Date: 1945–2011
Location: Somewhere beneath the Arctic Ocean
For seventy years, the ocean slept above him.
The world moved on — wars ended, empires fell, cities rose like prayers of metal and light. But beneath the crushing quiet of the Arctic, Captain Steven Rogers did not die. His heart slowed to a whisper. His body remained unchanged, suspended between seconds.
Yet his mind—his dream—did not fade.
And in that endless sleep, Dream came to him.
The Dreaming around Steve was strange, incomplete. There were no clear skies or cities, no defined edge to the world — only light frozen in water, shimmering like a thought trapped in time. He stood there in his uniform, frost glittering across the fabric, eyes lifted toward a sun that never moved.
Dream appeared beside him, his cloak flowing like ink through water.
"You endure even here," Dream said quietly. "Most mortals who fall into such stillness are reclaimed by me long before their bodies are found."
Steve turned, startled, but not afraid. "I've seen your face before," he said slowly. "Back when I was still fighting. In dreams."
Dream inclined his head. "You dreamed of peace. Of a dance left unfinished."
A ghost of a smile touched Steve's lips. "I still do."
They stood in silence for a long time. The water above them rippled, slow as memory.
"Is this… heaven?" Steve asked finally. "Or something else?"
"It is the Dreaming," Dream answered. "Neither life nor death. A place between breaths, between thoughts. You linger here because your story has not yet reached its end."
Steve studied him. "So this isn't the afterlife?"
"No," Dream said. "Though she—" he smiled faintly at the word "—would be glad to meet you when the time comes."
"She?"
"Death," Dream said simply. "My beloved sister. And more, perhaps, than that."
Something softened in Steve's expression. "You speak of her with kindness."
Dream's eyes glimmered faintly, a thousand stars reflected in his gaze. "She is kindness itself. And you will find no fear in her when your time arrives."
Steve nodded slowly, as though accepting an old truth.
⸻
The dream shifted. They now stood in a dance hall — the one Steve had imagined countless times before. Music drifted faintly through the air, the same song that played the day he promised Peggy a dance. But the room was empty, chairs turned over, time forgotten.
Dream looked around. "This place exists because you willed it to. A fragment of what might have been."
"I come here sometimes," Steve said softly. "Or maybe it comes to me. I don't know."
"You come here because this moment is unfinished. You dream it to remember hope."
Steve chuckled under his breath. "Guess I'm stubborn like that."
"You are," Dream said. "And that stubbornness will bring you back to the waking world."
Steve blinked. "Back? I don't think that's possible."
Dream smiled faintly — a subtle curve of knowing lips. "Many things that are not possible still happen, Captain Rogers. You are proof of that."
⸻
They sat together on the steps of the dance floor. Time flowed strangely here — each moment stretching, dissolving, reforming.
Steve stared down at his hands. "You said I haven't reached the end of my story. Does that mean… there's still something I have to do?"
"Yes," Dream said. "The world will wake you when it needs you again. You will be the echo of an older age reborn into a modern one — a dream of what humanity was, and what it might still become."
Steve's brow furrowed. "And what if I can't live up to that dream? What if I don't fit in that new world?"
Dream turned to him, eyes infinite. "Then you will do what you have always done. You will try."
There was power in that word — try. A mortal word, small but vast in its consequence.
Steve let out a slow breath. "You sound like someone who's seen this all before."
"I have seen every age, Captain," Dream said. "Empires, heroes, tragedies, resurrections. Mortals dream the same dreams again and again. But once in a great while, someone like you gives that dream shape. You make the impossible seem inevitable."
Steve looked away, uncomfortable with the praise. "I'm no symbol."
Dream smiled faintly. "You are precisely that. But symbols, too, are human. They break. They heal. They hope."
⸻
The air around them dimmed, and faint cracks of light appeared above — the first signs of the ice shifting, the outside world stirring.
Dream rose, his cloak rippling like storm clouds.
"It is nearly time," he said. "The world is calling you home."
Steve stood as well, uncertain. "Will I remember this? Any of this?"
"Perhaps not," Dream said. "But the feeling will remain — a certainty you cannot name, a calm before waking. You will feel as though you've been watched over, and in truth, you have."
Steve looked at him with quiet gratitude. "Thank you. For keeping me company."
Dream inclined his head. "The dream of the soldier was worth watching."
He turned to leave, his form already dissolving into shadow and starlight.
"Hey," Steve called out. "You never told me your name."
Dream paused, glancing over his shoulder. "Mortals have given me many. In your world, I have been called Morpheus, the Sandman, and more recently…" He smiled softly, remembering. "The Lord of Every Nothing."
Steve chuckled. "You got a lot of names for one guy."
"Names are dreams too," Dream said. "And dreams change."
Steve nodded once. "Then… till we meet again, Lord of Every Nothing."
Dream's eyes warmed — the faintest hint of affection. "Till then, Captain Rogers."
The light broke through the ceiling of the dream, and the ice began to crack.
Water roared, time rushed forward, and the Dreaming receded like a tide.
When Steve finally woke decades later, gasping in a sterile white room beneath Manhattan, he couldn't recall the dream. But in his heart, he felt calm — as though someone had promised him that everything would be all right.
And far away, in a place where time meant nothing, Dream smiled.