don't be fooled by the city lights @hansiris - Tumblr Blog

summary: after 90 years of cryosleep, you wake to a world that has left you behind. the red room is eradicated. hydra is in hiding. you are the living remnant of a long-gone super soldier project that shaped you into the ultimate weapon. but now, the other side of the same coin has awakened, and you're the only one who can rein him in before its too late.

wc: 11.5k

cw/tags: winter soldier!seungcheol x black widow!reader, angst/comfort with fluff and a happy ending, reader's red room alias is an OC (basically the red room equivalent of a supersoldier) but no other description is given, implied fem!reader, cameos from 3mix and antman!dk and spiderman!hansol, dark content ahead, please read below warnings before reading

dark content warnings: graphic violence, descriptions of blood and death, discussions of handlers/shock therapy/mind control/bloodlust/assassins and other themes associated with marvel comics' winter soldier character, dangerously protective seungcheol, even more dangerously protective reader, alcohol/drinking, food/eating, the bad guys are slimy and gross and misogynists (it's ok we kill them), themes of codependency, please let me know if there are others I should add and consume media at your own discretion!

note: i spent wayyyy too long figuring out how to photoshop seungcheol's face onto sebastian stan as the winter soldier's body so do NOT say it is AI or i will feed you to kwon soonyoung. anyway hope you like this, i luv luv luv luv luv infinity saga mcu (don't ask me about current mcu...) so this was one of my favorite fics to write ever hehe. also shoutout @noniesgummysmile for feeding my winter soldier!scoups delulu...couldn't have done this without you eia lol. enjoy!

likes, reblogs, and comments are appreciated! <3

Casablanca, Morocco – 2025

The port has changed since you visited 90 years ago.

The weather remains relatively the same, the city bathed in constant humidity from the adjacent ocean and comfortably warm in stark contrast to the sweltering summer days. A mild breeze carries the smell of salt and tanker oil, the latter bringing more pungent scents than the steam ships you remember. Below you are rows upon rows of shipping containers in every color and size imaginable, outnumbering the wood-paneled warehouses you’d traversed in 1935. The soft lapping of waves is overshadowed by humming machinery, buzzing electric lines, and distant rattling of various machines. You find no quiet in the sky, dark and obscured by the lights illuminating the port. Even after two years of waking up in an entirely new millennium, you still aren’t used to the cacophony of sounds that comes with decades of technological advances.

It’s so loud. Everything is louder in this new age.

“Are we sure he’s coming?” Nayeon’s voice crackles through your earpiece and you startle, nearly falling backward off your perch on the catwalk of a massive crane. You hear her chuckle and she waves at you from her position on another crane. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Don’t be fooled. The more you get to know her, the more you get to know her tricks, too,” Jihyo adds, barely visible under the cranes from her spot between two containers.

“They’re both tricky. Let’s leave it at that,” Jeongyeon concludes, and your ears are overrun as the other two adamantly do not leave it at that. You let yourself smile, if only a little bit. The Red Room never allowed you to make friends, much less ones as close as the three ex-Widows that had helped you adjust to the new world. You were still hesitant to call them friends despite how easily they referred to you as one, even going so far as to volunteer themselves to help you capture Choi Seungcheol.

Shit.

You take a deep breath and refocus your energy on the task at hand. The watch on your hand–an analog one you chose when you politely declined a newfangled digital thing–reads nearly midnight.

“I’m not sure, honestly. He's…programmed,” you choke on the word like poison, “to return to Casablanca and be retrieved by Hydra handlers after every mission. Even if he's just as unnerved as I was by this new world, his brain will guide him to what it knows, and that's Casablanca.” You hesitate and remember how you were also programmed to do something similar, though your rendezvous point was Jakarta. “This is all a hunch, though, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared of getting put back under if this whole plan fails.”

“We’d never let that happen,” Jeongyeon promises you. “Plus, the world doesn’t work like that anymore.” You sigh.

“Two years out of a test tube and I still don’t know how the world works,” you frown.

“That’s okay. Just know that no one’s getting put on ice again as long as we’re around.” The sincerity in Jihyo’s voice makes your chest a little lighter.

“Except maybe Mina, just to see her reaction. I think it'd be funny,” muses Nayeon and you finally crack a smile. However, any smart remark that you could contribute dies in your throat as a flash of silver dashes between two containers a few yards away from Jihyo’s position. Your heart drops like a stone into your stomach.

He’s here.

“Jihyo, 4 o’clock. Eyes up,” you order, your voice lethally serious. The energy in the entire port seems to shift as you double check your descender secured to the rail of the crane. “Remember, he doesn’t know you and he’s not trained to find out.” He probably doesn’t even know me anymore. “He’ll eliminate adversaries on sight and we’re about to ambush him. Proceed with caution.”

“Copy,” Jihyo confirms, already slipping through the containers like a shadow.

“I’m in position,” Jeongyeon states and you catch the clinking of a tranquilizing tube being loaded into her rifle. “Get me eyes on him and I’ll wait for your signal.”

“Got it. Nayeon, on my mark.”

“Ready when you are, boss,” she murmurs, dangling off the catwalk like an impatient spider.

“Be careful, all three of you,” you warn. “And as a personal favor, try not to fuck him up too badly. Please?”

“We won’t kill your boyfriend, we promise,” Jeongyeon swears with a teasing lilt in her voice. You swallow thickly and ignore the rising warmth in your face but don't argue.

“Okay. Jihyo, you have permission to engage,” you state and Nayeon is already halfway down her rope by the time you start descending. Warm air rushes past your face as your controlled fall brings you to the ground within seconds. You unclip the descender from your belt and sprint in the direction of Jihyo and Seungcheol. Nayeon throws herself into the fight with a roundhouse that Seungcheol blocks easily with his metal arm, shoving her off and using the momentum to swing at Jihyo, but she’s too quick. Both her and Nayeon play their parts perfectly, keeping Seungcheol distracted enough for you to find an opening to hit him with a syringe of the same tranquilizer in Jeongyeon’s rifle. As the best sharpshooter of her generation in the Red Room, Jeongyeon was the last resort if you, Nayeon, and Jihyo were incapacitated.

You stalk through the shadows, circling the fight while sweat beads on your forehead and a feverish sensation chokes your body. The monster that the Red Room trained within you was baring its teeth, eager to kill and kill and kill the way you were built to. That carnal, animalistic part of you whispers to throw Jihyo and Nayeon aside and take down Seungcheol yourself, a side effect of the Red Room’s supersoldier serum that only you had survived experimentation with. You were itching to fight him, like some part of your brain recognized him as your true equal and wanted to consume him entirely. Your serum-infected psyche recognized him as your enemy, and you wanted to tear him to shreds. The urge nearly overwhelms you but you fight it down like bile, gripping the syringe tighter and waiting for the other Widows to do their jobs.

You have a handle on the bloodlust until Jihyo falls down and stays down, and your vision goes scarlet red.

It’s as if your mind takes a backseat to your body, lunging forward to grab Seungcheol’s metal arm by pure instinct and twisting as hard as you can, the jerking movement making the syringe fall from your other hand. Nayeon is quick to grab it and retreat backward, dragging an unconscious Jihyo away. Your arm trembles with effort, your super strength against his until your muscle gives way and you duck as he swings on you, your leg shooting out like lightning to throw him off-balance. You exchange bruising blows with him and find yourself panting from the effort it’s taking to restrain the side of you that wants to claw out his throat entirely. You’re barely thinking clearly, partially registering that the other Widows are saying something to you but not knowing what they’re trying to convey. Your mind is at war with itself, hellbent on the urge to kill and shaking with the restraint of keeping him alive enough to tranquilize. He’s in full tactical armor, including a dark mask covering the bottom half of his face, so your best bet in subduing him completely is to get the tranquilizer into his neck. You risk a glance over your shoulder and feel a sobering chill run down your back as Nayeon touches Jihyo’s head and gapes at the sticky blood coating her palm.

With a shudder and a cry that tears itself from your throat, you let the bloodlust take over and all but drag him onto the floor. It's the perfect opening to seize Seungcheol’s metal arm and force it in a direction you know it’s not supposed to go. He thrashes like an animal in a trap, clawing and slamming his fists against your leg that keeps him from escaping, but the pain is nothing but numbness in the face of your single goal of crippling his greatest weapon. He roars in rage but you keep your grip on the metal limb until it wrenches off of him entirely with a sickening crunch. He goes limp and you briefly panic that you killed him until you spot the shallow rise and fall of his chest. You don’t fare much better; your vision is spotty and you feel like you’re watching yourself from a third-person perspective as Nayeon tosses you the syringe. You catch it in one hand and sink it into the side of Seungcheol’s neck, keeping him in your hold until his eyes shut completely.

You lay there on the floor, heaving and half-dead until Jeongyeon arrives to secure Seungcheol’s restraints. You somehow manage to bring yourself upright as the extraction team arrives, squinting in the blinding headlights of the armored vehicles. Waving off the EMT trying to get you onto a gurney and mumbling something that resembled an apology to Seungcheol is the last thing you remember before you black out entirely.

—

Madripoor – 1939

You first meet the Winter Soldier two weeks after you’re given the serum.

A modified version of Hydra’s supersoldier formula is what you were told was injected, trading the parts that would give you muscles as large as a gorilla’s for enhanced vision and metabolism. You were meant to be the ultimate weapon of stealth, a knife in the dark slipped into the ribs of the Red Room’s enemies. The scientists succeeded, for the most part–you were the deadliest Widow in the program before the serum and only became more lethal after it. What the scientists didn’t account for were the sudden, overwhelming fevers of bloodlust that possessed you whenever you trained with other prospective serum recipients. The serum whispered to you like a demon, pushing you to use any means necessary to survive…even if it meant your hands were covered in blood by the end of an everyday spar. The Red Room had blurred the lines between creating a soldier and creating a monster, and you were the sole survivor of all consequent experimentations. They called it ‘Project: Arachne,’ but you later took on the moniker solely as your own after the others disappeared.

The monster you had become paled in comparison to the shell of a man that Hydra was puppetting.

“Where did you find such a creature? Such strength, such rage,” one of your handlers remarks, circling the Winter Soldier as he stands like a statue in the center of the room, a private chamber in the back of a dive bar that reeks of mildew. The air sticks to you like moldy glue, sweat running down your back and threatening to melt off the picture-perfect face of makeup you were required to wear. Once a pirate stronghold, the island nation was now a cesspool of criminal activity, brimming with drug kingpins and mercenary gangs that kept the streets in a constant state of warfare. Madripoor is a chaos you cannot control, a steaming shithole completely opposite of the pristine halls of the Red Room. If you had to choose, it would be the last place you would ever set foot in again. “What a beast you have created!”

“He was a soldier that had fallen off a freight train in the Alps; we found him and made him into something we could use,” the Winter Soldier’s primary handler explains with a smile that looks more like a sneer. “Of course, there were some fixes to account for,” he continues, gesturing to the bionic metal arm on the Soldier’s left side. “Except for this, however, he was a picture perfect specimen.” The sight before you makes your stomach turn. The serum and the Red Room’s experiments had left you with at least some semblance of your own mind, but it seemed like the man in front of you was nothing but a machine activated whenever Hydra needed someone disposed. But without that role? The Soldier was a puppet, his eyes empty and his face blank in a way that nauseated you.

“You’ve put us miles ahead of our enemies with this creation,” a deep-voiced stockholder that frequented the Red Room booms from behind you. The Soldier remains motionless, the bottom half of his face covered by a dark mask, but you catch his eyes flickering to the source of the voice and narrowing, ever so slightly. His face was blank, but his distrust of those who had brought you here was apparent.

“You are too kind, really,” a beady-eyed Hydra scientist declares with a humble hand over his heart. You suppress the urge to claw his insect-like eyes from his skull when his attention turns to you, looming over you as you sit perfectly poised on your seat, your legs crossed and back straight like a fucking doll. “But I would like to discuss this beauty. Does she speak?” A clammy hand moves in slow motion to caress your face and you catch his wrist in your fingers, sinking your nails into his flesh not enough to make him bleed, but enough to make him hesitate.

“This beauty can speak for herself, sir,” you correct with a saccharine smile. Your handlers chuckle at your antics and a firm hand on your shoulder makes you release the Hydra scientist. Your nausea increases tenfold at the touch and you fight the instinct to stiffen, knowing that reacting in such a way would only make your handlers upset. Instead, you turn to the handler behind you with a kind look that falters when you see him looking at the Soldier rather than at you, a sort of sick amusement flashing behind his eyes.

You turn back to what could be drawing his attention and see the Soldier’s hand resting on his gun. His face is expressionless, but you swear the muscle in his jaw has tightened. He’s staring past you at your handler and his hold on your shoulder, eyes dark as a storm. He makes no move to draw the firearm, yet the mere presence of his hand against it is enough to sour the jovial atmosphere in the room. If he wanted to, this Soldier could have all of you in a puddle of your own blood before you could blink, and the polite conversation tapers into tense silence as those in the room make the same realization. As if testing what the Soldier would do, your handler tightens his hold on your shoulder and you swallow. The Soldier’s, in turn, tightens around his weapon.

“I believe your soldier is threatening me,” the handler behind you observes lightly. The Soldier’s stare is molten, and if looks alone could kill, your handler would be halfway to Hell already. “It seems he does not appreciate my interactions with Arachne,” he continues, his thumb brushing over your skin in a way that has you sinking your nails into your palms to keep from jerking away. The Soldier’s eyes dart to the imperceptible shake in your hands.

Before you finish blinking, everyone in the room is pointing a gun at each other, and the Soldier’s pistol is aimed straight between the eyes of your handler. You stand on instinct and draw your own gun from its holster on your thigh, leveling the barrel at the Soldier’s forehead. He doesn’t even blink, his gaze remaining past you and your weapon. Your handler’s grip remains and he seems unbothered when he speaks, though the sharp edge of his voice tells you otherwise.

“I thought he was completely erased of morality, doctor,” the handler grits.

“Perhaps one more round of shock therapy will do him some good, just to kill that last part of him that might remember his life before,” a Hydra scientist chuckles nervously, eyeing the Soldier with unease. A dozen guns or more are pointed at the Soldier like a morbid sort of halo, yet all you can see is the rage burning behind his eyes. Whether he was conscious of it or not, the Soldier was ready to kill your handler for touching you. It makes your heart unwillingly flip.

“‘Perhaps’ is right, doctor,” your handler agrees. “We wouldn’t want our stakeholders questioning the loyalty of their prized weapon.” The handler’s grip on your shoulder finally leaves, and the Soldier returns his gun to its holster. The rest of the room takes a breath, but you still feel air catching in your throat when the Soldier’s eyes meet yours and you recognize your own anger flaming in his dark irises. Your chest aches in a way more painful than any wound you experience during training. Two guards who the Soldier could probably snap in half like toothpicks grab him by the arms and escort him out of the room, leaving you with the Hydra handlers as well as your own.

Your mouth is moving before your mind can realize what you’re questioning, damning you to several days worth of harsh training as punishment for speaking out of turn.

“What is his name?” You ask, your voice low and guarded. You feel the irritation of your handlers stick into the back of your neck like needles, but you have to know. It feels wrong not to know.

“He is the Winter Soldier, Arachne,” someone answers patronizingly and you shake your head.

“Before. Who was he?” You turn to the scientist that wanted to caress your face and blink up at him through your eyelashes, putting on the mask of a stupid, innocent girl who asks the wrong questions at the wrong time. Your gamble works and the weak-brained one indulges you.

“‘Choi Seungcheol’ was the name on his dogtags when we found him, but he doesn’t answer to that anymore.” You nod, satisfied, and stare at the closed door where the Winter Soldier had been dragged away. “This won’t be the last time you see him, Arachne. You’ll be working together frequently on missions while Hydra and the Red Room sort out the kinks in the supersoldier serum formula.” I don’t want to work with him, you think to yourself. I don’t want him to have to be whatever it is they want him to be.

I don’t want him to live like this. Like me.

“Understood,” is all you reply with.

—

When Seungcheol dreams, moments pass in and out like sunlight refracting through water.

At first he’s stepping out of Mingyu’s Chrysler, helping a girl whose name he’d already forgotten hop out after him. It’s before the war, before the guns and the metal arm and you. Mingyu and his latest lady-friend are already hand-in-hand and skipping toward the entrance of the dance hall, leaving Seungcheol with this random girl who he thinks he might have seen at the soda fountain a few times before. Her hand is soft and clammy in his when she grabs it and drags him along too, talking airily about the importance of having a matching headscarf whenever one dons a dancing dress. Ever the gentleman, he nods along and pretends to be interested, even when he feels like a goldfish flopping around in the middle of Times Square.

When they finally push into the dance hall, Seungcheol finds himself looking for a face in the crowd that he’s not sure belongs in this memory, yet searches for anyway. The music of the big band roars and he’s on the dance floor in a blink, mechanically sorting through awkward movements while the girl in front of him slowly loses her patience. His limbs feel like gelatin and wooden logs at the same time, and his date soon becomes bored of him and latches onto the arm of another boy. Later in this memory, Seungcheol knows the boy will become too handsy with her. Mingyu will have to drag Seungcheol away from killing the guy after the latter slams his fist into the creep’s nose, and Seungcheol will remember it as the first time he felt vindicated in causing someone pain.

He enters a set of double doors at the back of the hall and finds himself in a different memory. If the thrill of the dance hall is distorted from noise and fluorescent lights, this one is soberingly clear. Same sticky air, same mildew stench, same dark shadows. He’s in Madripoor and his arm is extended, pointing the barrel of his pistol at a shithead Red Room agent that’s been keeping his hand on your shoulder for far too long. Whatever Hydra had done to him had made his body answer to his handlers rather than his own mind, so Seungcheol wasn’t completely sure how he was able to move independently in the first place. Maybe it was muscle memory, maybe it was the way the silent panic in your eyes made his vision go blood red. He didn’t know you, not yet, but his mind snarled around like a caged animal at the idea of someone laying a hand on you. The anger superseded any brainwashing Hydra had done to him, and only fortified itself after the subsequent rounds of shock therapy made in an attempt to rid him completely of his own sense of self. Call it Fate or divine connection, but something deep within Seungcheol’s soul outright rejected the idea of you being harmed. In this dream, he thrashes against the hands that drag him away, screaming for you. When he looks back at you, your handler’s hand returns to your shoulder and he’s slammed with so much white-hot rage that he nearly blacks out.

The memory shifts again, and Seungcheol is falling. Frigid air whips past his face, stinging like knife cuts, yet he’s flailing about in slow motion as the snowy canyons of the Alps envelop him like a casket. Mingyu’s hoarse cries are lost among the sounds of the chugging steam train and the splash of Seungcheol’s body as it collides with an icy river, the same river that keeps him cold enough to stay alive until he’s found by Hydra scouts. His vision blinks in and out of focus, the stark-white blizzard sky being replaced by the dingy hallways of Hydra’s medical facilities, where he’s all but blinded by a huge circle of light as the surgery to remove his left arm commences. He blinks again and he’s lying on cold concrete, having had his ass handed to him by another Winter Soldier candidate. His metal arm creaks as he pushes off the ground, spitting a glob of blood and saliva against the floor before rising to face his opponent again. He’s too slow to dodge the next swing and his head hits the ground hard, his body landing with a defeated thud.

The world lurches and he feels the sensation of wet earth between his fingertips. He’s tense, waiting for the next trauma-inducing event to begin, but there’s nothing but the setting sun and the endless rows of tulips surrounding him. Amsterdam. He blinks against the fading light and stands. You’re a few feet away in tattered tactical gear covered in blood that isn’t your own, looking out over the fields of flowers with a kind of sadness that makes panic flare in Seungcheol’s chest. Of all the memories Seungcheol was bombarded with when he slept, this was the one he hated the most.

“They’re gonna put me under soon,” you whisper, your voice raspy like you’d been crying. You watch the horizon like it’s your next adversary. Not only had you slipped away from the Red Room long enough to eradicate nearly every agent under the Winter Soldier program, you’d also brought Seungcheol’s mind back to himself. You had broken a dam in his mind that Hydra had so painstakingly built, allowing the flood of memories and emotions and all the things that made Seungcheol human to come rushing back to him. “They’ll know it was me, and they won’t like what I did to you.”

“You freed me,” Seungcheol says. He wants to reach out to hold your hand, or at least brush your fingers, but that’s not the way this memory works. He didn’t do it then, so he’s tortured by the inability to do it now. “You broke whatever words they put in my head.”

“I didn’t break the words, I killed the ones who used them,” you croak, frustrated. “Someone else could come along and find that God-forsaken book with the trigger words and take control of you again, and I won’t be there to stop them, and–” A sob tears itself from your throat and he sees the same rage that he adored so much burning in your eyes. You were the only one whose anger could ever come close to matching his own. “They could make you worse because of me, and it would be my fault that they did.”

“They would have to catch me first,” Seungcheol says with grave seriousness. He knows it’s foolish for him to say, knowing damn well Hydra does capture him and put him in the cryo-tube again until they figure out how to reprogram his mind to do what they wanted him to do. “I won’t let that happen.” He does let that happen, unfortunately, as he’s lured into an abandoned nuclear facility two weeks later under the pretense that you would be there.

“I wish I knew you under different circumstances,” you scoff bitterly. “Or I wish the Red Room ripped out my brain entirely so it could never learn how to care for you so deeply.” He knows you don’t mean it to cause him pain, but his heart winces all the same. Maybe in another life, you would be the one he’d take dancing. Before the war, before the fall off the train, before everything. It would just be you and him, laughing at Mingyu’s shenanigans and dreaming about a future you didn’t know how to want.

“Do you really mean that?” When he meets your eyes, the fire behind them has dulled into tired coals.

“I do. I hope that, in another universe, we’re together…and we’re happy,” you wish, and that’s where Seungcheol’s mind cruelly refuses to play any other memories. You and the tulips fade into darkness, and he succumbs to dreamless sleep.

—

Avengers Headquarters, Upstate New York – 2025

“That’s about to be the fourth one you break this week, and it’s only Wednesday,” notes a teasing voice from the doorway of the training gym. SLAM! Your wrapped fist completes its arc into the punching bag and, just as Jihyo had predicted, the rope it hangs from gives way, sending the bag flying across the room. You pause, catching cold, dry breaths of air conditioning, before retrieving the downed bag and tossing it into the growing pile in the corner. Only then do you turn to Jihyo, who’s watching you with a clever glint in her eye.

“You shouldn’t be so far from the med-bay,” you point out and she shrugs.

“I had a concussion, not a broken spine,” she reasons. “I’m fine.” She looks fine, in most senses of the word, but guilt still weighs on your shoulder for putting her in that situation. You look at her for a few moments, still skeptical, but relent and move to hang a new bag. “Hey, aren’t you gonna ask why I’m here?”

“It better not be to spar with me. You’re supposed to be on bedrest for another three days.”

“Which I think is overkill, but agree to disagree,” she grumbles and you shoot her a look. “It’s been nine days since we captured him and I got knocked around a little bit. If I’m being honest, I’d say you’re faring worse than me.”

“How so?”

“For one, you’ve been in this gym more often than your own room, which means your sleep schedule is fucked up.”

“Sometimes I hear Seungkwan’s TV through the walls and it bothers me,” you protest. “I come here because it’s quieter.” Jihyo raises an eyebrow.

“Nayeon caught you pacing outside the containment ward even though Jihoon said you’re allowed to go in.”

“There’s a laundry room across the hall from the entrance. I was waiting for a load to finish,” you protest. The ex-Widow’s frown deepens at your blatant half-lie and she gestures to the many broken punching bags you’d sent flying in the days since recovering from the capture mission.

“You can look me in the eyes and tell me that is normal?”

“Stress appears different on everyone, Jihyo,” you conclude too carefreely and something different blinks across her face. The light frustration shifts into a muted sort of sadness, like she was purposefully dialing down her emotions to avoid upsetting you.

“You haven’t been eating meals with us. Jeongyeon, Nayeon, the rest of the girls. We miss you,” she says quietly and your shoulders slump. You drag your hand down your face.

“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I just,” you inhale, trying to find the words. “I don’t want to burden you all with my baggage. Seungcheol, he’s the last person I would expect to show up from my past, and it hurts. Seeing him like that…it hurt.” Jihyo nods.

“I get it. I felt the same seeing you in the cryotube on that last raid,” she sympathizes. You chew the inside of your cheek. “We’d heard stories about the Arachne project and how the last surviving participant had disappeared. We couldn’t have imagined we’d find you, but I’m so glad we did.” Jihyo approaches you now, taking your hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. “It’s okay for you to open up to us about how you’re feeling. You don’t have to go it alone anymore.”

“Since when did the Red Room give empathy classes?” You ask wryly and she chuckles.

“Since we broke out of their mind-control and started leaning on each other more,” Jihyo replies, nudging you with her shoulder. “We’re the only ones who will get it, you know?”

“Yeah, I know. Thank you,” you say. “I haven’t had the chance to properly–” She cuts you off with a wave of her hand.

“You don’t need to say all that. It’s just what friends do for each other,” she cuts in and you finally give her a tired smile. “Now, are you finally going to let me tell you why I came over here?”

“It wasn’t just for a motivational speech and to tell me to stop bulldozing the punching bags.” Her chuckle turns into a bark of laughter.

“That, yes, but I also came bearing news,” she shares with a sparkle in her eye. “Choi Seungcheol is awake.” Your heart stutters.

“He is?” Jihyo exhales.

“He’s awake, and he’s refusing to cooperate unless he sees you first.”

—

Casablanca – 1942

After three years of assignments in collaboration with the Winter Soldier, you’ve done something extraordinary–you’ve helped him recover some semblances of his memories.

Granted, it’s an ongoing process that brings more backtracking than it does progress. You’re not entirely sure how you did it, but somewhere during the downtime of missions, you began asking him questions just to see if he had the facilities to answer them. To your surprise, he was able to answer you almost immediately, though sometimes his expression twisted like he was trying to wrench the memory out of his brain with his bare hands. Over time, you learned small things like his hometown, his friends, and fractals of his life before becoming the Winter Soldier. Your single-sided questions gradually transformed into full conversations, and your talks helped ease the strain of being the Red Room’s most prized weapon. In another world, you could see yourself being friends with Choi Seungcheol, perhaps even something more.

Sometimes, he remembered too much.

That’s when Hydra wiped him and started from scratch.

“Are you real?” He rasps unexpectedly from beside you on the external catwalk of a shipping warehouse. Question number one. You watch him from the corner of your eye, your focus never wavering from the bustle of a ship making a stop for the night at the port. He asked the same question every time his mind returned to him, even if it was only temporarily, like it was a ritual. He had to make sure you weren’t just a figment of his imagination.

Seungcheol has been dead silent since you met with him in Budapest, the biggest indicator that Hydra had ‘wiped’ him–that is, they shocked his brain into oblivion until the only thing he could understand was his handlers’ commands. When Seungcheol didn’t talk, it meant that he couldn’t remember what he had to discuss with you, but it didn’t mean it was completely gone; it was just deeper in his psyche, and it was up to him to pull it back out.

Now it seemed, as you watched the dockworkers begin to unload the ship, he’d returned to you.

“I’m real,” you say without any noticeable emotion, as stable and neutral as you can manage.

“Are we in danger?” Question number two. On a few rare occasions, you would spend an entire mission with Winter Soldier-only, completely wiped Seungcheol, only for his true self to appear in a relatively inopportune moment (e.g. getting shot at). He described it to you as being in a dream; he knew what the mission was, where he was located, and the task he had to complete, but it was like watching it from an outside perspective. Only when he registered that you were you did he feel like he was back in control of his body.

“No, we’re not in danger,” you answer, shaking your head. Your eyes narrow on a large crate with a bright red ‘X’ painted on it. One side of the crate is the size of your entire armspan, yet the item inside was a vial no larger than your pointer finger. You didn’t know much about it beyond that, other than that the Red Room wanted it and you were tasked to grab it. “We will be soon, though. That’s our target.” You nod to the box and Seungcheol’s gaze follows it as it leaves the cargo hold and is moved in the direction of your position.

“Did–” Question number three. He swallows and you wait for him, finally turning to look as he steadies his breathing. “Did I hurt you?” You shake your head again.

“No, you did not hurt me.” Seungcheol breathes a visible sigh of relief.

“Okay.” You check your descender and practice the timing one last time in your head–you drop onto the package, Seungcheol covers you as you open the crate and retrieve the vial, then throw a smoke bomb and disappear.

“Ready?” His eyes darken over his face mask.

“Ready.”

The sensation of falling is familiar as the rope goes taut and you drop from the catwalk. The crate wobbles as you land on top of it, the dockworkers startling with a shout of alarm. As you jump down to open the package, you see their shadows reach for something to use as a weapon, but Seungcheol is already there. He’s the closest thing to a demon you’ll ever see, stalking through the darkness and downing enemies. As he takes down the last of the dockworkers near the crate, you grip the side of the wooden box, channel the strength given to you by the Red Room’s serum, and pull.

Nothing happens.

You give another strong tug, then another, then another until you realize that the side of the crate isn’t budging. You scowl. The serum had given you strength, but there were also other tradeoffs to increase your speed, agility, and enhance your senses for covert operations. For a moment, you toss around the idea of punching a hole in the crate, then realize that you risked damaging the vial inside. Before you can ask, Seungcheol is already at your side, staring at the unopened crate with you.

“It’s still closed,” he monotones and you fight the urge to roll your eyes.

“I see that,” you grumble. “Not all of us got the serum that gave us biceps the size of milk jugs.” He motions for you to back up. “Don’t you dare punch that shit.” Even under his mask, you can tell he’s staring at you incredulously.

“What do you take me for, an animal?” Yes. He thinks for a moment and shakes his head. “Don't answer that.” Seungcheol then grips the same spot that you had with his human arm and tugs. The side of the crate gives way as easily as ripping a sheet of paper, and you can’t tell whether to be mad that he got more super strength or mad that you can’t stop staring at his arm. He’d ripped off the side of a wooden crate, and he didn’t even need to use the metal arm. “There you go.”

“My knight in shining armor,” you say dryly, stepping up to observe how the vial was encased. Thankfully, it was only a few layers of anti-shock plexiglass that you remove easily, and soon the vial is safe and sound in your belt. Mission accomplished. “Let’s get out of here. You know the way?” Seungcheol nods.

“Keep close,” he says before ducking into the darkness.

You follow him through the dim-lit streets and alleys of Casablanca to the bar where you would be retrieved by your handlers. It isn’t too late in the night and there are still a generous amount of patrons around as Seungcheol opens the door to the bar, putting you in a state of unease while you slide onto a barstool. Seungcheol stands beside you in between your stool and the next, leaning against the bar with his metal arm hidden by a glove and his jacket sleeve. He’s removed his dark mask and, to any untrained eye, you look like a pair of unassuming shadows that happen to haunt the bar.

“You don’t want to sit?” You ask after Seungcheol quietly orders you an Old Fashioned, rye with extra bitters, without you needing to request a drink. He’s positioned himself between your barstool in the next, his back to the counter and his head tilted to look at you while also keeping tabs on the rest of the room. Your voice is soft, barely perceptible in the raucous noise of the bar, but Seungcheol doesn’t need to hear anything else right now.

“I’ll stand. Easier to be close to you,” he says and you hate the way it makes your heart flip. Affection and love were not something afforded to you, yet you loved to look over the edge of what it would be like to care for Seungcheol freely. “Need anything?”

“Not unless you have a Tiffany bracelet hiding in your pocket,” you say lightly and he does that same huff-laugh again. His eyes are dark but the shadow that typically hangs over them is softened in the yellowed light.

“Tiffany & Co. That’s in New York, right?”

“It is. Do you remember New York?”

“New York from before, or New York now?”

“I rarely ever ask how you remember things now, Seungcheol,” you point out and he nods, the muscle in his jaw tightening. “What do you remember about before?” He’s silent for a few moments and the space between his eyebrows pinches.

“Mingyu liked to pick up girls in the diners. Said paying for a girl’s meal was the way to get her heart,” he recalls slowly and you fight back a snort.

“He really believed that?”

“Mingyu believed a lot of things,” Seungcheol continues, “and most of them were about how to properly woo a woman.” The bartender returns with your Old Fashioned and Seungcheol only nods to him rather than paying him, a kind of silent agreement that your drink would be on the house. You don’t question it. The rye is cheap and there are a normal amount of bitters, but it’s smooth enough as it runs down your throat.

“And how do you believe you should properly woo a woman?” You posit, momentarily forgetting who you were and who he was. This was the fine line you walked, indulging that desire to be normal and flirt and want, all these things the Red Room had trained out of you.

“I don’t remember most of the things,” Seungcheol begins honestly, “but I do know that knowing how she takes her alcohol is a good start.”

“It’s an excellent start.” You smirk over the rim of your glass and fight the urge to shiver when his gloved hand brushes your lower back. The noise around you dims and you scan his face slowly, cataloging every detail of it. What draws your attention the most are his eyes, always his eyes. There was a rage that burned behind them, but it seemed to temper itself when you were near. You didn’t know what to make of it and didn’t have the words to describe it, only that you liked his rage. It matched your own, and it made you feel seen. “Want a sip?”

“Alcohol doesn’t affect us, Arachne,” Seungcheol reminds you quietly and you wave him off.

“It’s not about getting drunk. It’s about feeling normal,” you correct. He looks at you curiously.

“And alcohol, it makes you feel normal?”

“As much as I can, considering what we’ve been made into.” You shrug and he carefully takes the glass from your hand, rotating the cup so that his lips make contact at the exact spot where you had taken your sip. Your breath catches. He doesn’t break eye contact even as he takes one, long drink, swallowing like it was water and handing it back to you like he hadn’t just thrown your entire brain into a live volcano.

“Pretty good,” he murmurs. “Up to your standards?”

“I’ve had better,” you lie. You’ve never had alcohol outside of missions, and even then, you tended to fake drinking to blend in with the crowd. “Drinking with company tends to raise my mood, though.”

“Am I good company?” Your eyes sparkle.

“You’re the only company I want.” Before he can reply, movement in the darker shadows of the bar catch his attention. Half a dozen men in three-piece suits huddle together, murmuring, but their gazes remain on you for a duration that makes Seungcheol’s skin crawl. Their eyes rake hungrily over your body and his vision starts going red, his hands unconsciously clenching into fists. He imagines five different ways he could dispose of each of the men, starting with the one that just licked his lips and seemed to be preparing to approach you. “Why do you look like you’re about to kill everyone in this bar, Seungcheol?” You ask in a low tone, your voice coming much closer to his ear than previously. You’ve leaned even closer to him, the smell of your perfume intoxicating him worse than any alcohol.

“Assholes at your six,” he snarls. You gently but firmly take his cheek in your hand and pull his face to look at you.

“Why the fuck should I care about them?” His face is inches from yours, but his fiery eyes remain on the group behind you.

“You shouldn’t.” The muscle in his jaw is tense enough to cut diamonds.

“So why do you?” You inquire and Seungcheol’s face burns from something he can’t name as he finally meets your eyes.

“Because they’re looking at you like they own you. No one owns you,” he seethes, his anger boiling over. Your face remains unchanged except for the slight pinch between your eyebrows. You seem to think on his words for a moment and then nod to yourself, removing your hand from his face and downing the rest of your drink in one swallow.

“It’s stuffy here. Let’s leave,” you order suddenly and Seungcheol’s anger sobers. “We can wait for the rendezvous outside.”

“Did I say something to upset you?” You smile in a way that doesn’t reach your eyes and lace your fingers in his, tugging him toward the exit.

“No, you just say things that make me think a little too hard on things I’m not allowed to want.”

—

Avengers Headquarters, Upstate New York – 2025

You’re not sure what you’re expecting when you enter his area of the containment ward, but you’re caught off-guard all the same.

They’ve put him in a dark shirt and pants that stretches over the rippling cords of muscle you, once upon a time, could never stop staring at. Instead of a hospital bed, they’ve transferred him to a fortified metal chair with cuffs as thick as your arm holding his limbs in place. His breathing is ragged when you step into the room and he raises his head to look at you slowly, like he was moving through syrup. When his gaze falls on you, you see sparks of recognition try to come to life in his eyes.

“It’s you.” You wait just outside of the painted lines on the floor that put him in an imaginary box, remaining just out of reach. You’d been put into the cryotube before he had, so you had no idea what had happened to him in the time between you going under and him going under. What he had become in that time without you was a mystery, and there was a real chance that they had programmed him to kill you on sight. Staying out of his reach was not only for your physical safety, but also to keep you from breaking and succumbing to the urge to touch him for the first time in decades. “I know you.” You just keep staring at him, face blank and still as a statue. Your silence makes him hesitate. “Are you–are you real?” You nod stiffly.

“I’m real.” His muscles flex as he subtly tests the strength of his restraints. You pretend not to notice. “The chair’s just a safety precaution.”

“Are we in danger?”

“Not if you keep your mind,” you answer truthfully. Panic flashes across his face, like it was truly a possibility he might lose himself again. “I won’t let them take it from you again.” His eyes scan your body, narrowing on the bruises and scars left behind from the fight during his capture.

“I hurt you,” he croaks. Your heart twists. That’s not the question he’s supposed to ask.

“You were doing what you needed to survive,” you correct gently, stepping over the line on the floor and into his space. Seungcheol stills as you draw nearer until you’re on one knee in front of him, close enough to feel his ragged breath. One wrong move is all it takes for him to headbutt you into the afterlife, yet you feel no shred of fear as you shakily reach for his face. He seeks your touch almost immediately, leaning into your palm with a slump of his shoulders. “You’re with me again, and that’s what matters.” He shakes his head like he thinks you’re a hallucination and you pull away your hand.

“I don’t understand.”

“Widows infiltrated and took down the entire Red Room. They found me in the cryotube during a raid two years ago.” Your voice falters. “I’d been asleep since 1944.”

“You’ve been alone.” The ghost of a wry smile tugs at your mouth.

“For the most part, though I did have the ones who found me. Three of them helped me find you in Casablanca.” Realization hits Seungcheol like a bucket of cold water.

“The one who was bleeding, is she–”

“She’s alive. All three of them are, thanks to some well-timed bloodlust on my end that only you have the capabilities of matching,” you state dryly. It’s meant to be reassuring, but you can tell it only makes Seungcheol uneasier. “They hold no grudge against you, nor do I.”

“Maybe you should,” he murmurs. Your face hardens.

“Don’t you dare say that. Don’t you dare think I can hate the one person that understands what I am.”

“You’re not a what; you’re a person,” he grits and your chest pangs. “You have to believe that. If you don’t, how am I supposed to believe that I’m human too?”

“That’s not fair to either of us,” you whisper. “I can’t hold you together if I don’t know how to hold myself together first.”

“You’re pretty damn good at doing it without trying, Arachne,” Seungcheol says softly. “You make me human, even if you don’t see yourself as one.” He holds your gaze a moment longer and lets the tension hang like thick fog, before sighing and sitting up straight. “How long do you think until I can walk around freely?”

“Depends on how well you behave,” you reply, the corner of your mouth tugging upward. “You’ll be let go as soon as the doctors say you’re psychologically sound.”

“As in, I won’t rip out the throats of everyone who breathes in my vicinity,” he deadpans and you nod. “Got it.”

“I’ll come again in a few hours.” You stand to leave, your legs still slightly sore from the fight during his capture, but Seungcheol rasps your name with a strangled, panicked cry.

“Wait. Please don’t go. Not yet.” You still, staring down at a man you’ve stood beside–killed beside–as he’s begging you to stay for the sake of his own sanity. “Can you stay a little longer?”

“Seungcheol, you need rest,” you insist.

“Please. Just for a bit.” You exhale and nod. His shoulders drop in relief.

“Yeah,” you breathe. “Yeah, I can stay.”

—

SECURITY REPORT #080895 | LOCATION - [REDACTED] | TIME - 0200 HOURS

EVENT - BREACH

DESCRIPTION - ROGUE ASSET (ARACHNE)

CASUALTIES - 99

You snap after Hydra wipes Seungcheol’s mind for the eighth time.

It’d taken him three days for him to even show some semblance of recognizing you, and five more hours of reconnaissance for him to fully remember what you were, who you were. He’d broken out of his trance with a violent thrash, collapsing against the wall with such force that it cracked. You sat on the floor with him, his face in your hands as you forced him to look at you, for what seemed like forever until he finally won over whatever Hydra put in his mind this time. By the time it was over, you were both drenched in sweat and shaking like leaves in the wind. For the first time since you’d known him, the fire in Seungcheol’s eyes was nearly gone, replaced by something broken and tired.

It made you want to burn the world to the ground.

He knew what you planned to do, at least some semblance of it; part of you was grateful that he didn’t offer to help you, nor did he try to stop you. You understood each other’s rage, and the only way for you to channel it was to seek vengeance against the only person you cared about.

Logistically, there was always a period of up to twelve hours after you requested extraction from a mission, enough time for you to track the coordinates Seungcheol had given you and slip into the Winter Soldier Project’s base of operations. You beeline for the security room, dispose of the guards as easily as blinking, and lock every door in the facility before cutting the power completely. The base falls into complete darkness and you bypass turning on the emergency lights. Your eyes, enhanced by the Red Room’s serum that made your night vision akin to a cat’s, adjust immediately and you let the familiar silence of darkness wrap around you like a security blanket. A low siren indicating a security breach echoes against the concrete walls, and you stalk into the void with knives in your hands and your gun locked in its holster.

You don’t fire a single shot that night. Every soul that you send to the underworld dies by your hands or the blades in them as proof of your rage and to feed the carnal need for blood that roared every time you remember what they did to Seungcheol. The scientists and doctors are easy enough, as are the handlers. The other test subjects that received the serum prove to be a challenge, but they aren’t trained to fight in darkness as well as you are. Their serum also does not make their eyes as strong as yours, so they sacrifice power for accuracy that never lands. In less than an hour, every Hydra agent in the facility is on the floor and your boots are slick with blood. After the last body hits the ground, you breathe in the copper-tasting air. You don’t regret it, not a single kill, and soon enough you’ve nabbed a truck and started on the road for Amsterdam.

—

Seungcheol is wary of almost everything in this new age, but there are three things he knows for certain. One, that the food he eats for breakfast alone is miles better than whatever he was eating a century ago. Two, that cars of this era can go faster than he could even blink. Three, that you are just as much of an anchor as you were before you said goodbye in that goddamn tulip field.

“Earth to Seungcheol, hello? Are you reading?” You say with a tilt of your head, lightly tapping his temple with your finger. It’s been a few months since you’d found him in Casablanca and everyday feels more reassuring than the last. In the soft sunlight of the Avengers compound common area, you look almost at peace, a stark contrast to how Seungcheol normally saw you. You’re a completely different person now that the Red Room isn’t breathing down your neck, and it slowly encourages him to bring his guards down as well. His stiff, awkward interactions with the other former Widows has evolved into some interesting conversations that don’t require your patient mediation. It isn’t abnormal for people to see you together like this, you with a computer or a notebook scribbling down whatever your next mission is, and the former Winter Soldier just sitting beside you, like there was nowhere else he’d rather be.

“I don’t have a book with me, how could I be reading?” He frowns and you smile. The act alone makes his heart trip over itself.

“It’s just an expression. Instead of reading books, you’re reading signals, like how the space people did when humans went to the moon,” you explain and his confusion deepens.

“Space people as in aliens, or…?”

“The people controlling the spaceship,” you laugh. “The ones making sure it didn’t crash and burn on national television.”

“Right. Television. That’s a thing now.” He scrunches his eyes shut and drags his metal hand down his face, a new Vibranium-reinforced appendage that you’d called in a favor for after Seungcheol began complaining that his old one was creaking. “How’d you do this alone? Adjust to an entirely different world?” You pause, your pencil hovering over the page of your notebook.

“It was hard at first,” you admit. “But it got easier when I realized that nothing ever really changes, it just evolves. The bones of everything I knew are still there, but they just look different.” An idea lights up in Seungcheol’s mind.

“Are you able to find information about places on that thing?” He asks, nodding at your laptop. Your face pinches like you’re fighting a laugh and he gives you a pointed look.

“I didn’t say anything!” You protest with your hands raised in surrender.

“You didn’t need to. I could hear you laughing at my cluelessness in your head from over here,” he shoots back with no malice. “Can you just–can you look up a restaurant downtown? Darling Diner.” You shrug and your fingers clack against the keyboard. Your eyebrows draw together and you lean closer to the screen, clicking around for an amount of time that makes Seungcheol feel embarrassed that he even asked. “It’s probably dead now, sorry for making you–”

“It’s still open,” you interrupt, surprised. “‘The original Darling Diner, serving New York since 1928.’ Is that the one?” He leans over to you and you turn the screen to face him. The exterior color is changed and the neon sign is in a different font, but the building is the exact same as the one where he and Mingyu used to go after school.

“Holy shit. That’s the one,” Seungcheol mutters. “I can’t believe it’s still around.”

“Did you frequent it often?” Seungcheol chuckles.

“Often? Mingyu and I were there every day of the week. All the staff knew us by name, even tried to set us up with their daughters.” An amused glint shines in your eye.

“Oh? Do tell about all the girls you’ve romanced at this diner,” you tease and Seungcheol stutters, his face suddenly hot. He swallows and the silence makes you stifle a snort, another sound that he’s never heard before but would never tire of hearing. “I’m kidding, I promise. You’ve told me all about the times you’ve third-wheeled Mingyu’s dates.”

“Yeah, that jackass always made me take a walk up and down the street when he wanted to give the girls a kiss goodnight,” he reminisces.

“Jesus, how many girls was he kissing?”

“I lost track after the fifteenth.” He shrugs and you both burst out laughing until your stomachs hurt. When the giggles die down, Seungcheol takes a deep breath and steels his nerves. “Does it…does it say when the diner closes?” You blink and scroll around a bit before nodding.

“1:00 in the morning, every day,” you reply. “Why?”

“Do you have any dinner plans?” Seungcheol asks and you try not to look too excited.

“I do not.”

“Would you let me take you out to dinner then? I can tell you if the quality is as good as I remember it being.” Your smile is brighter than every star combined.

“I would love to.”

A few hours later, you’re tucked into a well-worn leather booth scarfing down a plate of food as large as your head. The sun is giving its final bows and the diner is humming with hushed conversation amidst the soft clatter of pots and pans from the kitchen. Seungcheol has regaled you with at least six new stories about his escapades with Mingyu before they enlisted, and for a minute you let yourself imagine that this was a normal life. You were on a normal date with a normal guy (with a totally normal arm) in a normal diner on a normal night. Normal. How odd.

“Where’d you go?” He asks as the waitress in a grease-stained apron clears your entree plates from the table. You blink back to the present and try to ignore the way Seungcheol’s arms are flexing under the sleeves of his henley shirt. You offer an apologetic smile.

“Sorry, I’m not sure. I guess I got too caught up in the moment.” You fidget with a crumpled straw wrapper, if only to not get flustered by Seungcheol’s unwavering attention. “I like this. Being with you.” He nods almost solemnly.

“I do too.”

“I’m half-expecting someone to barge in and try to recapture us,” you chuckle dryly, though you’re not entirely kidding.

“Is that why you keep glancing at the door like we’re still on the run?” Seungcheol gently questions.

“A habit I can’t shake, unfortunately,” you sigh. “Nayeon calls it ‘the white rabbit’ theory.”

“Like from that book about the girl who smokes with a caterpillar?”

“Among other things, yes,” you snort. “It’s essentially a fear that whenever something feels too good, something bad comes along to ruin it. The white rabbit gets you, is what she says. I guess I’m…I’m waiting for the rabbit to come through the door.” Seungcheol is quiet as he digests what you’ve shared with him. Then, slowly as to give you time to pull away, he reaches for your hand. You let him take your fingers in his and run his thumb over your bruised knuckles, an act so delicate that you forget to breathe. The rest of the diner falls away until it’s just you and him in the dingy yellow light, holding on to a moment that isn’t as fragile as you think it is.

“If the rabbit comes in, I’ll shoot him,” Seungcheol mumbles after a while. You choke on a surprised laugh that falters when you see the grave seriousness etched into his features. “I’m serious.” He thinks back to Amsterdam, to the suppressed panic you were trying to hide from him in that fucking tulip field, and how he let you go without so much as lifting a finger. He could have done more to protect you. He should have done more. “I’ll die before I ever let someone take you away again,” he promises and your eyes start watering unexpectedly. You swallow thickly and nod, not trusting your voice to remain steady.

The waitress arrives with a single strawberry milkshake like a car horn on a quiet street, making both you and Seungcheol startle and swear colorfully under your breaths. She tosses two more straws onto the table and leaves without another word. You both share a look as you stifle your laughter, the moment effectively ended but not broken.

“Damn, maybe the real rabbit was our waitress,” you joke and Seungcheol makes a noise from his throat that sounds vaguely like a chuckle. “A little cliché, isn’t it? Sharing a milkshake with two straws?” You unwrap both and stick them on either side of the glass.

“You say cliché, but I remember it as Mingyu’s special closer,” replies Seungcheol. You lean in and take a sip and he does the same, your noses nearly brushing. “Good?”

“Delicious,” you whisper. His eyes dart to the corner of your lips and his thumb wipes your mouth without thinking. You don’t stiffen, but he does halfway through the action, pulling away abruptly like he’d been caught doing something wrong.

“Sorry, you had a…something on your face.” Your eyes are too knowing and he flushes under your gaze.

“It’s okay, I didn’t mind.” Your voice lowers and you lean forward over the glass again so close that Seungcheol can count the different flecks of color in your eyes. “Though you could also just kiss me next time that happens,” you murmur with a clever smile. “Unless that was also part of the Mingyu Special, in which case I don’t really want to–”

“I get the point, sweetheart.” Your teasing is cut off by Seungcheol closing the distance and softly placing his lips on yours, like you would explode if he moved too suddenly. He feels you smile against the kiss, though it might’ve been because he was smiling first. You hum and pull away just enough to nudge his nose with yours, the milkshake between you forgotten. “You taste like strawberries,” he grins.

“Is that okay?”

“More than,” he confirms. “I like kissing you.” He hesitates before speaking again. “I…I like you.” Your joy falters.

“I’m not the easiest person to be with, Seungcheol,” you remind him uneasily.

“I don’t need you to be easy,” he murmurs. “I just need you.”

“And if I prove to be too much trouble?” Seungcheol shakes his head adamantly.

“You said it yourself. I’m the one who’s made to match you. I’m asking you to let me.” You search his face but find nothing but conviction and raw determination.

“You’re sure about this? About me?”

“If I wasn’t, you’d have never been able to break me from Hydra’s control,” he says and the tiniest part of you starts to believe him.

“As long as you don’t let the white rabbit get me,” you caution with a poorly-hidden smile. “Now c’mon, let’s finish this and get out of here. Jihoon’s car isn’t gonna speed itself.”

—

Casablanca – 2026

“We really should stop meeting like this,” jokes an all-too-familiar voice over your shoulder as you watch the waters of the port shine in the early afternoon sunlight. You push your sunglasses up onto the top of your head and turn to look at Seungcheol as he approaches, looking too good for someone who was just on a flight for over twelve hours. When he’s close enough, you loop your fingers until the belt loops of his pants and tug him to kiss you. You hum in contentment when his hands immediately position themselves on your hips. “Someone’s happy to see me.”

“Mmm, I know you like when I’m clingy,” you reply and he shrugs.

“I plead the fifth. Sorry I’m late.”

“You’re right on time,” you reassure him. “They’re about to engage.” Seungcheol’s stomach turns uneasily.

“You’re sure they’re okay to take this on their own?”

“They’ll be fine. They’ve been training together for months. It’s about time they did a mission on their own.” You grab the earpiece case from your pocket and pop one into Seungcheol’s, connecting him into the comms system as the two trainees take their places. “Ant-Man, Spiderman, confirm positions.”

“I am in a position,” replies Seokmin through crackled static. “Not sure if it’s the right one.” Seungcheol gives you a skeptical look and you wave him off. You’re starting to feel relieved that you didn’t assign them a night mission as their first job. “You don’t happen to know where my extra vial of Pym particles are, do you?”

“You won’t need any more than you usually use during training, so just be smart with how you shrink. It’s just like the training simulations,” you explain patiently. Seungcheol has begun pacing back and forth and checking the magazine of his guns.

“Am I allowed to use web-bombs on this mission?” Hansol inquires and you pinch the bridge of your nose. “Also I’m in position. I have no idea where Seokmin is.”

“You can use web-bombs sparingly. Be sure to call out when you’re going to use them, since you tend to get Seokmin caught in the crossfire as he’s shrinking and growing.”

“Wait! If I go gigantic, you’ll be able to find me!” Seokmin proposes with too much enthusiasm.

“Do not go gigantic, Ant-Man. I repeat, do not go gigantic,” Seungcheol commands.

“I didn’t know Seungcheol was supervising us too,” mumbles Hansol a little indignantly. “Pressure’s on, I guess.”

“Wow, scary!” Seokmin adds. “The most terrifying Avengers making sure we don’t mess up. I guess I can’t be funny today.”

“No, be funny,” Hansol frowns. “It makes this more fun.”

“Your mission is to identify the contents of a shipping container. Where the fun lies in that, I’m not sure,” Seungcheol states incredulously. He presses a button on the earpiece to mute his microphone and turns to you. “Are you sure we shouldn’t just handle this? We could be in and out in under five minutes.” You shake your head and squeeze his hand.

“The Winter Soldier and Arachne are here as backup. We don’t need to be scary on this job; we need to be mentors,” you remind him gently. “Trust me, I’m just as nervous for this mission as you are.”

“I doubt that,” Seungcheol laments and you chuckle. Your smile drops suddenly when five different shipping containers fall over with loud metallic crashes as Seokmin’s Ant-Man suit grows to become as tall as the cranes. Swinging on his arms and throwing web-bombs like no tomorrow is Hansol, and the dockworkers are running about in a state of panic. The targeted container is nowhere in sight, and half of Seokmin’s leg is now in the water. You and Seungcheol share a look and sigh. “Well, shit.”

“So much for subtlety,” you agree, unhurriedly pulling your batons from their sheaths on your thighs. Seungcheol dons his black mask and pulls the detachable sleeve away from his Vibranium arm. “I could use an Old Fashioned after this.”

“Rye, extra bitters,” he continues. The corner of your mouth turns down when you realize you’ve misplaced a knife on your belt, and Seungcheol is quick to hand you one of his. “Maybe I’ll give it a try today. Seems like a drinking kind of night, if we survive this.”

“This is easily survivable compared to what we’ve done in the past,” you scoff, adding the knife to your array and stretching your neck from side to side.

“Sorry, I mean the press conference that’s gonna come our way once the press hears that Ant-Man got half his foot stuck in a crane,” corrects Seungcheol and you shrug.

“Just another day, isn’t it?” You smile at him and he winks at you.

“Guess so.” He cracks his human knuckles.

“Got my six?”

“You know it.”

“Great,” you grin, pressing one more kiss to his cheek. “Let’s clean up their mess.”

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