Rikki Barnes

Ever since Rikki woke up on this new Earth, she's pretty much been winging it. It's the only thing she can do. She has nowhere to live, her dad never existed, it's almost impossible to get ahold of the Avengers and she's not sure she could handle talking to a Steve who doesn't know her even if she could, and everything's just - it's a lot. She's living day-to-day and hour-to-hour and trying not to think too hard about how screwed up everything is because if she does, she's pretty sure her already precarious house of cards goes tumbling down.

So.

No money, no place to stay. She's spent a few nights in shelters, but she's since found an empty, broken-down building that's... probably safe to be in that she's using as a temporary home. Food is a problem. She has an under-the-table arrangement washing dishes every now and then for an independently-owned restaurant and gets some money and sometimes rejected food out of the deal, and it's something but it's not enough, even with the help of soup kitchens.

Maybe she shouldn't be going out and fighting criminals right now - she's not exactly in top shape - but she does anyway because she needs it, needs to be doing something normal. And it's not the same because she's on her own with no one to back her up, but it's still familiar and she's doing good, and that's enough.

Tonight, though - tonight was a bad idea. She hears a scream and greets a mugger with a kick to the face, which is a great start, but there's more guys than she expected and she's not punching with the strength she's used to. She takes a frankly embarrassing hit to the face that she totally should have dodged, and suddenly she's kind of grateful that Steve's not around to see that because wow, embarrassing. She's going to need to end this fight as quickly as possible before she gets too burnt out and starts making way more dangerous mistakes.

It doesn't take her too long to find a place to hole up. She's SHIELD-trained, knows a few things about how to survive if she has to drop off the radar until it's safe to stick her head out. Except that there is no radar here, no one to know who she is. She just has to survive.

One of the first things she does is look up her family.

They don't exist.

There was a Barnes family, of course. Even a Bucky Barnes who served with Steve Rogers and the Howling COmmandos back in World War II. But there's no record of her grandfather, and her grandmother married someone else, had a different family. About that time, she realizes she's started crying in the middle of a public library, and she has to gather up her stuff quick and leave before someone starts asking questions.

There's only one other man Rikki really ever considered family. In this world, Steve Rogers is still pretty recently out of the ice. He has a normal apartment instead of living at the Avengers Tower, thank god, because she doesn't know how she'd gain access to the actual living quarters in a world where she doesn't belong there. It doesn't even take much hacking to get his address.

Tailing him is familiar, in a weird way. She'd done it before, at home, back when it was a challenge, a game. If she could follow him without being noticed, they'd go bowling or get ice cream at her favorite place or something. It was training, not for real. Here... here it's so much easier, because he doesn't even know her. After the first few days to get an idea of his routine, she scales back from actually tailing to just happening to be places he likes to go. Maybe it's creepy, stalking Steve Rogers, but the thing is she doesn't know what else to do. She literally has nothing else on this world. If she doesn't have this to focus on...

Rikki plans out a meeting. In the Bucky uniform, of course, because no way was she meeting Steve the way she looked now, like some desperate, lonely homeless teenager. She gets a radio, keeps an ear out on police frequencies, but Cap here doesn't do that much fighting on the streets. So she just... keeps going for about a month. Takes on odd jobs for shitty pay so she can eat and have a place to sleep with a shower at least a few times a week. Does her best to keep up her training, but trying to keep up the activity levels of a superhero on a homeless teen's diet doesn't work too well. She hasn't lost much muscle mass yet, but her endurance is definitely taking a hit.

Actually finally running into him is a total accident, not at all what she planned. There's a creep that's been around her and some other teens she recognizes from the food kitchen she sometimes uses, makes her feel gross and defensive. She'd planned to check him out when in uniform, maybe have a chat with him about how it's not appropriate to prey on kids. But he makes the first move when she's in regular clothes, so that's how she has to take him on. Guy has size and strength on her, but she's clearly the only one of them who's been trained. Not too long ago, she'd have him flat on his back in a couple minutes, but she's exhausted and hungry and doesn't have her shield on her, so she keeps making stupid mistakes.

When she gets an opening, she runs, leading him to a more public area (more likelihood of stumbling across anyone else, more likely someone will call the police and get this slimeball off her hands). Unconsciously, though, she heads to the nearest familiar area, which happens to be the route Steve sometimes runs at night when he's not sleeping.