Chapter 1
The first time Steve sees her he’s sure it’s just his imagination.
Because it can’t be her.
It’s in the aftermath of Loki’s attack on New York; he’s standing in the wreckage of the city he was born in over eighty years ago. There’s smoke and screams and twisted metal and flames (it could be anywhere, any city during the war, the quaint French villages, the frozen Russian cities, Dresden, anywhere) Alessia is at his side, barking orders right along with him, coordinating rescues. She’s beautiful like this; sooty and singed, there’s a tear in her ear and a small gash on her side.
It’s how they’re meant to be.
But he can’t shake the feeling that someone’s missing.
Tony flies across overhead, his crow daemon spiralling down towards another group of trapped survivors or something. The sun glints of Tony’s suit and Mena’s glossy black feathers and Steve watches them soarMaori for a while before looking back down.
That’s when he sees her.
Deep blue eyes and soft grey fur.
He drops a hand to grasp Alessia’s ruff, blinks and she’s gone.
Alessia looks up, “What’s wrong?”
“I thought I saw...” but he can’t be, couldn’t be, so he looks away. “Never mind.”
She leans against him and licks his hand.
*****
It’s not unusual, they’re at war, kids grow up fast. Especially orphans. But then, Alessia settles before his mom dies. Most of the kids at the orphanage are a lot older than him, or a lot younger than him. He gets picked on a lot (but hey, kids are cruel and as long as their picking on him they’re not picking on anyone else)
Bucky’s a month younger than him and he’s already been there four years. His daemon, Aneira, is a gray wolf with the bluest eyes Steve’s ever seen. Steve’s a little jealous of her, truth be told, Alessia is only part wolf, Aneira is pure and beautiful and wild but then again Steve’s never been wild so in that respect Alessia is perfect.
He and Bucky don’t hit it off right away, to Bucky Steve’s just another trouble maker, to Steve Bucky’s just another bully. But things happen and people change and they become inseparable. They move out of the orphanage when they’re both sixteen, Bucky gets two jobs and Steve does what he can.
It’s not much but it’s theirs.
It’s home. It’s family.
*****
Sometimes it’s the camps and the starving, sick, severed people they saw. Sometimes it’s the battles and he wakes up in a haze of gunfire and explosions murmuring orders. Sometimes it’s the plane crash and coldcoldcold. Sometimes it's brown eyes and a beautiful red dress.
Mostly it’s the train.
Aneira fell first, that was the most terrifying part, hearing her howl as she spiralled downwards in to the snowy abyss. Seeing Bucky’s face drain of colour, his eyes go wide, his wordless scream of pain and loss and terror.
Alessia screaming, howling, barking beside him and he’s reaching – reaching even though he knows that Bucky’s going to fall.
He wakes up in a cold sweat and he's grateful that the other Avengers have nightmares of their own to keep them occupied. Some nights it's like being back in the barracks, people crying out, pacing around, and it shouldn't be.
Tony and Bruce, Tasha and Clint, none of them have fought in a war ("World's always at war, Steve," Tasha had said, Vikenti chuckling softly as he wound himself around her wrist.)
He doesn't know about Thor but then Thor took off with Loki and headed back to Asgard (Steve still couldn't get over that, Thor had no daemon but he didn't feel severed) Loki had a daemon though. A broken thing always something dark and vicious. Until he'd left and his daemon had been chained to the tesseract as an arctic fox.
Thor had been surprised that his brother had a daemon, Steve didn't like to think about what that implied.
*****
He's jogging in the park, Alessia humming old marching tunes beside him. "Do you have to do that, Ally?"
She grins up at him, "Keeps you going, don't it?"
She talks a lot like Bucky, it used to bother him. Now not so much. He chuckles breathless, "Yeah, guess it does." He pauses for a breather and a gulp of water watches as Alessia jogs on for a few meters before spinning, tail raised. "Awh, you tired, Steve?"
Steve smiles. "Just taking five, Ally." She yips impatiently, jogs back to him and beyond. Since the serum Alessia's been able to go further than she should, it doesn't hurt, doesn't weaken their bond, but it still gives him a mini heart attack when she's out of his sight for more than a few minutes.
He watches her disappear into the gathering twilight. That's when he sees her.
And this time he's sure.
"Aneira," he whispers and just like that she's gone, disappearing in to the night quick as a shadow.
"Steve!" Alessia shouts bounding back to him, "Steve! I just saw-"
"Aneira," he finishes for her, she nods frantically.
"But it can't be," Alessia whispers, ears down.
Steve drops to one knee, curls a hand in her warm fur. "I know."
*****
When he met Tony he only saw him for all his flaws, the bottle of scotch he keeps by the bed, the way he can't seem to understand how to let people in, the way his hackles raise and Mena tenses far too early, the egotistical, selfish man behind Stark Enterprises. It made his skin crawl, made Alessia growl deep in her throat because this couldn't be Howard's son.
"War is hell," Alessia says. "It probably messed him up too."
He's seen videos about the attack on Japan. Seem photos of the aftermath, the burns, the twisted corpses, the empty eyes. He thinks if he was involved in that he'd go crazy too. He wonders what Howard did when he realised what the Manhattan Project actually looked like in action. (He wonders too if that's what made Ilona's fur stopped shining because its so, so much duller in the more recent photos.)
He walks in to Tony's lab still sweaty from the jog, he probably should have showered and by the way Tony wrinkles his nose it's clear he agrees.
("Told you," Alessia hisses.)
"What's up, Cap?" Tony's panting slightly, face flecked with oil or grease or something.
Mena swoops down from wherever she was to alight briefly on Alessia's back, "You two look like you've seen a ghost."
Steve tries his best to smile dismissively, "Just tired. Listen, I need to know if SHIELD still have files on - on Red Skull. Johann Schmidt." He adds when Tony frowns a little.
"Oh, the guy who tried to take over the world back in your time? Sure they do." He smirks, "Why, feeling nostalgic?"
Steve thinks about the flash of grey fur and blue eyes, "Something like that."
He knows Tony doesn't buy it but he's banking on the theory that Tony will be more interested in hacking in to the SHIELD database again then finding out why Steve's so curios.
Besides, Steve fully intends to tell Tony what he's looking for (when he actually knows what he's looking for.
Tony watches him for a few seconds, calculating and Mena lands on his shoulder, bends to say something low in his ear. "Alrighty then," he says with a grin. "Let's go piss Fury off some more. I'd been meaning to poke at him some time this week."
*****
It doesn't of course. It keeps turning just like it always has.
He's given the files after a week of asking. A neat little pile of manilla envelopes and neatly typed documents. This is all that's left of his life, his family and it all fits in cardboard box.
Alessia whines at his feet as he spreads them out on the dark wood table of the apartment SHIELD have given him. It's bigger and fancier then his old place in Brooklyn, so much more than he's ever had (but he's still alone, he still has nothing but his daemon and his nightmares.)
Peggy's the only one still alive, retired of course and living in Britain. The picture attached is from the camp. Beautiful and young and proud, Milon by her side, teeth half bared in a grin.
Alessia pushes her head in to his lap, "We could go see her. Fly over as a surprise, take her out for that dance."
Steve traces the address with forefinger. "She has a family now. A husband, kids, grandkids."
"Coulda been our kids," Alessia says softly.
Steve laughs because on the rare nights he dreams good things its always Peggy and him in a neat little house, couple of kids running about, her in an apron baking. He scratches Alessia behind the ears as she laughs wetly. "An apron, she scoffs, "Really, Steve?"
In the end they don't go. Steve wants to say its because he doesn't want to dredge up old feelings, that he doesn't want to upset her. (But maybe it's more because he doesn't want to think of her as anything out her than the brave young woman who loved him, and she did love him, he's sure if that. But maybe she wouldn't anymore and that terrifies him.)
He stares at Bucky's file for a long time.
M.I.A it says, presumed dead.
He shuts the file and shoves it away.
"Maybe it would have been easier," Alessia says tentatively. "If we had died and they had found us quickly. Woulda given them closure at least."
Steve pushes her away.
She's right though.
*****
"Barnes," Alessia answers for him. "James Barnes."
"James Barnes..." Tony repeats. "Hmm. There's not much here." He spins the screen to face Steve. "See?"
Alessia growls in frustration, "It's the same stuff as they gave us!"
Steve sighs, "That's all there is with his name?"
Tony frowns, "Yeah, Cap. What's this about anyway?" Mena is watching them carefully and Steve wriggles under the crow's dark gaze.
"Doesn't matter," Steve mutters, stomping down to the gym to break something.
*****
He comes across Thor in the kitchen one day, wrestling with the coffee maker. Steve attempts to help him and Alessia laughs herself hoarse but by the end of it they both have mugs off passable coffee. "How's your brother?" Steve asks and Thor looks faintly surprised.
"He is better," he says hesitantly. "Now that he has his - his daemon back."
"So how come Loki has one but you don't?"
Thor sighs, "Loki is not... The Aesir don't have daemons, our souls reside inside us. Loki is not Aesir. I thought he was but..."
Alessia's ears are pricked with interest. "So Loki's daemon just survived without him all those years?" Steve asks.
"I suppose so," Thor says, a dark undercurrent to his words. "My father kept them apart. He says he didn't know but... The Allfather is supposedly all knowing."
"Do you think human daemons could survive like that?" Alessia asks quietly later that night. She's sprawled on the bed beside him, head on his chest.
"I don't know. Could you?"
Alessia sits up. "I dunno," she says thoughtfully. "Maybe." She licks his cheek. "They could be alive, you know."
"We saw them fall, Ally. No one could survive that."
"Schmidt was experimenting on him, right? He coulda-"
"Alessia..."
His daemon huffs. "I liked you better before everyone we loved died. You were much more optimistic."
"Yeah," Steve sighs, rolling away from her. "I liked me better then too."
*****
Every one of them.
"Everyone except Bucky," Alessia reminds him. Bucky doesn't have a grave. Steve had meant to get him one when the war was over, something nice in Brooklyn, something worthy
of his best friend, his brother. But then he died and somewhere along the way Bucky got lost.
He thinks about asking SHIELD to help him get one made, maybe not a grave but something but he can't think of anything worth Bucky and Aneira so he doesn't.
It's enough to make him wish he could get drunk.
*****
Alessia growls.
"I'm not in the mood today, Clint," Steve says, as politely as possible, tying up another bag.
"I can see that," Clint remarks, eyeing the broken equipment. "It looks like Bruce lost it in here, the hell happened, Cap?"
Clint looks relaxed but from the way Kahu is hovering just within reach of Alessia Steve knows that Clint is far from relaxed. Steve sighs. "Nothing, okay? I'm fine."
Clint snorts, "If this is fine I'd hate to see pissed."
Steve thinks about telling Clint that he's pretty sure he's being stalked by his dead best friend's daemon but they're interrupted by the arrival of Darcy and her odd daemon. "Whoa, what did Bruce hulk out over this time?"
"Actually," Clint says with a strange look. "This was Steve."
Darcy's eyes go wide, "Wow, for someone who should be like, eighty you really know how to throw a tantrum."
"I'll clean it up," Steve mutters.
"Hey, no worries, buddy," Clint pats him on the back. "I'll do it. You look like you could use a drink. Or maybe a whole bottle of drink."
Steve smiles half-heartedly. "It doesn't work on me."
Darcy shakes her head sympathetically, "Dude, that totally sucks."
*****
"What?" He whispers.
"There's someone here," she says, her voice low.
Steve sits up immediately, "There aren't any alarms going off though." Tony's got several high tech security systems in place plus JARVIS. No one should be able to break in.
"Steve," she implores. "There's someone here."
He trusts Alessia more than he trusts himself so he gets up, swings himself out of bed and pads after her into the hallway. "Where, Ally?"
She pauses, ears pricked, nose twitching. "Steve, I can only smell human."
He looks at her, questioning.
"I can't smell a daemon." She clarifies.
There's a flurry of movement behind them and Steve spins, fists raised, Alessia snarling. "Natasha?"
Natasha sighs, lowers her gun. "Steve?"
"Ally says there's someone downstairs," Steve hisses.
She cocks her head, Vikenti slithering down her arm. "We heard it too."
"Wake up the others," he says.
"Are you sure you should-? She begins, but he cuts her off with a look. She nods once, "Vikenti is going with you though."
Steve nods and Tasha's snake daemon drops on to Alessia's back. "We should sound the alarm." Alessia says, "It'd be quicker."
"If whoever's broken in thinks they're undetected they'll be easier to surprise," Tasha says.
Steve nods, "Right."
Tasha turns, disappears into the dark hallway.
"He's on the top floor, Steve," Alessia hisses.
"He?"
Vikenti nods, "He," the snake nods.
They move quickly, quietly, Alessia a dark, silent blur at his feet. Alessia looks at him when they get to the doorway to the main living room. You go in this way, she communicates. We'll go around.
Steve nods and steps into the darkened room.
It's been a few months since Bruce put a Loki-sized hole in the floor and the windows have all been repaired but the room is still a mess. Magazines and clothes and weapons strewn about. The figure is crouching a few feet away from him, probably intending to jump out at him.
*****