22

A/N: I wrote this a while back and I was debating posting it, I haven't really been active on here so here's a Steve x Reader Soulmate AU :) Please leave feedback.

22

That's the number Steve Rogers is born with etched on his wrist. He grows up convinced that it's his favorite number because that's how old his soulmate will be when he meets her. He dreams about her almost every night, he wonders how she'll look, will she be tall or short? What color skin or hair will she have? and most of all he wonders if she's happy. If she's not though, he can't wait to meet her and make her the happiest person on Earth.

He's always envisioned her as energetic and fun, making everyone around her laugh. He may be young, but he talks about his soulmate more than anyone else does. Steve always asks his mother about soulmates, how he'll know when he finds her, how will it feel? No matter how many times he asks, his mother always smiles, sits down, takes his little hand in hers and answers him.

"When I found your father," she said to him one day, "I knew he was the one right away, and I also felt something on my wrist where my number was, that moment, my number changed from twenty-one to nineteen, that's how old I was when I met him," she said showing him the numbers on her wrist.

Little Steve would lay in his bed at night, long after everyone had gone to sleep, tracing the numbers on his wrist with his fingers, feeling the slight raise of the skin, as he closed his eyes, trying to envision what she would be like, no matter how much he tries, he never gets close to how perfect he thinks she'll be.

The number fascinates Steve, the older he gets the more he thinks about her, when he's laying in bed sick, yet again, wanting nothing more than someone to hold him and tell him everything is going to be alright, it's her he's thinking about. When his mom passes, Bucky's there for him, be he still feels alone, and he's still thinking about her.

Stebe wonders if she'll like him, small, skinny Steve with a list of sickness longer than the Nile. He hopes she will, despite all his flaws. He thinks of her as a kind and accepting person.

As time passes Steve feels himself losing hope, feeling like he has no purpose, wasting time and oxygen just waiting around for his soulmate, so he enlists in the army, all five foot four and ninety-five pounds of himself, and he's rejected for the fifth time in a row. He has the heart, the determination, just not the muscle.

Bucky sets him up on dates with women who are twenty-two, hoping that one lucky lady could claim his best friend, soothing his aching heart and hopefully stop him from enlisting. Steve appreciates the effort, but it doesn't really help, because none of the women even acknowledge him, and none of them are what he pictures her to be.

At the Stark Exposition, he tries one more time. He can't stand the thought of not being able to go to war when so many other men are laying down their lives and proving their worth every single day. Even his best friend Bucky, the only other person in his life who truly cares about him is being shipped off the next day. What's he supposed to do? Sit around waiting for something amazing to happen? Deep down in his gut Steve feels it, he knows that being part of the army is something he must do for himself, and somehow or the other, he has a feeling that it'll bring him closer to her.

He knows that Bucky is upset, but it's something he has to do, he sees no other way. Bucky calls him out on it saying, "Yeah because you've got nothin' to prove," and it stings like a bitch because Steve knows he has a point. But he feels he has everything to prove, she still goes through with it and when he's offered a way in by a doctor he doesn't think twice about accepting the offer and the next day he's off to training.

Steve is somewhat disappointed when he finds out that Peggy Carter is twenty-two but she isn't his soulmate because she's almost what he imagined his soulmate to be, at least her personality, he still hasn't gotten the looks down quite yet. She's kind, fierce, brave, she stands straighter than any of the other soldiers at the camp, she's one of the only people who sees him as human, not just someone to push aside and ignore.

After a week at the camp, Steve is given the opportunity to be the world's first super soldier. He now has superhuman strength, speed, his metabolism burns four times faster than the average human and his cells are in a constant cycle of regeneration meaning he heals faster too and he's turned around and used as a puppet to promote the war. A part of him wonders if this is a good thing, he travels all around America, meeting different people every day, He hopes and prays that she'll be there at one of his shows, at least then he'll know who she is.

But he's always disappointed when he goes home and finds that his number is still twenty-two, he's twenty-five now, so that's what it would be is he had met her. It's a vicious cycle, waiting, hoping, getting disappointed. He's thankful that the number is still there tough. His mother had explained to him after his father died in the war, that her number had faded completely.

A few months later he's shipped off to Europe, to bring some motivation to the troops. The response from the crowd isn't what he's used to, and it only drags him down further. Once again, he's feeling like he has no purpose, even though he knows he does have one. But what is his purpose? Dancing around in tights?

Peggy happens to reveal some information about Bucky's division which had been taken hostage by HYDRA. He goes out to lo0ok for them, and all the while he's thinking of his soulmate, hoping she'll understand if he doesn't make it back out in one piece, or at all, but he has to save his best friend.

He manages to get Bucky back alive, along with almost four hundred others and he's deemed a hero. Things take a turn for the better, he's being sent out on missions left and right and he can't help the occasional sense of pride that sweeps over him. This is what he's meant for, protecting people, and it's what he intends to do until his last breath.

An entire year passes and Steve and the Howling Commandos plough through HYDRA's forces, stopping them at every turn. He's hardly thought of her the whole year, his soulmate, because he's distracted and needed on the battlefield. If he can manage to keep himself alive though, finding her is still in his plans, he hopes he can.

Things are going well and they're getting closer to stopping HYDRA.

Then Bucky falls off a train, and every positive thought Steve has ever had flees his mind. He's writing a condolence letter to the soulmate that Bucky will never meet and he distracts himself by working harder, all thoughts of ever finding his soulmate are shoved in the back of his mind. Steve doesn't want anything to do with love, his main mission was finding and stopping HYDRA.

Then he kisses Peggy and he wants to laugh afterwards. He doesn't know what he expected. He felt nothing.

Before he knows it, he's face to face with death. He's in Valkyrie, the nose of the plane he trying and failing to control headed straight down. There's only one person on his mind. Her.

Peggy's begging him to give her his coordinates, but it's no question. Him versus millions. She's the last person he talks to, but as he's headed toward his imminent death, there's only one thing he can think of, the one he'll never meet, he wonders if anyone will write her a condolence letter like he did for Bucky.

He takes one last look at his wrist, hoping she'll understand his reasoning, and just before he goes down he says two words that he somehow hopes she'll hear. A single tear slipping out of his eye.

"I'm sorry,"

Steve goes under on that day, and it's a tragedy to the world, losing Captain America. IN the seventy years that pass, things change, so much happens. The war is won, only to be followed by an even longer one. The world evolves, people come and go.

But there's one very important event that Steve misses though, and that is the birth of a very ambitious, bright eyes girl, named Y/N, the number "94" etched onto her wrist.