Another story written while I was on winter break in my lovely home of Belize. Now that I'm back to Uni, I've had a bit of time to write this up and hopefully polish it a bit. Tell me what y'all think!

Impossible things

Tony Stark was not a man who believed in superstition. At least, not much. He grew up hearing of the exploits of the great Captain America, and with the subsequent Gamma sized accident known as the Hulk and Bruce Banner, and counting in the now frequent visits of Asgardian Fellows… he supposed his definitions of possible, probable, and unusual were a bit skewed. Superheroes were real. Super Villains were real. Monsters were real. Being thawed out good as new from a solid block of ice after 70 years was real.

But immortality… That still wasn't real.

Was it?

After their initial rocky (mountainous) start, Steve Rogers and Tony Stark became very good, very close friends. They shared drinks together while watching tapes of baseball games that had stunned the leagues. Tony gave Steve free reign through his expansive movie collection so that the out of time hero could finally follow the myriad of quotes and references that passed for conversation in today's world. The two went to games and shows and concerts and museums together.

Lots and lots of museums.

It was in a museum that Tony learned something about Captain America that he was willing to bet no one else alive did.

"I was in love with him,"

Tony jerked around so fast that he felt his neck crack. Steve was standing at parade rest in front of a long picture of WWII soldiers taken during the London Blitz. Walking over, Tony leaned around Steve to see their faces. There, front and centre, was Captain America, looking boldly into the camera—or trying to at least. That sheepish smile threatened to undermine his calm look.

"Who?"

A single finger was pressed to the glass, indicating a tall, broad shouldered man with a handsome square jaw and thick hair. Even in the formal picture the man had a debonair and cocky smile, full of mirth and wicked humor, and a feeling of cock-sure swagger fairly oozed out of the picture from the man's body language. He looked vaguely familiar to Tony.

"The ham looking one?" Stark watched Steve's face soften as he nodded.

"He was very much a ham," he agreed, "Full of confidence, arrogance… Headstrong and reckless. He had this… way of making everyone around him love him, follow him, even as he drove you insane,"

Tony smirked when Steve turned and asked if that reminded him of anyone in particular.

"Quite a few people, actually," Steve punched him lightly in the shoulder.

"'S why…" Steve trailed off.

"It's why what?"

"Why I was so angry with you in the beginning. All I could see was him when you walked into the room. All I could hear was him. All I could think about was him. It was like a flashback, or a terrible dream," Steve turned away, "Can we go back to the Tower? I'm cold."

"Sure thing, Capscicle," Tony clapped a hand to his friend's shoulder and they returned to the Stark (Avenger's) Tower.

A few days later, Tony was still mulling over what Steve had told him, and the fact that Steve's lost love had looked so oddly familiar. Maybe his father had known the man as well and shown Tony a picture? Could Howard have had more pictures that Tony didn't remember?

That must be it.

"Jarvis. All of my father's photos from WWII,"

"ALL of them Sir?"

"Very funny. No, just of the men. We're looking for someone specific,"

It only took a few moments fro Tony to find the first photo with Steve's handsome stranger in it,

"That's the one Jarvis. Find me every photo there is with this man in it,"

"Every one, Sir, very well,"

"And ping Rogers as well when you're done,"

"Very well Sir,"

Tony went off in search of a decent pastrami sandwich while Jarvis worked, figuring he had at least an hour or so before Jarvis had compiled all the pictures and sorted through the duplicates. He flopped onto the couch upstairs to watch the news while he waited.

Three hours had passed before Tony grew impatient.

"Jarvis! What's taking so damn long?" he barked at the ceiling.

"I have amassed forty eight thousand seven hundred and fifty three photos, Sir, and am still gathering," came back the even reply of his AI.

Tony sputtered and choked on his scotch at the number. Soon he was sliding into the lab, yanking up one of his holo screens to look at Jarvis's actual progress—sure that the AI had misunderstood his request and angry at the mistake.

Pictures. So man pictures.

It couldn't be the same man. Some were obviously the man from the museum picture, and several photos were dated the same day as the one in the museum. Others were grainy and hard to distinguish without photo software but still the men in them were passable for Steve's mystery man. There were photos from the London Blitz, from the start of the war, from Warsaw, from the bombing of the Folke Wulf Factory in Berlin. But the next screen he pulled up… These were photos from the very advent of photography. The clothes and the setting and the timestamp all ancient, but that dashing smile still undoubtedly the same. Still more photos had the look of cell phone captures and a date stamp from the past year. No, Jarvis pinged another photo into the ever growing pool and it had today's date stamp on it. It looked like a still from England's CCTV feed.

A bell chimed and Tony turned stunned eyes to the counter.

Sixty nine thousand photographs. And still more video clips were popping up as Jarvis began to realize Tony would be wanting more.

"Jarvis?" Tony thrust the photos across all his available screens, staring in rapt amazement at the sheer number of them. Good god, that one looked like it was taken in Manhattan, "Jarvis, his name?"

"Captain Jack Harkness," Steve breathed from the doorway.

"Mister Rogers is correct Sir. All photographs with an attribution identify the man as one Captain Jack Harkness, with only forty deviations," Jarvis's clipped voice brokered no argument.

Tony clutched at Steve when the bigger man suddenly stumbled, "Whoa there Spangles!"

"Tony, but, how?"

The genius had no answer.