Author's Note: To those about to embark on this journey I have a few warnings. First, this is a side fic to "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" set in a hypothetical future of that universe. So if you're unfamiliar, you'll be very confused. Second, this is obviously NOT CANON.

2018

Half the universe ended quietly, quickly, and simply. With a mere snap of a titan's fingers half of everything was gone.

Eru Lee was thirty-eight and ageless, her once apprentice Uchiha Obito twenty-eight, and neither were anywhere near the battlefield.

New York, 1943

"You just don't know when to give up, do you?"

Those words, Steve thought as he hunched over and tried to catch his breath even when the next punch was undoubtedly about to land, pretty much defined him. If you looked up Steve Rogers in the dictionary you'd probably see "doesn't know when to give up" right above "invalid asthmatic five-time army reject".

The thing was though, that he knew, he believed, that it only took once. One acceptance, one new hometown on an enlistment form, one petty officer who didn't look closely enough at his extensive medical exam, just one chance, and then those other five times didn't mean anything. It only took once, every time, but if you gave up then it was forever.

So, no, Steve had never learned how to give up. Not in getting into the army, and not with fighting jerks in cinemas three times his size with knuckles bloody and bleeding and a dented silver trashcan lid for a shield.

The film from the theater was ringing in his ears, no different than any of the clips about the war that they showed before any cartoon, but all the same it still reverberated in his head, that last line, "Together with Allied forces, we'll face any threat, no matter the size."

No matter the size, no matter the threat, and soon Steve would be there right with them. Soon, someday, he'd be there.

So, he just forced himself up again, brought his fists forward and ready to box, and smirked at the loudmouth, "I can do this all day."

And he meant it, he moved forward, fist aimed upward to hit the guy in the jaw and send him reeling except something got to him first. There was a blur of movement, green and red, and suddenly the guy was twenty feet from where he should have been sprawled onto the asphalt.

Steve blinked, looked to his left, and stumbled backwards at the sight of two people having come out of nowhere. Like they'd just appeared in the alleyway out of thin air when he was blinking, before him or the other guy could even notice. And looking at them, a man and a woman, Steve definitely would have noticed if they'd been standing there.

The woman was standing closest to Steve and she looked American enough, or, white enough anyway, for all that she was a little taller than most dames Steve had met, but her clothing was a kind that Steve had never seemed before. First off, it was nothing he'd ever seen a woman wear, but probably not something he'd see a man wear either. Kind of like the cargo uniforms of the army, but different, skintight dark shorts, a gleaming silver headband, and a sort of oriental look to all of it.

More than that though, there was something off about her. Something in how green her eyes were, how intimidating they looked even when she was staring down at the jerk from the theater with dismissive contempt, or maybe it was the red of her hair tied in a loose braid snaking down her back. Maybe it was that he couldn't really tell how old she was, older than him, older than twenty probably, but beyond that he couldn't really place her except that she seemed somehow younger and older than his own ma.

It wasn't that she wasn't pretty, if she was less… Well, less something, then he could see Bucky asking her on a date (and Bucky had very high standards when it came to dames). Except she was too much of everything, to the point where it was hard to look at her and see her as a dame, recognize her as a woman or even a pretty woman and try not to flush and stammer and make a real ass of himself.

On the other side of her, lounging against the gray wall of the cinema, sparing a glance for the sprawled jerk and then pinning Steve with an intimidating look, was a man who maybe looked even stranger. Half his face was a mess of raised scars, like someone had once taken a blender to his face and hacked up just about all of it, the pale thick ridges disappeared down his neck and down under his shirt making Steve wonder if they just kept going. If maybe the whole right side of his body was more scar tissue than skin. His eyes were mismatched, not one just some unnoticeable blue and the other a subtle green either, but really mismatched. One was the same unnerving bright green as the woman's, the other so dark that it came out a dull and sort of flat black. More, Steve thought as he stared at the guy, with his dark course hair, his clothing, and his narrowed eyes, he looked oriental, maybe even Japanese.

Both carried large packs, the kind you wore on hiking trips in the mountain or even in the army, with bedrolls and all sorts of hidden supplies. More, on both of their belts, along with several pouches and oriental scrolls, Steve's eyes widened as he caught sight of what looked like Japanese samurai swords.

The woman looked over at him, green eyes looking like they could see every thought in his head, dipped her head slightly in a nod, and said in a clear English accent, "Captain."

Steve opened his mouth, swallowed, then opened it again trying to think what to say. On the ground the guy from the theater was groaning pitifully, trying and failing to set up as he clutched at his stomach.

"Hey! Hey!" Bucky out of nowhere, like usual, sprinted into the alleyway intent on saving Steve's ungrateful ass only to stop dead in his tracks at the scene, "Holy shit, Steve did you…"

Steve just pointed to the woman who, in turn, looked over at Bucky. She stared, pursed her lips together as if trying to place him, and when a spark of recognition did appear in her eyes she only said, "I thought you were supposed to be Russian."

(Out of the corner of his eye, Steve noticed the theater asshole making a break for it, hobbling out of the alleyway and back onto the street just like a coward and any other bully.

Except that Steve wished that it had been him who had made that happen.)

Steve and Bucky both opened their mouths, wondering what the hell they were supposed to say to that, to being accused of being a Red of all things but the man, the Jap, pushed himself off the wall and began walking towards them. He looked over at the woman, something sharp and pointed in his mismatched eyes, and when he spoke it was also in an English accent, "And I thought, shishou, that the good captain was supposed to be taller."

The woman, Shishou, spared a more assessing glance for Steve, taking in his diminutive height, his frail body that had always failed him, and seeing what everybody (even Bucky dammit) saw when they looked at him. Finally, she said, "Time, Obito, can be a funny thing, especially when it's on the gauntlet of a madman. That we're here at all, I think, says something about our desperation as well as our good fortune."

"Good fortune," the man said with a bark of laughter and a bitterly amused look on his face, "Is that what we're calling it now?"

The woman just smiled, a soft and fond grin, shoved her hands into her pockets in a rather casual and not at all feminine, manner, "As always, my dutiful apprentice, you lack a certain amount of faith. I, for one, choose to believe things will work out. After all, we cannot afford to lose."

"Hey, hey, hey," Bucky said, stepping in front of Steve (God, like he was some dame that needed protecting) and holding out his arms as he glared at the pair, "Who the hell are you two supposed to be?"

They just stared at him for a moment and there was something so… So dead, so bitter, in both of their eyes. Finally, the woman spoke again, again bowing her head slightly, "Forgive me, my name is Lee Eru, the godaime and last hokage of Konohagakure, and this is my jonin commander and advisor, Obito Uchiha."

On lifting her head to look them in the eyes again, she further explained, "We won't officially meet, I'm afraid, until over seventy years from now."

"The captain, that is," the man, Obito, added with a rather wry look pointed towards Bucky, "We've only seen pictures of the Manchurian Candidate over here."

"Manchurian what?" Bucky asked but the woman, Lee, beat him to it as she crossed her arms and gave a rather chiding look over towards the younger man.

"Recovering Manchurian Candidate," Lee corrected, "Please, Obito, there's no need to be rude to our brothers in arms."

Obito just gave her a look in turn, a pair of dark raised eyebrows, as if to ask whether being polite enough made any sort of difference. Eventually the woman seemed to decide that was the best she was going to get as she turned her attention back to Bucky and Steve, "This will probably take a while, how do you feel about lunch?"

Bucky opened his mouth, likely to tell them off or bring up that he was in the army set up to be shipped out at any moment, that he could turn them into the feds, but the woman just slapped him on the shoulders (with more than a little force if the way Bucky shuddered under it was any indication) and just grinned cheerfully as she walked out of the alley, "Great, we'll get cheeseburgers and fries, I haven't had that in ages."

Steve and Bucky looked at each other then looked at the woman confidently striding out of the alleyway like she had any idea where she was going. Steve hastily picked up his enlistment forms from the ground (the ones saying he was Paramus and then Jersey and just about anywhere but good old Brooklyn) before Bucky could see them and read him the riot act. Except, he couldn't help but think, that the man Obito hadn't missed it (and seemed to find it almost funny if the slight jaded smile on his lips was anything to go by).

"Gentlemen," Obito said, motioning towards the open street.

Bucky said nothing, just looked at Steve again, something worried and almost pleading in his eyes. Like these guys were a danger to Steve specifically. Steve forced himself to stand taller, as tall as he could, walking past him and saying, "I'll be fine, Bucky, I always am."

Bucky tried to smile, it didn't reach his eyes, "You know, Steve, this wasn't how I intended to spend my last night."

Steve, walking out of the alley, keeping an eye on Bucky as well as the man Obito, felt like he'd been punched in the stomach one more time. He had his orders, Bucky had his orders, as a sergeant while Steve would just be…

Be in some factory welding scraps of steel together.

"Listen, we're going to have to wrap this up real quick," Bucky said as soon as they were seated across from the odd pair in a rickety booth, "Me and my buddy have got dates tonight."

Obito didn't seem to care, he was instead eating through his chocolate shake like he'd just walked in starving from the desert. The woman however, idly sucked on her strawberry shake and looked across at Steve and Bucky with more interest.

"Oh?" the woman asked, eyebrows raising, not like she was surprised but like she thought it was a little cute. The idea of him and Bucky having dates.

"Dates, we have dates?" Steve asked, not even knowing who would agree to go on a date with him, wondering if it was another one of Bucky's pity double dates, "Where we going?"

Bucky elbowed him in the side, hissing under his breath and motioning to the pair with his eyes, "I'll tell you later, buddy."

Right, Bucky wasn't about to tell these two where they were going. Maybe they weren't even going anywhere, it was probably just some excuse to get them out of here already. Which… Steve didn't really know, sure they put him on edge, sure they were foreign, but that didn't mean he had to whisper and stare either. There were good people in Japan, just like there were good people anywhere, and who knew maybe they were just British and the guy just looked like a Jap. Probably was a Chinaman from Hong Kong or something.

Point was, staring, whispering, treating someone differently for something they couldn't really help, that never sat right with Steve.

"Point is, we don't have time to dawdle here with you," Bucky said, crossing his arms, "Much as I'd want to."

The trouble was that Bucky did want to. Or at least, he must have some intention of sticking around and hearing what they had to say. Maybe he'd go and report them to his superiors after, maybe he'd dig around for more information, but either way he hadn't tried to get them out of this meeting either which meant he was waiting for something.

The fact that he wasn't even bothering to hit on the lady, Steve thought, said more than enough.

Steve, for his own part, didn't know what he was waiting for. Maybe for something, any of this, to start making sense.

"Wrap it up quickly," Obito said with his mouth full, sparing Lee a rather derisive look, "I like that, shishou, like it's just as easy as taking out the trash."

Lee spared him another chiding look as well as a whack across the back of his head, which Obito artfully dodged like he had a lot of practice at that sort of thing, before looking back at Steve and bucky, "I'll try to keep it as short as I can. Simply, the universe is doomed."

"The universe is doomed?" Bucky repeated, his own brown eyebrows raising to his hairline and his voice disbelieving. The lady, however, looked like she was doing anything but joking.

"In seventy-five years, 2018 by your calendar, all six elements of the universe (time, space, mind, soul, reality, and power) will fall into the hands of a tyrant. He will offer fifty percent of the universe as a sacrifice to death and desolation and become a deity," she wove her hands together, her fingers pale yet steady, and glanced down at them, "There were… a number, too small of a number, who tried to stop this. They did too little far too late, and my own people, we had no idea at all."

"The Japs you mean," Bucky interjected, leaning forward to get a better look at them, but the woman just shook her head.

"Konohagakure, on another Earth in another dimension," she paused then and smiled bitterly, "Thanos, it turns out, has an incomprehensibly far reach."

"Wait, another dimension? And the future? And Thanos?" Bucky asked, still with disbelief and derision, looking over at Steve like it was time to get out of the booth with the crazies already.

"Our new lord and master," Obito cut in, and then, with a sigh looked over at Lee and said, "You'd best get to the point, shishou."

She nodded then pointed a finger straight at Steve, "The captain here, at some point in his life, at some point during the war, will come into contact with the space gem in the form of the Tesseract. New York, 2013, was too obvious and Thanos was already invading, before 1942 the Tesseract was obscurity, after 1945 lost… Obito and I have come as close as we could so that we can get to it before he can and prevent the snap."

Bucky laughed, loud long laughter, "Sweet Jesus, you're both mad."

"The universe's a big place," Obito said scathingly, "I wouldn't write off that Fermi Paradox just yet if I were you."

Bucky motioned to Steve with a dismissive hand, a sort of twitching smile on his face like he could barely keep it together, "So, you think Steve's got this…"

"Not yet," the woman interjected, "But he will, within a year, maybe two, he'll have it."

Bucky just shook his head, pushed at Steve, "Come on, buddy, let's get out of here, I found a real nice girl for you tonight. You'll love her."

Steve held up hand though, stopping Bucky from pushing him aside and asking, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you mean… You mean I get in? I get into the army?"

He could hear Bucky muttering some curse under his breath next to him, probably thinking that Steve had overlooked all the crazy for just that slim offhand sign of hope, from two people who looked and sounded half-mad.

Obito snorted, as if that was some kind of joke, Steve not getting, "Please, you're Captain America, what the hell would they do without you?"

"But," Steve stopped, leaned forward with a smile he could barely contain, "Then somebody doesn't care about the asthma, or the arthritis, or the…"

Lee gracefully slid out of the seat, slapping down an obscene amount of money onto the table to cover the food, and then with a smile towards Steve said, "World Exposition of Tomorrow, 1943, tonight, Steve Rogers. Look for a Dr. Erskine. Or, rather, let him look for you."

Bucky paled, swore under his breath, apparently having planned to go to the World Expo the whole time, and shoved Steve out of the seat and hauled him out of the restaurant with Lee waiving cheerfully at them.

Except all Steve could do was smile back, because even if he didn't know about time travelling or whatever a Tesseract was, the idea that tonight, tonight, he'd get in just… Bucky had never believed in him, not really, not that he could fight in the war, needed to fight in the war as much as anybody else. His ma, certainly, was relieved that he was stuck at home.

These two though, there hadn't been a doubt in either of them that Steve Rogers would be in Europe with Bucky and all the best of them.

He could thank the pair of them, even if it was only for that.

("So, you want to go overseas. Kill some Nazis."

"Excuse me?"

"Dr. Abraham Erskine, I represent the Strategic Scientific Reserve."

"Steve Rogers" a pause, then, "Where are you from?"

"Queens. 73rd Street and Utopia Parkway. Before that, Germany. This troubles you?"

"No."

"Where are you from, Mr. Rogers? Mmm? Is it New Haven? Or Paramus? Five exams in five different cities."

"That might not be the right file."

"No, it's not the exams I'm interested in. It's the five tries. But you didn't answer my question. Do you want to kill Nazis?"

"Is this a test?"

"Yes."

A pause again, and an admission, "I don't wanna kill anyone. I don't like bullies. I don't care where they're from."

"Well, there are already so many big men fighting this war. Maybe what we need now is the little guy, huh? I can offer you a chance," a pause, then a clarification, "Only a chance."

"I'll take it."

"Good. So where is the little guy from, actually?"

"Brooklyn."

"Congratulations, soldier."

A file passed, then a question, "Hey, Dr. Erskine, have you ever met someone, a woman, tall, red-hair, green eyes, named Leigh or maybe a guy, one dark eye the other green, scars all over his face, looks Japanese or Chinese or something, called Obito?"

"No, should I have?"

Steve didn't know how to say that somehow, they had heard of him, and had known that he'd be the one to finally say yes to Steve Rogers when five others had said no.)

At the training camp, as he first stood in line with the other recruits, he was shocked to see that somehow the pair has followed him here. They stood right next to him, Lee on one side and Obito in the other, neither looking at him as if it was all a perfect coincidence and they were all perfect strangers.

And maybe they should be, because they looked nothing like last time, barely recognizable at all. It wasn't just the foreign clothing and weapons that were gone but everything about them had changed.

Lee had cut her hair short, and now it curled out in every direction at just past regulation length as she stood at attention. Only, Steve couldn't be sure looking at her, but he thought she wasn't a she anymore. The curves of her waist were gone, replaced by a lean and tapered chest, and unless she managed to bind them into complete submission the breasts were gone too. Sure, she looked a bit pretty for a guy, but looking at her, (at her chest and even her pants), Steve wouldn't guess she was a lady either.

Obito's transformation was, in its own way, even more dramatic. The scars were gone, all of them, leaving smooth and pale flesh behind. His eyes matched now, both that dark flat black, but the skin warped to make them look caucasian versus oriental. In the end he looked like some oddly pale Italian-American or Slavic kid versus someone from the far east.

"Good morning, captain," Lee said, at Steve's attention, "Funny meeting you here in a place like this."

(The way she said it, and that fact that she and Obito were here, Steve doubted it was funny or any kind of coincidence at all.)

Steve said nothing, instead stood ramrod straight at attention as their officer, a woman, paced the line in front of them, "Recruits, attention! Gentlemen, I'm Agent Carter. I supervise all operations for this division."

A Brit, Steve thought with some wonder, how was it he kept meeting these mysterious British people? Well, not that the necessarily accent made Lee or Obito British, in fact, he suspected their Konohagakure was anything but British.

"Relax, she'll pay us no mind," Lee noted as some jerk scoffed at the lady, Agent Carter, "What's with the accent, Queen Victoria? Thought I was signing up for the U.S. Army."

As Steve still kept staring forward, even with his mind racing, Obito answered his unspoken question, "Lee's cast an illusion, a genjutsu. As far as everyone else is concerned we're standing in line like good boys."

("What's your name, soldier?")

At that Steve finally broke and looked at her, then at Obito, "What are you doing here?!"

"Fighting Nazis, saving the world, repossessing artifacts of extraordinary power from the Third Reich," Lee listed off, like she was talking about the weather rather than signing up for the United States army, "Please, captain, where else would I be?"

("Gilmore Hodge, your Majesty.")

"It's practically an Indiana Jones film," Obito added, without clarifying what that was even supposed to mean, but Lee seemed to appreciate his comment.

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" she said with a delighted grin, rubbing her hands together vigorously in anticipation, "This is going to be so much fun."

("Step forward, Hodge.")

"What does that…"

("Put your right foot forward.")

"We're here because you're here," Obito said with a sigh, barely glancing at Steve while he said it.

"You're here because I'm here?" Steve asked, trying and failing to stay at attention while he tried to process that, "What's that supposed to mean? And an illusion, cast an illusion like some… some wizard?"

"Not like a wizard," Lee corrected rather sharply, before clutching at her chest dramatically, "That very comparison is like a dagger through my heart."

"Shinobi or ninja," Obito further expanded, looking somewhat exasperated by his partner's dramatics, "Pick your poison."

("Mmm… We gonna wrassle? Cause I got a few moves I know you'll like.")

Steve was about to ask more, ask if their spell or their whatever had changed their appearances too, but he stopped when he watched Agent Peggy Carter suddenly deck Gilmore Hodge so hard in the face that he fell backwards onto the dirt with his nose bleeding.

"Oh, very nice," Lee said in appreciation, not even blinking at the sight of it, "Clearly civilian but she has very good form."

"And good timing," Obito added with a nod towards Hodge, "I don't think I would have lived through the wrassling."

"No one, Obito," Lee said rather dismissively, "Would have lived through the wrassling."

Steve wanted to ask more but the pair seemed to finally be paying attention as an officer drove up towards them in a jeep, Colonel Philips, according to Agent Carter. After that… After came the speech and the decision to choose one man out of more than twenty to become some kind of a super soldier.

For Steve though, it was enough to just be going to the front.

"They're going to pick you."

Lee and Obito, during the week, had taken to hanging out around his quarters. It didn't stop the bullying, didn't stop his shit being thrown all over the room, or being shoved into lockers, but in a strange way it added something kind of familiar.

He didn't really know them, didn't know if he believed half the stuff they said, but if Bucky wasn't going to be around then he supposed… Well, he supposed he'd take them.

Not that it really mattered what Steve thought about it. They didn't seem to care either way, always hanging around his bed, casting that genjutsu-illusion thing again to get everybody looking in every other direction. They never really went into how they did that, or how, even though neither was the biggest or the strongest (and Lee was supposed to have been a woman) they were always the best in everything.

Running, climbing, shooting, push-ups, even dismantling and putting the guns back together, they outstripped the lot of them and looked almost bored while doing it. Like they'd been doing a harder version of this every day of their life and this was just some giant waste of their time.

(Not that any of the superior offices noticed, or even seemed to notice them at all versus just nodding towards them every once in a while and grunting out some acknowledgement. Steve had the feeling that the illusions were a part of this at well, made them recognize that they were here, but never look that closely.)

Once Lee had said something short about, something like, "chakra", but really hadn't said too much beyond that.

Obito's explanation, even though it was just as short, had struck home a little more, "A hell of a lot of hard work."

They also, in the middle of the night, would sneak out of the barracks to beat the ever-loving shit out of each other. Steve doubted they let the others watch, and he didn't know why they let him notice it either, but every once in a while, he'd sneak out to look at them just wail on each other. Not like he used to fight either, not with fists in back alleyways, but trained eastern martial arts where every kick or punch looked like it could break bones or kill with a just a little more effort.

Seeing that, seeing their illusions, seeing Lee turn herself into a man, well Steve was willing to believe that they might just be space alien magical ninja from the future bent on saving the universe after all.

In the present moment, late at night, Steve looked up over his book. Lee was sitting on his bed, in a white wife-beater making it all too clear that she really had gone to town with the whole gender switch thing, and was looking at him with a somewhat fond expression that he probably didn't deserve after only a week or so.

Instead of commenting on what she said Steve just asked, "How did you do that anyway? How did you turn yourself into a guy? And why?"

She sighed, considered him for a moment, before shrugging and answering, "At first I wasn't going to, Obito and I were just going to camp out in an illusion for one or two years, however long this took. But that sort of genjutsu is draining, more draining than a long-term henge or smaller genjutsus to deflect attention even… Then of course your military lacks opportunities for women so here we are. As for this, would you believe I picked up this trick from my nephew?"

Lee motioned down to her changed physique proudly, "Of course, he used it to turn himself into a sexy naked woman but the principle, I think, is more or less the same."

Steve laughed, having finally gotten sort of used to Lee to get the joke and even joke back (maybe her being a guy helped though, because he could never picture a dame saying that to his face), "Well, I don't know if you ever were a sexy naked lady."

"How would you know?" Lee asked, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrows in a challenging sort of manner, "Obito says I'm quite attractive when I'm not downright terrifying."

From his own bunk, flipping through one of the many books that he and Lee had somehow managed to cram into those packs they carried with them everywhere, Obito said distractedly (like he was only half listening), "You're always downright terrifying, shishou."

"Well, I'm told that's a very good quality to have as a kage," she said with a smile, but then that disappeared, turned instead into that pensive and quiet frown that Steve would sometimes catch either her or Obito wearing.

"A kage, what is that, anyways?" Steve asked.

"It is essentially a king," she said, and her eyes darkened and grew distant, "Except… I had not expected to become hokage, but when it happened, Obito and I were the only ones left. Minato, Tobirama, Hashirama, Sakumo, Kakashi, Kushina, Jiraiya-sensei, even Naruto… All gone, every last one of them."

She laughed, shook her head, and quietly said, "We packed up everything, all my books, all of Tobirama's books, the forbidden jutsus, the photographs, the whole village on our backs… We are Konoha now, all that's left of it, its swansong."

She looked him in the eye then, and he could see the fires in her black pupils, the desolation and death that had been there in a single moment, a snap she'd called it, "It was fifty percent of the universe, captain, a random fifty percent… It wasn't even close to fifty percent of Konoha."

She closed her eyes, breathed out, and found some of the composure that had cracked as she returned to her original topic, "He'll pick you, Rogers."

"Pick me, who will, and for what?" Steve asked.

"Erskine, to become their super soldier, this ridiculous thing they're having us compete for like trained monkeys," Lee answered, standing from his bed and looking down at him with the fond smile she had started with, "He's already made up his mind, all that's left is for him to convince the others to see it his way."

"You think so?" he asked but it was Obito who answered, as if it was the easiest answer in the world to give.

"We know it, captain."

Steve didn't know, he was the worst of all of them and knew it, still, Obito and Lee had never been wrong so far. Maybe that should scare him, since they said the world was ending and it'd be nice if they were wrong about that, but…

"And why captain?" he asked as Lee swung into her own bunk, just beneath Obito's, "Why are you always calling me captain?"

"Not us," Lee said with a small laugh, like he'd just told some witty joke, as she settled beneath her covers and stretched, "It's you, captain, who insisted seventy years from now. Because apparently, captain, it's at the end of the world, when all hope is lost, that they need those ridiculous stars and stripes."

("Why me?"

"I suppose that is the only question that matters."

A bottle of schnapps placed between a German scientist and an American boy.

"This is from Augsburg. My city. So many people forget that the first country that the Nazis invaded was their own. You know, after the last war the… my people struggled. They… felt weak. They felt small. And then Hitler comes along with the marching and the big show and the flags and the… and the… And he… He hears of me, my work, and he finds me. And he says, 'You'. He says, 'You will make us strong.' Well, I am not interested.

So, he sends the head of Hydra, his research division. A brilliant scientist by the name of Johann Schmidt. Now, Schmidt is a member of the inner circle and he's ambitious. He and Hitler share a passion for occult power and Teutonic myth. Hitler uses his fantasies to inspire his followers. But for Shmidt it is not fantasy. For him, it is real. He has become convinced that there is a great power hidden in the earth, left here by the gods, waiting to be seized by a superior man. So, when he hears about my formula and what it can do, he cannot resist.

Schmidt must become that superior man."

"Did it make him stronger?"

"Ja, but, there were other effects. The serum was not ready. But more important, the man. The serum amplifies everything that is inside. So, good becomes great. Bad becomes worse. This is why you were chosen. Because a strong man, who has known power all his life, will lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength and knows compassion."

"Thanks, I think."

"Whatever happens tomorrow, you must promise me one thing. That you will stay who you are. Not a perfect soldier, but a good man.")

Except, he thought, they didn't tell him that Dr. Erskine would die, right there in front of him, that it would only ever be Steve, or that when they shipped him out, it'd be in blue tights dancing for the troops instead of among them like he was supposed to be.

And all that Lee said to him, when he came back from the river and hunting Kruger and the serum to the SSR compound, was, "They can't all be saved, captain."

He just looked at her, looked down at her because he was taller and larger now, could feel the strength and power thrumming inside him where before it felt like he'd had to fight even to breathe. He just looked at her, shaking his head, and asked, "Can't they, isn't that what you're trying to do?"

They'd known it was Dr. Erskine that would meet him, get him in, they'd known he'd pick him, but they couldn't… They just let him die? Just like that?

Lee paused, looking across at Steve like he just wouldn't get it and she knew it. Obito came up behind her and placed one hand on her shoulder, and finally Lee opened her mouth and said, "Captain, he said no to the Nazis, but I don't think he ever intended to build an American army either. Just one, just you."

"What are you talking about?" Steve asked.

"Well, he might have said as much but…" Lee paused, looked Steve in the eye, some dark knowledge inside of there that Steve just didn't know yet, "He was not a man of war, Steve, and they would have forced him to become one very quickly."

"If he survived," Obito added, before Steve could even open his mouth, "I doubt he would have been given the option of saying no twice."

"And besides, we are fighting against a man playing at god," Lee said, face pale and perfectly inhuman, "It would be sheer hypocrisy for us to do the same, even for your doctor."

Steve thought about that for a long time, for all the time they were on the road, Steve dancing in tights and selling bonds for the war effort, and in the end he didn't know what he thought. Mostly, he wished Dr. Erskine hadn't died, or at least, hadn't died like that. He wished that Lee and Obito were wrong, that if he'd lived it wouldn't be like what they said, or that if they saved him it wouldn't be playing god either.

Except, the trouble was, he didn't know what to think.

He had all the power in the world, the athletic body he'd always lacked, but he still didn't know what to think.

Italy, November, 1943

"How many of you ready to help me sock old Adolf on the jaw?"

Five miles from the front, and from the bleak eyed soldiers, there was just dead-eyed silence as they looked at him and the rest of the girls. Steve hated the stage, hated it with a passion, and it didn't matter how many comics they made of him punching Gerries or Japs, or how many films he danced through, he'd always hate it.

Sure, he might look like the All-American guy now, but beneath that Steve was still that short, frail, guy who'd learned to give up on dames and spotlights and instead fight for everything he had. Steve hadn't been made for the spotlight, he knew it, but Brandt didn't and so here he was in Italy dancing for the troops.

Not helping was the front row featuring the now embarrassingly familiar faces of Lee and Obito in their US army boy disguises, Elliot Potter and Toby Miller, who'd followed him all through the states with the girls and finally onto the European circuit.

They were the only ones with any spark of life in their eyes at all, Obito calling out to him as they took in this painfully familiar scene, "Yeah, work it, Rogers, punch that Nazi bastard straight to hell!"

If they didn't keep insisting that they were here until Steve picked up this Tesseract of theirs, some glowing blue mystery cube, then he'd swear they just followed him to make him miserable. Well, when they weren't about the only real friends he had hanging around.

"Okay, uh, I need a volunteer," Steve said with a rather forced grin towards his audience.

From the back someone called out, "I already volunteered! How do you think I got here?"

Well they'd laugh at that, apparently, Steve thought a little bitterly. It wasn't like he wanted to be up here either, the least they could do was appreciate the effort.

"Bring back the girls!"

Christ, the girls, Steve thought as he paled beneath his mask. He watched as the crowd began to cheer and Lee and Obito (like assholes) couldn't contain their laughter anymore. They were also practically falling on top of each other, like usual, they were always sitting too close together.

Even when they were both playing at being men, or she was actually dressed as a woman and no one else was around, there was something there. Nothing he'd ever caught, nothing he'd ever seen, but something intimate that couldn't be brushed over.

Steve faltered, looked out at them almost desperately, "I think they only know the one song. But, um, let me, I'll see what I can do."

"You do that, sweetheart," one of the men jeered, like he was the one who had picked the costume.

"Nice boots, Tinker Bell!" some other jerk added, while Steve just threw up his hands.

"Come on, guys," Steve said, wondering what more they wanted from him, "We're all on the same team here."

Sure, Steve might not be in the action, may have only been raising funds for months and months now, but that didn't mean he wasn't doing something. His own part, like he'd always said he would.

"Hey, captain!" a man turned his back, stood, and dropped his pants, "Sign this!"

At that point even, Brandt's obnoxious aide realized it was about damn time to bring the girls back on while Steve just shook him off and waited for the show to be over already.

It didn't take long to start raining, about halfway through the rest of the performance, forcing the rest of the girls off the stage and out into their tents while Steve just sat on the edge of the stage with a sigh, waiting for a sign of something.

And, like always, Lee and Obito approached him like a pair of unwanted ghosts that no one else ever seemed to even notice.

"You know, when you said I'd be in the war, this wasn't what I had in mind," he said, not even looking at them. It'd been one thing back in the states, here though, here it just hurt to put on this act.

Steve didn't like it, the boys didn't like it, so why the hell were they even bothering?

"Singing and dancing your way through Poland and France?" Lee asked as she, with a single bound, hopped up on the stage with him, "To be honest, I didn't know about this whole spiel either."

"You didn't?" Steve asked, because it seemed like they'd known a horrible amount of everything that ever happened to him.

"Understandably," Obito said, with a grin that found entirely too much humor at Steve's expense, "You might have skipped over this part."

"Not that you aren't wonderful, captain," Lee said, nodding towards him in all his spandex glory, "I, personally, am a very large fan of the boots."

Steve snorted, because he sure as hell wasn't. The first thing he'd thought when Brandt had stuffed him into this thing was that he'd never seen anyone look this much like a homosexual. And that was including Lee and Obito making eyes at each other when Lee was wearing a man's body.

"You really light up the stage," Obito added with his own nod, "It just brings joy to my withered heart to hear you and your chorus of cheery backup singers go at it. Like I just want to punch Hitler over and over again in his Nazi face."

"Hey, hey," Steve said, waiving them off, "That's enough you guys, I get it, I'm great…"

They laid off, finally, just looked out at the rain with Steve, towards the front five miles in the distance with him, and finally Lee said, "I know you won't appreciate this now, captain, but perhaps it's for the best. War is, to put it lightly, unpleasant. It's been over ten years since I've been to the front, the third great shinobi war, and I still don't want to go back."

She paused, lips quirking briefly, "Of course, this, your war, will be nothing compared to what comes after."

"What do you mean?"

"When we get the Tesseract," Obito said, voice firm and bleak as he stared out into the horizon, "If we can alter the timeline by just grabbing it, Thanos will notice, and he'll still have time even if he doesn't have space. He'll find us, he'll come, and he'll bring the whole damn armada when he does."

His hand clenched, knuckles white, and then he forced it open as he took a breath, mentally preparing himself for whenever that day came.

"Obito and I will have to sprint out of dodge, go after the Aether, the reality stone, from the dark realm if we can, or else book it to Nepal and try to barter with the reality warping monks there to collect the time stone," she leaned forward, pressing her lips against pale fingers, "Then the war, the war for the fate of all worlds, will truly begin in earnest."

"No offense," Obito said as he glanced wryly at Steve, "But compared to that, this little world war of yours is child play. War between civilians."

He opened his mouth, probably to object to the term "civilian" for the umpteenth time (not that Lee or Obito had ever explained why they insisted on calling everyone that), but was distracted as, from the empty stands, an old familiar face approached.

Agent Peggy Carter, she smiled at him, just as pretty and put together as ever as she said, "Hello, Steve."

"Hi," he said, and couldn't help but grin stupidly back at her, no matter how much garbage Lee or Obito might give him for it later.

"Hi," she repeated, smile broadening, like she found it cute or something.

"What are you doing here?" he finally asked after clearing his throat but she just gave him this sort of amused enigmatic look that only women seemed to know how to pull off.

"Officially I'm not here at all," she then looked up towards the stage, "That was quite a performance."

(Out of the corner of his eye he caught Lee and Obito sharing a look, like they were already tired of listening to him and Peggy flirt, when he could say the same of them and they did it all the damn time!)

"Yeah," Steve said somewhat sheepishly, "I had to improvise a little bit. Crowds I'm used to are usually more, uh… twelve."

And that was back when he was in school and had been given some pity role in the play with only his mother really watching him. It still seemed so surreal that people cared about Steve Rogers these days, Captain America.

"I understand you're 'America's New Hope'?" she asked further, seeming just as delighted by this as Lee and Obito always were.

He tried to look on the bright side as he said, "Bond sales take a ten percent bump in every state I visit."

Or, at least, so Brandt always made sure to tell him whenever Steve started looking too discouraged. Whenever it started sinking in that he was never going to see the front, either be consigned to being some kind of a lab rat or a dancing monkey.

Peggy, however, was too smart to be distracted or taken in by something like that, "Is that Senator Brandt I hear?"

"Well, between that and being a highly expensive and oddly good-looking lab rat, you can hardly blame him," Lee cut in, and at that Peggy turned to look at her (well, him from Peggy's point of view). Peggy blinked, like she hadn't even really realized that Lee or Obito had been sitting there. Lee grinned, held out a hand like a good-old American boy, "Elliot Potter and Toby Miller, official Captain America groupies."

Peggy cocked her head, looked at Lee closer, "No, I know you from somewhere, you were…"

"No one of consequence," Obito cut in, "Just members of the local regiment here."

"The one-oh-seventh?" Peggy asked, eyebrows lifting higher as if she was almost impressed by this or else highly dubious, "The regiment that just went out to Azzano? The regiment of two-hundred that only returned with fifty?"

"Oh, Toby and I are rather like cockroaches," Lee said with a wave of her hand, "We'd survive the nuclear apocalypse along with all the Hostess snacks."

"We did survive the nuclear apocalypse," Obito cut in rather bitterly, "More than the nuclear apocalypse."

"Point," Lee said rather blankly.

"With British accents in an American unit?" Peggy said, eyes now narrowing dangerously as she looked at the pair, apparently seeing past their illusion in a way that no one had ever bothered to before.

"… I have a great love of Masterpiece Theater, and the ladies tell me that British accents are just so very dashing," Lee said after a rather long pause, like this somehow explained everything.

"The ladies love themselves a suave British war hero," Obito chimed in with wriggling eyebrows that were either supposed to impress or disgust Peggy into stopping her questions.

Steve though was caught on Peggy's earlier words, before the back and forth really began, that dread number that he hadn't expected to hear anywhere in a situation like this, "Wait a minute, the one-oh-seventh, did you say the one-oh-seventh?!"

Peggy blinked, looked back over at him, apparently losing track or interest of Lee and Obito in Steve's panic, "What?"

Steve jumped off the stage, tore off towards Colonel Philips' tent, barely looking back behind him to usher the three of them on with him, "Come on!"

He felt like he should have been surprised, or that he should have been more surprised, even when he knew even before getting into that tent that Bucky's name would be on the list of those missing in action.

Except it was the trigger he needed, he was done reading his lines and playing his part, not with Bucky, not with the rest of these men on the line about to be abandoned by high command. Steve would walk to Austria if he had to, do what he was meant do, what he had meant to do when he'd signed up for this in the first place.

No, from now on, Steve wouldn't just play the part of Captain America, he'd be Captain America. He'd use every gift given to him and even if that didn't win the war by god it'd make some kind of a difference.

Still, Peggy and Stark getting him a lift, Obito and Lee coming along for the ride, that was worth more than something.

"The Hydra camp is in Krausberg, tucked between these two mountain ranges. It's a factory of some kind," Peggy explained to Steve, then spared a glance towards Lee and Obito, both sitting in comically casual positions given that they were about to jump out of an airplane and straight into hell.

"We should be able to drop you right on the doorstep," Stark, piloting the plane, added from the cockpit.

Steve nodded, "Good, just get me as close as you can."

"Us," Lee added, holding up a hand, then looking over at Steve she added, "And captain, I will take the lead on this one."

"What?" Steve asked, glancing her over once and then twice, taking in her unshakable confidence (as well as the odd look of command that was present even when relaxed in the hold of an airplane.)

"You've got guts, more courage and nobility than most, but that doesn't mean much out here," Lee said, leaning forward to look him the eye, leaning past Peggy to do so, "You may have the muscles now, the height, even some chakra, but you have no experience and no training. They will eat you alive at the slightest mistake. This is not a game, captain."

"Don't take it personally," Obito added to perhaps soften the blow as he stretched and cracked his knuckles, "Shishou's been dying for some action since your first time in the red, white, and blue tights."

"Oh, I'd hardly say that," Lee said with an odd smile, "But it has been a while since men haven't run in terror at the mere sound of my name. It'll be refreshing, I think."

"Yes, I'm still not sure why I let you two come," Peggy said with a frown towards Lee, but Lee just held a hand to her heart and declared, "Please, madam, no man left behind. We must go back for our brothers in arms!"

"That, and the captain needs babysitting from his own stupidity," Obito added.

"Oh, yes that too," Lee admitted with a nod, leaning back and crossing her arms as if this was a very wise thing of Obito to note. Peggy though, did smile at that, and didn't seem to disagree (however much Steve might bristle at that)

Steve sighed, tried to put it out of his head as he looked back at Peggy, "You know, you two are gonna be in a lot of trouble at the lab."

"And you won't?" she asked with dark raised eyebrows.

Which, well, that was true, but, "Where I'm going, if anybody yells at me I can just shoot them."

It was a different kind of danger, besides, Steve didn't mind it. Bucky would do the same for him, Bucky would do the same even if Steve was already dead and buried behind enemy lines. Steve couldn't do any less.

"They will undoubtedly shoot back," Peggy reminded him.

Still, Steve wasn't to be dissuaded as he tapped at his shield, a little more solid this time than a garbage can, "Well, let's hope this is good for something."

"Don't worry," Lee said, oddly serious for once as she looked at Peggy, "We'll get him in and out alive, you have my word, Carter."

Except, he didn't know why, but he noticed that Lee didn't mention a cost with that. Whether the cost was burning down the factory or something else, she hadn't set any kind of limit…

Peggy just nodded, like she was really taking Lee's, or well Elliot's, word for it. Lee was like that, Steve thought, she could say anything at all and you'd just look at her and know that no matter what it was, no matter how crazy it sounded, you'd believe her.

Stark interrupted then, sounding just as ridiculous and casual as Lee and Obito, "Agent Carter, if we're not in too much of a hurry I thought we could stop off at Lucerne for a late-night fondue."

Peggy flushed, looked almost desperately at Steve who, looking out the side of the plane, started to put on the parachute he only just knew how to use while Lee and Obito did the same.

"Stark is the best civilian pilot I've ever seen. He's mad enough to brave this airspace, we're lucky to have him."

Steve wasn't sure what to think of that, what that even meant, if it meant they were together and they fondued or…

Peggy handed him a small metal box, "This is your transponder, activate it when you're ready and the signal will lead us straight to you."

"Oh good," Obito commented as he finished shrugging on his pack, "I love it when there's an exit strategy."

Steve just looked down at it before looking up at her, "You sure this thing works?"

"It's been tested more than you, pal!" Stark probably would have said more but just about then gunfire sounded and it was clear that they were out of time, he stumbled towards the opening, taking a breath and readying himself.

Next to him, Lee grabbed his arm, pulled him down so she could whisper in his ear, "Remember, captain, behind me. Quickly, quietly, and deadly, be a leaf on the wind as well as a knife in the dark."

"See you on the flip side, Agent Carter and Mr. Stark," Obito said even as Peggy protested, or was about to protest that they weren't close to where they said yet and hurled the three of them out of the plane.

They moved… There weren't words for how they moved.

Steve knew he was fast, faster now than any man alive and stronger to, but when they hit the ground they took it sprinting so that he was panting to keep up, and everything was quiet just like they said, not a sound as they bounded off trees, took out metal Japanese throwing knives and would manage to slash through two tires at a time with only one and set the third into the head of the driver all while Steve could only watch dumbly.

A hand signal alone, a small flicker of fingers, then Obito would be moving one way and Lee another, the pair in perfect harmony as they hijacked a truck and snuck into the gate, Lee then exiting and leaving Steve to drive and Obito to ride shotgun while Lee manipulated the earth, the air, made fire out of nothing and started burning the factory to the ground.

"She'll be back," Obito said, not even looking as guards swarmed around Lee like flies, falling left and right and blades appeared out of nowhere to slit through their necks or else their chests were pierced through by nothing at all.

Steve just nodded followed in Obito to where prisoners were waiting, directed all of them back to the treeline while they went further in to the isolation ward that no one ever came back from, while Obito at every opportunity was throwing knives and breathing fire out from his lips and through his fingertips like it wasn't some kind of a miracle.

And then there was Bucky, strapped to a chair in some kind of a testing lab, and Obito telling him to save the beautiful reunion for later and to move their asses already. More sprinting, jumping over giant crevasses, and then Obito lighting the place up like the fourth of July as soon as they were out.

And there was Lee, waiting for them with a pair of shades on her face and a stopwatch. She lowered the glances, looked over at them with unimpressed green eyes, "Ten minutes, you're late, apprentice. I finished out here ages ago."

Obito through up his hands, in front of all the gaping wounded soldiers as well as Bucky and Steve, "What do you want from me, shishou? I had to carry all these guys… And did you even get the Tesseract!"

"Did you?" she asked.

Obito motioned to Steve, "No, if you'll remember, I was busy with this son of a bitch…"

They kept going, as they always did, like it was any other old day and they hadn't just infiltrated and burned down one of Hydra's top factories in ten minutes, and all Bucky did was look at them, with a sort of blank look on his face, and then said, "Oh Christ, don't tell me it's these guys."

Steve just shook his head, laughing slightly as he watched the two go at it with everybody else, "Bucky, buddy, you don't know the half of it."

Of course, when it came time to put the team together to wipe Hydra off the map, they were the first he asked aside from Bucky.

He didn't bring them to the bar with the others, instead they insisted on bringing him to Hyde Park, sitting on a bench and staring out at the leaves falling on the path. Lee was a woman again, out in public, hair momentarily longer and clad in her old foreign clothing that she hadn't worn in ages. Obito, too, was in his old Konoha uniform, that of a jonin he'd said, their elite soldiers.

Again, Lee and Obito sat shoulder to shoulder, his hand on hers, looking for all the world like some kind of couple, as they looked at the people passing by.

"I told you already, captain, Obito and I will be there until the end of the line," she looked at him, amended her statement, "Until the Tesseract, at least."

"Right, right, but when is that?"

"Soon," Obito said with a shrug, "Probably before 1946 at the latest. Should be enough for shishou and I to partake in at least some of your Nazi punching."

"Not just Nazis," Steve said with a smile, "Hydra punching, better than punching Hitler in the face."

"Of course, of course, there's nothing like taking Octopus Nazi ass," Lee said with a rueful shake of her head.

That probably should have been the end of it, but they kept sitting there, waiting for the rest to say something. Finally, Steve asked, "What you did back there… Schmidt said he and I were supposed to be the best, these superior men, but you were so much…"

"A little chakra goes a long way," Lee interjected, like that would mean something to him. Except it kind of did, he looked at her, then looked at Obito.

"You said, before in the plane, that I had some chakra, didn't you?"

They spared a look for one another, one of those ones that said Steve had just brushed on something very important and very complicated. Finally, it was Lee, who with a sigh explained, "Your Dr. Erskine, I don't know what he called it, he probably had some name for it, I'm sure, but essentially he injected you with concentrated natural chakra. This is… It's risky, very risky, you're lucky to have survived."

She then motioned to him, "It made you stronger, faster, better than everyone around you but… But you weren't born with it, don't have any natural chakra pathways that Obito or I have. Genjutsu, ninjutsu, really anything beyond taijutsu will be hopelessly beyond you."

Obito, as always, was the one to clarify, "We could teach you how to punch, how to run, how to be the fastest and the strongest but you'll never be able to make fire come out of your bare hands or cast illusions. Luckily, captain, you live in a world without shinobi, so it shouldn't make too much of a difference."

"But you can teach me," he insisted, because that was what he had really been getting at.

"Yes, for as long as there's time we can try to teach you," Lee said, nodding slowly, almost hesitantly, while Steve tried to think whether he should be insulted or not over the fact that she used a word like "try".

Later, when she insisted on strapping weights the size of bricks and the weight of elephants to his legs and started routinely waking him up at the crack of dawn to run laps and perform something called katas over and over and over again, he decided that it should have been some kind of a warning sign.

"Do you ever get the feeling that we're kind of, I don't know, superfluous?" this was Jim asking, at yet another Hydra base in Austria, or what used to be a Hydra base as Lee and Obito once again flew in and out record time blew the whole thing to kingdom come with men screaming in every direction.

"No, no we're not superfluous," Steve insisted, "We're just…"

"Enjoying the show," Bucky said, lips curled around a cigarette and shaking his head, "I'll tell you what, Steve, it's a damn good thing you didn't pick a fight with them in that alley. They'd have you standing before Saint Peter and the pearly gates before you could blink."

Probably, it was probably luckier though that Steve hadn't seen a reason to pick a fight with the pair of them. Since, you know, he'd met them when they were finishing his.

And just like that, out of nowhere, like they goddamn teleported, Obito and Lee were crouched next to them, Lee wearing a wild grin, "Oh, I am S-ranked now in their bingo books if I wasn't already. Look on my works ye mighty and despair, I am become death destroyer of worlds once more."

It was kind of terrifying how proud she was of having epithets that ominous sounding.

"I don't think the Octopus Nazis do bingo books, shishou," Obito said, brushing snow off of his uniform and sparing her a rather dry look before glancing over at Steve with a nod, "Even if they do watch American propaganda starring the good old captain here."

"So, did you two have fun?" Dum Dum asked, "Do anything exciting?"

"Oh, nothing more than usual, although they did have a laser canon this time, very cool," Lee said, "Granted, it didn't help them, but it looked cool."

"Right," Obito said, looking pointedly at Steve, "Where's the next one?"

The rest of the Howling Commandos just looked at each other, like they did every time, and Steve was wondering if maybe he should have left those two behind (except, of course, they'd come anyway.)

He wished they could have stayed superfluous. That maybe he could have just let Obito and Lee charge into everything like they always did, could even let them go on as he trained and tried to catch up to them, did catch up to them in comparison to the others.

Mostly, he wished they hadn't ziplined onto the train that Bucky would fall off.

Still, afterward, as he miserably tried and failed to get himself plastered on English beer in the aftermath, it was Lee who said to him, "You'll see him again."

Steve just looked up at her, shaking his head, "He's dead, Lee."

But she just looked at him pointedly, not caring that she was talking about the afterlife or something else, and insisted, "You'll see him again."

The end came quickly after that, in a base in the Alps, with the great Hydra energy source and weapon online. A last-minute kiss from Peggy Carter, fire, desperate fights, and then one last showdown in the cockpit with Lee and Obito right in front of him as always.

"You don't give up, do you?" Schmidt asked, shaking his head, skinless face a bright and burning red.

He motioned towards Steve, apparently not seeing Lee or Obito at all, as everyone always seemed to look past them, "You could have the power of the gods! You could…"

He didn't get a chance to say anything else, a silver blade had run through his windpipe. He staggered back, choking on blood, eyes rolling as he tried to look towards Obito whose black eye had now transformed into a spinning red pinwheel. Then, with a harsh foreign word from Obito's lips, the man was engulfed in black flames.

Schmidt screamed, twisting and turning as he burned, Lee holding back Steve while they watched until he was only dust. Then, as one, Lee and Obito turned towards the strange cube console in the middle of the plane.

Lee walked towards it, eyes blank and lacking any sign of emotion, then closing them and whispering out some half-prayer, she removed a bright blue glowing cube and held it upwards in her bare hands. On touching it she waited, looked up towards the sky, then breathed out with a great sob transforming back into her original body and clothing as she did so.

"So much, so much death, for something so small," she said as she hunched over the cube, she then looked up, over towards Steve and Obito who came to stand with her.

Then, looking at Steve, she said, "I'm afraid that this is goodbye, captain."

"You mean…"

"Time," Obito said, "Is on his side, we can't stay."

Lee nodded towards the controls of the plane, towards a screen reading "Ziel New York City", "Targeting New York City" in English, "You'd best be taking the controls, captain."

Steve moved towards it, looked at the screen as he desperately pushed buttons on the locked screen, anything to cancel the targeting system. Then he looked up in horror at the horizon, at the Arctic, as he realized that he was going to have to land it. He was going to have to land it out here in the water and…

"You didn't save Erskine," he said slowly, remembering, and he still didn't know how he felt about that, still couldn't quite wrap his head around it…

"I also didn't save Namikaze Minato," Lee said, a look of such… pity, in her eyes, pity and regret, but no lack of determination.

"You should radio Peggy," Obito said, nodding towards the console, "You won't get another chance."

Steve desperately fiddled with the dial to the radio, tuning back to Hydra's main command, but he stopped before he could speak into it. He looked one last time at the two strangers that he wanted so badly to call his friends.

Tears in his throat, he asked, "You said… You meet me in the future, right?"

He didn't ask if that meant he was dead or if they had somehow been dead or he would somehow get out of this and somehow lasted another seventy-five years. Instead, he asked, "Were we…"

"I always admired you," Lee said, her smile trembling on her lips, "Ever since I met you, I… There are so few truly good men in this world or any world, captain, and you remind me so much of Minato."

"Shishou," Obito said softly, grabbing her hand in his, brushing his lips against her cheek, the answer finally to that question of how close they really were.

She moved towards Steve, took his hand in hers even while she tucked the cube under one arm, and her face was lit by the strange blue light, making her look like a kind of angel, as she said, "Goodbye, Steve, God willing, the sun will shine on us again."

And then, just like that, they were gone, like they'd never been there in the first place.

(Waking up nearly seventy years in the future though, Steve thought they could have had the decency to give him a few more specifics, but then, that kind of morbid joke was just like them.)

Author's Note: Written for the 2100th review of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" by Spyrite Vesta who asked for a fic starring Lee and Obito. And I decided since a lot of people have asked for some MCU stuff that I'd just go with that as well, because why not.

Thanks for reading, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, Harry Potter, or the MCU