Chapter Text
Josephine kept her head down.
At Stark Enterprises, that was how you survived—do your work, do it well, and don’t get distracted. She had built her routine on numbers, data sets, and quiet focus. The world made sense when it was organized into clean columns and predictable outcomes.
Superheroes didn’t fit into that world.
The Avengers were background noise—headlines she didn’t read, names she vaguely recognized but never cared to understand. They belonged to a different kind of life. Not hers.
So when the energy in the research wing shifted, Josephine ignored it.
At first.
The hum of conversation rose, sharp and electric, spreading from desk to desk. Chairs scraped. Someone swore under their breath. Another laughed in disbelief.
Josephine clicked through her data, eyes fixed on the screen.
“They’re here.”
She barely registered the words until someone nudged her shoulder.
“They’re here,” her colleague repeated, voice hushed with awe.
Josephine sighed softly, still typing. “Who?”
A pause. Then, incredulous—“The Avengers. Captain America and the Winter Soldier.”
That made her glance up.
And everything stopped.
They stood in the middle of the office like they didn’t belong to it—like the sterile lights and glass walls couldn’t quite contain them.
The first was exactly what the world said he was: tall, broad-shouldered, impossibly composed. Clean-cut, with steady blue eyes and a presence that seemed to settle the room just by existing in it.
Captain America.
The second stood just behind him, darker in every way—hair, expression, the sharp edge of his posture. His metal arm caught the overhead light, gleaming cold and unmistakable.
The Winter Soldier.
Josephine stared.
Something in her chest tightened, sudden and sharp.
Not recognition—something deeper. Older.
Her mind supplied the names automatically now. Steve Rogers. James Barnes.
But the names weren’t what made her breath catch.
It was their faces.
Too familiar.
Her pulse stuttered. The edges of the room blurred as memory surged forward, unbidden and overwhelming—half-forgotten afternoons, whispered conversations, the vivid certainty of childhood imagination.
Steve, with his calm, steady reassurance.
Bucky, quieter, watchful, always just a step behind—but never far.
Her imaginary friends.
The thought landed hard enough to make her dizzy.
No.
That wasn’t possible.
She had made them up. She knew she had. Long days spent alone, filling the silence with stories, with voices, with people who stayed when no one else did.
They hadn’t been real.
They couldn’t be real.
And yet—
Josephine pushed back her chair before she fully realized she was moving. Her hands trembled as she stood, her focus locked on the two men across the room.
The way they held themselves. The way they felt.
It was the same.
Every logical part of her mind rejected it. Steve Rogers and James Barnes weren’t fragments of a child’s imagination—they were history, war, living legend.
But logic faltered under the weight of what she was seeing.
Because she knew them.
Or thought she did.
As if drawn by the intensity of her stare, Steve turned.
His gaze found hers immediately.
Josephine froze.
Something in his expression shifted—softened, like recognition hovering just out of reach. The moment stretched, fragile and impossibly quiet amid the noise of the room.
It was the same look.
The same one he used to give her when she was small and scared and trying not to show it.
Her breath hitched.
Steve’s brow furrowed slightly, confusion flickering across his face. He nudged the man beside him.
Bucky turned next.
The impact was sharper this time—those eyes, intense and unyielding, locking onto hers with unsettling precision. For a split second, something unreadable crossed his expression.
Not curiosity.
Something closer to awareness.
A chill ran down her spine.
“Is everything alright, miss?” Steve asked.
His voice was steady, grounding. Familiar in a way that made her chest ache.
Josephine opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
A thousand questions collided in her mind, none of them forming fast enough to speak. Her heart pounded, her thoughts spiraling between memory and reality, past and present refusing to separate.
This couldn’t be real.
And yet they were standing right in front of her.
Watching her.
Waiting.
Josephine swallowed, her voice finally finding its way free—
“Do I… know you?”