a dream even if an unpleasant one.) Furthermore, he thought it was for the best that Bob come along for the ride, lest he turn New York to shadow again.
You were with him only mostly against your will until that last part. Something thudded through you. A knife in the middle of your chest. You were not risking bringing a volatile, half-shadow to the mostly-stable home that America finally had. It spilled out of you like fire and blood both. Cutting through your ribcage and twisting your stomach into deeply unpleasant knots.
“No,” you said. You meant it with crying rage, but pain had stolen air from your lungs and it came out wholly flat.
Stephen looked unamused. “I’m not asking you for permission.”
You opened your mouth to argue again. Bob beat you to speech. “It’s not normally like… that. They told me what happened. In there. But normally it’s all…” He tapped a finger against the side of his head. “All in here. Unless I touch someone.”
Really, you weren’t sure what that was supposed to mean.
“We’ve kind of figured out it was different for you,” Bucky added. “Somehow.”
They explained to you the interconnected shame rooms that had plagued them all. Or, explained the concept. Neither of them seemed keen on going into detail, and you couldn’t blame them. But still, it slotted together some things in your mind. The flash of Titan, Bob’s other-self declaring eerily that he wasn’t sure where to put you. The shame had been shredded right out of you, leaving you only him.
None of it was any comfort. You still didn’t like the idea of taking him there, especially not in the aftermath of Wanda’s attack. Not with America there. But you had never been in charge, and even if you had been you certainly weren’t now.
“I still think this is a very bad decision.”
Your protests fell on deaf ears.
⊛
Bob was consistently fascinated by your humanness. You were a novelty surrounded by those who could still wield power and, to your great surprise, a man who apparently held the force of a thousand exploding suns. Everyone had really buried the lede there. You often found his eyes on you when they ought not to have been, but he seemed to take the hint that you weren’t interested in him. Not really.
It wasn’t fear. You’d have thrown yourself to his metaphorical wolves in an instant probably just to finally end your own emptiness. In fact, the great pit in your center seemed to sometimes call for him. Sometimes, you swore you heard the call of the Void in your own mind. What bothered you was the constant, searing, knifing-pain in your chest from the last dregs of worry you could scrounge up. It was the reason you didn’t outright tell him off.
There were two final hanger-on emotions inside you. Worry for America, worry for Bob. Entirely against your own will, you sometimes watched him back and wondered what it was like to live always teetering on the edge of great power and destruction. While Wong worked with America at your request, Stephen had taken up the Herculean task of trying to teach Bob to control abilities no one understood. As anyone could imagine, it was not going swimmingly.
Darkness always seemed to surge forward within him whenever he tried to use any power of the Sentry. Hesitance would turn to overconfidence, then to self-loathing whenever he failed to harness abilities at all or failed to control them. Luckily, it seemed to have proven impossible to truly turn the mirror dimension into any version of the Void. Of course, that was not to say it didn’t weigh on Stephen.
It must have become clear to Bob too, because you found him one night packing with the intent to flee like a bad one night stand. Part of you screamed to let him. The other, quieter, most still-human part of you knew he was going to flee not to his friends in New York, but straight into isolation. You could practically see it on him, the heaviness.
“You’re not a prisoner, you know,” you told him, leaning on the frame of his open door. “You do not need to flee in the dead of night.”
Caught red-handed, he dropped the clothing he had been holding. All Bob seemed to own fit in a duffle bag, and most of it you recognized seemed to be from his time at Kamar-Taj anyway. But really, you should have expected that. You knew only the vaguest details of his life, but you knew that he had given himself over for medical experimentation for a reason. Though you weren’t necessarily a betting woman, you were fairly certain a happy, stable life was not what led someone to such things.
“I thought it might be easier this way.”
That was the other thing. Bob seemed incapable of lying to you. You were sure that it was not a literal affliction of his, but moreso a complete mental block that seemed to occur whenever you did deign to speak to him.
“Easier for who?” you asked. He didn’t respond. “I’m going to level with you Bob.” You heard him mutter please, so you stepped fully into the room and shut the door behind you. “It’s obvious you’re not planning on going to New York, which is the only other place in the world you should be.”
He shook his head. “No. I shouldn’t be there. Not after— You were there. You saw what he— what I did.”
A twinge. A knife. The hurt of it sawed at your ribs. “It might have been you, but it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t ask for your darkest days to be given superpowers.”
His lips twitched. “Didn’t I?”
Stephen would have parroted something about informed consent, but you had long ago coaxed him into getting adequate sleep instead of wasting more of his time on the lost cause you had become. Still, it would have been a good point to make. Bob had not signed the dotted line on a paper that indicated he might end up with the ability to plunge people into their own personal hells just by a brush of skin.
“I don’t think so. Sounded like you just wanted to be… better. I know what that’s like. I just had the better luck of landing here.”
You had been a child, had just discovered you had abilities beyond your wildest imagination, and you’d been running from SHIELD. The Ancient One had found you, whether by fate or pure coincidence, and had become the mentor you needed to control not just what you were born with, but what she had wielded herself.
He was squinting then, searching in the depths of his own mind. “That was the… the bald one, right? She found you.” Bob looked at your face, took in something that must have read clear as day. You’d never told him about that, and she was long dead before he’d even stepped foot on the continent. “Sorry, I—”
“When Bucky said,” you began, then trailed off. It was hard to summon your thoughts. He’s been dreaming about you. You had thought it all memory of his own, the part you played with Void repeating over and over in his head on loop. You’d not anticipated he was seeing your past. “I didn’t think he meant like that. He said you were dreaming about me but I…”
Bob grimaced. “I’m sorry.”
“Well,” you said heavily, “we should have guessed you might be able to see into people like that.”
He shook his head at that. “Not people. Just you.”
The silence that followed was heavy. Impossible to break. Impossible to breathe through. Just you. Somehow, Bob was combing through just your memories in his dreams. Whether he was watching a supercut of your worst moments, of which there were many, or if he was seeing all the good too, it struck you as odd. Borderline scary. You wondered exactly how much of you was laid bare for him to see.
“Sorry,” he apologized again. A habit you were beginning to tire of. One that had been hard broken in yourself years ago. “I know it’s weird, but I don’t know how to stop it.”
Your mouth felt try, tongue heavy, throat swollen around nothing, lungs in a vice. The emotion itself hurt. The punishment for feeling it was only double. You forced speech past aching vocal cords. “Did you tell Stephen?” Bob shook his head again. You tried to scramble back to the absence of emotion. “You should… we should. First thing in the morning.”
Your only goal in the moment became a mad dash to exit his room. He was apologizing again, reaching out to try and cling, to make you listen. You didn’t have it in you to soothe his anxiety when your own was fighting out of you and turning your insides to ribbons. But his grip was stronger than you figured he intended it to be when it landed on your shoulder. It practically burned through your shirt, not just from the pressure but from his body heat. You had expected ice like before, but he was all fire now.
“It’s okay,” you managed, though it was not. You placed your own palm on his hand both in the hopes he might take the hint to withdraw and to try and make your words seem that much truer. “It’s fine. First thing, okay?”
Bob just nodded again.
You would likely have been ashamed to admit that you slept outside his room that night just to make sure he stayed, but there was no admission needed. The wake-up call you received was Stephen shaking you awake and looking at you as though you’d lost your mind. You offered him no explanation. Instead, you’d surged up with sudden energy and knocked a little too loud on Bob’s door. He opened it so quickly you nearly knocked directly on his chest next.
Much to his chagrin, Stephen was not allotted any time for such blasé things as morning coffee or breakfast. You, jittery with anxiety though suspiciously knifeless feeling, moderated a particularly intense discussion between him and Bob about what exactly such dreams might have meant. To your great frustration, Stephen seemed to make a point to keep a strict poker face the entire time. You could not have told anyone who asked if he was horrified, mesmerized, or somewhere in between. Even when Bob finished his explanation with great hesitation and a not-insignificant degree of mortification that had him blushing from the base of his neck all the way up to his forehead, Stephen said nothing of note.
I’ll look into it.
I’ll look into it.
And then he left like it was nothing of concern. You stared open-mouthed at the place he’d previously taken up. You could not have felt more frustrated if you tried. Bob was apologetic once more, taking your silence as opportunity to plead your forgiveness at the great invasion of privacy that neither of you had asked for. You just slumped, forehead to table, and found to your immense astonishment that you were nearly experiencing frustrated tears, all without the added pain from the inside out.
You shot out of your seat and left Bob with no explanation, chasing Stephen down the hall. He was walking at a leisurely pace. Waiting for you. He was a rat bastard and you were going to kill him. Another emotion you were experiencing without blinding pain in your chest. You grasped at him, stopping him in his tracks as you looked at him furiously. Still, somehow, you felt lighter than you had in months.
Not a question, but a fact. “You knew.”
“I had my suspicions,” he stated. “Needed you both here to know for sure.”
“Well,” you began, tears welling once more. You had seemingly become ill-equipped to handle any emotion at all in your months without much of it availed to you. Still, you feared there would come a rip through center mass, severing all of your organs as punishment for feeling anything at all. “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do with that?”
It had been the very first, most ancient suggestion of them all. The first answer anyone had found that seemed it would cure you completely. You still remembered it, clear as day. The earliest days where you could still feel mostly like real people did, when it only hurt a little to laugh or to cry. When it was no more than a prickle in the very center of your being. This one says you just need to find your soulmate, Stephen had said to you. You had cackled in his face and responded, What am I, a Disney princess?
Back then, neither of you had taken your affliction too seriously, assuming that with time you would find a more suitable answer. He’d brought it up again when you got worse, a more serious suggestion this time. There were ways you could try. He suggested that America might punch him into several hundred universes until he found someone you seemed to consistently fall for. When you shot that down, he’d suggested a dream journal where you meticulously recorded every man you came across, looking for a statistical likelihood, and you’d broken the news you weren’t dreaming at all anymore. Even then, he’d moved onto more serious ideas. Now he was telling you he really thought that was what would put you back together. The real-life, flesh and blood counterpart of a near-demonic shadow you’d met shortly before eating concrete on fifteenth avenue.
Still, you were horrified. It was not the suggestion of a soulmate. It was not even the suggestion of Bob being yours. Instead, it was the suggestion that you’d be asking a man who’d been through so much to stitch your soul whole.
“I can’t,” you said. “I can’t do that to him.”
Stephen sighed frustratedly at that. “So self-sacrificial.” He looked you straight in the eyes, hands braced on the sides of your arms. “It all seems to be proximity. He only needs to be nearby, as far as I can tell. There’s no saying it needs to be anything more than what it already is.”
Wasn’t there? The implications of soulmates were clear. Under normal circumstances, it might not have meant making you truly whole, but all the myths were clear: his soul would call for yours, and yours his. Like calls to like, you’d heard before. Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same. All rooted in hundreds and thousands of years of myth, legend, and folklore. All implying that Bob might not just repair what was broken in you, literally, but that he also might be the love of your life.
“It can be whatever you want it to be,” Stephen insisted. Ironic from the man who you’d watched utter the words I love you in every universe. “But between you and I, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for you to be loved the way you deserve.”
Things were not so simple. If you had once avoided Bob in general, you now avoided him like the plague. You weren’t sure how to look a man in the face and explain that you were afflicted by an ancient curse and he was seemingly the only cure. It was impossible to swallow the idea that you were destined to love someone who you’d hardly even felt a twinge of friendship for. In another, better version of events, you might have found yourself accidentally cured long after you’d already fallen for him. Instead, you seemed to perhaps do things in reverse order, even for how much Stephen insisted it did not need to be that way.
Unfortunately, word had reached both America and Wong via the way of Stephen’s loose lips, and they both had begun to interfere. Portals appeared out of nowhere, sending you crashing straight into him, leaving you floundering for an explanation after the third or fourth time it happened. To his credit, he was taking it like a real champ. He cracked a confused smile most of the time, not questioning why you were suddenly unable to form any meaningful sentence. Still, it was impossible to miss the vague air of disappointment that settled every time you found a new excuse to head in the opposite direction.
He smiled tightly through it until the seventh time you’d found yourselves transported to each other. You had been in the library, manually combing through to find any books that even seemed to mention the vague notion of soulmates when you took one wrong step and ended up smashing into him, sending volumes tumbling to the floor. He looked at them curiously, which would have likely been fine if one particularly recent book was not simply titled Soulmates in the Modern Era. You heated from head to toe and wondered if he could feel it.
“Research,” you chirped quickly, reaching to take it. He jerked back before you could even brush the spine, reading the cover and then flipping it open one-handed.
He skimmed the table of contents with great interest, then looked at you. “Interesting research.”
“Yeah,” you admitted, hoping he would just hand it over. “I have this… thing.”
You waved it away like it was nothing, like you weren’t actively trying to sever your connection to spare him from having to fix you. From being stuck with you. Maybe then he wouldn’t be plagued with your memories as dreams, and you could quietly slip back into the abyss you had grown so accustomed to.
“Doctor Strange said you were sick, is this…?”
Though you cringed at both at the revelation and the way Bob referred to Stephen, you nodded. “It’s related research, yes.”
He looked at you like he was trying to read into your very bones and you were not entirely assured he wasn’t. Still, you staunchly resolved that you were not going to elaborate. It appeared Stephen had already been loose-lipped enough for the both of you. It was meant to be a push, you bet. You were sure the cogs had turned in that insufferable brain of his, and he had determined that if Bob learned the truth he would resign to it. Which, of course, was the complete opposite of what you wanted.
Bob still had a firm grasp on the book, though it was now tucked safely behind his back. It would take a tank or some magic for you to get it back. Unfortunately, you had no access to the former and had only just begun refamiliarizing yourself with the latter. He didn’t seem to be playing keep away to frustrate you, but you certainly thought it was a ploy of some sort, you just weren’t sure what.
“Is it infectious?” he asked, quietly. “Is that why you’ve been avoiding me? Because I can’t get sick, I think. Not anymore.”
If that didn’t crack you in two, you weren’t sure what would. It wasn’t like you had assumed he hadn’t noticed, but you didn’t know it had been whittling at him so badly he had resorted to hypothesizing.
“No,” you said quickly. “No, it’s not that.” The speed with which you had responded seemed to cut equal to the answer. “I’m just— I’m really busy with all the research.”
“Oh,” he said thoughtfully. “For a cure?”
You tried your best to fake a very convincing smile. “Something like that.”
“Sorry,” he said, retreating to apology again. “I’m being… I feel like I know you, even though I don’t. All the dreams.”
It wasn’t that you had forgotten about them. You knew he’d had them, you knew he was still having them. But you hadn’t considered the fact that someone viewing your life while sleeping might get to feeling like you were a friend. A piece of them, even. You hadn’t considered that, especially for someone who seemed to be destined for you, it might be a version of waking hell to wake up and feel like the meant nothing at all.
“Don’t apologize,” you said, sharper than intended. He almost winced at it. You softened immediately. “I just— you’re right. You’ve been forced to know me, and I know almost nothing at all about you. I forget, sometimes.”
You watched him almost apologize again, but he seemed to catch himself.
“I think maybe I would like to get to know you,” you added. “Once my research sorts itself out.”
Bob smiled. You thought you might drown in it.
⊛
You stopped avoiding him far earlier than anticipated, both intentionally and unintentionally. Your research had stalled out. There was nothing you could find that even suggested a way to severe that type of connection. You needed more time, which meant you needed Bob. Proximity, and all. It felt dirty to use him in that way, made you feel sick to your stomach because his mere presence allowed you to feel at all. Unintentionally, you found he was a very good cure to boredom and a truly fascinating individual, even pre-Sentry project.
It hurt getting to know him, knowing what your intentions were. It hurt to learn his every expression, hurt to watch him strain with every fibre of his being to try and coax his abilities into being helpful instead of harmful. The irony of feeling so deeply only at his allowance was not lost on you. If he pulled away, decided he was done with your constant push-and-shove, it would be the most fatal double-edged sword you ever encountered.
Weeks had passed since your last manufactured collision, after which you’d promptly chewed both America and Wong out so bad they’d ceased immediately. You had buried yourself in your research after, only to stall out after mere days. Since, then you had been nearly glued to Bob’s side entirely of your own volition. Horribly, he seemed to enjoy it, which made everything all the more crushing.
There was a strange comfort in failing together, though. Bob had still made essentially no progress with his abilities since arriving, and you were no closer to your own answer than when you’d begun. Just a couple of abject failures wandering around the most mystical place on the planet, learning together everything except what they should have.
Stephen had nearly lost interest in Bob, now that he’d solved the real problem he’d been gunning at. Really, you should have expected it. He was fascinated with what he was fascinated with, cared about what he cared about, and could not be bothered for much else. If Bob became a real threat, he might bring himself to actually be concerned, but for the moment he seemed unamused. He held on for your sake, because of the sharp look you gave him whenever he became exasperated, but you knew that Bob was catching on too.
He admitted it to you finally after a particularly grueling three hours trapped in the mirror dimension. Stephen had stalked off like the toddler he so frequently behaved, Bob had found you reading under a large tree and you immediately recognized the look on his face. It was the same one you had seen the first night you truly talked to him, when he thought he’d escape to anywhere but here or New York. Resignation. A bone-deep tired. He laid down next to you and stared straight up at the sun, a habit you would have chastised him for if it had actually mattered.
“Jealous,” you muttered, nudging his foot with yours. “We lesser beings can’t do that.”
“Not much to see,” he said. “Just habit.” Then, after a deep breath. “You sure there’s not a spell for that, anyway?”
If there was, it was the furthest thing from your mind. “Maybe. Might be my next project.”
But you knew there would be no other projects, and you sensed that he was coming around on that fact too. He nudged the cover of the book you were reading, only to be met with some long-dead language he couldn’t hope to understand.
“How’s this one?”
“Hopeless,” you admitted, slamming it closed and tossing it to the side. A less bitter you might have been worried about how such an old book would fare on the grass, but you were feeling particularly spiteful. Powerfully spiteful, thanks to extended and close-quartered exposure to your deeply affectionate medication. “No closer than I was when I started.”
It seemed to surprise him. “You seem better, though.”
That was one particular thing you didn’t know how to truly explain, so you simply said, “You know, magic.”
He reached over you for the book despite all concepts of it being lost on him. All he really knew was that you were buried in the same subject you always were. Soulmates. You never told him why, never told him that it was the opposite of a cure you were looking for. He was fascinated all the same, despite how in the dark you kept him. Usually, it was enough to placate him when you just declared you were getting nowhere, but as of late he’d been getting more and more interested.
“What is it with soulmates anyway?” he asked, flipping through the book as though it was a question he was only asking casually. Certainly a hard thing to do when you knew damn well he had no clue what he was looking at.
“What do you mean?”
“All of the research,” he said. “How does it help you? Are you just trying to find them before you…”
Bob had been concerned about you dying, as of late. You guessed that Stephen was dropping more and more hints in the hopes of escaping the vague mentor-mentee thing they had going on. If that taught you anything, it was that you needed to get Bob back into the hands of the New Avengers quickly if you ever did succeed in finding a way to cut your fated thread. You shuddered to think what might happen if you succumbed and Bob was still at Kamar-Taj. Stephen would reveal everything you had been intent on hiding, whether from rage that Bob had not worked it out himself, or out of spite at you. And Bob… you were beginning to think something like that might really cause another New York level incident.
“No,” you said, fighting to keep your tone light and breath even. “No, I— It’s more complicated than that.”
It ultimately became clear he had been pushing you even when he already knew the answer. Your blood ran cold at the phrase I had a dream. Something surged in your ears and you missed much of his next sentence. He only caught on that you either were not listening or could not listen when you looked at him with an anxiety-ridden expression and said nothing. But then you were also beginning to think it must not have been the memory you were worried about, because he was not looking at you like a bomb had been dropped on his head.
“You were laughing,” he said, once you had sat up. He followed suit. “So I wasn’t sure if it was really a suggestion, but if you’re doing all this research it must be real, right?”
“It’s not supposed to be like this,” you said quietly, pulling up blades of grass. Bob didn’t say anything, only urged you to continue with eyes alone. “It’s not supposed to be a thing that fixes you. It’s not— that’s not how it works, for most people.”
“So you don’t think,” Bob began, then cut himself off. He looked pointedly at his shoes. “You don’t think something like that would fix me?”
The very breath was punched out of your chest. You wanted to reach out for him but that hurt you too. It always did. It was not the Void that scared you away from any brush of skin with Bob, it was the very idea that one day you would never want to stop. You ached for him in a way that you were beginning to think extended far beyond the simple repair of your actual soul. Some days, you thought your blood, bones, and every nerve ending sang for it. Each day, you denied them. But it was different when now it seemed like it was for him, like he was the one who needed it.
Heat and static radiated though your fingertips and down your arms when you guided his face to just look at you. “I don’t think you need fixing.” You recognized a yearning in his face that you had seen mirrored in yours before. “And it’s not— it’s an awful feeling to want someone, even in part, just because you know it might fix something in you.”
“But wouldn’t they want to?” he asked. “Isn’t that the whole point? Someone who wants you, all put together or not?”
You didn’t have an answer for that, and you had the very sobering thought that you were getting far too close for comfort. So, you let your hand fall away from his face and began to plan a very heart-wrenching escape route from the grave you’d dug too deep.
At your lack of an answer he said, “Is there any other way for you? I’ll do it, whatever it takes.”
The problem was that this echoed a very similar conversation with Stephen that you had adamantly refused to take any further. The problem was that your heart wanted to stutter to a stop and give out entirely at the thought that Bob was telling you he would do anything, and you were spending all your time trying to find a way to make sure he couldn’t.
“Please don’t,” you all but gasped out, pushing yourself up and out his reach. “Please don’t say things like that. Please.”
It was foolish to think you could move faster than him. He was grasping at you. Not hard, but firm. Rooting you in place. A furnace against you, tears glistening in his eyes. “I can’t lose you, don’t you get that? I want to be what you need, so tell me there’s some magic way to make it happen.” From his mouth, your name sounded more like an invocation than anything. It took everything you had not to fall apart right there. “You’re all I dream about. You’re all I want to dream about.”
“Bob, I—”
“I’m in love with you,” he said. “Can’t that be enough?”
He was searing against you and you lost all capability for human language. His forehead against yours, eyes shut, holding you like he thought he could keep you tethered to life just with his own force. But it was as far as he allowed himself to go, even with the so-obvious ache you could see on his face. The smallest twitch of his lips from the effort of keeping himself from pressing them against yours. You damned yourself for it, but you did the work for him. You felt the full body warmth of him. It felt all at once like there was not a centimeter of your body he wasn’t touching. You were surrounded by him entirely.
“It feels right,” he said, still so close you could feel his lips move to form the words. “Why isn’t it?”
“It is,” you promised. “Of course it is. I’m sorry.”
He was on you again, all heat. It clicked inside your chest full and heavy, just like a puzzle piece slotting into place.
⊛
“To recap,” John Walker said, looking simultaneously fascinated and annoyed, “you were literally wasting away, killing yourself trying to destroy the one thing you needed to keep living, all because you didn’t want to be a burden?”
You nodded. “Yeah, pretty much.”
He rounded on Bob. “And you, you were ready to do, and I quote, whatever it took, to save her and you didn’t stop to think for one second that you were actually soulmates?”
“Also yes,” Bob admitted.
John slumped back on the couch like he’d just taken a beating. “I think I hate you both. And I mean that genuinely.”
“I think it’s downright adorable,” Ava remarked, but you were fairly certain that was just to piss John off.
Yelena was digesting the information and unnecessary commentary, stroking her pet guinea pig the entire time. Bucky, several minutes ago, had thrown his hands up in exasperation and decided he was done listening to the story of the two of you hopelessly pining like idiots. Alexei, to his credit, was enraptured and taking nonsensical notes the entire time.
“So, basically,” Yelena began, and you nearly groaned at what you assumed was going to be another unnecessary recap, “you are mystically married now?”
It was not the question you had been expecting.
“Oh,” Bob said. “Yeah, that too.”
“It’s a binding ceremony, actually,” you added. “A little more involved. Quite literally tying our life forces together. But sure, I guess you could call it that.”
“Outstanding,” Alexei remarked. “Would make fascinating rom-com.”
Frustrated still, John exclaimed, “Did you even learn anything about your actual superpowers?”
Bob shook his head. “No. Still can’t be the Sentry without the other guy.”
“My god,” John dramatized, “I think you’re giving me a stroke. I’m a super-soldier and I think you’re giving me a stroke.”
Everyone else ganged up on him, from threatening to actually call 911 just to make a fool of him or actually somehow inducing a very real stroke. You leaned back into Bob, muttering lowly, “I love you, but are you sure you don’t want to go back to Kamar-Taj?”
“I like them, unfortunately.”