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Chapter Text

1934

Steve looked pretty funny opening and shutting his mouth with his eyes bugged out like that, staring at the tickets in his hands.  He wasn’t finding any words, so eventually Bucky snickered and said, “Happy sixteenth, punk.”

Steve grinned, acknowledging he looked ridiculous, then said hesitantly, “Buck, this is an amazing present, but it musta cost –”

Bucky rolled his eyes.  Steve was so predictable.  “Quit bumpin’ your gums and think about where I’ve been workin’ the past month.”

“Ohhhhhh.”  Then, shyly, “Did you get that job just so –”

“Pssh.  I got it ’cause it paid.”  He cleared his throat.  “Later I asked how much work I’d need to do to earn those.”  He shrugged.  “Boss knew I was a hard worker by then and they had a lotta stuff to move, so he let me do extra.”

Steve’s smile lit up his entire face.  Just for this, Bucky wished he could draw like Steve, or afford a camera, but he’d have to content himself with memorizing.  His eyes fell to the curve of Steve’s mouth, which made Steve smile even more.  “Don’t blow your wig,” he said gruffly.  “We gotta make tracks if we wanna be first in line to stare at melting clocks.”

1945 -

At least Steve didn’t jump after him. He held to that as everything else was melted away. At least Steve – at least Steve –

Unknown

He came to slowly, groggy and cold.  Voices murmuring about temperature, blood pressure, pupil dilation; pinpricks all along his body, whether sleepy flesh waking or actual needles; bright lights in his eyes; a heavy weight hanging inert and uncomfortable from his left shoulder: he didn’t like any of it.  I never do floated through his mind.  Odd: he didn’t remember this happening before.  He didn’t remember much of anything.  It didn’t bother him.  It oughta.

He squinted at a figure standing near his feet, reading aloud from a battered red book with a black star on the cover.  “Confirm step 25 precautions: maintain low-level sedation for Asset and safe distance for technicians while activating arm.”

“Sedative, confirm,” said another voice.  He couldn’t see the speaker – Eyes front.  Show nothing.

Someone else had hated waking up cold too.  Someone used to crawl in with him – he could almost feel a slender, bony body pressed tight – he tried to wrap his arms around it.  Something tugged at his wrist.

“Distance, too bloody right,” said a third, softly but with great conviction.  A woman with that accent meant something, didn’t it?  Someone?

“Activate arm,” said Book, and electric pain shot through his shoulder.  He heard himself making a high whining noise and felt his chest rapidly expanding and contracting as he panted.  Eventually the pain decreased.  The weight on his shoulder remained uncomfortable, but was no longer inert.

“Step 26a,” said Book.  “Release arm restraints.  26b, resume distance and maintain firing lines.  26c, discontinue sedation.”

Someone was doing something at his wrists.  He could feel it much more clearly on his right.  It was the woman again, muttering.  “Bloody stupid discontinuing restraints and sedation before reading the words, are you absolutely certain you’ve not mucked it all up?”

“Full alertness is recommended prior to triggering,” said Book coldly.

“I thought it was supposed to work no matter –”

“These steps have been refined over decades, Agent.  By all means, take it upon yourself to modify them, but we’ll be leaving you alone in here to experiment.  Now if you’re finished, clear the firing lines.”

No more pressure on his wrists.  The woman stepped back with alacrity.

He waited.  Slowly, feeling came back.  He raised his hands.  The left felt oddly heavy and slow.  He stared.  One normal hand.  One gleaming silver.  It was a shock. It always is. He flexed his fingers, and all ten responded.  The left was rapidly becoming as quickly responsive as the right, though it didn’t feel the same.  It never does.  Frustrated by thoughts he didn’t understand, he clenched the silver hand into a fist.

“You see, Agent?  The fist tells us when it’s time.  Step 27 –”  Words marched into his head and trampled everything.

* * *

He was sitting at a table.  Papers were put in front of him.  “Your mission,” said the man across from him.  His handler.  He tests. He hurts.

The target’s photo showed an elegant, dignified older woman in professional clothing, curled dark hair going to steel-gray, brilliant red lipstick, a look in her eye that gave him the faintest urge to sit up straight.  He stared at the picture.  He didn’t move.

“Margaret Carter,” said the man.  “Director of SHIELD. It would give too much away if we got through her security at work.  Kill her at home.”

He considered.  “What collaterals?”

A shrug.  “Husband and children.  Immaterial.”

“Information.”

Handler pursed his mouth dismissively, but his eyes narrowed.  “Second page.”

Scrawled notes updated sparse typewritten text: Husband: Gabriel Jones Grant S. Carter.  Children: Gabriel Steven Jones; Jacqueline Marian Jones.  Duena Carter.  Aleksandra Carter.  Sannath Carter.  Dates of death, remarriage and births suggested it was at least the mid-1970s. (Thirty years since - since what?) The elder two children probably no longer lived in the family home.  There were no pictures.

“Husband: ex-military? Other relevant skills?”

“Some kind of artist or photographer, mostly home with the kids.  What’s he gonna do, shield her with a canvas?  Throw a film-roll at you?”

He was drawn back to the picture.  Without consulting him, his mouth said, “She musta been a looker when she was younger.”  He blinked, but even through his surprise he noticed Handler’s stillness: a hunter scenting expected prey.

“I suppose,” said Handler, too carefully neutral.  “Is that relevant?”

Apparently he had a secret. He’d better keep it, at least until he figured out what it was.  He kept his shrug minimal and his eyes down.  “Guessing you’ve sent me after dames before.  Did their looks protect ’em then?”  Slight flinch at ‘dames.’ Right pinky twitched at ‘protect.’  He turned pages, letting his eyes run over maps, schedules, extraction points and backups.  He kept himself from looking at the picture again, but found instead he’d turned back to the family names.  Why was he expecting Gabe and Jacques instead of Gabriel and Jacqueline?  Why did he feel he knew Grant’s middle name and understood Gabriel’s? Thirty years since what?

He was staring too long.  He turned back to the maps again, then closed the folder and slid it over to Handler.

“Soldat?” said Handler evenly.

A Russian word.  Aleksandra: Russian.  Duena: Spanish.  Sannath: Hindi.  (Children’s voices cried out: Кто ты? ¡Vete, pendejo! यह मेरा है! He shook his head to clear it.) All meant protection.  Gabriel Steven, too. The cold air of the room chilled his skin the way it used to chill –

“Soldat?” said Handler again, with the faintest shading of threat.  At the rear of the room, two masked agents in separate corners leveled their guns at him.  Handler gestured minutely and the guns were lowered partway.

“Ready to comply.”  He tried to keep his voice flat but knew by the tiny narrowing of Handler’s eyes that he’d failed.

Handler sat back in his chair, tapping the folder gently, then extended it to an agent near the door.  “Return this to lockdown,” he said, not looking away, “and notify the techs to prep for cryo after full wipe.  They can scrub the mission or use an alternative, I don’t care, but the Asset is compromised.  Schedule a review of conditioning procedures to be implemented prior to the Asset’s next use.”

“The Secretary was very insistent, Mr. Pier-”

Handler didn’t even turn very far away from him, but the junior agent fell suddenly silent.  “You can tell the Secretary,” said Handler very, very calmly, “that I do not manage the Asset for his personal benefit, and that when I am Secretary, the Asset will still be available.  If he mistrusts my handling of the Asset for its intended purpose, he is welcome to discuss that with me at his convenience.  Then inform the Secretary that you used a name in front of an Asset you knew to be compromised and that I will trust him to deal with that.”

The junior agent paled and had to swallow several times before he could speak.  “Yes, sir,” he finally managed, then fled the room.

Handler returned full attention to him.  “In the meantime, let's refresh your memory –”  The words came, and he had no protection against them.

Early 2018

“That’s enough for today.  Thank you, Sergeant Barnes.   We’ll resume at 0800 tomorrow.”  Papers were shuffled, video and audio recorders were shut down – the obvious ones, anyway, he wasn’t stupid – and he closed his eyes, massaging his temples, while everyone else filed out.

Nearly everyone.  He didn’t need to open his eyes to know Natasha was still there.  Possibly he shouldn’t find it so restful to sit silently with the friend most likely to kill him at need.

“Dinner?” he said eventually.

“You asking for company?”

“You’ll keep me from murdering anyone who gets between me and food.”  She never made him feel like the self-directed darkness of his humor was cause for grief.  Steve could handle gallows humor just fine – they’d been soldiers after all – but when Bucky turned it on himself, Steve’s mouth would tighten and his eyes go dark before he forced a smile.  Natasha just snorted and stood, patting the jacket pocket that held the attention-bait gun.  It was reassuring to know that if he turned out not to have been joking, she would too.

“Eat with the Dora Milaje?  Okoye and Ayo like you for some reason and they won't let you murder them.”

“Rather get outta here.  Think anyone would blow a gasket if you took me out on the town?”

“Probably.  Let’s go.”

He waited until a gaggle of children went shrieking past to murmur in Russian, “Need to talk.  Privately.”  She nodded and said nothing further.  Dinner was delicious.

* * *

She showed up at his door the next Saturday morning carrying a bag: sweats, underwear, T-shirt and shoes, his size and hers, all obnoxiously fluorescent.  “So security understands we’re out for a run, not running running,” she said blandly.

“Yeah, ’cause I’m really anxious to leave the one place trying to help me.”

She shrugged.  “Show of good faith.”  She turned each item inside out to show him there were no trackers or microphones, then stripped efficiently and put the new clothes on.  He was touched by her effort to reassure him, but when she held a knife up to one of the shoes inquisitively, he rolled his eyes.  If he was wrong to trust her, there was no point putting his attention where she led it.  He stripped sardonically for her, and she slung a throw-pillow at his head.  “Not worried about you hiding a gun up your ass, Barnes.”

“Oh, nuts, I gotta amend the debrief, didn’t tell ’em about the time I –”

“No.”  Her lips twitched, though, so it counted.  “Put your clothes on.”

“Where are we running?”

“Out to check on your goat friends, then downtown for food.”  One quiet and isolated path, one crowded and noisy: a choice of privacies.

He waited until they were halfway to the goats’ pasturage.  “I need information,” he murmured as they climbed a hill.

“On?”

“Margaret Carter’s family.  Uh – Peggy.”  Why had he said Margaret?  He never called her that.

“Her niece was in SHIELD til it fell, then CIA.  Disappeared after Steve found you in Bucharest. Sharon –”

“No.  Immediate.  Husband and children.  Very, very quietly.”

He didn’t want to respond to her thoughtful eyebrow.  Eventually she elbowed him.  “What gives?”

He kicked a rock to watch it skitter.  “I don’t know.  But it’s important.”

They finished climbing the hill before she spoke again.  “Steve knows you’re not who you used to be.”

He scowled.  “Yeah, he’s been painfully careful about not crowding me.”

“You’ll have to make the first move.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.  I can handle ’im.  Mister Self-Sacrifice only likes to think he’s changed any since ’36.”

“Ten inches, a hundred forty-five pounds of muscle and nigh-invulnerability don’t count?”

“Nah.”

She nodded.  “I’ll see what I can find out.”

He grinned.  “Don’tcha wanna know what happened in ’36?”

“There are some details, Barnes, that no debrief needs to include.”

* * *

He didn’t see her again until she showed up at his door two weeks later.  She looked immediately to the pile of fluorescent clothing on the floor.  “Tell me you washed those.”

“Why? Just gonna run in ’em again.”  He tossed them to her, rewarded by her narrowed eyes and the kindhearted way she didn’t shoot him once the clothes turned out to be clean.  He said nothing about the folded papers she let him see her tuck into her waistband.

Up on the hill again, she pulled them out.  “From the SHIELD/HYDRA web dump,” she offered.  “Figured you didn’t want any electronic trail.”

He unfolded them.  Target ID: Margaret Carter. An elegant, dignified older Peggy, a look in her eye that made him want to stand up straight.  He stared at the picture.  He stood up straight.  He flipped through the rest of the pages.  “Mission brief. For me?  I don’t remember trying to kill Peggy ...”

“HYDRA sent people after her, but never you.  This file was put together after other attempts failed.  Its access dates cover a period when you were removed from cryo but returned after a week, with no recorded missions, after the longest full wipe they ever documented.  The next time you were thawed, they’d revamped their procedures.  You were tortured and conditioned much more thoroughly before the Rifaat el-Mahgoub hit in 1990 and the Starks in ’91.”

A voice in his head said very calmly, “Is that relevant?”  He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until Natasha gave him a distinctly unimpressed look.

“Well, yeah,” she said.  “Obv-”

He held up a hand, shaking his head, and she fell silent.  “Is that relevant?” he said again, trying to get the intonation right.  He frowned, closing his eyes, trying to follow the thread back.  “Musta been a looker,” he managed, but that was all he could get.  He sighed, frustrated.

“Hey,” Natasha said gently. Once he’d opened his eyes, she put her hand briefly over his.  “Don’t blow a gasket, Barnes, we can get this without it.  We’re agreed this is a prep file you were given, too much you leaked through and they iced you again without sending you out?  OK.  Then look more carefully and tell me if this is what's bugging you.”

He hit the second page and stared.  “This is it.”

She nodded.  “I’ve got pics of all the kids.  But there’s no photo of Mr. Carter anywhere.”

He frowned.  “Grant S.: could be a coincidence. Kids all named for protection.  Not unreasonable for a SHIELD Director.”

“Mmm.  No photo of Grant anywhere is more than I’d expect even for a SHIELD Director’s husband, though.”

He stared at the names.  “Wish I knew if there were more to this.”

“I’ve done all the digging I can without any risk of being noticed.” She shrugged. “I can talk to Sharon. She’s discreet.”

He frowned.  “Show me the younger kids’ pictures?”

A tiny, elfin blond white girl with a delighted grin.  A stocky girl with straight black hair, coppery brown skin and a fierce look in her dark brown eyes.  A North Indian boy with spots of blue paint on his right hand.

They were too old.  Eight or ten.  Hadn’t they been … hadn’t there been small children, once, three of them with these colors, these faces, but malnourished?  He heard the first one coughing, the second shouting at him, saw the third trying to hide something.  There was – a man – tall and strong, familiar, speaking words – his mind flinched away and he tried to bring it back.  The man’s voice –

He rubbed his forehead and sighed.  “Talk to her.  Tell her –”  He hesitated, unwilling to put words to the most ridiculous possibilities.  “Tell her that very, very quiet specifically includes not talking to Steve.  At least not yet.”

Chapter Text

2002

As soon as the door closed behind the rest of the family, Great-Aunt Peggy gave her a look.  “You’ve not spoken three words together since you arrived,” she said, “and you keep staring at your uncle.  What’s on my favourite niece’s mind?”

Sharon knew her line.  “Aunt Peggy, I’m your only niece.”

“Then it’s a good thing you’re my favourite, isn’t it?  They’ll be out there an hour at least.  Grant and Alex spent the entire morning stockpiling snowballs and debating fields of fire, Gabe and Jackie asked my advice on flanking manoeuvers, Sannath hid a jai alai cesta in his trousers - tried, I should say. Duena’s got a slingshot. Children, the lot of them, they’ll cause more uproar than the actual grandchildren.  We’ve finished as much of the dishes as I for one intend to do right now, so let’s take tea and curl up by the fire.  I’ve the biscuits you like.”

Sharon took a breath and forced it out.  She wouldn’t have another chance any time soon – “Aunt Peggy, is Uncle Grant Captain America?”  Uh.  She’d meant to ask why he looked like Captain America.  Oops.

She’d seen Aunt Peggy’s Director Face before, but never aimed at her.  (The cousins called it Dictator Face. Uncle Grant’s matching expression got him labeled the Lieutenant Dictator, to which he had merely responded, “That’s Captain Dictator to you.”) Retirement and age hadn’t softened it.  She’d never realized how fast her throat could dry out or how loud the kitchen clock was.  She’d never known how fast girding one’s loins could tip over the precipice into regret.  “Um, can we pretend I didn’t say that?”

Aunt Peggy smiled grimly.  “Tea.  Biscuits.  Sofa.  Now.”

They carried the tray out and sat down.   Aunt Peggy turned on the old radio and twisted the dial slightly off-station.  Staticky Christmas carols filled the silence.  She poured tea, handed Sharon her cup, then nailed her with a glance and said quietly, “Evidence.”

Sharon swallowed.  “He looks like photos in my history book – older, but not much.  His hair’s the wrong color, but it’s the same as the dye you use, and sometimes when I hug him his head smells like hair dye, but it doesn’t smell like bleach, so he must have light hair naturally.  He takes the family photos, but he’s never in them – there aren’t any pictures of him anywhere.  Not in your house, not in ours, not in our local newspaper for the last fifteen years, not on the internet.  Gabe and Jackie talk about their Jones family, but Alex and Duena and Sannath never talk about anyone on Uncle Grant’s side.”

Aunt Peggy sipped her tea.  Her face said nothing, but said it terrifyingly.

Sharon didn’t dare stop.  “We saw one of the old war propaganda films in AP History a couple months ago, only I was tired when it started so I had my eyes closed and I thought why did they dub Uncle Grant’s voice into a Captain America newsreel?  That’s what got me started.”

“Is it.”

“I analyzed the newsreels for my history paper so I had an excuse to watch them more.  They’re built similarly, and Uncle Grant moves like him.  He’s never here when the Howlie uncles visit.  Plus Duena told me a story Uncle Howard told her about you shooting Captain America’s shield, and then last year Uncle Grant was teasing you and he said ‘Please don’t shoot me, this time I don’t have –’ And you gave him a look and he was like ‘uh internal organs to spare’ but it was totally awkward.  As soon as I started teasing him about ‘once she shot you and you did have internal organs to spare?’ you made me help with dinner and sent him out for eggs.  Which you already had two cartons of.”

Aunt Peggy sipped her tea.  Her posture, as always, was calm and perfectly straight.

“When I was a little girl I got in trouble asking you for stories about Captain America that weren’t in the history books.  You told Mom it was ok and showed me a drawing he gave you, a circus monkey in his uniform.  Last week I was helping Mom and Alex dig the Christmas decorations out of your attic and I found sketchbooks.  The drawings aren’t signed, but there’s ones of everyone in the family that had to have been done in the last ten years, in the same style.”

Aunt Peggy’s breathing didn’t change.

“All the best stories he tells are since you got married – the rest are kinda vague.  And Sannath tackled him last time they played football and Sannath’s really big and strong and Uncle Grant is, uh, sorta old, but he didn’t even move, just flipped Sannath over like this fancy martial arts move like he didn’t even have to think about it.”  She smiled nervously.  “It was really funny, actually, the look on Sannath’s face, but, um…  At first I thought maybe you married Uncle Grant because he reminded you of Captain America and I figured I should just not ever say anything –”

“Wise.”

“But then I kept noticing things and um especially the sketchbooks – and then I said something.  Now I’m regretting it and I’d like to go back to not saying anything.”

Aunt Peggy smiled, entirely unreassuringly.  “Darling, you currently have a series of fantastic circumstances and anecdotes which, should you be so foolish as to relay them to anyone, will either be ignored, convince all and sundry you’re a delusional girl seeking attention, or slightly embarrass me for having been so gauche as to select a husband to stand in for a past lover.  Unfortunately, to a certain conspiracy-minded lot with links to those of a far darker bent, what you say would be enough for them to plan more direct action.  Which could lead your uncle and every other member of this family into grave danger: captivity, torture, death.”  She gave Sharon a very straight look.  “I do not exaggerate.”  She sipped her tea, then set it down.  Her hands weren’t shaking at all, Sharon realized, as she tried to set her own tea down and the cup rattled humiliatingly against the saucer.

“I haven’t said any of this to anyone else,” Sharon managed, forcing herself to meet her aunt’s eyes.

“Good.  You’ll continue not to.”  It wasn’t a question.  “Now, choose: this conversation can end here, and we’ll never speak of it again.  Or it can continue later, when you’re a fully qualified agent of SHIELD.”

Sharon’s jaw dropped.

“You’ve shown me you’ve the eyes and the mind to do the work.  Now show me you’ve the discretion.”  A thin smile.  “There are certain secrets I’ll need to pass on in the next few years and I daren’t entrust them all to the institution or to any one individual.  For reasons I shan’t yet specify, you’d be ideal for this matter.”

“He’s hardly aged, and you have, but I’ll still be around, and since he’s family you trust I’ll stick by him,” Sharon said, then clapped her hands over her mouth.

Her aunt’s gaze sharpened.  “Begin practicing discretion now, my dear, or I shall be forced to kill you and replace you with a robot.  I’d make it quick and painless and I’d regret it terribly – I do love you dearly – but this is about far more than my own feelings, or yours, or either of our lives.”

Sharon blinked, then really looked at Aunt Peggy.  “You’re … you’re not kidding, are you.”

“I am not.  You may ask yourself whether I am bluffing about the quality of robot I can procure at speed, but may I suggest you not risk finding out.  I’ll not ask you your choice yet; we’ll consider this conversation closed.  If –”

“No, no, I want to, Aunt Peggy.  If – if it’s really something that big, then I want to help.”

“No.  You’re not ready.  Have a biscuit.”

“I know I’m not ready to be an agent yet, Aunt Peggy, but I can choose –”

“Whilst your desire to help is laudable, your willingness to choose this quickly constitutes in itself proof that you are unready.  Rapid choice is a necessity in dire situations and I trust you’ll retain the ability, but rapid uninformed choice in a non-emergency is sheer idiocy.  If you choose this path, particularly if you choose to know any more about this specific matter, it will change the entire course of your life.  It will be a duty that you will honour at all times and at any cost.  It might cost me my niece’s life or my own and I can’t promise the cost to you will be any less.  You are sixteen.  You didn’t even pause to consider.  You’re not ready.”

Sharon took a breath, then picked her tea up again, pleased that her hands no longer shook.  “What do I have to do to be ready?”

“Come to me in a year and tell me everything you’ve learnt, or haven’t, about the answer to your question; tell me what about your life you most want to preserve, what you want to change, what you’re willing to give up.  And I’d best have no evidence between now and then that you’re even wondering anything to do with Uncle Grant, or that you’ve changed in any way not expected for a young lady in your position.”

The back door banged open.  Over the sound of boots kicking off snow and plans for hot chocolate, they heard Uncle Grant proclaim in great satisfaction, “And that is what a rout looks li- aaagh!”

General laughter, followed by Aleksandra’s voice: “And that is what a surprise snowball sounds like.”

Sharon intercepted a look from Aunt Peggy that said quite clearly, Discretion.  She smiled back and called brightly, “Aunt Peggy won’t appreciate snow melting into Alex’s mattress tonight, Uncle Grant, but her boots would keep it contained.”

2007

“Congratulations, Agent Carter.  Our children are taking theirs to see a film after your graduation dinner, but perhaps you’d like to stay in with your uncle and me.  We’ve not had a chance to catch up.  We’ll take your new thigh holster to the basement range, then have a good cuppa and chat.”

* * *

“I have to kiss you?  Like I like you?  Uncle Grant, that’s gross.”

“You’re no longer a child, Agent, and others have done far more for a far lesser duty.  You’ll –”

“Peg.  She’s teasing me to deal with some pretty shocking stuff.  Cut her some slack.  She’ll do fine.  I know, I was there.”  He smiled reassuringly at Sharon.  “No hard feelings, hon.  ‘I’m risking my job to help you mostly because it’s right and a little because I’m attracted to you’ is a much easier and safer story to sell than the truth.”

“Just channel the crush you had on our neighbors’ daughter when you were thirteen –”

“Aunt Peggy!”

“You were charmingly obvious, darling.”

“Oh my god I’m killing you.  I’ll be a legend at SHIELD.  Director Fury will either ice me or promote me.”

“Better agents than you have tried, love.  And if you managed it he’d certainly promote you.  He and I have enormous respect for one another, but I’m far more useful to him once I can’t contradict him.”

Sharon smiled at her aunt and regarded her uncle over the rim of her cup.  “So, I understand why you’re being extremely sketchy on details, but at some point we must get to whenever and whatever led to you, uh, looping back?  Is that something I have a part in or that I need to safeguard?”

“The person who convinced me this was going to happen – had to happen – didn't dare contact you directly.  Agent Romanov was the one who came to you.”

“Agent Romanov?  Came to me?  Will come?  I guess she really is serious about defecting, then.”

She wasn’t expecting the flash of grief on her uncle’s face.  “Natasha Romanov is every bit as dangerous as you’ve heard, and she – she did some terrible things while the Red Room controlled her.  But she’s a very dear friend, my teammate, someone I trusted with my life and my mission more times than I can count.  She –”  He closed his eyes, then scrubbed his face.  “I’m sorry.  There are things I don’t dare say, even to you two.  But you can trust her.”

Aunt Peggy took Uncle Grant’s hand, interlacing their fingers.  Sharon sat back, giving her uncle a moment.  “If she’s coming to me, she must already suspect something, but she doesn’t quite know?”

He nodded.

“I’ll need better evidence than any you two have left lying around.  I want a photograph.” She expected argument.

“Three,” Uncle Grant said. “Two to convince Nat and – and the final link that it’s real, they’ll never even bring the idea to me otherwise. One to convince me that it’s the right thing to do. Film camera, I’ll develop them here. You’ll keep the only copy of each; they can’t ever get into any electronic system. There’s a date by which Natasha must get them to the final link – I’ll tell you later, I’m sorry, Peg –”

“Darling, don’t be ridiculous, this is nothing compared to what I’ve already trusted you not to tell me.”

Sharon concentrated on her tea, unwilling to intrude on the look they were sharing.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Uncle Grant kiss Aunt Peggy’s fingers; Aunt Peggy squeezed his.

“That darkroom’s waited a long time,” Aunt Peggy murmured.

“You know I’ve enjoyed it all along. If I couldn’t draw like I wanted, at least I’ve found something else I loved.” Aunt Peggy smiled at him. He grinned mischievously at her and Sharon. “Wanna help me find a Battleship set, a reddish-orange pocketwatch, some dead ants and a biography of Ludwig Boltzmann?”

Chapter Text

Early 2018

Natasha sat back in the booth.  The woman across from her was hiding both fear and giddiness out of proportion for an experienced agent at a quiet meet. Natasha didn’t glance around - she’d already vetted this place - but flexed her feet, ready to move.  “What gives, Carter?  Hope I don’t burst any bubbles if I’m not here to seduce you.”

Sharon laughed.  “There go my evening plans,” she said easily, and Natasha grinned.  “The person who said you’d contact me told me I could trust you. You asked to talk, so...”  She raised her eyebrows, then sat back herself.

Natasha went still.  “The person who said I’d contact you,” she said flatly.

Most people looked nervous when she used that voice.  Sharon smiled.  “You twist my tail, I twist yours,” she said, unrepentant.  “Your security hasn’t slipped.”

Natasha narrowed her eyes.

Sharon rolled hers.  “Spill already.”

This was the nerves of a person about to reveal a long-held secret, not one preparing herself for violence. Natasha leaned forward and smiled flirtatiously; a waiter was glancing their way. “I need information.  I can’t tell you why. The person asking doesn’t know.”

Sharon smiled.  “You’ve been in Wakanda recently,” she observed.

“I’ve been lots of places.”

“Not many where people might have half-remembered concerns worth tracking me down.  How is he?  The Wakandans were able to help?”

Natasha let Sharon see a momentary half-smile.  “I never knew Director Carter personally, but now I wonder what an interrogation with her would have been like.”

“Epic,” said Sharon darkly.  “No matter which of you was the interrogator.  God, I’d buy popcorn.”

Natasha grinned.  “I’d sell tickets.  He’s doing – well.  He’s resilient, and he’s had help.”

Sharon nodded.  “Good.  He and Steve an item yet?”

“Not by the time I left – Steve’s being a patient gentleman, if you ask Steve, and a nervous nellie according to Bucky.  Bucky’s debating ambushing him in the gym vs. sneaking into his quarters.”

“It’d be poetic –”  Sharon stopped, then smiled and said firmly, “Tell him quarters, but leave a note right inside.  Saves damage from Steve thinking he’s fighting off capture or assassination.  And god will I be amused if this is what gives him the idea – ugh, will you please spit it out.”

“Peggy’s family –”

“Bingo,” Sharon murmured, and smiled.

Natasha raised an eyebrow, but when Sharon said nothing else, she shrugged and slid the papers she’d shown Bucky across the table.  “We think this was a mission brief he was given, but his handler dumped him back in cryo instead of proceeding with the hit.  Page 2.”

Sharon glanced at the brief and nodded.  “Mmhmm.  Those are their names.”

“The second husband’s name is coincidence by itself, but there are no photos of him anywhere, which means a serious scrub job.”

“Mmm.”

“Bucky thinks he remembers the younger kids.  When they were very little.”

Sharon blinked.  “He – huh.”  She stared at the page.  “Huh.”  She tapped her fingers on the table.  “Did the Red Room tattoo you, as a child?”  She brushed the back of her neck, up under her hair.  “Somewhere not too obvious?”

Natasha shook her head.  “There was nowhere guaranteed never to be obvious.  HYDRA sometimes tattooed people, though.  Experimental subjects.”

Sharon closed her eyes briefly, looking pained.  “You happen to know whether the Winter Soldier was used in the early 1970s?”

“When the kids were little?  He was active in northern India and East Pakistan in the leadup to that war.  Nothing about any kids.”

Sharon nodded, smiling thinly.  “I think I’m finding out one of the things he didn’t tell me.”

“Bucky?”  That didn’t make sense, she knew Bucky hadn’t tried to contact Sharon.

“No.”

Natasha regarded her narrowly.  Clearly Sharon wouldn’t budge until she went out on a limb with the craziest theory, if the merely extraordinarily unlikely idea of the Winter Soldier knowing Peggy Carter’s children wasn’t enough.

“The name isn’t a coincidence at all, is it?” she finally said, and was rewarded with a slight flare of Sharon’s nostrils.  “The full thing is Grant Steven Carter.  He switched them around and took her name.  In 1970.”

Sharon smiled.

“I don’t believe you.  Even though I’m the one who just said it.”

Sharon’s smile softened.  “Public displays of belief in time travel make people uncomfortable, and if ‘uncomfortable’ isn’t the word you’d use, there’s a chance you’re in the wrong business.”

Natasha had been trained in a much harder school than Sharon.  She didn’t let her eyes widen.  “If this is some bullshit Steve is pulling –”

“Oh, it absolutely is, but not the way you mean.  Uncle Grant told me you’d come to me because this is the chain that leads to him making the choice to come back.  He’s asking you to be part of it.”  Sharon reached unhurriedly into her jacket, pulling out an envelope marked ‘N.’  She took a photo out of it, and slid the photo across the table.  “This one’s ‘to convince and comfort you,’ and if you agree, there are more.  He said to remind you Alexander Pierce tried to stop you from dumping SHIELD’s files by appealing to your fear, but you were brave enough to let the truth be seen then; he hopes you’ll be brave enough to let yourself see it now.”

Natasha felt chilled, and refused to let herself swallow.  “I never told Steve that,” she said slowly.

Sharon smiled gently.  “You haven’t yet.  Now you’ll have to make sure to.”  She sat back and ran her hands through her hair.  “Wow.  Do you have any idea what a relief this is?  Uncle Grant’ll be so happy we’re probably still on track.  He has no way to know, he tracks the news but it’s the little details – ok, I’m babbling, I’ll shut up while you look at the photo, I just – wow, damn, that’s years of stress right there, and it’s not even over yet.”

Natasha raised an amused eyebrow.  “Eat,” she said, “the biryani here is too good for the way you’ve been ignoring it.”  She picked up the photo.  After a moment, her hand loosened on her fork, and she left her food to sit untouched.

A slightly older-looking Steve sat at a kitchen table, next to an awkwardly waving younger Sharon.  He wore a thin gray V-neck hoodie with dark horizontal stripes under a light gray suit-jacket, a wig of straight red-brown shoulder-length hair, a dark baseball cap over the hoodie, and glasses like the Clark-Kent-style ones they’d snickered over at the mall.  A red-dotted black friendship bracelet intertwined with a red-, white- and blue-striped one on his wrist.

On the wall behind him hung a 2007 calendar reproduction of that famous melted-clock painting; “2018” had been written in black on the silver-backed clock draped limply over a tree-branch.  On the gold-backed clock beginning to melt, the 5 had been traced over in red.  On the counter behind him, he’d set up one side of a Battleship game using three carriers, connected by red threads, each with all five holes filled with red pegs.  Tiny stars (one red, one white) and an American Airlines pilot-wings pin sat next to the carriers.  A map of Theodore Roosevelt Island in the Potomac was partially obscured by an eyepatch, a needle and a plastic spider.

On the table, he’d stacked biographies of Ludwig Boltzmann, Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg and Albert Einstein on a board game called Realm.  A coppery pocket-watch, closed, lay atop the books, with ants crawling on it.  Next to the stack, a small plate held half a peanut butter sandwich, with ants on it arranged in a stick-man pattern, and an index card: “Dinner?  Make sure front doorbell works.”  A larger plate held homemade frosted cookies: a stack of green, purple, blue, yellow, and red figure-eights, and a black cat next to a Red Cross flag followed by a red star.  On his other side he’d laid out a world map, with a tiny black bow glued onto Mexico and a tiny black arrow stuck into Tokyo.  Black threads led from each to an open notebook, showing a red-ink drawing of an umbrella shielding a sword from pouring rain.  A large, well-used eraser sat next to the sword.

Steve held his cupped hands out to the camera, offering three cookies (a peace sign, a heart, and an orange-frosted figure-8 marked with a “V”) atop a pile of grey dust.

Natasha drew a deep breath and looked up at Sharon.  “I’m convinced it’s him, but ‘comforted’?  The ants are ...”

Sharon snorted.  “Dead and glued, and you can bet Aunt Peggy and I gave him really strange looks for it.  No idea what that’s about other than the obvious Dalí reference –”

“Well, Ant Man –”

“Sure, we get that much now, but is it vital to the future of the world that Ant-Man have a peanut butter sandwich for dinner?  Or bring you one?”  She shrugged.  “Uncle Grant designed this for a paranoid critical thinker – he said that was an art joke you wouldn’t get – so you could reassure yourself as bits came clear over time that you weren’t crazy and, he hoped, that things were still on the right track.”

“Even if this really is some version of Steve, why should ours travel back in time?  ‘Because the photos say so’ won’t cut it.  He misses Peggy, but he’d never put that over Bucky or the risks to everyone else.”

“There’s something coming,” Sharon said hesitantly.  “Aunt Peggy said they had a rip-roaring fight after the first time he could’ve prevented a disaster.  She brought up theories about multiple universes and branching timelines and wasn’t it better to do all the good he could in the timeline he was in, and he just – wouldn’t bend.  Threw those words about ‘no, you move’ in her face – wow, is that where she got it – and hollered about how she had no idea what we’d lost or how costly and narrow our victory was getting it back, and no prevention of small tragedies here would stop it so he was gonna respect the fucking timeline to make sure the fix happened too.  Then he started sobbing.”  She sighed.  “He obviously couldn’t see a therapist, so there were a lot of 1970s self-help books about trauma and grief around their house …”

Natasha frowned.  “That doesn’t sound promising.  So … it really is ‘go back because you already went back.’”

Sharon grimaced.  “I think there’s more to it, but he won’t spell it out.  Says he’s afraid of causing changes, he resents all the times he feels he has no choice, and he doesn’t want to play grandmaster with our lives any more than he can help.”  She cocked her head.  “One of the photos has all of Peggy’s kids in it.  Only family photo he’s ever been in.  Can’t be just more evidence the whole thing’s real, because he had Alex and Duena and Sannath with their backs to the camera and their hair pulled up.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow, then connected Sharon’s earlier gesture with her question about tattoos.  “Rescued from HYDRA, adopted and raised by Peggy and Steve?  Steve would agree three kids’ lives and freedom are worth a lot, but nobody can save every kid in all of history.  Why would these three be worth a time-travel rescue and years away from Bucky?  Do they know about all this?”

“I don’t know.  Uncle Grant never would have asked them to show their marks with no explanation.  Between whatever he told them and what they’ve gathered on their own, especially once Steve came out of the ice and his face was all over the news, they might know a lot.”  She shrugged.  “I don’t know why them.  I love them and they all do important work, but so do lots of people.”

“I’ll look into their public info.  What’s the step after that?  Steve’s in Wakanda, I can get you there –”

Sharon shook her head.  She pulled two more envelopes, marked ‘B’ and ‘S,’ out of her jacket and handed them over.  “Bucky’s the final link – I’m just a colleague and casual flirtation to Steve now, and you know he won’t leave Bucky if Bucky doesn’t practically force him.  You can see Bucky’s photo, and show yours to Bucky, but not to Steve until – Uncle Grant said you’d know when it was time to make sure it got to Steve.”

Natasha looked at her photograph again: Steve’s offering and his gentle smile, mixing yearning, sorrow and hope.  “‘Make sure it got to him,’” she quoted.  “Not ‘give it to him.’”

Sharon met her eyes and nodded silently.

Natasha flexed her hands and let out a slow breath.  “Well.”  She took a bite of her food to give herself something to do, but hardly tasted it.  “I notice he’s not here himself.  Now that would be convincing.”

“He was sure you’d have told Bucky if you actually got to meet him, and he can’t risk being close to either of you – you’re both so known.  That’s what he told me to say when you brought that up.”  Sharon smiled twistedly.  “I don’t think that’s all, though.  Maybe he’s been missing you all for so long he can’t stand the thought of letting you go again, maybe he doesn’t trust himself not to give something dangerous away.  I don’t know.  You’re to tell Bucky that Uncle Grant swears up and down he will see him again, young whippersnapper, and he’d better make it worth the wait.”

Natasha laughed, then sobered.  “No such promise to me.”

“No.  Whatever’s coming, I think it might start soon.  Uncle Grant told me you had to get these to Bucky by spring of this year, and he’s to keep them at all times.  Not just within reach.  On him, every instant. He said if we really are still in exactly the same timeline then he could give a date and circumstances, but just in case we’re not …”

“These are the only copies?”

“As far as Uncle Grant knows, and as far as you should tell Bucky in case Steve asks.”

Natasha smirked.  “His sniper and general mayhem skills are excellent, but he can’t lie to Steve.”

Sharon nodded.  “You have copies of Bucky’s and Steve’s photos in your envelope, and the location and access and self-destruct codes for my set.  That’s all.”  She hesitated.  “When it’s time to make sure your photo gets to Steve – destroy your extras.  There’s a deadman’s-switch rigged on mine – that info’s on your note too –”  She faltered.  “I’ll text you every day when I send the code to reset the switch.  Uncle Grant let slip once that I was still alive when he – left – but there was something in his face …”  She sighed.  “Work Alexander Pierce into conversation with Steve soon.”

“You could tell Uncle Grant about the extra copies now.  Clearly he can keep a secret.”  Natasha frowned.  “Is he ok, truly?  He put on a brave face when the whole world jumped ahead seventy years without him, but I know it was rough.  To leave everyone and his whole world a second time ...”

“He and Peggy had a good life together.  Kids, grandkids, my family – there’s a lot of people who love him.  He misses her, but he’s not alone.  He talks to all five kids just about every day, they like to brainstorm about their work with him.”

“Can I give you a note for him?”  At Sharon’s nod, she scrawled on the back of her receipt.  “You can read it.  I’d better go.  Long way back to Wakanda.”  She smiled at Sharon.  “Keep in touch about more than the deadman switch, if you like.”

Sharon raised an eyebrow, grinning.  “I thought you weren’t here to seduce me.”

“I appreciate competence.”  She handed over the note.  “Stay safe and harass the old man for me.”

B was right: you haven’t changed since ’36, ya big self-sacrificial lout.  If you think I’m gonna find you’ve been without us 48 yrs & NOT do something, you’re an even bigger dope than B thinks you are now for giving him space.  I’ll put a fresh batch of B’s dark-chocolate-chip cookies in the 7^th DC drop spot at 0800 2 days from now & the recipe Mr. “Secret Ingredient” doesn't know I stole.  I’ll make sure there’s no surveillance, stay out of your way and check it at 1000 in case you want to leave any stock forecasts.  Cookies you haven’t taken by then are mine.  Love ya, doofus.

P.S. Your idea of a “covert” name, omg have I taught you nothing?

* * *

At 10:00 there was one cookie left, and a note.

Thanks.  I’ve missed you all so badly.  (Almost as much as I’ve missed these cookies – tell B he knows damn well how to seduce me.)  I watch you on the news and burst with pride.  Speaking of pride, I never told you how much it meant that you were so matter-of-fact when you figured out how I felt about B and that the first thing you said about me being bi was ‘Me too, let’s go check out hot people together.’  I drew you a present in return for that and the cookies.

P.S. Don’t look at me, that’s what was on the paper that managed to catch B’s attention in whatever mental state he was in and stick through whatever happened later.  Figured I better not mess with it.

A colored-pencil portrait filled the rest of the page: Natasha in her combat suit, holding a shield the size of Steve’s own.  Instead of his three red-white-red rings, hers had six in rainbow hues.  Instead of his central white-on-blue star, hers had a black widow spider on red.

She grinned and ate the cookie while she left her reply on the back of the note.

You’d’ve warned me if I weren’t supposed to steal & repaint the shield, right?  Look, the messages in your photo & via Sh.:  thank you, I love you too, take care of yourself & I hope you get to see the others again.  If you’re making me worry over nothing, then the instant St. bails on us I’m gonna hunt you down and tattoo your design on your damn, you can’t get tattoos, you were bitching about wanting B’s star on your shoulder. OK, drag you to Pride in matching T-shirts with the design in glitter paint.  Also I’ll want this drawing back, autographed & framed.

Sh. will always know how to reach me.

* * *

“You gave him the recipe?”

“Shh, no shrieking, you’ll scare the goats.  Sharon and older-Steve say to sneak into his apartment and bake him those cookies so he climbs you instead of wrecking the place.  Now, can we focus?”

Bucky blinked, then snickered.  He hadn’t actually taken his eyes away from his photo since she handed it to him.

The calendar, Battleship diorama and “Bucky’s getting taken care of in Wakanda” cookies were the same.  A toy car with a red star, white star and wings painstakingly painted on the roof sat next to the Battleship game, near a blue gingerbread man with red spots on the left thigh, right shoulder and stomach (scowl, “I said I was sorry!”).  The kitchen table had been replaced by couch cushions on the floor – Bucky smothered a grin that told her not to ask what that meant.  Plates on the cushions held two purple gingerbread men, each with an extra gob of purple frosting on the chin, each covered by a red frosting X.  A set of three cookies (white star, heart, red star) was repeated four times: leaning against the wall at the very back of the counter, almost out of sight; next to the blue gingerbread man; in a small plate balanced on Steve’s knee; and on the floor so far in the foreground it was out of focus and half out of the frame.

Steve wore a black sweatshirt, the left arm replaced with silvery fabric with a red heart drawn on the shoulder.  With one hand he offered a key, and with the other, two tickets to MoMA with “happy 16^th” scrawled in black marker.  This time, his smile looked mostly happy.

Bucky finally looked up, just long enough to roll his eyes.  “God, he’s such an obvious sap.”  He went back to the picture, hardly trying to hide his smile.

“Now sound like you mind at all.”

“Nah.  Huh.  How come I only got one personalized inscrutable future message and you got a bunch?  Everything but my purple globby X-men is either ‘it’s really me’ or ‘I’m a sap.’  Redundant.  Don’t like the obvious explanation.”

“Shorter future for you?  He couldn't smile that happily if that’s what he meant, he can’t lie to you either.  No, the globbies show when to give him the photos – Sharon said not til everything in ours had come true, enjoy fighting gingerbread twins – and the rest is the artist emphasizing the message he cares about most.”  She grinned at him.  “So here’s the one for him, remember they stay on you at all times, go seduce your man.”

“How am I supposed to – ‘hi, please ignore these suspicious envelopes while we –’”

“‘Tell Bucky he knows damn well how to seduce me’ is the clearest message from future-Steve we’ve gotten.  You can’t disobey, you’re doing it to protect the timeline and save the world,” she said, widening her eyes.

He narrowed his.

“You’ll figure something out.  I’ll even help: I’ll invite him to go spar, clear the way for you to get into his place.”

“You are way too easily amused, Romanov.”

* * *

Steve circled her warily.  She was enjoying not hiding her grin, and it was making him suspicious.  Good.  When Bucky jumped him he’d figure that was the secret and not wonder about others.

“You and Bucky have a good run up to the goats?” he asked, making a few quick jabs she blocked easily.  No real force behind them.

She made her face suitably serious.  “Can’t talk about it, Steve.  Spy stuff.”  He rushed her; she ducked, caught his arm, pulled, and flipped him to the floor, then stepped back.  Too easy.

He raised an eyebrow.

“Part of his rehab.  We sneak around and stab people, then compete to see who can seduce the most targets with the most ridiculous stories.”

“Must be hard when you’re both so recognizable,” he said.  He made as if to rise, then spun into a leg sweep she barely dodged.

“Adds to the challenge.  Til we get bored or shot down too many times, then we play Movie Russian.”  She managed a good kick to his thigh, but he blocked her follow-up.

“Do I want to know?”  He got her almost pinned before she broke his hold.

“Drink vodka, call each other comrade, worst fake accents we can manage, drop all articles in speech.  ‘I will drink you under table, like bear.’  See who cracks first.  Wakandan rehab is awesome.”  This time he was too fast, and she wound up on the floor, grinning up at him.

“Seriously what –”  He offered her a hand up, which she used to launch herself into her next attack.

“I’m giving Bucky seduction tips, Steve, you need to not be there so you can’t start formulating counter-tactics, now shut up and fight me like you mean it.”

One week post-Snap

“Steve, go ring the front doorbell for me, wouldja?”

“OK…?”

“We’re done with the high-tech comm systems, might as well check the low-tech.” As he headed down the hall, she let her shoulders droop and her eyes close. Melina was safe. Alexei was gone. No word from Yelena.

* * *

“Pepper? How are you doing?”

“The markets are crazy, half my people are gone, we have one employee worldwide who isn’t missing multiple relatives, Happy’s gonna have a heart attack managing the new security environment. He and FRIDAY and I are trying to hold each other together, DUM-E won’t stop following me around and if I’m gone for too long FRIDAY has to deactivate all three bots so they don’t break down the doors to come after me.  I just wish I knew what happened to Tony, you know?  And the heel on my favorite pair of Louboutins just broke.  Probably because right before you called I threw them against the wall as hard as I could.”  She looked up from massaging her feet to aim a rueful, strained half-grin at the camera.  “So that’s me.  How are you, Nat?”

“Similar.  Look, I’ve got people who need whatever support you can give them.  Their work is vital right now and I’ve already confirmed they’re still alive.”

Pepper chuckled dryly.  “I have too many plates spinning already, what’s a few more?  At least this sounds vaguely positive.  Go.”

“Dr. Aleksandra Carter-Dugan at MIT.  Specialist in hydroponics and farm automation.  Long track record of publication and small demos but needs a deep-pocketed partner to scale up.  Dr. Sannath Williams-Carter at UIUC.  Spent time as a labor organizer in the Southwest, now he’s an anthropological and economic historian specializing in how societies deal with sudden massive population loss.  Europe after the Black Death, the Americas after the arrival of Columbus.  Half his old contacts are gone and the rest are so swamped with emergencies no one’s listening to him about the big picture; he needs a signal boost.  And Jackie Jones.  She’s worked with UNHCR and WHO for decades, trains communities without access to therapists in mental-health and social-support techniques.  Another problem of scale, plus she’s doing astonishingly well for a woman in her seventies but if she doesn’t get an assistant soon, she’ll burn out.”

Pepper gave her a thoughtful look.  “That’s a lot of information to happen to have on people who aren’t threats.”

Natasha returned it evenly.  “Saving the world with knives and guns didn’t work out for me.  But gathering intel and getting it to the right place, I can do.  I’m running the network for whoever’s left to deal with whatever turns up next, but I’ve got downtime between emergencies.  Might as well find the people who can actually get us through this mess.  I started with those three ’cause they’re Peggy Carter’s children so they were on my radar, but there’s more and I’ll find ’em.  ‘Look for the helpers.’”

Pepper laughed.  “Did you just quote Mister Rogers at me?  All right, Nat.  I’ll see what I can do.”

One month post-Snap

The knock at her door was quiet.  He’d knocked earlier, too, then left when she didn’t respond.

He counted Thanos’s death a failure of his leadership, but what would they have done?  Dragged Thanos back to Earth and taken resources away from disaster management to figure out who the hell even had jurisdiction and could be impartial?  Hoped to conduct some farce of a trial without another alien army showing up?  No.  Thor could decide whether he’d expedited justice or committed murder.  Thanos’s death, and even the loss of the Stones and their hope to undo the whole mess, wasn’t why she was avoiding everyone.

She knew Bucky’s picture by heart.  Two purple gingerbread men, X’d.  She nearly wished she believed in a non-Asgardian god so she could yell at Her about what the fuck more were they supposed to lose when the next one showed up?  Bucky was gone, there was no getting him back, neither Sharon nor Uncle Grant were responding to messages, everything was off the rails.  It wasn’t the first time an op had gone badly, she’d get herself back on her feet soon, but the consequences this time –

“Nat?” he said very softly, right outside the door.  “I know you’re not crying, but I can hear you breathing the way I have a few times this week.  Can I come in?  I could use a hug.”

She exhaled on the edge of a laugh.  Trust Steve to get the mix of bravery, compassion, and friendship exactly right to decide his own vulnerability was his best tool and then wield it so precisely for her good.  She was never sure if he thought of it that way; he was much cannier than his gosh-golly image.  He’d even get a hug out of it, the bastard, like the ricochet leading the shield right back to his hand.

“If you tell me everything will be all right I will stab you in places you didn’t know it was possible to stab,” she said conversationally, not bothering to raise her voice.

“Now you’ve got me curious,” he replied mildly, coming in, “though not curious enough to find out.”  He was carrying plates and mugs.  “May I join you?  Only the finest in fine dining: peanut butter and honey sandwiches, baby carrots, masala chai, and I tried making sharlotka.  No idea if the recipe was authentic, but it smells good.”

She turned and curled her legs up on the couch to make room.  He handed over her dinner and sat down, leaving her space, but she moved to sit shoulder-to-shoulder in silent apology for withdrawing.  He smiled in understanding, briefly and sidelong.  They ate quietly except for the crunching of carrots.

“I thought about proposing a run around the city, pounding a punching bag, teaching me some ballet.  Give you something physical to focus on,” he said eventually.  “But I didn’t know what you needed.  Can’t spar right now.  Don’t think I could hold back.  I stopped some looters earlier and it got nasty and I …”  He sighed, looking at his hands.  “I didn’t, Nat, but it was close.”

She set her empty plate down, sipped chai, put her free hand on his.  After a moment he turned his hand over and allowed her to take it.  “I sharpened all my knives today,” she murmured.  “And yesterday.”

He nodded sagely.  “Well, they were both days ending in y.”

She gave him a look.  “It’s ritual.  Calming.  After that I knit, I’ve started a scarf.”

“I remember the one you made for Hulk.”

“It wasn’t meant to be. I’d had a rough month and never bothered binding off, so it got out of hand.  Clint got snarky and it was mostly green yarn so I said it was for the Other Guy.  He didn’t dare call me on it after Bruce just about dropped his coffee and then gave me puppy-Hulk eyes.”

“Clint only teases you about knitting when he’s out of arm’s reach.”

“A physical ritual you can get lost in, that makes people underestimate you, but you’ve got two huge needles in your hands and if you’re doing circular knitting you also have a garrotte?  Plus periodically you get a scarf?  It’s the perfect hobby.  And Clint underestimates my ability to throw a knitting needle.”

He eyed her.  “You could be trolling or dead serious, I’d believe either.”

She smiled.

He shifted.  Hmm.  Confession time.  “I, uh, I was watching cat videos while I made dinner,” he said.  “And the algorithm went from kittens playing with yarn to fun craft projects ten-year-olds can do and before I knew it I was halfway through a video about making friendship bracelets.”

She knew he registered her sudden flinch, though she managed not to gasp.

“I was gonna propose that as tonight’s calming ritual not involving sharp objects, but I guess that’s a no?”

How many parts of the photos were watch for this and how many were make this happen?  She let out a slow breath.  “I’ll show you how to make one with stars.”

Three years post-Snap

“Doorbell check, please.”

Steve grinned.  “Your attention to detail is gonna save the world one day, Nat.  A monthly comm systems check with a doorbell step?  Now that’s Avengers-level.”

“If someone comes looking for help, I don’t want to miss the signal.” Yelena might still – no. She would have gotten in touch by now. This was for Scott, as little sense as it made to hope when no one had seen him since the Snap.

Steve wrapped his arms around her, let her rest her head on his shoulder and rested his own atop hers.  “OK.  I’ll ring it on my way out to therapy group.  Sure you won’t come?”

“Thanks, but I’m gonna keep watch here.”

“You gotta take care of yourself too.”

“I’ll route everything to the gym and go dance for an hour.”

“I was hoping for another ballet lesson later.  You gonna be up for that if you angry-dance your toes through the floor?”

“Angry-dance was yesterday.  You’ll take half an hour to limber up enough anyway, I’ll be fine by the time you’re ready.  Go on, don’t be late.”

Once she’d watched him walk far enough down the street she was sure he wasn’t coming back, she pulled out her phone for the daily ritual.  Text: Sharon?  Wait ten minutes.  No response.   Text: Cookie Monster?  Wait ten minutes.  No response.  Send deadman’s switch code.  Clear all three messages from history.

Close her eyes.  Picture her photograph.  Try to decide if anything else had come true.

Five years post-Snap

Tony had shown up with something vaguely clock-like strapped around his hand and announced, not in such words, that he had melted time.

Hawkeye had been in Mexico.  Now he was in Tokyo.  Putting red in his ledger.

She hadn’t let the rest of them see how she’d nearly staggered in relief.

She hid a smile she didn’t want to explain and packed her umbrella.

* * *

She stared at the blank paper.  She’d already put the friendship bracelets and her photo in the envelope, destroyed the copies of the others, texted the other two one final time and let the deadman’s switch lapse.  She’d sent Melina a letter, with notes for Yelena and Alexei. Nothing specific. “In case I don’t come back, in hopes it works anyway.” She had the suit on and everything in her room neat.  She’d done the last row on Morgan’s scarf.

The team would be waiting for her.  Slowly, she turned the envelope over and wrote “for Bucky to give to Steve.”

She stared at the blank paper.

Chapter Text

June 1943

Erskine hadn’t let him drink.  He might have thrown it up anyway.

The barracks were quiet since the other candidates had been sent on.  He stared at his sketchbook.  Eventually he sighed, put it away, and stepped outside.  He wouldn’t make a fool of himself trying to go for a run, but the last night he’d have this body seemed like a good time to let it take him for a walk.  He’d lose it tomorrow, one way or the other.

He hadn’t gotten far before he spotted someone coming: Hodges.  “Left some reading material in my bunk,” Hodges said, eyebrows suggesting he’d better not let Agent Carter catch him with it.

“Still here?” Steve asked.  “Thought everyone left hours ago.”

Hodges shrugged.  “They mostly did.  Last transport’s in an hour.”  He lowered his voice.  “Sure you don’t wanna be on it?  Dunno what they picked you for ’steada me, but – no offense – if they’re expecting you to bash Nazis they gotta be plannin’ somethin’ you ain’t gonna enjoy.  My brother’s a colonel, I can get on the horn to him and see if maybe he won’t request you for … uh … somethin’ …”

“Thanks, Hodges,” Steve said.  “But I got a chance to do somethin’ real for this fight and I’m takin’ it.”

“You are somethin’ else, Rogers.”  Hodges shook his head.  “You look like you ain’t worth shit, so pardon me if I hope nobody I gotta fight next to looks like you.  But if they got your guts, that’d be ok.”  He grinned.  “I left a bottle of hooch with the reading material, no point bein’ sober while I wait.  Want some?  You gotta do somethin’ stupid eventually.”

Steve laughed.  “Pretty sure signin’ up for tomorrow counts.  Thanks, but the doc said no alcohol tonight.”

Hodges grinned slyly.  “Then you gotta do somethin’ else stupid.  Got any tattoos yet?  You ain’t a soldier without a tattoo, Rogers.  Or ten.  Check out my Sailor Jerry girl.”

Steve blinked.  “That’d fit the bill.”  Bucky didn’t have a tattoo.  Or hadn’t, anyway.

“Can’t getcha a good one here in the next hour.  But Chambers’ll do ya a stick-and-poke, he’s off duty.”

Steve almost refused.  He’d had his fill of needles, and if he was going to decorate his body, he had ideas he doubted Chambers could manage.  But … a line.  Just a line, with a dot to emphasize one end.  Bucky would smile, and he didn’t want anyone else to get it anyway.

Chambers was amenable, but wouldn’t do it on Steve’s shoulder.  “You got no meat there,” he said, gruff but kind.  “Gonna go straight to the bone and that’s rough for a first.  We’re gonna put it in the thickest muscle you got –”

Hodges guffawed.  “Yeah, Rogers, pants to half-mast and grab your ankles!”

Steve rolled his eyes.  “I ain’t gettin’ a tattoo on my ass, Hodges.  What about my thigh, Chambers?”

Chambers shrugged.  “Better’n your shoulder.”

It wasn’t as bad as he’d expected, though it was hard to sleep comfortably and his pants chafed the injured skin when he put them on in the morning.  He liked it, though.  He headed for Dr. Erskine’s lab, trying to distract himself from fear by imagining the look on Bucky’s face when he nonchalantly let slip he had a tattoo, and the wicked smile he expected when he dared Bucky to find it.

* * *

God in Heaven, as soon as they let him out of the machine he was going straight to a tattoo parlor to get full-body art because it would fucking hurt less.

* * *

He was surprised when the cheap, thin metal of the cab door actually stopped a bullet.  Was the fella just using a little pop-gun?  He ran on.  Maybe his next tattoo would be a star like on the cab door.  Right in the middle of his chest, where the bullet woulda gone.

His eyes narrowed as the fella grabbed a little kid.  All right, the tattoo after that would be “DON’T LIKE BULLIES.”  Somewhere really obvious.

* * *

They gave him dry clothes after the whole debacle and left him alone to shower.

When he stripped off his pants, the tattoo was gone.

November 1943

“Don’t take it so hard.  Maybe she’s got a friend.”

Bucky’s answering smile was tight.

1945

At least it had to have been quick. He held to that as over and over, Bucky and everything else tumbled away. At least it had to have been quick.

Late 2011

The nurse who met him was kind.  “Thank you for waiting,” he said.  “Her family are delighted for you to see her, but that flu hit her hard. She needed her strength back first.  You do know she has –”

“Early stages of Alzheimer’s.  Yes.”  Steve sighed, wiping a hand over his face.  He looked down the hall, but didn’t move.

“Look,” said the nurse hesitantly, “I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to be in the position you’re in.”

Steve smiled wryly.  “I barely know what it’s like.  Took me longer than it should have to get up my nerve to come here.  I know she’s gonna look different and she might not even remember me –”

The nurse laughed.  “She gets confused about recent things, but they told her about you three days ago and she’s been asking for you ever since.  Her memory for long ago is pretty sharp.  You’ll be good for her.”

“Are her family with her?  I don’t want to intrude.”

The nurse shook his head.  “They thought it might be easier on you both if they weren’t.  Sticking with one long-ago time period will be easier for her than mixing long-ago with recent.”

“Don’t I know it,” Steve muttered.

The nurse grinned.  “We’re all very fond of her.  Go on.  If she gets the cards out, don’t fall for her ‘surely you can beat an elderly lady with memory loss at whist’ routine.”  His imitation was so like the Peggy of long ago that Steve was startled into laughter as he headed down the hall.

It wasn’t far.  Her TV was on, showing a fuse burning slowly across the screen while other scenes flickered past and dramatic music played.  He thought he’d heard Peggy humming along, but by the time he reached the door she’d stopped and turned to face him.  She lifted her chin just so.  Her face – her face – the breath slammed out of him.

 “You,” she said, “are late,” and the room blurred in front of him.

2012

“Steven, I expect you not to let a minor matter like aliens invading New York disrupt our whist games.  You’re late.  Again.”

“You’re awfully feisty for an ‘elderly lady with memory loss.’  I think you’re faking, anyway.  You haven’t let me win yet.”

“Is that what’s giving away my secrets?  Let’s just say I’m on an undercover mission.”  She patted her blankets.

Steve smiled at her fondly.  “Yeah?  ‘Fuzzy and blue’ is a less detailed cover than I’d expect from you.  What’s the mission?”  He shuffled and dealt.

She hummed a snatch of music he’d heard her humming often and didn’t answer directly.  “My mission – and I chose to accept it …”  She trailed off.  “As always, should I be caught, I’ll disavow any knowledge of my actions.”  She picked up her cards, humming again.

* * *

“How’s she doing?” the charge nurse asked as he headed out.

Steve sighed.  “She’s awfully fond of that ‘undercover mission’ joke.  Twice again today.  Acts like it’s the first time every time.  I’m having to work a lot harder to maintain my perfect record at whist.  Gonna break her heart the first time I can’t manage to lose.”  He frowned.  “Lot of talk about being on a mission.  Dunno how with me she really was.  She kept fading off –”  He hummed a few bars of the now-familiar tune.

“Oh, that’s her favorite TV show.  Only one she watches any more.  I think she was watching it ironically at first – I used to watch with her, her commentary was a hoot.  Utterly scathing.  Now I think it’s … familiar.  Anchors her.”

“She’s trying so hard to hang in there.”

“Yeah, she’s a real trooper.  Back next month?”

“I’ll keep coming as long as she knows me.  As long as I can.”

2014

“Afternoon, Captain Rogers.  We weren’t expecting you until next week.”

“Yeah, I know I’m early, I was just hoping – how is she today?  You think she’d mind seeing me?”

“It’s funny, for the last week she’s been insisting you’d be here soon.  We always have your visits marked, but lately every time we go in there we have to tell her the date and count the days.  Today’s been the worst.  She won’t even let us put on Mission: Impossible or hum it with her, it just makes her upset.  Go on in, maybe it’ll reassure her.”

As he approached her door, he could hear her murmuring four short phrases, over and over, but he couldn’t make them out.  Today might be one of the hard days, then.  He stopped out of her line of sight to close his eyes and lean his head against the wall.  Was it fair to bring his worries about Project Insight to her?  She’d been the closest thing to an anchor he could find in the months after coming out of the ice, and he’d tried to be one for her as she drifted further and further into confused currents of memory.  Perhaps today they should just play her favorite “Best of the 1940s and ’50s” CDs and reminisce about her shooting his shield.  That always made her smile.  Their whist days might be done.

She was still murmuring her litany.  He put on his best USO smile and knocked gently on her doorframe.  She fell silent and looked up.

For the first time, she was in bed, wearing a nightgown and no makeup.  The nurses always teased him about how she insisted, on his visit days, on being up and dressed and putting her face on, at least her signature red lipstick.  He’d never taken it as the flirting they seemed delighted to look for; he understood about putting a costume on for someone else’s comfort or your own.  If it helped anchor her to one of the few steady places in her mind, he’d take what face she chose to show him, and reflect back to her the competent and daring woman she’d always deserved to have others see.

The nightgown was clean and her hair had been brushed, but it was still a shock.    He tried not to let his smile falter.  “Hi, Peggy,” he said softly, coming to sit in the chair beside her bed.  “You’ve caught me being late often enough, thought maybe my best girl wouldn’t mind if I showed up early for once.”

She watched him move, seeming briefly very far away, then nodded.  “Early, for once,” she repeated, slow and oddly emphatic.  “Yes.  That’s it.”  She closed her eyes, taking in a deep breath.  Her hands on the blankets spread wide open and then closed slowly, gathering the blankets up over her waist.  When she opened her eyes, they were clearer and more alert than he’d expected, and she smiled at him.  “Do you know what day it is?”

He cocked his head and glanced at the large calendar on the wall, wondering if she wanted the literal answer.

The brightening of her eyes suggested she thought that was funny.  “It’s mission day.”  She patted the blankets.  “And here I am: under covers.”  She looked pleased.

“What’s the mission, Peggy?” he asked kindly, expecting humming or Mission: Impossible quotes, expecting nothing.

Her lips moved as she almost said something, but stopped herself.  She tried again.  “You – tell me, first.  Why you’re here early.”

No details.  “Something at SHIELD.  Could be really dangerous.”

She smiled and let her head drop back onto the pillows.  “Yes.  That’s always your mission.  Saving – everybody.  You came here so I could tell you: that’s the mission.”

“Thank you, Director Carter.  Gonna need a more specific mission brief.  People I thought I could trust are making decisions I don’t.”

“The mission isn’t always what you’d expect.  Sometimes, the people you want to tell everything, you can’t tell anything.”

“No.  I guess not.”

“But we always complete our missions, Steven.”

“You always did.  You should be proud, Peggy.”

“Mm.  I have lived a life.  My only regret is that you didn't get to live yours.”

She sounded so emphatic, but how many people wouldn’t get to live their lives, if Project Insight were allowed to launch?

She saw something in his face.  “What is it?”

“For as long as I can remember I just wanted to do what was right. I guess I'm not quite sure what that is anymore. And I thought I could throw myself back in and follow orders, serve. It's just not the same.”

“You're always so dramatic.  Look, you saved the world.  We rather ... mucked it up.”

Saved the world seemed like a bit much for what he’d done, but comforting her was more important than arguing with her.  “You didn't.  Knowing that you helped found SHIELD is half the reason I stay.”

She took his hand.  “Hey.  The world has changed, and none of us can go back.”  She squeezed his hand, stronger than he expected, relaxed a moment, squeezed again.  “All we can do is our best, and sometimes the best that we can do is to start over.”  She forced the last words out past a cough, her hand gripping his painfully, then suddenly relaxing.

He turned back with the water quickly, afraid what her slackening grip might mean.  “Peggy.”

Even before she spoke, he knew from the changes in her face that she’d lost whatever she’d been holding so tightly.  After that, all he could give her was kindness.

He hoped she’d completed her mission.

2016

Sam had nodded when he asked for a few minutes, and disappeared with the general throng.  He was sitting quietly when he heard footsteps and looked up.

A late-middle-aged biracial man in elegant funeral clothing held out a hand; he stood and shook it.  “Steve Rogers.”

“Gabriel Steven Jones-Morita.  But unless I’m in a heap of trouble, you just – you can call me Gabe.”

Steve smiled.  “You have her eyes.”

“The family wanted to thank you for all the time you spent with her.  It meant so much.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there more the past couple years.  I’ve been on a mission that required a lot of travel.”

Gabe tilted his head.  “Have you found what you’re looking for?”

Steve shook his head.  “Not yet.”

“I’m sure you will.  You’re welcome to be with us graveside, if you like.  You’re family.  There’s a reception afterwards.”

“I – thank you.  That means a lot.”  He paused.  “I never asked Peggy about any of you.  I thought, whatever she wanted to talk about, whatever she wanted to tell me, that’s what I wanted to hear.  Mostly that was whist, old times, and her opinions on – everything.”  He looked around the echoing church, nearly empty now, and nodded faintly to Natasha when he spotted her waiting for him in the back.  “It was wonderful to see so many people who cared about her.  So much life she’d led.”

“But a bit much to meet all of us at once, especially under these circumstances?”  He glanced at his mother’s coffin and photograph.  “I have it on good authority that you’ll love us once you get to know us.”  He handed over his card.  “When you’re ready.”

* * *

“We will ‘get that stuff out of his head,’” said a soft but intense voice.

Steve nodded gravely as Shuri joined him, looking into the lab they’d just left.  He’d been taken aback to learn someone so young would be in charge of Bucky’s healing, but then he’d thought of Tony, making AI robots at seventeen with less.  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he murmured.

Her mouth tightened and her chin came up.  “Thank you,” she said, calm voice at odds with the fierceness of her gaze.  “My efforts for your friend are my insistence on justice.”  She looked away from Bucky’s frozen form to meet his eyes.  “He and my father were used to split the Avengers because a small man could not step back from his own pain.  I can’t bring my father back.  But I won’t let others’ use of us define us.  We’ll help him find his way back to making his own choices.”

Early 2018

Bucky grinned as Steve arrived, note in hand, having followed the trail of discarded clothes and chocolate-orange scent to its end.

Steve stared at him.  “What are you doing in my bed?”  So that was why Nat had been so amused.  He’d get her back later.

Bucky waited.

Steve stared.

“If you don’t want them, that’s one thing,” Bucky said.  “But I’m pretty sure you do, so I think you should get over here and eat my damn cookies.”

* * *

Snap.

“Steve?”

Ashes to ashes.

Dust to dust.

2018: one month post-Snap

It was Thor’s-Day, so of course it was raining.  Thor himself was nowhere to be found; Steve had gone on foot patrol to avoid finding him.  If Thor pressed him to join in the endless mead-quaffing one more time, he wasn’t sure if he’d down an entire flagon in one gulp or brain Thor with the mead-barrel.  Asgardian mead would at least get him drunk, and that had been … tempting.  Too tempting.  They could all see where that path was taking Thor, but none of them had the words to get him off it.

“At least the moonshine serum still let me get a little bit drunk on, y’know, normal alcohol,” Bucky said, and Steve could hear the laughter in his voice, was already smiling as he turned to catch Bucky’s grin –

Rain blurred his reflection in the plate glass of the pharmacy window he was passing.  His arm trembled at his side as he kept himself from shattering his own image.

“Hey, Cap, got a minute?” said a tired voice.

He turned to see the pharmacist opening her door just enough to speak to him.  He breathed, found a smile.  “Sure, Agnieszka, what’s up?”

“Finally got one of Stark’s generators in here.  Gotta hook it up to the med fridges.  Both my stockers are … gone …”

Steve nodded.  “Need a hand wrangling the fridges?  No problem.”

* * *

Three hours later, he’d also helped the sanitation crews still struggling to clear the detritus of the dead, and even rescued a kitten from a tree, mouth tight as he tried not to think of Spider-Man.  He was rain-soaked, and he needed to check on Natasha.  He’d heard the communal toaster being used at 3 a.m., but he didn’t think she’d been out of her room otherwise.

“So why didn’tcha go catch her then?  Mighta gotten toast,” said B-  Dammit.  He turned to the empty air at his side to beg it to leave him alone, and something about the reflections was off.

Half a block ahead.  The pharmacy.  The big hole in the window.

He forced himself to slow down as he reached it.  The looters hadn’t been there long enough to damage much, but they had Agnieszka backed up against the pharmacy counter.  No guns, but two had bats.

“Oh, these assholes are goin’ down,” breathed Bucky, and Steve didn’t even try to shush him.  The idiots clearly had no tactical training; they were ignoring everything but Agnieszka, who after one sharp glance at him kept her gaze down and changed her posture from defiant to cowed.

Steve leapt lightly through the hole, avoiding crunching any glass.  Ducking behind a shelf got him close.  The unarmed looter was saying, “Bitch, cash register, now.”  The one to the left was leaning on her bat, the one to the right had his indolently balanced over his shoulder, and oh, Steve could see a hundred ways to have them down and broken before they knew what hit them.  His hands flexed, and he balanced himself on the balls of his feet –

“Ain’t none o’ that gonna bring me back,” said Bucky.

Steve gritted his teeth.

* * *

“Thank you for your donation,” said Agnieszka calmly, patting the bats and smiling only a little.  “And for the nice job putting the plywood up to cover the window you broke.  I do appreciate your thoroughness sweeping all the glass off the floor.  From the window.  That you broke.”  Her smile for Steve was far more genuine.  “And thank you as always for stopping by, Captain.”

“Let me know if your new stockers give you any trouble, ma’am.  I’m only a very short walk away, and I’d really like to see them succeed here.”

* * *

Nat hadn’t answered his knock.  He’d gone back to his own rooms, turned on the lights, the TV and the radio, and tried to draw.  When he started smelling chocolate and orange, he barely stopped himself from snapping his pencil.  He drew a deep breath, let it out, set down the sketchbook and pencil, and walked into the kitchen.

“You’re not here,” he said to the air.  “You’re not real.  I know what this is.  Last time I thought you died, I saw you everywhere for months.  I heard you around corners.  I smelled your skin, I felt you next to me at night, I woke up every morning thinking you’d just kissed me.  I knew where you were every moment and it was always just out of sight.”  He put his hands on the counter, focusing on its solidity, and let himself lean on it.  “I can’t – I can’t do this again, Buck.”  It was hard to breathe, but there was no one there to help him through it.  He was not going to imagine Bucky rubbing his back.  He was not going to ache for Bucky to hold him.  The room was not blurry.

He filled a glass with water.  Drank it.  Set it down.  “I’m gonna make dinner and take it to Nat,” he said aloud, and he was not talking to Bucky, he was not.  “And I’m gonna – I’m gonna watch stupid cat videos while I do it.  Make sharlotka for Nat, give her a taste of home.  Ordinary things.”

And sharlotka would smell nothing like chocolate or oranges.

March 10, 2021: three years post-Snap

“You’ll take half an hour to limber up enough anyway, I’ll be fine by the time you’re ready.  Go on, don’t be late.”

He smiled at Nat and rang the doorbell on his way out, as promised.  The spring air was finally almost warm, and he’d left early enough he didn’t have to hurry.  He’d made it a week without nightmares.  He might even do something to celebrate Bucky’s birthday.

A glimpse of brilliant red caught his eye just as two small streaks crossed his path and an exasperated voice yelled, “Shaima!  DJ!”  He pivoted smoothly and caught a giggling miscreant under each arm.  “Thank you!” the voice continued.  “Can you bring them back over here, please, I’m rather occupied.”

He threaded his way into the community garden to find the woman in red riding herd on three other children, all enthusiastically digging in the dirt.  Without looking up, she leveled a finger at the two he was carrying.  “DJ, burying your shoes does not mean a shoe tree will grow, we will retrieve them before we go home.  Shaima, I’m delighted you and DJ are getting along today, but that doesn’t mean you get to mimic his fashion choices.  What’s our number one rule?”

Five cheerful voices responded, “Pants!”

“Yes.  Dig yours back up and put them on, both of you.”  The woman ran a hand through her dark hair, adding a streak of dirt to the streaks of silver, then finally looked up.  “You’ll have to put them down –”  Her eyes widened.

Must be new around here.  He hadn’t gotten the look of shocked recognition in a while and didn’t miss it.  He set the children down gently and held out a hand.  “Steve.”

“Duena.  Sorry.”  She shook his hand.  “Y- uh, I’d been warned you lived around here, forgive my awkwardness, I … looked up to you as a kid.”

He glanced at the logo on her uniform polo, connecting it with the nearby home for children orphaned in the Snap.  “When I was growing up I admired people taking care of kids who had no one else,” he said, smiling, “so I guess we’re even.  There was a lot of that during the Depression.”

“It’s no job for the faint of heart,” she agreed.  “DJ!  You may certainly run the hose over your pants after you get them out of the dirt.”

Steve glanced over.  DJ said nothing, but his grin spoke volumes.  Steve snorted and shook his head.  “I’ve fought Nazis and aliens, but managing this many children still looks intimidating.”

She raised her eyebrows, amused.  “Skill managing a chaotic environment transfers quite well.  Once you get the rhythms of this sort of battlefield – thank you for fixing the sprinkler, DJ, the water goes on the plants and not on Shaima – the results are much more satisfying.”

He cocked his head.  “That sounds like the voice of experience.”

She shrugged.  “Marines, First of the First.  Had a chance at higher rank, was told I’d be groomed for bigger and better th- DJ!  Darling, you can be replaced.  By, today, a mud puddle and a jackhammer.”

DJ considered this, grinning, then shook his head with firm delight.

“I suppose you’re right, the jackhammer wouldn’t eat nearly as much of my apple rhubarb crumble.”

DJ nodded, then made as if to jump in the mud puddle again.

Duena raised an eyebrow.

DJ stepped away from the mud puddle.

Duena nodded at him regally, then turned back to Steve.  “I decided there was nothing better than giving kids the kind of childhood y- I almost didn’t get.”

His mother had used you can be replaced in exactly that tone of voice.  I love you; stop that or I’ll stop admitting I’m amused.  He found himself saying, “Thought I’d get the chance for kids once.  That was before I went under the ice.”

She hesitated.  “Yes, I’ve – heard the story.”  She absentmindedly relieved a child of the trowel he’d gotten his hands on and handed him a plastic shovel instead.  “We can always use volunteers.”

He shook his head regretfully.  “Maybe someday.  After things are more settled.”  Emboldened by how easy it felt to talk to her, he risked teasing.  “You were warned about me?”

She slanted a grin his direction, offhandedly collaring two arguing kids and separating them firmly.  “My old man steered me to this job, which I let him do because it was exactly what I wanted.  But he, ah, knew how awkward I’d be if I ran into you unexpectedly.”  She rolled her eyes fondly.  “He’s – he was such a troll, when I was little he had me convinced for years that he could become invisible to my mother at will.  Now she knew how to keep her face straight.”

Steve didn’t miss the tenses.  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She put an arm around Shaima, who’d come to lean against her side, and ran her hand over the little girl’s hair, then nudged her gently back towards the plants.  “He was visiting me.  Said since I worked with kids I was the best one to pass on the secret cookie ingredient to.  We’d just gotten them out of the oven, he said ‘Excuse me a moment’ and stepped into the other room.  I heard him say ‘I’m coming, B-.’  Seemed odd.  By the time I got there … pile of dust.”

Steve nodded.  They’d all gotten accustomed to these stories.  You listened and you nodded, or you spoke and you breathed, and then you went on.  What other choice was there?

Something caught his attention.  “You said he steered –”  He broke off.  He should probably leave well enough alone.

“There were children who needed attention before, too.”  She glanced at him, something unreadable in her face, then turned away, unzipping her fanny pack.  “Snack time, kiddos, everyone wash your hands, yes that means you, DJ.  No pants, no snack.”

His therapy group would be waiting.  He nodded politely to Duena and the kids.  “I should be going.  Nice to meet you all.”  He got a chorus of waves and giggles.

Duena looked as though she were brazening her way through embarrassment.  “Given my, uh, historical interest … I know whose birthday it would have been today.  Sorry for your loss, too.”

He let out a breath and half-smiled.  “Thanks.  He at least got a chance to get better.  Had people helping him.”  He nodded at the kids.  “All anyone can ask.”

The kids were ripping open their snack baggies – except DJ, who was building a baggie-opening claw out of PVC pipes from the garden’s sprinkler system.  As he turned away, he thought he caught the scents of chocolate, orange, and whatever spice Bucky had always refused to name.  He smiled, shaking his head.  The imagined sensations of Bucky’s presence were rare these days.  Thanks for the reminder, he told his brain, and moved on.

Chapter Text

2023

Bruce knocked hesitantly on Steve’s door.  He’d gone off by himself after throwing the bench across the lake, while Tony prepared to put the Stones in the gauntlet.  “I, uh, Tony wants me there while he manipulates tiny things that could end life as we know it, so I was trying to get my head calm,” he said.  “I went to Nat’s room to … sit, I guess, and I found this.”  He handed over an envelope: sealed, with “for Bucky to give to Steve” written in Natasha's hand.

Steve turned it over and over.  The paper was smooth in his hands.  Bruce stood patiently in the door, neither leaving him alone nor rushing him.

Steve set the envelope gently on his desk, then reconsidered and sealed it into a compartment on his suit.

“Not opening it?” Bruce asked, unsurprised.

“Not until Bucky gives it to me,” Steve said firmly.

* * *

Spider-Man actually stumbled, pulling Steve's attention out of his fog of exhaustion and grief.  He caught Spider-Man, then wrapped an arm around his shoulders.  Nearby, Pepper and Rhodey were preparing to bring Tony’s body off the battlefield.  No help he could offer would ease that burden.

“Come on, Queens,” he said to Spider-Man, who was leaning against him, shaking.  Up ahead, first responders were jury-rigging treatment tents: unenhanced, unarmed people who'd driven towards a battle worse than the Chitauri. “The world’s bravest people are waiting for us.”  Spider-Man straightened, but Steve kept the arm around him.  He wasn’t sure which of them he didn’t trust to make it otherwise.

He got Spider-Man settled on a crate and managed to make his collapse on the next look intentional.  Paramedics examined them both; nothing they said registered.  Others came in from the battle, walking alone or leaning on each other or carried, and the work of triage went on around him with calm urgency.  The spikes of relief as each new face appeared were welcome, but the tension in his stomach and shoulders didn’t begin to ease until Bucky thumped down next to him, Sam a step behind.  Bucky said nothing, but after a crushing embrace they settled with arms around each other’s waists, and Bucky leaned his forehead on Steve’s shoulder.  His grip on Steve’s side seemed likely to bruise.  Steve tightened his arm around Bucky and pressed a kiss onto the top of Bucky’s head, then returned to keeping such watch as he could, feeling Bucky’s ribs move with each breath.  They hadn’t been affectionate like this in public before, but he was damn sure not stopping now.

Spider-Man stood up, straightening his shoulders, as Pepper and Rhodey brought Tony’s body in.  Silence fell; those who could braced to attention.  Steve met Rhodey’s eyes as they passed, and made a mental note to be sure Rhodey saw a counselor.  Rhodey, arms cradling Tony’s body, was unable to return his salute, but nodded gravely and kept going.

Pepper, bless her courage and compassion, had stopped to console Spider-Man.  He turned away to give them the illusion of privacy, but heard Spider-Man say, “I’d have done it instead, nobody would have missed me, I’ve been gone so long.”  Pepper handled it beautifully, but he added Spider-Man to the list right after Rhodey, then gave it up in a flash of dark humor: why the hell keep a separate list, they’d all end up on it anyway.  Who was he to decide whose grief merited extra care?

He almost said something after Pepper moved on and Spider-Man dropped back down to the crate as though his strings had been cut.  Bucky beat him to it, leaning around Steve to say, “Hey.  Take it from me, somebody can miss you a hell of a lot longer than five years.”

Spider-Man didn’t respond.  Steve looked over to see him breathing raggedly, hands pressed to his face – but not enough to hide that face.  Steve’s eyes widened.  “Queens.”

Spider-Man looked up. “Yes, sir?”

“You’re a kid. I mean, I guessed you were young, but you can’t be more than sixteen, seventeen.”  Steve ran a hand across his mouth, shocked – not that someone so young would want to fight, he got that, but even discounting the lost years, the kid must have been nearly a baby for the fight in Germany.  What the hell had Tony been thinking?  Even now –  “You shouldn’t have been out there fighting, not at your age.”

“I’m sixteen. And I had to fight. There was no way I was going to let Thanos win again.”

Steve looked him up and down, and thought of all those trips to recruiting offices. “I know how that feels, Queens.  Time was, I got constantly told to stand down.  Kinda wish someone would tell me that now, actually.  I’m tired of fighting.”

Spider-Man shrugged.  “Then stop.  Find something that makes you happy and go fight for that instead.”

On his other side, Bucky flinched.  Steve turned to him in concern, then turned back hastily as he heard Spider-Man chugging a bottle of water, reaching out a futile hand to stop him.  That was gonna –

Spider-Man threw up.  Steve winced and took the water bottle and protein bar out of his hands, raising them to wave a paramedic over.

“I want to go home,” Spider-Man croaked.

Steve gathered his strength to stand, figuring he might have to carry Spider-Man to transport, but Dr. Strange caught his eye as his cloak settled around Spider-Man’s shoulders and shook his head slightly.  Steve nodded back, thinking wryly that what he thought of as delegating Strange would doubtless interpret as deferring, but he didn’t much care.  The man was a medical doctor under all the light-show.

Once they’d gone, Steve looked around to see what else he needed to do.  The paramedic who’d cleaned up after Spider-Man saw and shook her head firmly.  “Sir, you need rest and we need space for casualties.  If you want to help, clear out.”

Sam spoke up from Bucky’s other side.  “She’s not wrong, Cap.  Let’s go find space for people to crash.”

He reached for Bucky’s hand as they left the triage area.  Bucky’s met his halfway.

* * *

He stood where Pepper had asked him to, right behind her and Happy and Rhodey.  “I don’t know how Morgan will take it all,” Pepper had said, “and if she can’t handle it, I need to be there for her.  She might want Happy or Rhodey too, and they’ll both be trying to watch out for me, and – if it comes to it, Steve, you let the reactor go, ok?”

“Lots of experience in show business,” he’d answered, trying to make a gentle joke of it.  “I’ll make sure it doesn’t capsize even if I have to swim next to it to stabilize it.”

He’d counted it a success when her next breath was almost a laugh.  “Tony would fit a ‘Cap-size’ joke in here somehow.  I can’t quite manage it today.  But thank you, Steve.”

“You know Morgan has more aunts and uncles than she’ll know what to do with, right?”

Her eyes had been wet, but she’d nodded firmly.  “I told Tony we’d be ok, and we will.  The next few years won’t be easy – for anyone – but we’ll make sure the cost wasn’t in vain.”

Now he watched her release the arc reactor to float on its wreath, thinking he wasn’t the only one with experience putting on a good symbolic ritual: it had trackers and would be retrieved almost as soon as it was out of sight.  No sense letting even the outmoded one wander off for Joe Random Supervillain to find.

Pepper stood, finally, straight-backed and calm, holding Morgan’s hand, and turned to look at them all.  “Not many people get to choose the timing and purpose of their death,” she said quietly.  “Not many of those get to die knowing they’ve achieved that purpose, and no one else has gotten to know they saved everyone, everywhere.  But all of us can choose the purpose of our lives.  Tony and all of us who fought to make this day possible, here, with all of us alive, we won that for ourselves and our children.  Let’s not waste the gift.”

* * *

He’d heard Clint’s ragged breathing during Pepper’s words, so when he saw Wanda head back up to the house, he walked down to the water where Clint still stood.  “You ok?”

Clint nodded.  “Yeah, I – yeah.”

“Nat got to choose her timing and purpose too,” Steve offered quietly.

Clint flinched.  “She fuckin’ fought for it.”

“She never stopped fighting.”

Clint took a deep and slightly shaky breath.  “She did stop.  Once we both knew she’d won.  I was the one still fighting it.  She told me it was ok, and then she went.  She wasn’t fighting at the end.”

Steve sighed.  “She deserved peace.”  He glanced around and lowered his voice.  “This funeral – God knows Tony earned it – it just – it shouldn’t have been only about him.  Should’ve done one for her too, or made this one be for both of them.  Everyone who fell, getting us here.”

Clint opened one hand, then let it fall.  “Sure.  But Tony always wanted to be the center of attention, and Nat – she could be, but she wielded it for missions.  She didn’t need it the way he did.”

“Funerals aren’t about the needs of the dead.  They’re for the living.  I don’t want her erased.  Things that happened, choices that people made shouldn’t be – she saved the world as much as Tony did.  Without her death, he couldn’t have –”

He’d come down here to make sure Clint was ok, but it was Clint who put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Hey, hey.  Steve.  You’re not wrong.  You think Laura and I won’t make damn sure Nate knows where his name came from and what she did?  My family would be either still dead or here but missing me, if not for her.  I don’t forget it for a second.  We’ll make her a memorial, we’ll see how many ridiculous stories about her we can get in history books as stone-cold truth, you know she’d love that.  Betcha fifty bucks within the next five years I can get a story about her using trained ferrets to defuse a Pop-Tart bomb into a reputable college history textbook.”

Steve felt himself settle.  “Double or nothing within six years I get a controversy going among historians whether it was ferrets or spiders.”

“You’re on.”  Clint crossed his arms and looked out over the water.  “Right before we started trying to kill each other to keep each other from dying, she said, ‘For the last five years I've been trying to do one thing: Get to right here. That's all it's been about. Bringing everybody back.’  I can’t get it out of my head.  ‘Get to right here.’”  He kicked at a clump of grass.  “Get to where we could believe we’d get everyone back, I guess.  I dunno.”

Steve shrugged.  “She was probably busier planning how to take you down than picking the perfect words.”  He sighed.  “Now we gotta keep everybody back.  Get the Stones returned, keep time travel quiet so we don’t have the next wannabe going after them again, deal with the population doubling instead of halving …”

Clint got them headed back up to the house.  “I refuse to get exhausted thinking about it.  That’s Tomorrow-Clint’s problem.  Tonight-Clint is gonna find the catered funeral spread, which I hear involves cheeseburgers.  Come on, I’ve left Laura to deal with the kids long enough, will you please tell her you fell apart sobbing and I couldn’t leave you?”

* * *

“You all right, Buck?”  Steve pulled off his funeral jacket and tie.  “You were quiet all afternoon.”

“Letting you lead,” Bucky said.  “Didn’t seem right to be too visible, given ... well, you know.”

Steve looked over.  Bucky was sitting on their couch, but he wasn’t relaxed.  He kept clenching his fists, then slowly forcing them to open, staring at them.  It had a ritual air, but the repeated, deliberate letting-go wasn’t reducing the tension in his arm and shoulders.

Steve sat down, laying a hand over Bucky’s, and said quietly, “Hey.  Talk to me?”  When Bucky didn't pull away, Steve slid over against his side.  Bucky sat very still, but his hand closed tightly around Steve’s.  Steve pulled lightly until Bucky let his hand rest on Steve’s knee, palm-up, then dug into the ball of Bucky’s thumb with gentle pressure.

Bucky sighed and closed his eyes.  After a moment, he let his hand fall open.  “You thinking about staying?”

“Staying?”  Bucky usually let his hand go fully lax as soon as Steve started massaging, but tonight his fingers still felt tense.  Steve worked carefully.

“Your housecleaning trip.  Save Peggy’s stone for last, and just … don’t come back.”

Steve’s hands loosened and his breath caught.  “Buck …”  He didn’t know where to start.  He twined his fingers into Bucky’s.

“Don’t tell me the thought hasn’t crossed.”

Steve waited until Bucky looked at him.  “I’m not leaving you, Buck.”

“That’s not ‘I never thought of it,’ Steve.”

“It’s the important part.  Sure, I saw her on the trip out and it reminded me how much I miss her.  But that’s twelve years ago for me, and she had a long life after me, married, had kids, ran SHIELD...  She was kind when I showed up again.  But whatever might've happened, I was just the maybe she lost in the war.”

Bucky closed his eyes again.

“C’mon, Buck,” Steve said gently, trying to understand why Bucky still looked so pained after what Steve figured was common sense.  “I’m not erasing the life Peggy built just because I miss her. I’m not changing history – we barely survived Thanos and got you all back, you think I’d risk that? Now we finally have a chance for peace together?”  He shook his head. “I’m not leaving you.”

Bucky raised his metal hand to cover Steve’s and drew a deep, deep breath, then let it half out, like he used to when it was time to pull the trigger.  He opened his eyes, pulled an envelope out of his jacket, and opened it slowly.  Steve didn’t try to rush whatever was causing that look.  Bucky had had to give him bad news before.

Bucky started to pull out a photograph, then chose a set of papers instead.  “Back when I was gettin’ my brain sorted out, somethin’ wouldn’t stop buggin’ me …”

The next five minutes felt like a convoluted plot from a pulp comic.  A HYDRA mission brief for his first love to assassinate his second.  Names he’d have shrugged at if everything about Bucky hadn’t told him worse was coming.  A photo that would’ve made him smile – of course he’d find all these ways to tell Bucky he loved him, of course he would – if it hadn’t taken his breath away in shock and fear.

“Nat got a photo too, but I don’t –”

Steve raised a hand to stop him, sighing, and stood to retrieve an envelope from his own jacket.  It was stained with dirt and blood, crumpled during the final battle with Thanos.  He returned to settle against Bucky.  “Bruce gave me this right after Nat died,” he said.  “Kept meaning to give it to you, but – I needed a little time with you to not be hard –”

Bucky’s mouth twitched.  “Failed, didn’tcha.”

Steve elbowed him and opened the envelope.  His breath caught when two friendship bracelets fell out, in his colors and Nat’s.  “We started making these. I didn’t know she’d finished them.”  He slid them onto his wrist and pulled out the envelope's remaining contents, a photo and a letter.

He nearly dropped both when he saw the photo.  “She knew.”  Snapshots of the last five years brutally reframed themselves: the friendship bracelets were both his size.  “She knew.”

Bucky put a hand on his back, as he’d done so often long ago to anchor Steve through asthma and pneumonia.  “I made some crack about having a shorter future because there were fewer messages for me beyond mushy stuff.”  An affectionate squeeze.

“I teased her about checking the doorbell so much.  It had shorted out once. About a week before Scott showed up.”  He shivered.  Would Scott really have given up on finding them if the doorbell hadn’t worked?  Surely not.  But Bruce, wanting to refine their control before trying to return the Stones so precisely, had gone back to security footage from the storage place, trying to figure out why the quantum tunnel van had suddenly disgorged Scott.  He’d been relieved it had been a rodent rather than a fault in the machine or some undiscovered feature of the Quantum Realm, but Steve had been awed and shaken by the fragility of the event chain.  Now it terrified him.  No wonder his older self had prompted Natasha to doorbell paranoia.  He was only amazed he hadn’t written down everything he knew about the past fifty-three years in triplicate.  He rubbed his forehead and reached for Nat’s letter.

‘Time travel is real and Steve did it’ isn’t the only truth I was brave enough to let myself see.  There’s only one reason for you to wish me peace and love as I go to find the soul-stone.  Thank you.  I wish you the same.

I’ll make sure Clint comes back.  Tell him to throw peanut butter sandwiches at your head for me.  And keep dancing, I didn’t put all that work into training your grand jeté for nothing.  Fais attention au port de bras et à l’épaulement!

Love you all.

Bucky took the letter and photos gently from his hands and set them aside as his vision blurred, then slid his arms back around Steve and leaned their heads together.  “Sharon told Nat you’d said her photo was ‘to convince and comfort’ her.  Sounds like it worked.”

Steve swallowed.  “These last years, sometimes she seemed so sad and stressed and alone, but who wasn’t?  I knew she was one of the strongest people I knew, but I had no idea.  I should have –”

“Steve. Did you ever once discover a secret Natasha didn’t want you to?  Right.  So knock that shit off.  You were a good friend.  You don’t know how to be anything less.”  He disengaged to stretch and roll his neck.  “What the fuck was wrong with Thanos anyway? If you have a scarcity bug so far up your ass you scour the universe for macguffins to fix it, once you get absolute power why not double the fucking resources instead of killing half of everybody?  Plain damn stupid.  Study basic fucking arithmetic instead of murdering people and see where it gets you.”

Steve put on his Captain America PSA voice.  “So, you have absolute power, but you don’t know math…”

“…and you’re an asshole…”

Steve snorted and scooted down to put his head in Bucky’s lap.  Metal fingers dug into his temples with measured strength, and his developing headache eased.  He sighed.  “We’re not done yet, are we?” He’d hoped so hard. He’d looked into art schools, planned to ask what Bucky wanted.

Bucky silently handed over the envelope marked ‘S.’

The photo Steve pulled out held three images, all with the familiar background of the kitchen with its melted-clock calendar.  In the left-hand image, the older Steve stood looking calmly at the camera.  He was naked (“Damn, Stevie, you hold up all right.  What do the kids say these days?  I’d hit that.”  “Shut up, Buck.”  “If you do this, I’m gonna hit that.”  “Shut up, Buck.”), with four simple designs painted on his body: on his left thigh, a single vertical line ending in a dot, with a small red star next to a small white star below it; in the center of his chest and on his left shoulder, red stars; and in large letters across his upper chest, DON’T LIKE BULLIES.  The Infinity-Stone cookies were set atop the TV, which showed Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street putting their toys away.  It’s time to pick up and clean up, said the scrolling lyrics.

Steve ran his fingers over the designs, smiling wistfully.  “All the most important tattoos I’ve wanted.”

“I remember how pissed you were to lose the one you got.”  The metal fingers drifted gently down his face.  “‘With you to the end of the line,’ punk, how many decades you been usin’ that on me now?”

“It keeps working, I keep using it,” Steve said serenely.  “Anyway, you started it.  That tattoo worked even after it disappeared, if you remember.”

“Because I kept insisting on hunting for it?  Couldn’t use the ‘new-body inspection’ routine every time.”

Steve smiled, then sighed and put aside the temptation of a distraction.  “This one’s just proving it’s really me and that now is when we’re supposed to get the message.”  He moved on to the right-hand photo, saving the larger central one for last.

This older Steve had a wristwatch strapped around his hand. The watch-face had been covered with a melting clock cut from red and gold foil.  On the kitchen table, a plate held a garden salad and a cube of blue Jello.   Small reproductions of paintings were propped up on the counter and table.

Bucky raised an eyebrow at Steve.

“Knox Martin’s Venus mural, Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador, Tamayo’s Tres Personajes, untitled works by Sughra Rababi, Jija Oduka, and Madhvi Parekh.  All from 1970,” Steve said.  World art history had been his favorite part of catching up.  “The Garden State is where the Tesseract goes back.  Where Peggy was.”  He turned his attention to the central photo.

Older Steve and an elderly but vigorous Peggy sat in the outer two of a line of four chairs, their arms around the middle-aged biracial man and woman between them; he wore a physician’s coat and stethoscope, she a UNHCR polo.  All four had a hand on an arm or shoulder of one of the three younger adults who sat on the floor in front of the chairs, backs to the camera, holding their hair up.  A tattoo that appeared to be an alphanumeric code was easily visible under the hairline of the tiny, pale blond woman.  The other two, darker-skinned and black-haired, had brands in the same location.

Steve's jaw tightened.  He knew some people got brands voluntarily, but it seemed unlikely here.  “Those are Peggy and Gabe’s kids in the chairs.  I asked Nat if Jackie could train the Avengers, but they never worked out scheduling.”

“I think we know why,” Bucky said dryly.  He tapped the photo.  “See this map?  Asia?  That’s 1971 at the latest.  The city he marked is Chittagong.”  He sighed and massaged his own forehead.  “Nat and I dug into this because I had a weird feeling I knew these kids when they were tiny, which musta been around then.  I was active in northeast India and East Pakistan in late 1970, early ’71.  There was a HYDRA cell in Chittagong.  Local director was Bihari.  After the massacre he put personal loyalties above HYDRA.  They assumed he’d compromised everyone, so I was sent to clean up – no survivors, make it look like another attack to push towards war.  I thought I’d finished and was setting it up to blow when I found kids – trainees.  Nobody’d told me.  I hadn’t given them any reason to question my conditioning for years, so my handlers had gotten lax about whether little things like child murder might shake me.”

Steve offered his hand.

Bucky took it.  “The kids weren’t Bengali and they were only maybe three or four – one spoke Russian, one Spanish, one Hindi.  The Russian was a skinny little blond with a bad cough, so that caught my eye for some reason, and when I looked at her the Spanish kid stood between us, yelled at me and made like she was gonna fight me.”

Steve couldn’t help snickering.  Bucky let go of his hand long enough to flick his forehead, then twined their fingers together again.

“So of course that resonated too, and the Hindi-speaking kid was trying to hide his drawing – all together it reminded me I was human.  I pulled ’em outside, let the place blow, didn’t have a plan except telling them to scatter and hide.  Someone was waiting for me.  They said the words right away.  They musta told me to go back, report mission success and say nothing about the kids, ’cause that’s what I did.  HYDRA wiped and refroze me soon after and I didn’t remember the kids at all til Nat dug up names and pictures.  The only thing I remember about the person who found me is that he was built just like you.  And his voice made me feel – I can’t tell you what, but that I felt at all and enough to stick in my memory – I guess we know why.”

Steve squeezed Bucky’s fingers.  “There’s writing along the map edge.”

Bucky’s mouth tightened.  “Russian.  The first three of my trigger words.  And an address and exact date.”

“You ok?”

“They’re just bad memories now.  I don’t like ’em but I’m not sittin’ here fightin’ off compulsions to murder you.”

Steve turned Bucky’s metal hand over, bringing it to his mouth to kiss Bucky’s palm.  “Nat’s not the only one whose strength I admire.”

Bucky’s flesh hand was warm on his chest through the thin dress shirt and undershirt.  “Sometimes it does take a lot – no, hey, don’t even try, you know I’m not ticklish.”

Steve set the photo atop the others on the coffee table.  “Bruce’s upgrades will take at least a week.  So for tonight, I’m through thinking about not coming back to you.  If you’re fighting off any compulsions to take me to bed, I’d really like you to stop fighting them now.”

* * *

“You gonna peel that orange, Stevie, or pick at it?” announced Bucky’s arrival at the kitchen table.

Steve glanced up from the photos and grinned.  “You call me a sap?”

Bucky, on whose pink T-shirt the ‘o’ in ‘LOVE’ had been replaced by a glittery Captain America shield, smirked.  “Traded a paramedic after the battle when you weren’t lookin’.  Been savin’ it.”

Steve snorted and went back to his orange.  “I was just thinking, I never looked for pictures of Peggy’s family.  I knew she remarried after Gabe died. Knew she had kids. Didn’t feel right to dig.”

“She never said anything?”

Steve pulled apart the orange slices, considering.  “Nothing caught my attention.  She’d be lucid, then fade.  She was better talking about long ago.”  He frowned.  “I think she was trying to tell me – things I wouldn’t understand then but would remember now.”  He’d unthinkingly arranged the orange slices to outline a circle, or a clock face.  He grimaced and looked back to Bucky.  “I don’t want to do this, Buck.”

Bucky slid into the chair next to him with his usual casual grace.  “Seems you got things to balance.  Leaving me: sucks, don’t do it.  Sucks more for you though, ’cause pal, if you do this, you will live long enough to get back to me, or screw the timeline, I’ll come back to 1970 and find you and then where will we be?”

“Together,” said Steve in his sappiest voice, blinking innocently and looking up at Bucky through his eyelashes.

Bucky groaned and threw a piece of toast at his head.  “Yeah, me with a metal arm, you startin’ fights every time someone calls us fags, us not daring to let HYDRA or SHIELD notice us, that’ll end well.  Gloves and long sleeves only work for so long.  Sooner or later, there’d be explosions.”  He grabbed the toast where it had fallen to the table and ate half of it in one bite.  “Next, should this timeline be protected?  Wouldn’t using the Stones to go back and stop Thanos in the first place have been better?”

It was Steve’s turn to groan.  “We can get Banner, Foster, Selvig and Strange to argue for a month about splitting timelines and multiple universes and ‘your new future can’t change your old present ’cause it’s now your past,’ but I can’t follow it.  We can’t just stop any single attempt to get the stones; he’d only try again.  Whatever happens, Thanos has to end up dead.”

Bucky snorted.  “Put a therapist on the Benatar and send ’em back to Thanos’s childhood.  And a math teacher.”

Steve laughed.  “OK, but even if that worked for someone, it sure didn’t for us.”  He sighed.  “If this all working out depends on the path a rodent took through a storage place, do I dare not be where I’m supposed to have been for fifty years?”  He scowled at the orange slices, then ate one.

Bucky raised an eyebrow.  “You don’t do things just because it’s always been that way or someone said to.  You were always shit at following orders.”

“It's not an order. Older-me chose to go back, and was still sure enough after thirty-seven years to ask me to do the same.”

“Having seduced Captain America to protect the timeline,” Bucky said thoughtfully, “I see why you’re so into sacrificing yourself for the greater good. Don’t gimme that look, older-you told me how, so I had to. It was a hell of a charge and don’t even tell me you didn’t love every second.  Older-you said you seduced me three times a night and twice every afternoon until you went back.”

Steve’s lips twitched.  He crossed his arms.  “Only three?  What about mornings?”

Bucky nodded.  “Yup.  Them too.  So we gotta finish this talk, ’cause time’s a-wastin’.”  He tilted his chair back and put his feet in Steve’s lap.  “Thing is, Steve, you might be right about how important this is.  But you’ll fail if you’re not gettin’ somethin’ you want, too.  You’re a stubborn little bastard. You can make yourself slog through fifty years if anyone can.  But do you really think Peggy and the kids won’t notice?  Or that they’ll turn out the same as if you’re a loving husband and father who wants to be there?”

“I’d do right by th-”

“Do they deserve you forcing yourself to be there?  Look at that picture, Steve, look at their names.  There’s love there.  They weren’t raised by someone grimly doing his duty.  Yeah, they’re all in altruistic careers, and three of ’em were suspiciously ready to help after the Decimation, so maybe gettin’ ’em there is part of your duty.  But it’s ok to admit raising a family with Peggy doesn’t sound all bad.  I heard you and the Spider-Kid.  Do you need me to tell you it’s ok to stand down?”

“I can’t just show up in her office in 1970 assuming she’ll be delighted to change her life for the maybe she’s twenty-five years past losing.”  He stopped.  “She did have a picture of me.  There.  Still.”

Bucky nodded at the family photo.  “You’re holding hands behind the kids’ backs.  That’s part of the message, Steve.”

“You’re really ok with this?  I – I dated a little, three or four years after you – after the Snap.  Never took.  They were fine people, I just never felt like it could get anywhere like it was with you.  With Peggy, I hoped it could.” He realized his hands were on Bucky’s feet, and dug into a massage.

Bucky’s eyes drifted closed, and his shoulders relaxed.  “I wanted to hate her.  I could see how it was gonna go.  I’d been tellin’ myself for years we’d find girls who could stand each other and we’d be neighbors.  Visit each other when the gals were out, go on fishin’ trips.  Survive.  Every time a girl ignored you I told myself oh well, next time.  Pretended it wasn’t a relief.  Peggy made me see I was bullshittin’ myself.  Either we were all gonna have to come to an – an arrangement, when even asking her could have ruined everything for you, or I was gonna lose you.  None of it was her fault, though.  I didn’t love her, but I could see why you mighta started to.”

Steve’s hands tightened on Bucky’s feet.  “I wasn’t aiming to be lost, Buck.  Either I talked her ’round, or she said no but kept our secret, or you and Captain America got dishonorable discharges and I took on the whole damn world to insist I could love you.”

“You’d’a had ’em on the ropes,” Bucky murmured affectionately.  “I don’t want you to leave me, Stevie, but I won’t be without you for long, and you’ll have a chance at happiness you missed.”  He opened his eyes, put his feet back on the floor, and leaned forward to take Steve’s hands in his own.  He met Steve’s eyes frankly.  “I’m scared as fuck, Steve.  I’m so damn sick of us not gettin’ to be together.  But do your duty. You’ll come back.”

Steve nodded.  He squeezed Bucky’s hands, then stretched and went to the fridge.  “Eggs?”  He turned on the stove.  “I’ve lost you too many times.  Yeah, I miss her, but you’re here and there’s nothing and no one I want more.  I’ll do it – ask Peggy to do it with me – to protect -” He waved his hand around. “All this.  You. If she won’t, then the timeline’s already diverged, so I’ll rescue the kids and you and we’ll figure it out from there.  If she says yes, I’ll love her and the kids, I promise, Buck, you don’t have to worry about me.  I’ll be happy with her.  But it’s only a hiatus.  If I don’t show up right back here, then get Sharon to tell you where I am and come find me, and if I died without seeing you again then the timeline can go to hell.  Hank Pym’s back, make him make you another particle, take Clint’s suit and come get me.  I mean –”  He stabbed the eggs with a spatula.  “Ah, hell.  Talk to the Doctors Four and see if it’ll branch if you do or wipe us out, then decide.”

Bucky snorted.  “I called Sharon Carter this morning while you were in the shower.  Grant’s fine.  Says to warn you if you come back home early you’ll be sharing me, ’cause he’s gettin’ his hands on me real soon, if I think I can handle him.”

Steve slid the eggs onto plates and brought them to the table, raising an eyebrow.  “And?”

“I got a feelin’ I’m about to develop a fetish for older men.”

“Technically, we’re already –”

“Ones a good fifty years older’n me.  Can’t hit the nursing homes, they’re all younger and none of ’em could keep up with me.  Wanna watch old man porn together?”

“Jerk.”

“When Grant shows up, I aim to kiss the hell outta that man.  You can either be him and get the best reunion sex of your life, or you can get us a bed big enough for three.  Sure hope the whole space-time continuum doesn’t implode if you two meet.  Me, I think one of you is enough stubborn and stupid to be gettin’ on with.  Now if you don’t mind, I’m gonna find some educational videos.”

* * *

“You still gonna be able to, um, Captain it up when you get back?”

“Physically?  No idea.  But I’ll have been out of that game for too long.  It’s time to pass it on anyway.”

“You haven’t told anyone else about this?  Bruce is gonna feel awful if you don’t come back.”

Steve massaged his temples.   “If I need to come back early, better not to have said anything.  If I don’t, I’ll be right there anyway.  Bruce will be ok.  He’s doing final checks tonight.  It’ll be tomorrow.”

“Gotta send you off good tonight, then.”

“Is that what the kids are calling it.”  Steve didn’t look up from the piles of papers, books and tablets that had overrun the kitchen table over the past week and a half.  Histories; old newspapers; names of crop scientists, economists, roboticists and disaster management specialists active in the last fifty years and summaries of their work; old maps of India and East Pakistan; books on cross-racial/cross-cultural adoption, parenting, pediatric trauma recovery and mental health; dictionaries and grammars for Russian, Spanish, Hindi, Bengali, Chakma, Chittagonian and Bihari; the entire transcript of Bucky’s debriefing sessions and every SHIELD/HYDRA record on the Winter Soldier.  Bucky had been making him sleep four hours a night.  At the moment he was staring at the list Bucky had written him.

Желание. Ржавый. Семнадцать. Рассвет. Печь. Девять. Добросердечный. Возвращение на родину. Один. Грузовой вагон.

Солдат.

Я готов отвечать.

“I – I’m sorry, Buck.”

Bucky rolled his eyes.  “Dumbass.  Look, I know you’re gonna twist yourself up if I don’t make this real clear, so here: use the damn words.  At least you’ll use me for good – hell, you’ll help me complete a mission I chose and couldn’t have finished myself, you think I could’ve kept three kids safe and helped them grow up happy right then?  Use the damn words.”

Steve’s mouth twisted in grudging amusement.  “Am I that transparent?”

“Yep.  Don’t be kind to me, either.  No puppy-dog eyes, no tragic sighs, no ‘Bucky?’  Your shape and voice will be enough, don’t trigger my fake-handler responses or mess me up enough they do any more than a standard wipe when I get back.”

Steve nodded.  “I know, Buck.  I’ll get it right.”  He pushed back from the table and went to grab a glass of water.

Bucky glanced at the table.  “Steve … why is there a printout from FRIDAY’s living room camera of you and me cuddling on the couch?”

Steve, raising the glass to drink, paused.

“Great shot, you look damn hot, we’re happy. Still have clothes on, that narrows down the time frame.  You took off the time/date stamp, but my face and arm and a lot of tech are awfully visible for what I think you’re planning to do with this.”

Steve drained the glass and put it next to the sink.  “You know, I resented Tony’s conditions for creating time travel – if we couldn’t erase the Snap, couldn’t we at least take the Stones back to right after Thanos was dead the first time and bring everyone back then?  I took what I could get and tried to be generous about it, but he put his one little girl ahead of five years of fucking catastrophe and grief for the whole damn world and I just … But you’re it, Buck, you’re the part of the timeline I won’t lose.  I’ve at least got the excuse that I have to preserve you to get it right.  I’m showing that picture to Peggy and telling her if it ever comes to it she has to make sure you live, even at the cost of not stopping the Winter Soldier.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Fine. Now: you’ve got everything on the table memorized twice over, so enough, I told you Grant said twice every afternoon and you’ve hardly –”

* * *

Bucky arched under him.  “Fuck, Steve – you can’t – wear me out – I got – ohhhh – I got – old-man – reunion sex – tomorrow night – oh, fuck me –”

Steve pulled off just long enough to kiss Bucky’s hip and murmur, “That’s the plan.”  Then he resumed protecting the timeline.

* * *

“Wow.  Did we really –”

Steve didn’t move.

“Did we actually find your limit?”

Steve breathed.

“After the Night of a Thousand Cookies I didn’t think you had a limit.”

Steve managed, barely, to roll onto his side.

“My jaw hurts.”

Steve tried to throw a pillow at Bucky, but dropped it on his own head instead.

“My wrists are sore.”

Steve let Bucky pull the pillow off, lift his head and stuff the pillow back under it.

“My tongue is sore.  We went through all the lube.  My –”

Steve pulled Bucky’s arm up under his own and curled around it, letting Bucky curl around him as they’d done so many times since they were children.  He didn’t fit so well any more, but he could breathe easiest here, he could fall asleep best here.  His other hand lay open, palm up, fingers slack.  He closed his eyes.

“Old-man-you better be patient with me tomorrow, we just tried gettin’ in fifty years’ worth in nine hours.”

Steve patted Bucky’s hand.

“You gonna be able to walk in the morning?  I won’t.  Oh well, you’ll either heal or take one for the timeline – a lot more than one – I lost count, too bad, woulda been nice to know your limit. For science. Have to try again, maybe Bruce can spend another day gettin’ things ready –”

Steve patted Bucky’s hand with more emphasis.

“Right.  Letting you sleep now.”  Bucky brushed kisses onto the back of Steve’s neck.  “Good night.  I love you.”

Steve twined their fingers together.  “Love you too.”

They slept.

* * *

“Don't do anything stupid ’til I get back.”

“How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.”  Their arms tightened around each other.  “Gonna miss you, buddy.”

“It’s gonna be okay, Buck.”

Chapter Text

Spring 2011

Trees shaded the long, curving drive welcomingly.  Peggy patted Grant’s hand as Sharon drove them smoothly around the bend.  “Lovely,” she said.  “We’ll have to go on walks, for as long as I can.”

“Every day,” Grant said, and she let her fingers linger on his for the effort she heard him making.  “They’ve got paths everywhere, we’ll have wheelchair races with the other residents when it’s that time.”

She smiled.  “Now that would hardly be sporting of you.”  She looked at him sidelong.  “You made them give you the whole tour, didn’t you.  Even though we know this is the place.”

He shrugged.  “Would have looked strange if I hadn’t.  Did it at the other places, too.  Besides, if I hadn’t liked the look of it, or if you don’t today – we’ll figure out something.  I won’t take my best girl somewhere she doesn’t want to go.”

“I’ve quietly checked out the personnel,” Sharon said, and if her eyes met Grant’s in the rearview mirror a half-second too long, well, Grant had been playing things close to his chest with good reason for a long time now.  Peggy knew what she needed to know, and she would only become a worse security risk over time.  Grant was being as kind about it as he possibly could, but she’d insisted he return to watching himself around her as carefully as he had when he first returned.  “They’ve already been vetted to work here anyway given its retired-intelligence clientele, but I didn’t find any … new concerns.”

Grant sighed unhappily as the car rounded the final curve.  “I can still take care of you at home,” he murmured.  “We’ve got months before you have to be here.”

It was her turn to meet Sharon’s eyes.  Sharon nodded, pulled up to park, and made an excuse about letting staff know they were there.

Peggy kept her hand on Grant’s.  “Darling, we’ve been over this mission brief more than any other in my life.  Need we review again why it must be now, have you forgotten?”

He smiled at her.  She’d ribbed him about his perfect memory for years.  She’d stopped when he told her about the Alzheimer’s.  But after the initial grief and anger, she’d rallied, as she always did.  Stiff upper lip and all that; some parts of being British were too precious to ever cede.  Now she joked about her own memory more than his.

“So we have time to learn which staff we trust most.  So you have time to feel comfortable and familiar and safe in this environment while your marbles are still mostly in your jar –”

“Mostly!  Grant-me-patience Steven Carter, I’ll have you know every marble I have ever owned is firmly in my jar.  I may, from time to time, misplace the jar, but you always find it for me.  It’s why I keep you.”

He raised her hand and brushed his lips gently over her fingers.  “So we can practice your lines in the setting in which you’ll deliver them, over and over and over until we’re both sick of it.”

“We passed that point long ago, love, the ‘undercover’ joke was funny once.  But we’ll keep at it until they’re graven on every marble I’ve got.  So no matter how many I lose …”  She reclaimed her hand and cupped his cheek; he turned and kissed her palm.  She smiled.  “You’re graven on every marble I’ve got.”

“That,” he said, “is because I’m marble-ous.”  He hopped nimbly out of the car before she could swat him, retrieved her walker from the boot, and opened her door to hold the walker for her as Sharon reappeared, a staff member in tow.

Pleasantries and tour-guiding lasted them the short walk to the small apartment.  The halls were wide and many-windowed (“wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs and hospital beds, so even the frailest of our residents can get outside when the weather’s nice”), with cushioned benches at short intervals and a hand rail along each side.  Doorways were similarly wide, doorknobs all manipulable with an elbow – “we’re fully ADA-compliant, of course, but we regard that as a minimum standard.  Residents are the majority of voting members on all our committees, and anyone can suggest improvements for public areas or request changes to their own private space.  Our commitment is to support aging in place in a welcoming community, keeping you together in what we hope will become your home.  We cherish your dignity and independence, and our services will evolve as your needs change.”  It was sales patter, of course, but Peggy forbore to roll her eyes; the young lady seemed quite sincere, and the place was well-designed.  For that much money per month, it had better be.

They entered the apartment.  She heard Grant inhale as he noted the placement of the window, its view, the design of the space.  The hospital bed he’d described would come later.  For now, simple but elegant show furniture was arranged to leave clear paths.

There was a “Welcome!” card on a desk just inside the door.  She reached to pick it up –

1970

– wondering how and why a piece of paper she didn’t expect had come to be on her desk.

Not accidentally: whoever left it had set her picture of Steve atop it to hold it down.  She frowned.  Only her adjutant had keys to the office, and it wasn’t like him to move her pictures, or not to warn her when he’d left her paperwork.  She set the picture back in its accustomed spot and turned over the paper.

Handwriting she hadn’t seen in twenty-five years:  Sorry I’m late.  The Stork Club closed before I could get to it.

She muffled her gasp instantly, the paper falling from her loosened fingers, then caught it, eyes narrowing.  Was this Howard’s idea of a joke?  Surely not; Howard was thoughtlessly self-centered, not viciously cruel.  Had he actually found Steve and kept the news from her?  But he’d stopped his expeditions years ago.  Why in God’s name – how –

Was here dropping something off.  Thought about hiding under your desk, but I can’t fit, and you might not come back alone.  So I’m going to the grocery store.  Then I’m breaking into your house – sorry, but we need to talk privately, and I need to be out of sight.  I’ll have dinner ready at 5:30. Please don’t shoot me. Unless you got really enthusiastic I’d survive, but the neighbors would notice.

It wasn’t signed, but there was a drawing of a large person crammed into the small space under a desk, in a style she’d never mistake.

* * *

She’d parked half a mile away and gone through the woods behind the properties, then settled in to case her own house.  He was being canny: no lights, no unfamiliar vehicle in the drive.  She’d caught glimpses of him in the kitchen, keeping well back from the windows.  It was certainly someone built like him, moving like him.

She’d been out here an hour.  Time to resolve this, before her deadline passed and Howard came to investigate the “something slightly odd” she’d insisted was all she was going to tell him.  Annoying man.  If he’d kept a secret of this magnitude from her, one afternoon of refusing to satisfy his curiosity was the very least of the vengeance she’d exact.

She fetched the car home, arriving at her usual time, and checked her gun before getting out.  The front door appeared unmarred.  “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” greeted her quietly from the record player as she eased the door open.  Scents of toad-in-the-hole and apple-rhubarb crumble –

Spring 2011

“– will make it feel like home soon, I hope,” Grant said, pulling the oven open.  “Thought I’d surprise you for our first night here.”

She smiled at him.  “Repeating our first dinner...  You are lucky I didn’t shoot you, you’d burned the crumble, and that toad-in-the-hole was ...”

“My first attempt, and I was distracted.”

“Rehearsing your lines?  Wondering whether I’d shoot you?”  They’d had this conversation a hundred times. She settled into the familiar rhythms of teasing him.

“Hoping you’d kiss me.  Terrified the slightest wrong word would derail my mission. Since I didn’t know what my lines were supposed to be.”  He set her plate in front of her and sat down with his own, leg bumping comfortably against hers.

“Speaking of missions, and rehearsing lines, and getting distracted,” she said, and recited softly: “Early, for once.  Yes, that’s it.  Do you know what day it is?  It’s mission day.”

Christmas 2011

“‘Mm.  I have lived a life.  My only regret’ – Grant?  Will the children be here soon?”

He smiled.  If she’d already asked, he was doing an admirable job pretending she hadn’t.

“Alex and Duena and their families are coming tomorrow.  Sannath and his get into the airport tonight.  I have to go get them.  Will you come –”

Christmas 1970

“– with me?”

She set down her teacup.  Howard had monopolized last night’s “SHIELD family” holiday party, insisting that all of SHIELD’s records should be moved to these “floppy disk” things the instant they went on sale, that by the end of the next year they wouldn’t need paper.  Then he’d asked yet again when she was going to “move on.”  Her eventual sharp retort that she was auditioning a candidate, it wasn’t him, it wasn’t going to be him, and perhaps with a new baby he should tend to his own knitting had not gone over well, and she was due to face similar questions from her mother during the traditional Christmas transatlantic phone call an hour from now.  At least Gabe and Jackie had gone straight to the Jones grandparents from university, so she’d have an hour to herself in the car on the way over after she’d chatted with Mother.

She massaged her forehead.  “So you’re proposing not only a marriage in which my colleagues could never meet you, but that we travel secretly to East Pakistan to rescue HYDRA-trained children, whom we then smuggle back here and adopt?  And I’ll continue my career while you raise them?”

He cleared his throat.  “You see why I thought we should take our time getting to know each other again before making any big decisions.”  His face softened.  “No matter what else happens, Peggy, I’m grateful for these months.  It’s been a gift getting to know you as you are now.”

She eyed him.  She was hardly immune to flattery from him, especially knowing he meant every word, but … “I am fifty years old, S- Grant.  With a career I have spent a lifetime building, and both for my own sake and the sake of what I do, I cannot compromise it.  Three small children in the house … three HYDRA-trained, abused, uprooted small children …”

He ran his hands over his face and through his hair.  “I know.”

“Do you really?  How much experience do you have with even one small child?”

“Bucky had three younger sisters – don’t give me that look, I’m not claiming that makes me a parent.  It makes me humble enough to know if I try this alone …”  He shuddered.  “Please don’t make me try this alone.”

Her lips twitched, but only briefly.  “Millennia of free-will philosophers are turning in their graves right now.  You showed me a photograph.  It happened.  Where, exactly, is my choice?”

“It’s right here, Peg,” he said, utterly serious.  “I have to respect it.  You couldn’t have been anything less than a committed partner, in my timeline’s past.  If that’s not your choice now, I don’t know what happens to my timeline. I’ll rescue the children, do what I can for them, then find – then try righting other wrongs.  I don’t think there’s any way to prevent the catastrophe I know is coming, but if there is, I’ll find it.”

“You’re asking me to commit to a very difficult path to put the welfare of three children above – how many lives could you save, if you were free to act on what you know?”

He shook his head.  “If we do this, we’ll love the children for their own sakes.  But that’s not what I’m asking.  Peg, I can’t – I can’t tell you, I’m so afraid I’ve already said too much.  But there’s no number of lives I could save that would even approach what we’ve overcome in my past.  That’s what I’m trying to protect.  That’s what I’m asking for.”

She cocked her head.  “Do you know what color shirt you’ll wear every day for the next fifty years?”

“Um … a lot of white, light blue and plaid?”  A brief hesitation, a flash of amusement and loneliness: she’d learned the signs of a memory he wouldn’t explain.

“At least you’re not inviting me into a play whose script only you know.”

“I’m flying almost blind.”

She sat back and crossed her legs. “Dedicating one’s life to duty amid dimly perceived approaching catastrophes, striving to avoid the greatest and mitigate the rest…” He nodded. She lifted an eyebrow. “I was describing my career.”

Steve looked ruefully amused to be caught out. “That’s why there’s n- there’s no one I’d rather do this with.”

She knew why he’d hesitated, but it would be churlish to hold memories of lost love against him. There was no sense in rivalry with a dead man. “Are the children – like you?”

“People like me only do the flashy parts, Peg.  The kids will never have the serum, but are you gonna say they’re not worth it unless one of them will save the world?  These three are HYDRA-trained, HYDRA-abused.  They need to be with someone they’ll have trouble killing until they settle – and then the only protective, constant, kind presence they know should disappear on them?  No.  By that time I will be their parent.  I’ll do it alone if I have to, but I hope you’ll give me a chance to do it so much better with you.”

She picked her teacup back up.  She sipped.  “You never deal with small problems, do you?”  She smiled.

He smiled back.

“When do we leave?”

After the Chitauri invasion

“He’s all right.  Still can’t play whist to save his skin.”

“My young rival for your attentions?”

“He’s been on the telly.”  A long pause.  “‘That’s always your mission.  Saving – everybody.  You came here so … so I could tell you: that’s the mission.’”

Grant pressed a kiss into her hair.

That winter

“The world has changed, and none of us …”  The edge of her blanket was soft beneath her fingers.  Grant’s arm around her was warm.  She leaned into him.  He kissed her temple.  “None of us …”  She was undercover.  There was a mission.  Those weren’t the words she was looking for.  “None of us can …”  She fell silent.

“None of us can go back,” Grant murmured at last, his arm tightening.  His chest expanded and contracted against her shoulder.

She listened to him breathing.

“Let’s take a break,” Grant suggested gently.  “How about some hot chocolate?”

“Hot chocolate,” she agreed, and waited while he made it.  The edge of her blanket was soft beneath her fingers.  She missed his warmth against her side until he returned, carrying their hot chocolates and his sketchbook on a tray.

“Got it?”  He made sure she had both hands around the cup, cradling her hands in his own and waiting for her nod before letting go, then settling back against her with his own.  “What shall I draw for you today?”

“Something happy.”  The hot chocolate was sweet on her tongue.  “Old friends.  Gabe.  Dum-Dum.  Bucky.”

His head lifted and his posture straightened.  Only the tiniest bit.  She wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been leaning against him.  Her eyes fell past her cup to her blanket.  Gabe had given it to her, years ago now, years and years, when Jackie was born.  Jackie wasn’t a baby anymore.  Jackie was all grown up.  They had pictures of Jackie, and Gabe, and everyone, in the bedroom.  But out here, only the two: herself and Alex, and herself with Alex and Alex’s annoying little friend from Sunday School, what had his name been?  It escaped her and she let it go.  Grant was sitting so quietly, eyes closed, his face calm –

Years ago

– in a way she’d come to know hid pain he couldn’t tell her about.  The Arizona Republic he’d been reading lay folded on the table, his hand mostly covering a photo he’d laid atop it.

She let the back half of her brain monitor the sounds of three children in the next room for outbreaks of Armageddon, and slid into the chair across from him.  This wasn’t the first time he’d suddenly taken an interest in a newspaper they ordinarily ignored, then gone quiet after a few days or a week of reading it.  Usually it was a foreign paper.

She carefully made no attempt to see the photograph.  She waited until Grant opened his eyes to her, then said quietly, “Bolles?”

He sighed and nodded.

“You’d never have permitted it to stand unless you felt you had no other choice.”

His mouth tightened briefly, but he nodded again.

“How many more? – No, I know you can’t tell me.  It’s – distressing – to see what you feel you must allow.”  She shook her head at his look.  “I’m not starting that argument again.  I made my decision to trust you.  I just hate the cost to you.  Whatever’s coming, I don’t want to know, Grant, but if you need me to hear it, I will.”

He let out a breath.  “I hate keeping secrets from you.  But I can’t tell you – not about that, nor this … as for this, I actually feel worse about not standing around handing out free condoms on every street corner.”

She raised an eyebrow, but he seemed perfectly serious.

“Or working on food distribution systems or clean energy or – these, these are just … personal.”  His hand shifted minutely on the photograph.  Suddenly he blinked.  “Uh –”

She smiled slightly.  “It’s no secret famines are an unsolved problem, love, or that the Clean Air Act can’t be the end of our efforts to clean up after ourselves.  I’ll admit to curiosity about the condoms …”

He didn’t smile.

She let it drop.  “We’ve each got secrets, and I knew what I was agreeing to when I married you.  You already had the choice of me vs. your duty before, and you made it.”

He winced.  “I missed Bucky so bad, my life to stop Schmidt didn’t seem like a cost I’d mind.  Almost a relief to have a reason.”  His thumb moved on the photograph, along its edge – no.  He was touching part of it on purpose.

As always, she chose to look away.  “You managed to sound like it was me you were giving up.”

“It was the last kindness I could do you.”  He smiled a little.  “And I was, you know.  I’ve never stopped loving Bucky, but I never faked anything with you, either.”

“I know.”  His thumb had moved almost imperceptibly on the photograph as he spoke of Bucky.  She chose her next words very carefully.  “It’s not any particular assassination’s occurrence that you’re protecting and grieving for, is it, so much as the assassin.”

Grief flared across his face and his hand tightened on the photograph before he forced himself back to a stoicism that would have fooled anyone else.  “If this were only about protecting the assassin, I’d have intervened there a long, long time ago.”  He met her eyes.  “I get quiet and keep away from you after these because I want so badly to tell you everything that I can’t trust myself not to.  But we can’t stop them and we can’t bring them in.  That absolutely would muck up the timeline.”  His eyes fell back to the photograph.

Despite her best intentions, the corner of her eye insisted on reporting a dark-haired man with a metal arm in the photograph, though his was an elegance of black and gold lacking the –

Chittagong

– red star, crossed by the edges of plates that slid smoothly together as his rifle swung up to point at her heart.  He made no sound beyond a faint mechanical whine as the arm moved.

Her own gun, aimed squarely at his forehead, wavered no more than her voice.  “You’ve an eye for the high spot too, I suppose.”  She owed Dum-Dum a whiskey for passing on the rumors, even disparagingly.  It had seemed far-fetched: an assassin with an unbelievably advanced prosthetic arm, active sporadically over multiple decades?  She’d accused him of mistaking the latest John Le Carré for an intelligence briefing.

The assassin’s posture straightened slightly.  Only his eyes were visible under the black mask.  They gave nothing away.

Grant had told her the children escaped from a HYDRA cell’s unfortunate demise, but demurred when she asked how they were to accomplish that and said that they only needed to be in position: him to collect the children, her to guard the safe space nearby for them to hide until they could leave.  She’d pointed out that the children might be more inclined to come to a woman, but he’d been inflexible.  They’d rented the run-down second-story flat with the view of the shop across the street last week, but come back only this morning.  Grant was somewhere outside, below, waiting.

She made her decision. “I understand there’s a HYDRA cell to be taken out.  You must be the one sent to do it.”  She stepped to the side, very slowly, and lay her gun down on the single table.  “I’m not here to stop you.  Consider me … background support.”

He said nothing.  The rifle tracked her.

She hid a sigh, set down the containers of street food in her other arm, and pulled out the chair, all slowly.  She sat down.  The chair creaked loudly.

The rifle tracked her.

She gave it, and the assassin, a pointed look.  “I’m quite hungry.  I intend to eat.  There’s enough to share, if you need.  Take my gun to the window with you; you’ll hear if I move.  When you move, I do ask you leave my gun here.”

The rifle didn’t move.

She shrugged and opened the mejbani beef and the jhal muri mixed with dal.  “Shift change for the front door guards is in ten minutes, I believe.”

The rifle lowered a fraction.

She ate.

After her third bite, the assassin glanced meaningfully at her gun, then jerked his head at the window.  She got up, carried the gun to the window, set it down on the floor, and returned to her chair.  The rifle tracked her all the way.

He was staring at the food.

She raised an eyebrow and nudged the beef in his direction.

He abruptly lowered the rifle, returned silently to the window, and got resettled.

With his attention off her, she allowed herself a momentarily wistful expression.  Even more than his build and dark hair, the assassin’s focused calm at the window reminded her of Bucky the few times she’d been in the field with the Howlies.  They’d never been close, but she hadn’t been blind to how he and Steve felt about each other.  She regretted, now, cutting him dead in the bar, but she’d seen him as a rival and needed to make her claim clear.  If she’d known then all that the serum had done for Steve’s … endurance, she’d have taken Bucky aside and proposed a quiet arrangement.  If nothing else, the look on his face would have been priceless.  And the look on Steve’s –

The assassin’s finger stroked the trigger twice.  He rose smoothly to his feet, leaving her gun by the window, and headed for the door.  Perhaps it was her unfocused gaze or her reminiscence, but the way the assassin carried his hips and shoulders reminded her of the figure at Steve’s side as the POWs returned from Kreischberg: beneath the exhaustion and the thousand-yard stare, the remnants of swagger.

It was ridiculous.

It was no more ridiculous than Steve’s survival and far less ridiculous than his return to her from the future.

She found herself on her feet.  The assassin turned at the chair’s creak, rifle already swinging back to her.  She didn’t move.  “Bucky?”

His eyebrows suggested confusion and annoyance.  “Who the hell is Bucky?”

The door swung shut behind him.

Years ago

She laid her hand atop Grant’s on the photograph.  “I can’t do anything obvious, but I’ve done what I could to discourage rumors.  Just – tell me, please, that there’s – enough – of him left.  I think there must be, if he chose to save the children.”

Grant stared at her.

“It is him, isn’t it.”

His hand twitched beneath hers.

“I’ve known since Chittagong.  He’d broken into the flat to keep watch on the store-front.”

Grant’s eyes got huge.  “He told –”

“No.  Seemed rather put out when I asked, actually.  But aside from the abysmal haircut and the failure to recognize me or his name, it was him.”  She tightened her hand on Grant’s.  “I think, beg your pardon, that this is one you should have told me.  If he’s at risk from anyone, it’s from SHIELD.”

“He’s at risk from the people who did this to him,” Grant muttered savagely, then cut himself off.  “There’s only one time SHIELD will get close to him, and I’d planned to let you know before that…”  He took his hand off the photograph.

She smiled.  “He looks so happy.  You both do.”

Grant looked wistful.  “He had such a rough time for so long, and I can’t save him from any of it.  But he got a chance to heal and he took it.”

“All we can do is our best –”

That winter

“– and sometimes the best that we can do is to … is to … is to start over.”

Grant smiled at her sidelong.  “Now, no making fun of an old man, my drawing’s not that bad.”

She looked into her cup.  Empty.

He followed her glance.  “Oh, is that what you meant?  All right.”  He left her the sketchbook and headed for the kitchen with her cup.

She looked.  He’d drawn a family portrait: Gabe, herself and Grant seated together on a couch, the children – all drawn as youngsters – curled up on their laps and between them.  Alex with the three-ponytail look she’d insisted on for a year and a half, Duena and Grant making faces at each other, Sannath trying to paint Alex’s leg, Gabriel Steven listening to his father’s elbow with a toy stethoscope, Jackie upside down.  Behind the couch stood Bucky, leaning over with his forearms on Grant’s shoulders and his chin on Grant’s head, grinning cockily down at them all.

The paper was smooth under her fingers.  She smiled.

The next spring

“Sometimes, the people …”  Her hand clenched on the blanket.  Soft and fuzzy.

Grant never, ever lost patience.  “The people you want to tell everything, you can’t tell anything.”  He stroked her hand, then readjusted the angle on the hospital bed and sat back in his chair.  Steve’s chair.  It was all set up now.

She sighed, distressed.  It was all so hard to hold.  “Grant … I can’t.”  She’d never said that before.

He went still.

“I’m so scared.  I forget.  You’ve got to – help me.”

He sat forward again, taking both her hands in his.  “On your best days, best girl, you still can.”

“What if it’s a bad day?  It’s – getting harder.  Even on the best days.”

His fingers tapped the backs of her hands.  “Can’t disguise a comm as a hearing aid.  He’d hear me talking to you.”  Tap.  Tap.  Like rain on her skin.

There was a leak in the porch roof and the rain dripped steadily onto her hands.  She was too exhausted and angry to move.  Thank heavens the children were at the sitter’s.  This had turned into a horrible date night.  She’d never yelled at Grant before.  He’d never yelled at her.  But they’d made the mistake of turning on the news while they cooked and – it had been so preventable – if only he’d said something, she could have tipped off the right people – She’d never suspected that the ethics of not knowing whether multiple universes existed and which one you were in would be worth calling someone she loved an amoral, unfeeling sociopath or that whatever he feared in the future was enough to draw sobs.

She’d only shut the sliding screen when she came out.  She heard him get off the couch and come slowly to the door.

He spoke to her softly through the screen.  “Peggy, I love you, swear on my life, but if – if that’s really what you think of me, I can’t hold you.  I’ll ask you to let me stay until August, since that’s when Bucky’s mission brief got put together.  After that – I told you I’d respect your choice and nothing’s changed.  Just – help me get set up somewhere I won’t get noticed, I’ll make money and send it to you for the kids, I – please, please let me still see the kids –”

He sounded so broken.  She sighed and stood up to face him.  “Always so dramatic, Steven.”  She kept his name nearly inaudible, but knew just then he needed to hear the real thing.  “Come out.  Let’s walk.”  She ignored the jackets and umbrellas by the door and took his hand.

They went three blocks without speaking, but much could be said by interlaced fingers.  The rain gentled to a cool patter on their heads and shoulders.

Eventually, words came.  “I’ve trusted your judgment that this is important enough our personal feelings can’t come into it.  I accepted that.  But I’m only human.  When I see what you will do in the name of duty, it makes me wonder what else you’d do.  What you would sacrifice – and I’m speaking very selfishly here, of myself, of the children.  I can choose to sacrifice my own life in the line of duty, and I can commit to a mission where someone else I trust might make that call.  I just need to know if you would.  And – the children …”

He squeezed her hand.  “When I left to come back, all five were alive and well.  My duty and my love for them don’t conflict.”  A breath.  “The duty is why I made myself leave Bucky, allowed myself to come back to you.  Our marriage is better than I dared hope for.  You and the kids are the joy that makes the duty bearable.”

He’d only answered half the question.  She let it hang.

He stayed silent another half a block, then finally said, “You will never, if I can help it, die through any action or inaction of mine.”

She could hear words chosen that carefully through a brick wall.  “Were you there?”

Ten paces.  “My past self wasn’t.  My future self?  I don’t know.  But I’m making the commitment to you now that I will be.”  Ten more paces.  “Peggy, I’m – how much do you want to push, here?  What are you really asking for?”

“What has to happen?  For the timeline to work?  You told me what I needed to know for us to get the children – we made that happen.  What else do we have the power and responsibility to make happen?”

They’d reached the neighborhood park.  Scents of early spring flowers mingled with the scent of rain.  They turned together towards their favorite nook.  The rain was no more than an occasional tap on her skin.

He stopped and turned to slide his arms around her.  There was no one near, but he kept his voice low in her ear.  “When I get out of the ice, you’re the only person I knew.  I’ll come to see you – many times.  It was – bittersweet, it was hard to see the best girl I’d lost, but I could see you’d had a life full of love and I was so happy for you.  There was one particular conversation … I came to you at a hard time.  And I thought you were giving me advice about it – you were – but once I knew about this, looking back – you weren’t just talking about the present at all.  You were planting seeds, so that when the time came I’d have one more piece of evidence of what I should do.”

“Simple, then.  Teach me my lines for all the conversations, I know you still remember every word.”

He swallowed.  “Not simple.”

When it seemed he couldn’t find the words to go on, she nudged him.  “Darling, obviously there’s some bad news here, but step back from telling your wife and tell your mission partner instead.  You’d never keep important intel from someone who needs to know, no matter how unpalatable.”

He could only manage one word.  “Alzheimer’s.”  His arms tightened around her.

His breath was warm on her neck.  She kept her voice steady.  “Then just the one conversation, and we’ll practice over and over and over.”  He nodded, and she turned to kiss him, then spoke firmly.  “Now.  It’s date night.  Dance with me.”

He straightened, slid a hand down her back, held his other hand out to meet hers.  She loved how he held himself: not military-stiff, but dancer-elegant, shoulders and arms graceful and expressive.  They whirled together under the dark trees, nothing fancy.  Just the essentials.

He straightened up in his chair, fingers going still on hers.  “That’s what you were doing before I came in.  Rehearsing the most important parts.  And we’ll trust that the rest will come.”

She smiled at him.  “All we can do is our best.”

Mission Day

Grant cleared out, kissing her and murmuring that he loved her, he trusted her, she was his best girl, he’d see her soon.

She was undercover.  The blankets were soft under her fingers.

She drew a breath, and began.  “Live yours, saved the world, go back, start over.  Live yours, saved the world, go back, start over.  Live yours, saved the world, go back –”

* * *

“– start over.”

There.  She’d done it.  She let go of the blankets.  She let go.

He turned to her, offering her water as though he knew she’d be thirsty.

Even though she’d just spent an hour watching him, his presence in her kitchen, within touching distance, was hardly real.  “Steve?”

He smiled at her, that sweet, joyful smile.  “Yeah.”

“You’re alive! You ... you came, you came back.”

“Yeah, Peggy.”

She’d kept her composure under interrogation and fire, but for this, for him, she’d let her guard down.  “It’s been so long.  So long.”

His smile would never leave her.  “Well, I couldn’t leave my best girl. Not when she owes me a dance.”

Chapter Text

One hour after the end of Avengers: Endgame

It was the lull between the end of the immediate excitement and the beginning of demands for Steve to debrief, most of which he intended to decline.  He saw his chance and remarked that he wasn’t as young as he used to be – perhaps a rest before dinner would be wise, could Bucky make sure he still remembered the way to their rooms?

This was met all around with eye-rolls and grins.  Someone – Sam or Clint – wolf-whistled as they left, and the whole room cracked up when he and Bucky simultaneously flipped them off without looking back.

He made all the right turns without thinking about it, kept his hands in his pockets, just breathing the same air as Buck.  He’d at least wait until they got into their rooms before –

Bucky tugged his hand out of his jacket and held it, interlacing their fingers.  “You ain’t pullin’ that gentlemanly shit on me again, Stevie, I can definitely take you now,” he announced mildly.

Steve stopped with their door halfway open.  “Is that a sparring invitation, Buck?  I haven’t gotten to let loose in fifty years, but I did get off the couch all by myself just now.”

“I ain’t as stupid as I look.  You’re already plotting to lure Sam into betting on tomorrow morning’s run.”

“Yeah, remind me to walk slow to dinner tonight.  And leave an empty seat so he can say ‘on your left’ and I can protest too much.”

Bucky snorted and shoved him inside, but not as hard as he would have, fifty years or five hours ago.

Steve took off his jacket and hung it up neatly, wondering if the clothes he’d left here would still fit, thinking of the distance between home and here.  “Nat reminded me that when I gave you space in Wakanda, it wasn’t what you wanted.  I just had the privilege of almost fifty years learning to communicate with a partner I loved.  So I aim to strike a better balance this time.  Buck, I’ve got another family now, another home, another half-century under my belt. We gotta figure out how we fit together again, but I hope we do, if you want me.  I dunno how effective educational videos were at giving you an old-man fetish –”

Bucky didn’t hesitate.  “Very.  We’ll figure out what you’ve got under your belt and how we fit together just fine, Gramps.”

“Punk.”

Bucky smiled, but didn’t crowd him.  “We ain’t the sweet, innocent young soldiers we were –”

Steve knew exactly the look Bucky was expecting, and gave it to him.  “The couch cushions of 1936 will attest you were very sweet, but you weren’t innocent, long before the war.”

“And you’ve had fifty years to get over the Decimation and I got to skip it, so maybe we’re not quite as raw this time around.”

Steve cocked his head.  “I went, this time.  I remember disintegrating …”  He saw a shadow on Bucky’s face and said gently, “But that can wait.  Buck, I’m sorry I left you.”

Bucky snorted.  “Steve, I had a major hand in that decision, and it was less than a minute between when you left and when I saw you again.  I’m still sore from last night.  I’ve got some adjusting to do, but I’m fine.”

Steve smiled.  “Here’s to the third time being the charm.”  He sniffed the air, then stepped into the kitchen and smiled at what he saw on the table.  “How’d you –”

“Hid extra batter in the team freezer, bribed Wanda to put ’em in the oven as soon as we left this morning.  I understand Nat gave you the recipe.”

“They’re still never as good as I remember them.  I always liked your cookies best.”

“I remember exactly how much you like my cookies.  You askin’ me for some?”

“Seems to me I’ve been long enough without.”

-END-

Chapter Text

Bucky seducing Steve with cookies: Theme and variations

I

Bucky grinned as Steve arrived, having followed the trail of discarded clothes and chocolate-orange scent to its end.

Steve stared at him.  “What are you doing in my bed?”

Bucky waited.

Steve stared.

“If you don’t want them, that’s one thing,” Bucky said.  “But I’m pretty sure you do, so I think you should get over here and eat my damn cookies.”

II

Bucky applied cookie batter strategically and liberally, then sat back and eyed his handiwork thoroughly.  “Well,” he said, satisfied, “looks like I’m gonna have to work hard to get all that off.”

III

Bucky applied cookie batter strategically and liberally, then looked down and eyed his handiwork thoroughly.  “Well,” he said, satisfied, “looks like you’re gonna have to work hard to get all that off.”

IV

“Um,” said Bucky.  “This … isn’t what it looks like.”

Steve set the groceries down.

He turned around.

He leaned back against the counter.

He crossed his arms.

He raised an eyebrow.

“Oh,” said Steve, “I think this is exactly what it looks like.”

“Um,” said Bucky.  “Help?”

“Love,” said Steve, “is helping with Unfortunate Cookie Incidents.”

“And then never speaking of them again?”

“Oh no.  That’s successful blackmail.  You’re gonna need a lot more cookies for that.”