Chapter Text
“So what happened after?”
Carol Danvers had been staring at the fields of corn curving above her head; she snapped out of it and looked down at her tiny neighbor.
“What happened after, Kam?”
“Well, yeah!” protested Kamala. “You can’t end the story here. We don’t know what happened to Steve.”
“That’s how it ends. He left the nexus,” said Carol. “He went back to his life.”
“But to what part?” asked Kamala, stamping her foot.
“Beta,” called Kamala’s mother over the fence. “Don’t bother Captain Danvers. We need her to drive the ship.”
“It’s my day off, Mrs. Khan,” said Carol with a grin. “She doesn’t bother me.”
The three American interstellar arks, Marvel, Providence and Galactus, had sailed off on June 4th, 2101, under the command of Carol S. Danvers, Nathan C. Summers, and Norrin S. Radd, respectively. They’d glided away from the Earth in smooth silence, carrying inside them gardens and water and earth, and people who held hands and watched their brown and blue planet grow smaller and smaller on the screens.
All arks had been built directly at the orbit, simply because they would have crumpled under their own weight on Earth. Each of them was carrying three hundred thousand people. At the time of their departure, the US population had just fallen under one million. It had been about time they left.
Marvel was made of two cylinders, one inside the other like a spyglass. The passengers lived on the inner walls of the bigger cylinder—it was huge enough that the curve of the ground was meaningless for those living on it. They had recreated towns and roads and gardens there. Everyone had their own small house. The inhabitants could look up and see the outside of the smaller cylinder, hovering less than half a mile away. It was covered in fields—corn and wheat and barley in abundance again. Green leaves and brown earth in lieu of blue skies.
The year was 2103, and they would reach the wormhole in four weeks. Carol hadn’t felt the last two years pass; ever since she’d looked up to find the gravity equation written on Bruce’s black board, everything had moved terribly fast.
“Captain Danvers!”
Carol blinked at Kamala, then smiled. “Sorry, Kam.”
“So what happened to Steve Rogers?”
Carol shifted in her honest-to-god deckchair, squinting up at the light. The outer cylinder was stripped with translucent sections that let the sunlight through for twelve hours, then grew softly opaque for the next twelve.
“What do you think?” she asked.
Kamala hesitated. “Did he… go back to the war to be with all his friends?”
“He probably could have done that,” murmured Carol. “I’m sure it would have been nice. But then he would have had to go around again, and I’m not sure he would have wanted that.”
“Right.” Kamala scrunched her nose. “Did he go back into the Lander, then? Just before it got away from the black hole? He could reach that moment.”
“He probably thought of doing that,” said Carol. “But there was a problem.” She leaned forward. “You see, Gargantua is a supermassive singularity. That means its gravity is really, really strong.”
“I know that.”
“Okay,” said Carol. “So what happens with a lot of gravity?”
“Objects are heavier?”
“Correct!” Carol smiled when Kamala beamed at her. “So the Lander and the two pods were very heavy, right? So were all the people inside. And they were already spinning on themselves.” She plucked Kamala’s gyroscope from the ground and sent it spinning. Kamala stared it, brow furrowed in concentration.
“The passengers were very lucky the whole thing was perfectly balanced.” (Or rather, thought Carol for herself, they were very lucky Banner had been there to calculate the whole thing.) “But what would happen if someone added even more weight out of nowhere?”
She let her bottle of beer fall atop the gyroscope; she’d aimed for the central axis, but the toy still barreled out of balance and smashed into the foot of her chair.
“They would have all fallen into the black hole,” concluded Kamala grimly. She scowled up at Carol. “But then what did he do?”
“The only thing he could,” said Carol quietly. “He went home.”
Staring dumbstruck at the equation on the black board until someone stormed in.
“Carol. CAROL.”
“What—what is it? God—look at the—you’re never gonna believe—”
“Steve Rogers just appeared in the middle of the hallway! Steve FUCKING ROGERS!”
“What?”
Running, steps echoing in her ears, heart hammering.
“Was anyone else with him?”
“No. Fuck, he’s still in his space suit. He’s still wearing his goddamn helmet!”
“Has he said anything?”
“He’s wounded, Carol, he’s got burns all over and he’s bleeding, and—”
People talking, yelling, clamoring, protesting when Carol’s elbows dug into their ribs.
“Alright, now everyone get back! Give him some air! Go on, get back!”
“Jesus, Jesus fuck, his dog tags melted into his chest. Jesus Christ.”
“Was he wearing any dog tags when he left?”
“Just scrape them off, carve them out, there’s no way around—”
Kamala wasn’t satisfied. “What do you mean, he went home? You mean he came back to leave Earth with us?” When Carol nodded, the little girl protested, “He’s aboard the Marvel? But then where is he? We never see him around!”
Carol hesitated; then she said, trying for a smile, “Oh, Kam—I don’t think he wants to talk to people very much.”
*
Steve Rogers talked to people just fine, actually. He just never said anything. Carol sat with him one day through one of his therapy sessions, with his express permission.
“How are you today, Steve?” asked the therapist encouragingly, half-getting up to shake his hand.
“Fine,” answered Steve.
He did look fine. He was running three hours every day; he had access to the inner cylinder so he could jog in peace, going through the green corn whose leaves brushed his shoulders. The skies for him were houses and schools and people playing baseball. When he was done, he stepped into the elevator whose shaft connected the small and the big cylinder. It took him up and up, away from the fields; then the gravity turned on its head mid-trip, so the elevator was instead bringing him down and down towards the strangely suburbia-like surface of the outer cylinder’s insides. Steve went home, took a shower and dressed himself and ate and slept and shaved in the morning like a regular, well-adjusted human being.
He was anything but.
“How are you?” he asked in turn.
“I’m fine, thank you.” The therapist sat back in his chair. “Carol’s here today. She’d really like to hear about what happened before the black hole.”
Steve’s expression was perfectly blank. “Well, if you don’t mind,” he said politely, “I’d rather not talk about it.”
“It might be a good thing. To share.”
“I understand,” said Steve patiently. “And I’m really sorry for the inconvenience. Can we talk about something else for today?”
“We can talk about your dog tags. They’re Chekov’s, aren’t they?”
“You already know that,” answered Steve in a reasonable voice. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
*
One fruitless hour later, Steve took his leave and his therapist turned to Carol with a helpless, wry little gesture. “He’s always like that. Plastic.”
“Plastic?”
“Yes. Smooth, seamless, artificial.” The therapist was drumming on his thigh. “Bartleby style. Can’t be cracked.”
That day, Carol went running with Steve after his therapy session. They rode the bi-gravity elevator in companionable silence, then started jogging across the corn fields. He was faster than her, but not by much; if she pushed herself, she could keep up with him.
Steve’s behavior, she reflected as they ran, was both disarming and weirdly familiar. He’d been a good soldier, filling them in on what had happened in the black hole and admitting that while it hadn’t been confirmed, Chavez’ planet was the safest bet for habitability. But he’d absolutely refused to talk about—anything else.
Carol was certain that she’d seen people act like him before, quite often, in fact; but not for such an extended period of time, and so she couldn’t place the feeling yet.
Steve was wearing a white tank top and she could see the knot of scar tissue between his neck and right shoulder. She knew Chekov’s dog tags had left a permanent mark as well, a rectangular wound carved over his heart. She wondered if his scars would ever heal. Steve was back to peak health, but his body was not perfect anymore. Erskine’s serum might just be beginning to wear out after a century and a half of strenuous use.
“Good run,” she told him as they went back to the elevators.
“Good run,” answered Steve blankly.
Without a doubt, he knew perfectly well how obtuse he was being. It wasn’t even denial; he readily acknowledged something had happened to him, but simply refused to share with the class. This wasn’t unconscious trauma at work, but active, intentional repression.
He wasn’t even closed off. Hell, Chekov had been less communicative than him. Rogers was perfectly functional—but he was also just that. Functional. A surface with nothing beneath.
“Steve,” asked Carol. “What are you waiting for?”
She hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. But she suddenly remembered why his behavior felt so familiar. She’d done the same thing when her father had crashed his car; she had absolutely refused to panic, hadn’t even made plans to travel across the country to be at his side, and kept on acting normally until the hospital had called her back to tell her he’d make it. Only then had she collapsed into a quivering mess, trembling for hours on end until she found the strength to drag herself under the shower and sob with the force of her relief.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t ever thought of asking Steve directly. He’d come back three whole years ago. But, well, between the building of the arks and the gathering of the survivors, Carol simply hadn’t found the time—or maybe she’d been afraid of the answer.
Because Bruce should have been the one to send back the results; except Steve had been sent back instead, adamantly refusing to talk about what he’d been through and looking like someone—someone, not something—had tried to kill him.
Carol still remembered the night before the Endurance’s take-off—unbeknownst to the others, neither Bruce nor Carol had slept that night. They’d stayed in the empty mess with half-filled cups of synthetic coffee, looking at the sun rise on this exceptionally cloudless day.
“I’m sorry,” he’d told her. “I thought I could solve this, I really did.”
He’d been staring at his cup, looking terribly tired.
“You’re leaving so you can solve it,” she’d reminded him softly.
He’d shaken his head. “I’m a hundred and twenty-eight years old, Carol. It’s not like I lacked time.”
She had wanted to reach out to him. To take his hand, maybe. But it wasn’t that simple. People had been focused on Chekov’s gloominess and they’d all missed the fact that quiet, smiling Professor Banner was more closed-off than James Chekov had ever been. In that moment, though, he looked so forlorn and so small she’d thought maybe—but as if he’d sensed her intention, he’d wrapped both hands around his cup and leaned back into his seat, away from her reach.
And now he was gone.
All that was left was Steve, and he still wouldn’t say anything. He was in that in-between state right now, high-strung like a piano wire, refusing to acknowledge his terrors for fear of having them confirmed. Only it had been three years and he didn’t look like he planned on stopping any time soon.
“What is it?” she asked. “Is the Endurance going to come back? Are you meeting them somewhere?”
Steve’s eyes widened. “I—” he said.
She hadn’t seen him waver ever before. It was like looking at someone on the edge of a cliff.
“I can’t,” he managed.
There was a tremor in his hands and it wasn’t because they’d just ran for two hours. He desperately tried to maintain an air of casualness to his shaking voice. “I really can’t.”
She stared at him for a long, helpless minute.
“Do you want to go into cryo?” she asked.
Steve blinked at her.
“I was just thinking,” she said. “That maybe you’d want that. If it makes it easier.”
He opened his mouth, didn’t speak, and ended up saying nothing at all for a very long time. Just as the silence became unbearable, he finally said:
“No.”
He swallowed audibly. “I mean,” he said, “yes. I suppose it would be easier. But I can’t…” His shoulders were tense. “I can’t lose time anymore.”
*
“…and fuck, sometimes I wonder if it’s him at all,” said Carol. “He was with Loki. Who knows what happened. What if he’s a prisoner inside his own mind? What if he’s screaming for help but no one can hear?”
“Calm down, crazy,” said Miles. “I like your other theory better.”
Morales was her co-pilot; he’d spent the last four years training at SHIELD, and the only reason he hadn’t been part of the Endurance expedition was because he was too young at the time. He was exceptionally skilled and very good for Carol’s sanity, except when he wasn’t.
They were sitting in her “backyard” again, enjoying the deckchairs and looking at the fields hung over their heads almost half a mile away. Steve was there, clearly visible in his white t-shirt and dust-colored slacks, running between the green lines of corn like a rat in a maze.
“I admire him, you know?” Miles went on. “I was a bit weirded out by his thing with Chekov, but we all were. I mean—” He shook his head. “Freaking Chekov. I never even talked to the guy, but I miss him anyway. And we all miss Banner. But we weren’t up there with them.” He shrugged. “I figure Rogers is entitled to his own way to deal.”
“But he’s not dealing,” said Carol. “That’s the thing.” Steve was holding his breath not to drown. But how much longer could he go on without air?
“He fought in fucking World War II,” said Miles emphatically. “And now he’s here. Of course he’s clamming up. People have gone insane for way less.” He paused. “But at least he’s trying to keep it together. That’s not thanks to therapy. He’s been trying so damn hard from day one. That means he’s still got something to live for. He’s just… like you said.”
Steve kept running endlessly above their heads, upside-down on the earth.
“On stand-by.”
*
“Attention all ship. This is your Captain speaking. The Marvel station is about to begin the crossing of Saturn’s wormhole. Please remain seated or lying down for the whole process. Strange phenomena may occur, but you will be in no danger.”
Carol hesitated, then added softly,“See you on the other side.”
She exhaled through her nose, looked at Miles in the seat next to her, and smiled at him. Then she drove onward…
…into the hole that was not a hole,
when is a hole not a hole? When it’s a gate
into darkness into vastness into the light and into that good
night, her father in the hospital reading that little poetry book another
patient had forgotten on the nightstand, do not go gentle into that good night,
with a bright smile on his face, isn’t that beautiful, darling? and now here they were, leaving
an entire era behind, leaving their home to live on and to forget them, flashes of light and sound
and the whole station quaking and shaking, surreal sounds drawn from twisted metal, and suddenly
a tall, slender man with long dark hair and a slightly wicked smile, waving at her, Godspeed, Captain
and then a brighter light, brighter, brighter, brighter, new stars and dysphoric constellations,
new stars, new skies, there will be no Zodiac and no moon and no Milky Way, there will be a
Gargantuan monster in the heavens instead, we’re gone, oh, we really are gone, and the
Earth behind them gone, the wrinkled brown Earth like an old apple, gone, goodbye,
goodbye and stars, stars, stars, stars, in lines and then in dots and then in
distant pinpricks glittering against the void, the feeling in her chest
painful like tears and burning like joy, wetness
on her cheeks, goodbye, goodbye…
*
“So Chavez’ planet is go?”
“Yes,” confirmed Carol. “The readings just came back. Her beacon’s still emitting.”
“Fuck,” said Miles softly. “Shoulda known America Chavez would be the one to get it done.” He licked his lips. “It’s been a long time, but—do you think she’s still alive?”
“Chavez? I don’t know. I hope so.”
The powerful readings of the Marvel station had been excruciatingly clear: Quill’s planet was a ball of water and Daken’s a ball of ice. They must both be dead. Chavez’ planet was a dry, rough world, but the air was breathable, the temperatures were bearable, and they needed nothing more for the terraformation to take.
“How long has she been there?” asked Miles.
“The time distortion ratio is relatively weak for her planet,” said Carol. “When the planet is beyond the event horizon, it’s like… nine of our years for one of its months? But the regular part of her orbit lasts fifteen years, and right now the planet is just beginning to enter the zone.”
The Twelve had left the Earth in 2091 and passed through the wormhole in 2093. Ten years ago. Since Chavez’ planet was only beginning now to desync its timeline…
“What you’re saying is, she’s been there all ten years,” said Miles.
There was a silence.
“We’re gonna send down a hundred people first,” murmured Carol. “Set up the essentials.”
“Is Rogers coming?”
Carol said nothing for a second. “I’ll ask him.”
*
Steve Rogers hadn’t forgotten any of his training. He performed dutifully every single safety check, slotted his helmet into place without a hitch and buckled himself into his seat with ease. The MARVEL-01 took off and spiraled down from orbit like a linden seed.
The nameless planet was a flat, rocky wasteland, glaring a dazzling ivory under the not-quite-blue sky. There wasn’t a cloud above. When Carol took off her helmet, the air was hot and dry and smelled like grilled almonds.
They walked to America Chavez’ camp and found her sitting on a rock, eating lunch.
Her hair, which had been cropped the day she’d left, had grown into a wild mane of luxurious curls. There was something savage and hard in her gaze, and she was Carol’s age now.
"Took you long enough,” she said dryly.
She got up and walked to them like a jungle cat, all confident stride and unimpressed gaze. But when she wrapped Carol in her arms, she almost broke her ribs clutching at her.
While they laughed and cried and all tried to clap America’s back, Steve stayed on the side, only giving a Carol an absent glance when she looked at him.
There was no one else on the planet.
*
They wanted to name the planet after her first explorer, but said explorer shook her long hair and declared she’d sabotage the terraformation herself if they named her world America. She looked at their ship and said, “How about Marvel?”
*
The interstellar arks would stay in orbit while the planet was made habitable for the ten million people or so who’d travelled from the Earth. There was an ecosystem to understand before cities could be built; the pioneers were intent on not repeating their earthly errors. They wouldn’t be trapped in another cycle.
Steve’s lips twisted a bit ruefully when Carol told him so, but he accepted when she asked him if he would be in charge of handling the terraformation process. Said that he had some experience looking after the earth, having been a farmer for so long.
He actually got into it pretty quickly. He never looked overly interested by his work, as though he always had his mind focused on something else; and yet he was nearly always working, as though he desperately needed something else to focus on. He was still walking that edge and Carol had learned not to ask anymore.
Marvel was just entering the time distortion zone of its orbit. It made no difference to anyone, now; the arks were all within the orbit and time took them all in its stride. At night, Gargantua shone bright in the dark, shockingly close and clear where the Milky Way had been but a faint trail of silver. Only when the black hole set beneath the horizon could the stars be seen.
It would be several years, maybe even a decade, before they could afford to start changing the ecosystem in a way they could fully understand and control. Thankfully, there seemed to be no life to disturb on the planet; but the planet had intricate workings all in itself.
A few days in people felt lighter; and it took them a week to realize they actually were lighter—the enormous gravity of Gargantua was affecting them, enough to affect Marvel’s gravity itself. A few weeks in, people could throw small objects ridiculously far and leap over ridiculously long distances. Someone fell from a great height and didn’t get hurt. Everyone was tremendously excited at the thought of maybe, actually being able to float at their closest point to the black hole.
After that, people realized just how unpredictable a new world could be; and it was decided that absolutely no colonization would be started until the planet completed a least one whole revolution around M-616. For the next fifteen years, Marvel would remain empty apart from a thousand pioneers and terraformers, the rest of the population watching them from the orbiting arks.
Steve was the only one not wondering at his new-found lightness like a child. When Carol explained to him that they were lighter thanks to Gargantua’s pull trying to draw them in, he acknowledged it and went on his way. Carol almost said something to him, but Miles persuaded her to give it a rest.
She still took Steve stargazing under the guise to help her find new constellations. For the first time since he’d come back, Steve showed a sliver of interest in something other than his own thoughts. He watched the stars for a long while in silence, then traced a human shape in the void and said, the Soldier.
*
“Carol,” Steve asked her very quietly one day. “What year do you think it is?”
Carol was so stunned that he would actually speak without being prompted that she almost didn’t answer the question. “What year? Still 2104, Steve.”
“No, I mean,” he said, voice even lower, “what year do you think it actually is. Out there.”
“Oh.” She ran a brief conversion in her head. “We’ve been in the zone a little more than five months. It must be something like 2150 or 2151.”
Steve nodded and said nothing.
*
“Carol? Carol.” Miles was shaking her. “Wake up. Aliens.”
She blinked and stirred half-awake. “What?”
“Fucking aliens, Carol!”
*
“…anyone know where that thing is coming from? What is it?”
“It’s too small to be coming from the American stations…”
“Have you called T’Challa? The African arks have small pods, maybe…”
“…says it’s not him…”
“Is it a meteor?”
“I don’t think a meteor would have boosters… Oh, shit—oh, shit—”
“Oh, it’s going up into flames—it’s going too fast, they’re gonna crash—the way they’re coming in—”
“In the dunes, and with the lighter gravity, maybe that can break their fall enough for—”
“Let’s fucking go, people, all aboard the Marvel-01, let’s go!”
*
The crash made the red sand blow up in such an almighty geyser they saw it from two miles away.
Coming closer, there were pieces of steel everywhere, embedded in the sand and burning with white flames under the cloudless sky. Carol saw the shell of the ship, saw the name on the side, and understood, then.
The blackened remains of the mangled arm fell off when they moved what was left of Sergeant James Chekov onto the gurney.
*
“It’s no use,” said the medic. “He’s already gone.”
The long wail of the heart monitor sounded like a funeral lament.
Carol knocked softly on the door.
“Steve?”
He looked up from the holographic diagrams he was working on.
“Steve, there’s something I need to tell you.”
*
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lighting they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
“Fuck,” repeated Miles, wiping his tears with his palms and breathing out. “I barely knew him.”
“He was a good man,” said Carol, staring ahead.
Those words might have sounded hollow on Earth, but here, on this new world, they’d never been spoken before. “He was a good man.”
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
“Do you think he would have liked it?” asked Miles. “The poem?”
“He liked it,” murmured Carol. “Very much. It makes for a good eulogy.”
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Steve spoke the last line in a soft undertone; then he put the poem down, stepped down from their makeshift platform, and turned away.
No one in the small crowd tried to stop him.
*
“I never thought I’d bury him,” said Carol softly. “All these years of him not aging. I thought he’d be here forever.”
She looked out the window at the strange blue of the alien sky.
It had been two days since the burial; she felt like time had stopped, like every day would be the same forever and ever. To know that they had a whole new planet to explore wasn’t enough to help yet. Right now, it only reminded her of all the things they wouldn’t get to share.
“It’s so unfair,” she murmured. “I wish he could have seen this.”
“He did,” answered a faint, hoarse rasp.
She almost didn’t register it. Then she looked up.
“James?”
He was as still and pale as before, but his lips were parted.
“We saw it,” repeated Chekov under his breath. “The sky. Your arks.”
He slowly opened his bleary, sunken eyes. He’d turned his head towards the window and was looking outside. The sky, she realized, was the exact same color as his irises, a clear slate-gray.
He was all sharp angles and hard lines, enough to cut the space he breathed in. Without his metal arm, he looked broken. Like a toy finally taken apart after too much abuse.
He glanced at Carol. “I’m alive, then?”
“Yes,” she said, trying to control her voice. “Yes, James. You’re alive. You’re home.”
Chekov stared at her, then out the window again.
The Hulk had curled around Chekov, taking the worst of the impact into his flesh and bones, and protecting him from the fiery heat of their abrupt re-entry. The huge corpse had been impossible to revive. It was burnt to a cinder, and when they tried to move it, it had partially crumbled to ashes.
The impact had still been enough to put the sergeant in a coma for three days. But his stubborn body had brought him back among the living yet again.
“Do you remember what happened?”
Chekov sneered. “S’been a long time since I was last allowed to forget.” He glanced at her again and rasped, “Banner?”
She shook her head, without a word.
Chekov’s vacant eyes drifted to the ceiling. “Good. He needed the rest.”
Carol was so shocked she found nothing to say. Chekov looked at her again after a while, then closed his eyes. “Living for too long, Danvers.” He licked his cracked lips and swallowed, throat working up and down. “You don’t know what it’s like.”
“He didn’t want to die,” she murmured.
Chekov didn’t reopen his eyes. “That something you know?” he said in a wry undertone.
Carol said nothing, swallowing wetly.
Chekov sighed a little. “Maybe he let go, and maybe he was pushed,” he conceded. “Either way, it’s good to know this fucking serum isn’t infallible.”
There was a silence. He scoffed a little, without opening his eyes. “I can feel the way you’re looking at me. Don’t worry.” His voice was bitter and terribly tired. “I promised Steve I’d stay alive whatever happened.”
Carol stared at him.
And she began to understand, then. She couldn’t see the whole picture yet, but she understood who Steve had been waiting for all those years, and she understood it hadn’t been years at all for James Chekov.
“I hope you named the goddamn planet after him,” said Chekov. “Least you could do.”
“James,” began Carol.
“Don’t call me that,” he said. “Don’t call me—”
“Bucky,” said another voice.
Chekov’s eyes snatched open. He looked around with a haggard gaze and zeroed on Steve hovering by the door.
He’d been sleeping in the hallway for the three days of James’ coma. His hair was mussed, there were dark rings under his eyes, and he looked downright awful, shaking, hands unsteady, years of holding back finally taking their toll.
“You’re awake,” he murmured.
A look of pure terror spread on James’ face.
“No,” he mumbled. He screwed his eyes shut with a scowl, breathing fast, whispering to himself, “No, you’re not here. You’re not here.”
Steve looked like he was going to die.
Carol got up and grabbed his hand. “Sit down. Sit down,” she repeated, tugging him into the chair before he could collapse. Then she crouched next to the bed and grabbed James’ arm.
“James? Look at me. I’m here.”
He shook his head violently. “I know you’re here,” he said, teeth gritted. “I can’t—”
“How,” she said, talking over him, “am I here?”
He cracked his eyes open again and stared at her, shuddering violently when Steve pleaded, “Bucky—”
“Shut up,” hissed Carol. “James. Focus. How am I here? This is another planet. I’m alive. How did I get here?”
He licked his lips. “You, uh,” he said, quivering. “You solved the equation.”
“No I didn’t. It was unsolvable. You know it was. Banner couldn’t do it, nobody could. It was sent to me. Steve sent it to me.” She gripped his arm when he tried to draw back. “You saw the arks. We’re here. We’re all here. We made it. Steve sent me the equation.”
James shook his head again, eyes wide. “Steve’s dead.”
“How?”
“The black hole.” Tears started rolling down his cheeks. “He fell into the black hole.”
“Yes. And from there, he sent me the equation. Look at me. I’m here. He sent us the equation.”
James blinked at her, cut short on the brink of shattering. He swallowed, trembling so hard he rattled the bed. “You can’t send anything from a black hole.”
“Exactly,” said Carol. “Exactly. Yet Steve sent out the equation.”
James stared at her for an excruciating minute. Carol could almost see his scrambled brain trying to make sense of it all. He didn’t want to believe Steve was alive, couldn’t believe it, but there was Carol and a nanocanvas hospital and orbital arks and an entire planet to say otherwise, and so maybe—maybe—
James looked up at Steve.
Steve looked back, eyes wide and haunted, pale as a sheet.
“Steve?” asked James in a small voice.
“Bucky.” Steve slid off the chair to kneel by the bed. “Bucky.” He grabbed James’ hand and turned his face into it, pressing kisses into the palm. “Bucky.”
James—Bucky?—was staring at him with wide, horrified eyes. “How long,” he whispered, “how long has it been?”
“Three days,” Steve mumbled into his palm, “three days, they said you’d wake up—”
“How long has it been for you,” said James, tears rolling down again.
Steve closed his eyes and breathed into his palm for another second. Then he admitted quietly, “Four years.”
James let out a small sound of pain.
Steve looked up at him. “It’s okay,” he said, incredibly soft. He was crying, but for the first time in those four years, he was smiling, too. “It’s okay.” He closed his eyes again and turned his face back into James’ palm. “I owed you a bit of waiting.”
*
It was a long road home.
Carol was not prepared the first time it happened, when James was wheeled into surgery—his prosthetic had been messily destroyed in the crash, and he needed to get rid of the mangled pieces still attached at the shoulder. But as soon as they took a turn in the hallway, he ripped out his IV frantically trying to crawl out of bed to go back to Steve—Steve himself almost killing a well-intentioned paramedic who tried to keep him away from the operation room.
The surgery was postponed and Steve was allowed to stay in the room when it happened, firmly holding James’ good hand.
A week later, James was cleared to move into the barracks with him. They were given separate rooms up until Carol realized they were living together in Steve’s room, tucking their large frames in the small one-person bed, leaving James’ cold and empty. Carol had them moved into a duplex; it was a luxury very few could afford among the settlers and usually reserved for married couples, but no one on this earth would have dared to imply Steve Rogers and James Chekov weren’t deserving of it.
She quickly realized the hospital incident hadn’t been a one-time thing. Steve and James were just physically unable to leave the other’s side, coming down with full-blown panic attacks if they lost sight of each other. Every time she saw them, Carol noticed they were always maintaining some sort of physical contact, holding hands, nudging knees, pressing close, sitting side by side on the floor rather than into separate chairs.
Which was why she was so surprised to see Steve wander on his own between the nanocanvas buildings, ten days after the Endurance’s return.
It was early in the morning, M-616 just rising above the horizon.
“Steve?”
He turned to her, and the look on his face scared her to death—as haggard and lost as he’d been when James had thought he was having visions. She tried to quell her own panic.
“Steve,” she said firmly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Steve in a strange voice.
“Where’s James?”
Steve stared at her for a full ten seconds.
Then he turned round and took off running back to the duplex.
Carol ran after him; she was already expecting the worst and was confused when she stopped at the door, breathless, to find them both safe and sound and locked in a tight embrace. But when she heard Steve whispering endless apologies, and when she saw how badly James was trembling, she understood. Steve had woken up and thought James wasn’t real.
It went on like this for a few painful weeks, Steve and James pathologically unable to leave each other—right until one of them became convinced the other was a hallucination. For all the helplessness she felt, Carol saw the logic in it. Steve had spent four years waiting for James without knowing for sure he’d ever return; James had seen him fly straight into a black hole and been persuaded he’d been vaporized. Carol didn’t know what toll the shock had taken on James’ sanity, and didn’t know either how Steve had managed to keep it together for so long. She wondered to what ghosts they’d both talked—through what hells they’d both been—that they couldn’t believe now in what they’d been given back.
It took her intervention to bring them back to reality, every time—hours of pleading and negotiating on the worst days; and every time, when her reasoning won out, they dissolved into frantic apologies, promising they’d remember, only to repeat the same pattern a few days later.
*
It was on a good day, on a rare day when Steve and James both managed to believe in their happiness long enough to enjoy it, that Carol walked in on them shaving each other’s heads. It was a peaceful scene, the both of them sitting in their bare room amidst the clear alien light, but her first instinctive reaction was dread.
Steve saw her frozen up on the doorstep and smiled at her.
“Hey, Carol,” he said, as James ran the electrical razor over the side of his head. “We’ve decided to copy your hairstyle.”
When she blinked at them, he explained, “I can’t wear piercings or tattoos, and neither can Bucky. And mutilating ourselves seemed a bit excessive.”
Carol glanced between them both, her initial fear dissolving into understanding. “It’s a reminder?”
“It’s proof,” said James softly as he finished his work.
He put down the razor to brush the buzzcut with his one hand, smiling at the feel of it underneath his fingers. “We’ve done a lot of things, but neither of us ever cut his hair this way.”
Steve ran his fingers over the shaved side of James’ head, then tangled them into his long hair on the other side.
“We’ll see if it works,” he murmured fondly.
“Suits ya, punk,” said James before dropping a kiss on his lips.
*
It didn’t work—not in the sense that it solved it all.
But it did help them untangle the present from the past. Every time they became overwhelmed with the thought that none of this could be real, it helped to ground them. It became sort of a ritual for them, to shave the side of each other’s head every morning. The unusual color of the sky helped, too, and the pale yellow nanocanvas buildings, and the hot grilled almond smell in the air. Everything that was alien helped; after so much time spent living in the past, they couldn’t get enough proof that they’d made it to the other side.
They also found a grimmer relief in each other’s scars. Carol saw them on a particularly hot day, sitting together on their front porch. They were bare-chested, James running his fingers over the rectangular wounds carved into Steve’s chest, Steve brushing the casing of James’ missing prosthetic—more proof of the here and now. They were leaning into each other, eyes closed, as if breathing each other in. Carol had to look away.
Later, they took to writing on each other’s skin, Steve drawing elaborate doodles on James’ forearm and James writing down private jokes, little messages and blatant innuendoes on Steve’s biceps. They didn’t sleep well at night—their duplex was right next to Carol’s room in the barracks, and she could hear them getting up, talking in droning voices she couldn’t understand through the nanocanvas. They caught up on their sleep during the day, curled up together under Marvel’s warm sun.
Steve had been relieved from his terraforming duties. Carol said any job would be theirs to take if the idleness became unbearable, but for the time being, they seemed happy to rest. She was beginning to suspect they’d never, ever taken the time to let themselves be—even less so with each other.
Steve’s former therapist had been given special permission to come down from the orbiting arks, and met with him and James every other week. They’d refused to see him more often, even though Steve still couldn’t let James out of his sight without panicking and James wasn’t much better on that front. They also remained utterly touch-starved for each other, pressing full-body against the other whenever they could, and otherwise lacing fingers. On the rare occasions where they had to stand apart, they were both obviously fidgety and on edge until they could touch each other again, holding hands with some sort of hurried relief, thumbs rubbing over scraped knuckles.
They weren’t overly committed to solving that particular problem, and maybe they never would. Steve said they simply didn’t see any point to it. James said they were too old to hope to be remade anew. A few well-meaning souls wondered if this was all very healthy, if they shouldn’t be forced to interact with more people, but they got told in no uncertain terms to fuck off and leave them alone. After nearly two hundred years of fighting for others, Sergeant Barnes and Captain Rogers were finally allowing themselves a well-deserved bout of utter selfishness.
Walking together, holding hands and leaning close into each other with their painted arms and half-shaven heads, they should have looked like two teenagers in love; yet they looked their age—ancient, world-weary and only really interested in each other, just like old age at close of day.
Carol thought maybe, for her own sake, she should try to accept that. It was already a miracle, that so much should be left of them.
*
The first hard, durable structure erected on Marvel, amidst the nanocanvas buildings, was a memorial they carved into the red rock of the ground. On it were engraved the sixteen names of the explorers who’d guided humanity to its new home.
The stone was engraved under the supervision of the three survivors, Steve, James and America. James pursed his lips at the engraving of Daken Akihiro’s name, but said nothing. He also stared darkly at the four letters of Loki’s name, but said nothing either. The only thing he said was that he wished to be marked down as James Buchanan Barnes.
(Carol understood another piece of their story then, even if that one left her reeling, but it wouldn’t be another few years before she fully got the measure of what they’d been through.)
Steve talked a little to Loki sometimes, saying he hoped he’d found his way. But most of the time, it was to Bruce they all talked, telling him about the color of the sky, about how odd their returning weight felt now that they were moving away from the black hole, about how they could never thank him enough, and how much they missed him. Carol knew they all wondered whether or not Bruce had planned his own death, and to what extent. But that was something they could never know; they could only murmur their regrets and try to make their peace.
Whenever she went there alone, Carol thanked Bruce some more, and promised him she’d take care of what he’d left behind. She told him about Steve and James and of what they’d carried through the ages. She told him that the air never smelled of iron anymore.
And always, before leaving—she wished him a good night.
The electrical buzz of the razor stopped.
“Steve.”
Steve opened his eyes and looked up. “Yeah, Buck?”
Bucky’s fingers were light on his scalp, his weight warm at Steve’s back. He plucked something from the unshaven side of his head and leaned against his shoulder to hold it before his eyes.
Steve frowned at it, inching back; when he saw what it was, he blinked, then met Bucky’s equally stunned eyes.
“Wow,” he said, softly, almost reverently.
It was a white hair.