"Don't give up. Don't give up on your story. Don't give up on the people you love. Hope is real. Love is real. It's all worth fighting for."

Jamie Tworkowski

Her world was spinning, her head was spinning. At first, she could feel nothing, not a prickle of her flesh, not the weight of her own body pressing down on her feet. Then a dull throb in the corner of her skull grew more powerful, taking over her whole head. A scream emitted from her lips, her hands shooting up to clutch either side of her head. The throb was a searing hot agony, burning through her, forcing her to her knees. Now she could feel the water soaking through her pants, her knees ached where they hit the ground.

Whimpering in pain, still clutching her head, Ophelia shook to her core with pain. What was this she was feeling? And why?

It felt like death.

Her death.

When she forced herself to look up, she saw Steve crouched right before her, hand on her shoulder. His lips were moving, mouth open, she could see his tongue forming shapes to produce words – but she couldn't hear anything. Blinking a few times, she held her breath and focused on calming herself, trying to locate the pain and force it out. Shutting her eyes tight, she could figure out where it was coming from, what section of her brain. Her neurons were firing like crazy, and she took a deep breath for five seconds, held it for another five, then released it for a count of five. She repeated this process until those nasty little neurons slowed down, stopped sending out that pain, and then she was able to open her eyes.

"Ophelia, can you hear me?" Steve was asking her.

She nodded – forming words seemed impossible, as if breaking her concentration on taming the fire in her skull would make it all come raging back. He placed his hand on her cheek, looking her in the eye, and then he pulled her close and embraced her. The tightness of his body wrapped around hers was shocking, but she felt a tidal wave of goodness wrap around her. It flushed out the pain from her head, it filled her with a swelling of pure happiness. She had no idea where this was coming from, why she was feeling in such strong force.

"Are you..." Steve faltered as he pulled back, as if he was shocked that she was there. "Are you alright?"

"Mm, I think so..." she whispered, realizing that she could breathe again and the pain was only a throb, dull and insidious. Reminding her that it could come back at any time. "W-Where are we?"

"It's a long story," Steve said. "What do you remember?"

"Remember?" she asked, cocking her head to the side.

Steve looked uncertain, he tasted his words before he spoke them. "We haven't seen each other in a long time, do you understand?"

She shook her head; she didn't understand anything.

"Ophelia, it's been eight years."

"Since what?"

"Since... Since I couldn't save you."

She studied his hardened features. He looked tired, he looked as though he had seen too much in his life. And he had. She wondered if her own face looked that way, if her eyes carried the weight of the life she lived in them. What Ophelia didn't know was that her eyes did, only they didn't carry the weight of the trauma and the fighting; her eyes carried only the joy and love she experienced.

"What are you talking about?" she mumbled.

"Do you remember the fight, in Siberia?" he asked. "Me, you and Bucky... Fighting Tony Stark?"

She could see the regret flicker in his eyes, the way the corners of his mouth dipped down after he said the name Tony Stark. Reaching up, Ophelia touched his cheek and focused on him. She could feel his heart beating, slow and calm – it echoed the dull throb in her head. She could feel grief, so much grief. Shutting her eyes, she dug deeper.

Just like being electrocuted, Ophelia felt extreme agony but couldn't pull away. She felt the despair that Steve felt, she felt the despair of the whole universe rip through her. Why was there so much sadness? So much heart break? So much anger? As she clung on, not even aware of the fact she was crying in pain, she found something else underneath all that. She felt overwhelming joy again, and it reduced her to a shaking mess.

"Ophelia, stop," Steve commanded, shaking her shoulders to break her from this.

"I feel... everything." She sounded as though she was begging for it to stop.

Ophelia clutched Steve's wrist and shakily rose to her feet; he stood alongside her, ensuring that she would be able to stand on her own. Looking around, tears stinging in her eyes, Ophelia took a deep breath.

"This place... There is so much death here," she said in a muted tone.

"Ophelia, you have a choice to make, if you're ready," Steve changed the conversation to the direction that he wanted it to go. He placed his hand on her shoulder, the look in his blue eyes telling Ophelia that he could hardly believe that she was there. Physical contact was necessary in order to believe it.

She nodded.

"Eight years ago you got hurt, and we couldn't save you, even though we brought you to the most technologically-advanced country in the world. I found the journals that Bucky wrote, about your time together in Romania. I don't think I have ever known a love like the two of you have. Something happened five years ago, Ophelia, I won't get into detail but half the universe... vanished. But with sacrifice, heavy sacrifice, we got them back."

"I don't understand," Ophelia cut him off. She was regaining her mind, her control of herself, and her voice shook less than it did minutes before. "Is Bucky...?"

"Yes," Steve replied quickly. "Bucky is still alive, although, he was gone for five years."

"That's what I felt," she replied. "When I looked inside your head, I felt your pain when you lost him. When you lost all of them."

Steve realized that it was good Ophelia hadn't been alive for Thanos. There was no way she could have survived such anguish, feeling all that horror, all that hopeless despair. If she had been there, if she hadn't disappeared when Thanos first snapped his fingers, Ophelia would have suffered immeasurable grief. 

Glancing around, Ophelia looked up at the purple-orange sky, as if there were answers there. But there weren't. There would never be answers for what she felt and why she felt it. The thoughts that crossed her mind were that what HYDRA put in her head to stop her from achieving her full enhanced ability was gone after all this time, and she could feel everything and it was agony. Could she go on feeling that much emotion?

Steve's eyes showed his distress. "I think that's my fault."

She cocked her head to the side. "How?"

"The stone that brought you back, it said there would be a price to pay for bringing you back."

She nodded gently. "So, when... when I connect to someone, I feel more than I used to."

"I'm so sorry."

She offered a faint smile, even though her head still hurt. "But I also felt something else, Steve... You're not going back, are you?"

He shook his head. "I came to return a few things, to... to bring you back, and to have the life I missed."

"You've earned it," she told him, making sure that Steve understood that Ophelia accepted his decision.

"You know, that's what Bucky told me too."

The realization that she was alive hit her then like a tonne of bricks. She brought her hand up to her mouth, her body raked with a sob that she couldn't hold back. Her other hand reached out for Steve to hold on to before she fell- the weight of knowing that she was not only alive, but given the chance to live with Bucky again was too much. She crumbled, but Steve caught her and held her against him in a hug.

"I left him," she said through the sobs. "I should have fought harder..."

"No," Steve said. "Nothing could have been done differently... He's waiting, and he doesn't even know it. I couldn't... I couldn't tell him in case..."

"In case you didn't succeed."

"Take care of him for me," Steve said. "He acted like he was okay with me leaving, but I think without us... He doesn't have a lot."

"Why me?" Ophelia asked. "Of all the people you could bring back, why me?"

"Because one of us has to be there with him, to the end of the line." 

Steve then gave Ophelia a tiny white suit, which then blew up to full size when he applied a small device to it. She clambered into it, and Steve explained the GPS. He typed in the coordinates, and they hesitated for a moment.

"This is goodbye, isn't it?" Ophelia asked.

"I guess so," he said, holding back tears. "I've said a lot of those today."

"Go live your life, Steve. And remember, Bucky and I send our love."

Steve kissed her forehead. "Goodbye, Ophelia."

"Goodbye, Steve."