"You're telling me the man from the box has awakened and is currently downstairs?" Gemini asked, her voice carrying the particular tone of someone who'd just been presented with an unexpectedly interesting puzzle.
Ben nodded with the earnest precision of someone still learning the rhythms of magical customer service. "Yes, proprietor. Should I... send him away?"
Gemini waved a dismissive hand while reaching for her phone. "Leave this to me. Let him wait—I need to make a call first."
Ben's sharp eyes caught the contact name as Gemini scrolled through her phone: "Fake Eye Baldy." He bit back a laugh and retreated downstairs, wondering what kind of relationship his new employer had with someone bearing such an irreverent nickname.
The call connected on the second ring.
"Proprietor," Fury's voice carried its usual measured caution. "Unusual time for you to call. What's the situation?"
Gemini set the phone on speaker and leaned back in her chair with predatory satisfaction. "Your sleeping beauty has awakened, I see."
A pause that spoke volumes. "Yes. He's conscious. And he's with you?"
"Isn't he supposed to be your asset?" Gemini's tone could have cut glass. "Having trouble with authority, is he?"
The silence stretched longer this time. Fury had faced down alien invasions and government conspiracies, but Gemini Black had a talent for finding exactly the right nerve to press.
"Rogers is a free citizen," Fury said finally. "A retired soldier. I can't exactly order him around like an active agent."
Gemini laughed, the sound bright and utterly without mercy. "How unfortunate for you. Well, I suppose I'll just turn him away then—"
"Wait." The word came out sharper than Fury had intended. He knew Gemini's reputation for following through on threats, and losing Steve Rogers to wounded pride would be a strategic disaster. "Look, the man's been frozen for seventy years. He woke up to a world where everyone he knew is dead, where technology has advanced beyond his comprehension, where the very country he fought for has changed beyond recognition. He's... struggling."
"And you want me to fix him," Gemini said, her voice deceptively mild. "For free, I assume?"
"Your rates are—"
"My rates are exactly what they need to be," Gemini cut him off. "If you can't afford quality service, there are plenty of discount therapists in the phone book."
The line went dead. Fury stared at his phone in disbelief as the call-ended tone mocked him. When he tried to call back, he discovered he'd been blocked entirely.
Gemini set her phone aside with satisfaction. The audacity of some people, expecting premium magical intervention at bargain prices. Still, the Captain America case intrigued her—not because of Fury's ham-fisted recruitment attempt, but because of the psychological complexity involved.
A man out of time, carrying the weight of a war that had ended before most people alive were born. The trauma of displacement, survivor's guilt, and the crushing responsibility of living up to a legend that had grown in his absence. It was exactly the kind of challenge that made her work worthwhile.
And if Rogers couldn't pay... well, she'd been meaning to hire security for the shop.
"Bring our guest upstairs," she murmured to the empty air. A piece of parchment materialized, words flowing across its surface in elegant script before it folded itself into a paper airplane and sailed toward the door.
Minutes later, Ben escorted their visitor into the reception room. Steve Rogers moved with the controlled grace of someone trained for combat but uncertain of his current environment. He settled into the offered chair with the careful posture of a man who'd learned that furniture in the twenty-first century might be more fragile than it appeared.
The room itself seemed to ease some of his tension. Unlike the glass-and-steel modernity of the world outside, this space felt timeless—warm wood, soft fabrics, and the kind of comfortable elegance that transcended any particular era.
"Good afternoon, Captain Rogers," Gemini said as she emerged from the balcony, her voice carrying genuine warmth. "I'm Gemini Black, proprietor of this establishment. This is the first time I've seen you conscious."
Steve rose immediately, decades of ingrained courtesy overriding his confusion. But when he looked down at the young woman before him—barely reaching his chest, with features that belonged in a high school yearbook—the prepared words died in his throat.
"Are you..." he began, then stopped, his face flushing with embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but shouldn't you be in school?"
Gemini stumbled slightly, caught off guard by the sheer earnestness of the question. Her expression darkened like storm clouds gathering, but before she could unleash what promised to be a withering response, Steve was already backpedaling.
"That came out wrong," he said, his hands moving in helpless gestures. "I'm not good at this—talking to people, I mean. It's just... you look so young, and I was expecting..." He gestured vaguely, as if trying to pluck the right words from the air. "I brought you something," he added desperately, lifting a elegantly wrapped gift box before immediately second-guessing himself. "Though I suppose it might not be appropriate, given... I mean, if you're not..."
He trailed off, looking like a man who wanted nothing more than to disappear into the upholstery.
Gemini watched this display of social catastrophe with growing amusement. The legendary Captain America, reduced to stammering confusion by basic conversation. It was almost endearing.
"Please, sit," she said, her anger evaporating into laughter. "I understand what you meant. And for the record, I'm older than I look."
Steve sank back into his chair with visible relief, though he couldn't quite meet her eyes. The gift box remained clutched in his hands like a shield.
"Your medical treatment has already been paid for," Gemini continued as Coby appeared with tea service. "There's no debt to settle."
"I know," Steve said, finally finding his voice again. "But I wanted to thank you personally. And they told me—Director Fury told me—that you might be able to help with... other things."
Gemini drew her wand with fluid precision, the movement so natural it seemed like breathing. "Don't move. I need to examine you properly."
Steve went very still, every instinct screaming danger at the sight of what his mind categorized as a weapon. But something about Gemini's manner—professional, confident, utterly without malice—kept him from reacting.
Magic flowed from the wand in streams of colored light, wrapping around Steve like luminous silk. Gemini studied the display with the focused intensity of a master diagnostician, her eyes tracking patterns invisible to anyone else.
"Physically, you're perfect," she announced, lowering the wand. "Enhanced metabolism, accelerated healing, optimal muscle development. The Super Soldier Serum did its work well. But that's not why you're here, is it?"
Steve shook his head slowly. "I feel like I closed my eyes for a moment and woke up in a different world. Everyone I knew is gone. Everything I understood has changed. I can't..." He paused, searching for words. "I can't find my place in any of it."
Gemini leaned back in her chair, fingers steepled in thought. "Temporal displacement trauma, complicated by survivor's guilt and identity dissociation. It's treatable, but not through conventional means."
"What do you mean?"
"I have a potion," Gemini said, her voice taking on the careful neutrality of someone explaining a dangerous procedure. "It would allow you to experience the seventy years you missed—not as history lessons or documentary footage, but as lived experience. You'd dream your way through the decades, seeing how the world changed, understanding the context of where you are now."
Steve leaned forward, hope flickering in his eyes. "That sounds..."
"Potentially fatal," Gemini finished. "Dreams have their own reality, Captain. In the potion's influence, you'd live through those years as if they were real. Every joy, every sorrow, every loss and triumph. Many people find such dreams so compelling that they choose never to wake up. They grow old and die in their perfect imagined lives, and their bodies follow suit."
The hope in Steve's expression didn't dim. If anything, it seemed to solidify into something harder, more determined.
"I'd like to try," he said quietly.
"You could die," Gemini repeated, studying his face. "Not metaphorically. Actually die. Are you prepared for that risk?"
Steve's smile was sad but genuine. "Miss Black, I was supposed to die in 1945, crashing a plane into the Arctic. Everything since then has been borrowed time. If this is how I spend it... well, at least I'll have tried to find my way home."
Gemini felt something twist in her chest—an emotion she couldn't quite name. Here was a man so lost, so desperate to belong somewhere, that he'd gamble his life for the chance to understand his place in the world.
"Very well," she said, summoning a contract with a gesture. "But we do this properly. If you survive the treatment, you'll owe me a considerable debt. If you can't pay in currency, you'll work it off in service. Are those terms acceptable?"
Steve read through the contract with the careful attention of someone who'd learned not to sign anything blindly. "How much are we talking about?"
"More than a soldier's pension would cover," Gemini admitted. "But I'm not unreasonable. Security work, mostly. The shop could use someone with your... qualifications."
Steve looked up from the contract, and for the first time since entering the room, his smile was genuine. "You're offering me a job?"
"I'm offering you a purpose," Gemini corrected. "The job is just how you'll pay for the privilege of finding yourself again."
Steve signed without hesitation.
~~~~❃❃~~~~~~~~❃❃~~~~
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