Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves...

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

 

Dylan Thomas, "Fern Hill"

Berkeley, California: July 1942

 A conversation. The air is hot, stirring paper napkins under the palm trees. Dr. Teller holds his hat to his head with one hand, gesticulating with the other. He is young, but Howard's much younger: so young. He felt it in his body more on the East Coast: like the world around him was slowing down, while he was energetic, his own system of heat. All of his cells were super-charged. When he was a child, it took him a long time to learn to speak, but once he got started he took off running. "A mile-a-minute mouth," his teachers said. He thought his mouth was slow; his head went so much faster.

In California, it doesn't matter so much. California is like someone sanded the earth down, just came along with a neat hard edge and wiped out everything out, and started from scratch. A fresh clean world. The sunlight hits the ground at strange angles. The trees smell like trees from the Paleozoic. The sea isn't old like the sea off Long Island. There's no history to it. He saw a campus exhibit on Polynesian navigation. There were maps made out of twigs, maps that look like geometric figures. Wooden maps of ocean swells, from the Marshall Islands. Howard didn't know how to read them. He doesn't like this idea, that some knowledge is secret.

Teller is drawing a plan for plasma confinement. Ink ruins the paper napkin, running out of his pen. The table is cluttered with crusts of toast, dishes. Orange juice cups with pulp on the rim. Howard never liked orange juice before, but his taste is changing. His way of carrying himself, his accent. The sun has burned the East Coast off him. He feels like a blank slate. He sips coffee black. He listens as the physicists carry on.

"You're not a physicist, Eddie," Dr. Serber says. "You're a storyteller."

Teller, with his Hungarian accent like a vampire: "You think so? You think so? I am the only real physicist!"

Teller's theory: fuck plain fission, let's start fusioning atoms. Fusing? Fusioning. They're speaking in tongues, a brand-new language. The verb for fission is to fish. We gotta fish the whole lot. It requires about n = 80 generations to fish a kilogram of uranium-235, Serber will write later. Why stop there, Teller says. With this you waste my time? No, we will make the really big bomb, the Super. This is only the real problem, the really big problem now.

No one else on the project believes this. Oppenheimer's response, invariably: If we may return to the pressing matter...

Serber, to Howard: "Dr. Teller is a danger to organization. Everywhere he goes, he spreads wild ideas."

"Wild?" Teller cries, mock-indignant. "Wild?"

"The Germans don't pay him, but they should."

"Ach, you blacken my name to this child!" Teller throws a straw wrapper at him.

Serber looks at Howard critically. "He's rich. The rich are never really children."

Let us examine this assumption: is Howard a child? Undeniably, Howard is rich. He has a company in his name, a Manhattan brownstone, a fleet of cars, a Cove Neck mansion. He hasn't the slightest idea how money works. Wealth has never really interested him. He's interested in engines and atoms; he's interested in airplanes, and the possibility of solar power. He's interested in cryptography, and the cryptographic potential of quantum entanglement. He's interested in high velocity projectiles. He has a theory of how time travel could work. It's hard for him to believe that there's a war in old, slow Europe. But make no mistake: he's part of that old, slow war now. The U.S. Government said to him, "We could put you in a trench, son, but we've decided not to. Your work is necessary to the national defense." What this means is: Howard can build them weapons. So: a question: does Howard mind? Howard does not mind. You might say Howard is keen for it. He likes to build things that he can see work in the world.

"How odd you are," Teller says, regarding Serber owlishly. "I would have said the opposite." But next he's gone, off already, in pursuit of his Super. "Pfft, this fission, a problem which is— what— two months?"

Serber rolls his eyes. "Yes, very trivial, Edward."

They're building a whole base to solve the trivial problem. They, the Army, the scientists. Howard's not headed there; he's seconded to New Jersey. Still, Teller's urgency is electric, contagious. Howard studies the notes he's scrawled on the napkins. "You'd need," he says. "—You'd need some type of radiation. Like a reflector."

"Don't encourage him," Serber says. "Oppie'll have my head if he drags you down his rabbithole."

"Not rabbits. Not rabbits! A wormhole," Teller protests. "A window which you and Oppenheimer will not look through."

Howard squints once more at the notes. The sun is climbing overhead. Soon they will be in the cool white classrooms, the long lab rooms with their narrow desks, scrawling in chalk till the air gets dust-heavy and the smell of it is more than they can stand. But still outside there will be this California, all gold and green and impudence, all start-fresh sky with electric sun. He feel like he's already through some wormhole, though he doesn't know exactly where he's come from.

"I have some ideas," he says. "Radiation's my project. I'll give you my notes."

"Well, well," Serber says. "God bless the child."

Howard's twenty-four years old. He'll be twenty-five in August.

In California till the autumn, he writes letters to New Jersey: notes on setting up his lab, on equipment. The Strategic Scientific Reserve is the name of his new outfit. His liaison's a Englishman named Carter; they send telegrams to one another. [V V IMPORTANT ! ! VAN DE GRAAFF GENERATER MUST ! !! HAVE SOLID GROUND], he sends. [PLS CONFIRM RCPT SPECS FOR EYESHEILDS !! ! NOTE NOT STANDARD! ! ! ]To which Carter's response typically is: [COMM RECEIVED STOP LETTER FOLLOWS.]

The letters followed.

Mr. Stark,

You may rest easy at night; the Van de Graaff generator has been installed on solid ground, as opposed to the other kind. I am to inform you that it is capable of producing .5 MeV neutrons, which I assume is a number that has some meaning. We are experiencing some difficulties with our power supply— a political matter, not a technical one, which I am assured will shortly be resolved. I have made arrangements for other laboratory items likely to cause large electrical drains to be temporarily sited at Princeton, a university with which I understand you are somewhat familiar. Perhaps you could inform me prior to your arrival if this arrangement is likely to create as many "political" concerns as it resolves. I trust you understand what I mean; tales of your salad days are, shall we say, notorious.

It is, as ever, my pleasure to assist you:

Agt. Carter

 

[WHAT TALES DONT KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN HAVENT FOGGIEST ALSO WHAT IS A SALLAD DAY]

Mr. Stark,

Allow me to allay your concerns regarding the eyeshields you have requested. As you provided technical specifications for said equipment, rather than indicating the make and manufacture that would best serve your need, I did assume that these specifications were nonstandard. I have dutifully communicated the details of your request via the proper channels, and will personally endeavour, to the best of my ability, to ensure that the equipment thus produced meets your standards.

We have budgeted you for two full-time assistants. You will, of course, be working closely with Dr. Erskine; he has a considerably larger staff. Perhaps he will share them if you play nicely. Please find attached: ten personnel files of suitable candidates. If you could indicate to me your preferences by 12 November at the latest, it would be greatly appreciated.

Salad days: from Antony and Cleopatra, Act One, Scene Five: "...My salad days,/ when I was green in judgment: cold in blood,/To say as I said then!"

It is, as ever, my pleasure to assist you:

Agt. Carter

 

[I THINK YOULL FIND IM STILL V COLD BLOODED ALSO NEED MORE ASISTANTS ! ! PREF FEMALE. NEGOTIATE]

Mr. Stark,

Per your instruction, I proposed to Colonel Phillips the possibility of further assistants. The colonel wished me to communicate to you the following sentiment (lightly censored): "Stark ——s money; he can hire his own godd—n staff. Does he want me to short our boys ——ing guns in Manila so he can pay some floozy to carry his godd—n briefcase?" I suggested that it would be highly irregular for military personnel to be privately employed, and mooted a compromise: the SSR will vet and clear your men (n.b.) as contractors. You yourself will assume the expense. Too, you will carry your own "godd—n" briefcase. I hope this will seem an acceptable solution. If so, please submit the pertinent documents (list attached).

It is, as ever, my pleasure to assist you:

Agt. Carter

 

[I DONT HAVE A BRIEFCASE IS THIS GOING TO BE A PROBLEM]

Mr. Stark,

The colonel beseeches me to enclose this mail-order catalogue, from which, I gather, a gentleman of means might obtain a very satisfactory briefcase model. Further, he instructs me to communicate that "we are in a godd—n war here, not going to geography classes," and that, as such, you may be called upon to transport classified documents. I shall leave it to you to light upon an appropriate course of action, as the colonel's suggestion was both obscene and inappropriately specific.

I shall await your arrival on the 6th of November, and I look forward to embarking on our work together.

It is, as ever, my pleasure to assist you:

Agt. Carter

 Camp Lehigh, New Jersey: 1942

So, now: Imagine Howard's shock when he arrives in New Jersey. He's expecting... what? An Englishman. Not this tall, dark-haired woman, with red lipstick and a profile that Klimt would paint. And yet he looks at her and sees at once the letter-writer. Knows it, even before she says, "Mr. Stark. You bought a briefcase; I'm pleased to see it."

"Agent Carter," he says. "Do I have to salute? If I don't salute, are you going to throw me in the brig?"

"Don't be silly. For civilian contractors, we use torture."

"Good idea; gotta keep us in our place."

And just like that, the shock has passed. They're familiar to one another in these bodies.

She grins at him, unexpectedly. Her eyes are warm. Howard's never had a woman grin at him like that, like they were in some kind of a club together. He likes it. He feels nervous a lot of the time around other people, like he has to perform, but with her it's easy, basic.

She says, "Let me show you to your lab. Your spelling's atrocious, by the way."

"Yeah? Did they tell you I'm a genius?"

"Something along those lines."

"That's what they tell me, too."

"Well, I suppose it can't be helped."

Howard hefts up his briefcase. He shrugs. He says, "Some things can't."

He's working with Erskine, whom he'd met once in Europe. Or rather: the two of them are working in tandem, two separate sides of the same larger project. Howard spends his days thinking about Vita-Rays, the effect of radiation on the body. At night, he thinks about other problems: gravitic reversion, nuclear fusion, vibration-absorbent metals. He's thinking of building a flying car. He's thinking about invisible airplanes. Erskine says, "Perhaps, Mr. Stark, if you could consider the matter at hand...?"

Erskine is a sad, stooped man, a gentle physiologist with a passion for flowers. He takes hikes in the nearby swamps to collect orchids. His office is like a miniature hothouse. Howard, who has little use for plants, is nevertheless amazed when Erskine invites him in. So many flowers, like bright glass baubles, anchored by fragile green wires to their pots. He sees things at the level of machinery, always. But the machinery here is fragile, complex, a living system that he's slightly afraid of.

"Dr. Erskine," he says, "this is amazing."

"Yes, thank you," Erskine says. He has this very wry cool manner, like nothing you say is surprising to him. "In Germany I won prizes for my flowers. People say to me always, there, But what is your secret? Always wanting a secret."

"So what is the secret?" Howard asks.

Erskine shrugs. "There is no secret. Why should there be a secret? It's very simple: I talk to them."

"Seems like there should be more to it than that."

Erskine gives him a long, slightly melancholy look. "You think this because you are so young still. Someday, Mr. Stark, you will be an old man. Like me, an old man. And you will know how few secrets there are in the world. No; don't argue, or I will not share this very fine brandy I have here."

So Howard doesn't argue, and they share the brandy.

New Jersey is wilder than he would have expected. It's close to New York, but the wind blows from the Pine Barrens. It's not the same kind of wild as California. There's a smell of swamp water, white cedar, rotted trees. At night, when the air gets cold, you can smell it more clearly. He goes up to the roof, sometimes, after midnight. He needs to think things through. He needs to not see the numbers. The sheer amount of stars he can see here is vast. On clear nights: the band of the Milky Way. He lies back on the concrete and tar, smoking cigarettes. He hears horned owls hooting in the distance. It's supposed to be a friendly sound, something that little kids learn how to make. Whoo-hoo! goes the owl. But it's not. It's like they're hollow, like their whole bodies are empty, and all that's left is the wind blowing through them.

Carter finds him there, come the first week of November, in a parka— her, not him. She says, "You bloody idiot, you'll freeze to death!"

"Now? Nah, not now. This is my home turf. Don't they have winter in England?"

"Occasionally." She crosses her legs to sit next to him. "We don't actively embrace it. Pass me a fag?"

He does. He hears the lighter, the flame. The stir of her breath.

She says, "One of the boys has told the others that there's a monster in the woods, something horrible coming to get them— which they of course all believed."

By "boys," she means the soldiers-in-training. Some of them have never left home before. It's like summer camp to them.

Howard says, "The Jersey Devil."

"The what?"

"The Jersey Devil. It's supposed to live in the Pine Barrens. It's a big, you know, monster type of thing. I remember stories about it from when I was a kid."

"What's it meant to look like, this Devil?"

"I dunno. Big wings, flaming eyes. The usual." Howard flicks his cigarette butt off the roof. He feels suddenly sad. He is the type of person who stumbles into emotions. They start as physical sensations: a pain in his chest, a nerve-twitch, a sudden lethargy. Only later does he know the meaning of these clues. His body is a locked-room mystery. Even now he doesn't know why he's sad; why be sad? He says, "It's supposed to have lived there since the Indians lived there. I guess maybe it was one of their things."

Carter looks at him. He can't see her eyes in the darkness. She says, "When I came to America, I thought there would be Red Indians all over. Like the pictures, you know, Destry Rides Again. But there aren't. In fact, I don't think I've seen any."

"No." A horned owl calls again. Howard imagines the Devil, out there in the forest: a big, wild, ancient lumbering thing; maybe with wings, maybe without; maybe without hands or eyes. It doesn't have to look human. It could be older than humans. Unkillable, like the bogs themselves. Are they unkillable? He remembers tales of farmland, swallowed up by the encroachment. Now beetles and ghost moths come to bat against the base's lightbulbs. He says, "You should come up to the City. Sometime. For the holidays. It's not like this."

"All right."

"I mean, if you're not going home."

A gently exasperated look.

"Oh. Right. There's a war on."

"It's all right."

"Don't you miss it?"

"What, England?" She breaths out puffs of smoke. "I don't know. Home, maybe. It's odd to consider that once you lose it, you've lost it. You can't go back and do it over again. Being a child, I mean. Growing up somewhere."

"Thank God," Howard says, harsher than he meant.

Carter looks at him sharply. Her eyes are always so sharp. He doesn't know what she sees. They sit in silence for a while. At one point, a meteor streaks by overhead. Howard doesn't as a rule go so long without talking. But he thinks to himself: this isn't bad. This, right here, isn't more than he can handle. He lets himself relax into it.

Around this time he thinks he might marry Carter. She's the type of girl you marry, not the type you bed. He hasn't thought of marrying before, hasn't wanted to think about it. One of the physicists at Berkeley had had a wife who was dying. A guy about Howard's age. Tuberculosis, Serber'd said. Howard hadn't known them well. Imagine, because Howard can't: other people marry, settle down; they start families. They get sick and die. All of this feels removed from Howard's life. When he sleeps with a girl, he wants her gone the next morning. By that point, she's exhausted her usefulness to him. Cold, but there it is: most people don't have much to offer. Not to a mind like Howard's, and women less than others.

Imagine Howard marrying. Imagine him bringing someone home, to his inherited house, to any of the houses he lives in. Already it seems impossible. A house that he shares will never be a house he lives in. But here, now, he entertains the fantasy. He'll marry Carter, he thinks. After the war. Later. Who knows who he'll have become after the war, who any of them will have become by then.

He finds time to send a batch of papers to Teller. X-Rays??? See notes on other posible fixes. Solved that triveal problem yet??? Have a look at this and see what you think. Yrs sincerely, THE CHILD.

1943 

January. Snow. Happy New Year, Howard.

He wakes up, still pretty drunk, in the lab. How did he get there from New York? He remembers a party at the St. Regis, then El Morocco, someplace in Brooklyn, maybe? The Cafe Rouge, later? He doesn't remember driving. He's still wearing a tuxedo. Erskine's sleeping on a bench, smelling of schnapps. Jesus, what a holiday season. The serum still isn't working. He bought Carter rubies for Christmas. Now she isn't speaking to him.

He makes coffee on a Bunsen burner. He thinks absently about gravitic reversors. God, his head hurts. The smell of the coffee seems to wake up Erskine, who groans. Howard asks, "Did we blow anything up last night?

"I am a scientist, Mr. Stark. I do not blow things up. I do science."

"Yeah, yeah. Potayto, potahto." He pours the coffee. "You want some of this?"

"Please." Erskine accepts the cup.

They drink their coffee in silence. After a while, Howard says, "I'm thinking about building a flying car."

"Yes? And what use do you foresee for this?"

"It just seems like an interesting problem. I guess: making money."

"You do seem to spend a great deal of money."

"She told you about the rubies, didn't she?"

Erskine looks amused. "No, you did."

"I was pretty drunk, huh." Howard runs a hand through his hair.

Erskine shrugs mildly. "Why not celebrate? It's a new year. The world hasn't ended."

"It never seems to. No matter how much I fuck things up."

He's startled by the hand that settles on his shoulder: a heavy comfort, warm and gentle. Erskine's face suggests he's laughing at Howard a little bit, but it's not unsympathetic, that expression. "Fear not," Erskine says. "Your, how do you say? Fuck-ups. Are very much minor, so far. At any rate, this is what the work is for, yes? We break things, and then we put them back together."

Erskine doesn't, really. He works with living bodies. You can't do that with living bodies; you can't just put them back together again. But Howard appreciates the words, anyways.

"Okay," he says. "Okay, yes. Back to work."

"Tomorrow," Erskine says, making a face. "We put them back together tomorrow. When neither of us feels like blowing things up."

Howard sees Carter, of course. They have to work together. And it's not like he proposed marriage to her. He just wanted to give her something pretty. Something she'd like. And the money doesn't matter to him. He should be able to use his money to do whatever he wants. But Carter had refused to take the jewelry.

"Mr. Stark," she'd said, "I can't accept this. We work together."

"But I want you to have it.

"I'm sorry."

"It's not— I'm not expecting anything. I just want you to have it. Honestly, I swear. It's just a gift."

She'd looked at him like he was ten years old, rather pityingly. "Surely you know better than that. Howard."

"What? It's just a gift. What— if you're so smart, explain it to me."

"Do you know what kings used to do, when they wanted to ruin their rivals?" She pushed her heavy hair behind her ears, looking for a moment quite fierce, and beautiful, and strange. "They would give their rivals the most lavish gift they could afford, and they would ruin themselves— their rivals, I mean. Trying to pay the gift back. Because a gift is a debt, and an unpaid debt is a dangerous thing."

"You're not my rival," Howard said. "And I'm not trying to— Jesus."

"I know. I know, and I'm sorry. I am."

"You think, what, I'm trying to buy you? I don't need to buy you. I can buy any woman I want. I've got millions of dollars. I've got a PhD from Princeton. I don't even have to pay for it. I go to expos, I've got dames throwing themselves at me, practically lining up to— dames lining up to jump in bed."

He'd stopped himself from saying fuck, but it didn't help. He could tell by the way she was looking at him.

"If you were any other man," she said, "I'd slap you across the face. I suppose that's more insulting, that I want to and won't do it. Because you're Howard Stark, because you're rich. Because you could have my job, and I wouldn't put it past you."

"Hit me," he said. "You want to hit me? Go on. Do it."

But Carter hadn't. She'd just walked out on him.

So they don't talk for a while, and it's fine. It's all fine.

Anyhow, Howard's got a thousand projects to finish. He's building the flying car, and there's Teller's superbomb— a constant, tantalizing, phantasmic presence— and the Vita-Rays, and the guns, and a new metallic alloy, and for the love of Christ, there's a war on, there's a war on; don't people have something better to do? Doesn't anyone else care about this?

"All right," says Erskine mildly. "I was only asking."

"I don't have time for..." Howard waves his hand, short-tempered.

"Other people?" Erskine suggests. "Friends?"

Howard ignores him. He says, "These are my new estimates, as close as I can get them. I can give you 95% power, at capacity."

"You should have given her an orchid," Erskine tells him.

Howard snorts. He can't help himself; he's picturing it: Carter trying to keep an orchid alive. It would die immediately, probably withered by scorn. "That's a terrible idea," he says. "No offense, Doc."

"Ah well," Erskine says. "Woman is an unknowable creature. And there are so few connoisseurs of orchids, these days."

He heads up to the house on Long Island. Yes: the inherited house. The house that he spent his early childhood in. He doesn't like to talk about his parents, but it's not what you think, all right? He'd never really known them. He thought that they had not been clever people. They'd been managers, managers of large sums of money; they had inherited all the wealth they possessed, and then left it to him in turn: his mother dead of Spanish influenza, his father a suicide by the time Howard was ten. (Two uncles, as well, Rudy and Conrad. People talked; the papers talked: hereditary madness. Cosmopolitan lifestyles. European background.) So: an orphan. Already, he'd apprehended his place in this world: the brain that would not stop; the inexhaustible voice, the old slow handlers who'd try to handle him. "Poor Howard," they said, "poor little Howard." "May I have my money, please," poor little Howard said, and proceeded to do exactly as he liked.

There had always been, you know, people around. A lot of affectedly genteel East Coast affection. He'd been a little prince; he'd lacked for nothing. In fact, he'd grown up rather spoiled, some opined. He thinks of his childhood as largely happy. And now, now, at twenty-five, he has everything he wants: he's rich and he's famous, he runs his company; he works with science's brightest minds; he's saving the world. Winning the war, at the very least. Right, Howard? Right? He's going to build a flying car. He's going to reach inside an atom. He's going to be the man who throws the switch on the first super soldier.

He ends up breaking a window. He just can't stand it; he has to let some air in. This whole house is like a mausoleum. Every quiet room perfect, a perfect doll's room, high-ceilinged and oddly echo-infested. There's a reason why he doesn't live here. But he comes sometimes and raids the stocked liquor cabinet, gets fantastically loaded and stumbles out to the terrace-edge, where he sits on the ground and watches the seagulls: circling restless and hungry in from the ocean, then— crying, unsatisfied— back out again.

New York in March. The snow is melting. He sends a telegram from the office. Silly to do it, silly, but he does—

[ERSKINE SAYS SHOUD HAVE GIVEN YOU ORCHIDS THINK HIS MINDS GONE FROM TO MUCH TIME IN THE SWAMPS HA HA DONT WORRY NO FLOWERS FOURTHCOMING]

He debates adding more but can't figure out what. He still doesn't know why she's angry with him.

So he sends it, and then goes to meet a girl from the Follies. She thinks she's going to be a Broadway star. She's vapid-eyed but very tender, and he thinks about the bomb while they're in bed, touching the animal musculature of her body. It's something physical to do, and he's grateful for it. Afterwards, he jots down a quick note on plasma cooling— he always has a lot of ideas during sex— and kisses her shoulder. She really is very pretty. He loves these girls, the simplicity of them. It's a human level he can't exist at. Like rabbits, but not rabbits. Rabbit-humans. Their lives are full of feeling, and go by so fast. There's an emptiness to them he envies a lot. He'd like to stop thinking. Sometimes. Sometimes. He'd like to just lie there, not thinking, not talking, with somebody's lips against his skin.

Mr. Stark,

I appreciate your self-restraint in re: the flowers. I have very little time for them. As it happens, there is a service you could do me. I believe you know that I carry a Walther PPK pistol. This is the standard sidearm for agents of the SSR; however, as a blowback firearm, it is designed for heavy hands. This is less than ideal, as my hands are not heavy, and firing consecutive shots takes a toll on them. If a simple modification could resolve this problem, I would already have attempted it. I wonder if you might have some alternative thoughts.

My sincere thanks in advance,

Agt. Carter

Carter—

Made some mods give it a shot Let me know if trigger pull to lite now, Can fix no prob. HS

Mr. Stark,

An upcoming operation necessitates that I be able to conceal a weapon while wearing a green floral rayon dress. The sleeves will be short (approx. 17 centimeters from shoulder to seam) and as the night may not be chilly, I cannot rely on a coat's camouflage. A thigh holster seems the most likely option; however, I would prefer something with a bit more accuracy (and potentially a higher capacity) than the .38 snub nose pistol. Have you any alternatives to suggest? Two weeks' advance should allow me to familiarize myself with a new firearm.

My sincere thanks in advance,

Agt. Carter

Carter—

if wishes were horses begars woud &c But have a look at this mod .38 cant stick more ammo in it Sweetheart but if you can hit em 1st time you wont need it xx HS

He's working late when she comes in from the mission. He hears her heels on the concrete: click, click, click. He stops soldering circuits and lifts up his goggles. Turns, his eyes adjusting to the new light of the lab, and all at once, there she is: oddly ungraceful in the fashionable shoes, gawky in the made-to-wear rayon dress, with ashes on her knees and the outside of her elbows. She ties her hair back impatiently as he watches, with a tsking noise.

"Did you give 'em hell?" he says.

"I got knocked down," she tells him, sounding offended. "In an alley. By a Nazi. But then I shot him."

"Gun hold up?"

"It's serviceable."

"Well, that'll do the trick," he says.

"That'll do the trick," she echoes.

He strips off his gloves and wipes his forehead. He doesn't really know what time it is. His shirt is damp with sweat; his eyes are tired. She looks exhausted. "Should probably knock off work," he says.

Carter nods. She takes her high-heeled shoes off and stands in her nylons, holding one shoe in each hand— as though weighing an option, a hard decision. "Do you want a cigarette?" she asks him.

So. The two of them on a rooftop, in the springtime of New Jersey, facing out against the wilderness; smoking cigarettes as ghost moths batter the base lanterns. There's a war on. Nothing changes.

Queens, NY: 14 June 1943

Howard lures Erskine out to the Expo, really. Erskine lives in Queens, but he's more of a stay-at-home man. Still, the Expo has a recruiting booth, so: serum candidates, always an exciting potential, and: "Fireworks like you've never seen 'em," Howard promises. "A full-on light show. New York's finest."

"And your flying car," Erskine says. There's laughter in his eyes. "Or am I mistaken?"

"And my flying car." Howard shrugs. "Trust me, pal, I'm not the main attraction." Truthfully, he's been killing himself on the gravitic reversors. Reversors: ha. There's no reversing gravity. You can't just break the natural laws of the universe. But people want to hear that you can, that you've done it. The world of tomorrow; that's what Howard's selling them: a world with no laws, only marvels and wonders. When in fact, if you want to conquer nature, you have to step on its neck. He can feel it every time he powers the reversors: his metaphorical boot, the muscles tensed in the struggle, the earth pushing back, as he says, Stay down, stay down, stay down. The thought isn't pleasant.

Still, it's true that he'd wanted Erskine to see it. So he's pleased when Erskine says yes.

After, after the demo's gone wonky, he tears his bow tie off his shirt. He still feels invincible; he always does, onstage, and it lingers, like he's wired into a circuit, like he's charged. Out there, in the lights, he wears a god-mask. I'll make you immortal; I'll give you wings; I can see into the future. God. God. And they turn to him, eager, with enraptured faces, and they feel that they know him, they feel they can trust him, and he loves it, loves it until it makes his skin crawl.

He could stay in New York, probably should; but for some reason right now he can't stand the thought. So instead he drives back out to Jersey, headlights cutting through the sticky June darkness, engine roaring as loud as it can. He loves driving. He likes being one more component, an inner part of the machine, consciousless, like he can just be a body. He forgets about the Expo, the gravitic reversors. When he gets to Camp Lehigh, he feels half-human again.

He heads to the lab, still in his tuxedo. He can't think about what he'll say to Erskine tomorrow, in the face of his sympathy. So he finishes the Vita-Ray chamber instead. He'd told Erskine he could get it up to 95%; he can theoretically get it above that now— as close to one hundred as it's possible to get. Untested, but he has immaculate numbers. It'll work, he thinks. At least that's something, something he can do right.

Around 6 AM, Carter comes by with coffee. She says, "Jesus Christ, Stark, have you been in here all night?"

"You know, you sound like a soldier."

"Good: I am a soldier."

"I didn't say I was complaining about it." He takes the coffee. It's half-chicory, but very hot. "Felt like working."

"Oh? I'll just bet you did. How's the flying car?"

"Let's not talk about it."

They share a look, and then they share a cigarette, and then they go inside for an SSR briefing. Halfway through the order of business, late, looking wild, Erskine comes in, and that's how they hear about his wunderkind, Rogers. Steve Rogers, the miracle boy.

Howard himself doesn't want to meet Rogers. He's not so used to working with human flesh. Better, he thinks, not to get too attached— just in case— So he works on moving the lab to Brooklyn (Brandt, of course, having denied their generator request). It's a week of work, then, checking the machines, hooking up the cables, praying the electrics work.

He tells Erskine, "Assuming, of course, we don't black out Manhattan, we might get more power. I have a tweak that I think we can try. I just want to make sure we don't fry the Chrysler Building first."

Erskine is harried, slightly distracted. He says, "Ah, yes, the power. Tell me, Mr. Stark: can we get to one hundred percent?"

"I can't promise it, but if the numbers hold up— I don't know if we can sustain it, though, through more than three, four runs— if all goes as planned, and we're turning out soldiers, we might have to make do with a little less."

"And this is the circuits themselves, the physical machine?"

They fall into plotting out modifications: what they'll do if this happens, and that, and does Howard think that Brandt will ease up on requisitions, and should they move the lab upstate, and then one of the lab techs starts waving a clipboard, and Erskine says apologetically, "Excuse me for a moment," and when Howard looks up again, Erskine is gone.

So they don't finish the conversation. Howard shrugs, and jots a reminder: power tweek lower max but long sustained sub-max??? generater time use issue (BRANDT) ask AE subject indurance—

Brooklyn, NY: 22 June 1943

What is it he thinks will happen in that lab? What is it that Erskine thinks? They don't talk at all, the night before the test, so Howard never knows. He knows Erskine wanted something. Not money or power, not success or fame. Not what Howard wants, which is— he can feel it at the very back of his heart, the way he knows a new design is forming in his head. But it never seems to grow the skeleton that he can draw.

What he dreads most is that flying-car sensation: the flesh of the old world straining in his grip, as he forces it down. Be a wonder, he commands. Who was it that wrestled the angel? Jacob, he thinks. Starks are nominally Catholic— at least, Howard was christened— but now he can't recall much more than the name. Did he win? What does it mean, to win against an angel? It's an angel: you can't ever really defeat it. Either it comes back to get its revenge in the night, or else you have to go on making it submit, your whole life holding down this one angel. Maybe he should have thought of that before he got started, Howard thinks— Jacob. Maybe he should have asked: Is there another way to do this?

This is what's in his head, approaching the test.

So when he sees the chamber lit up with Rogers inside it, this large electric thing that doesn't look like a man, he thinks, Fuck, oh fuck, what have we done?

But when he hits the lever to make the machine open, when he puts his hand to Rogers' side— touches the sweat-wet flesh of his shoulder— he feels that what he's been selling is true, that maybe the world could be filled with marvels, and they could be beautiful, an endless springing-up of life. It's like Erskine had said: there is no secret. It's so easy, and he's bewildered, overjoyed.

And then—

A nurse pulls a sliver of glass from his palm. Like— he thinks, amazed— a magic trick.

At some point, someone says that he should go back to New Jersey. He thinks: why not. No point being here.

Carter comes to New Jersey also, and the shivering wunderkind. So that's how he knows they're still alive.

Also: a Hydra submarine has been acquired. This is an interesting object. He buries himself in its innards at once. After a while, Carter shows up (sans wunderkind) and says Mr. Stark maybe you should rest. A good suggestion, but Howard's got other plans. He tries to shoo her from the lab. Busy now, sweetheart. She tries to give him an order. The situation deteriorates after that. Eventually she convinces him to at least change his clothes, since— wouldn't you know it— there's blood on his shirt. His own, he thinks. A smear on the cuff from the cut on his hand.

About ten hours later, Carter returns. This time, she asks, "Are you all right, Howard?"

He's up to his waist in quantum wiring. He can't look at her right now. "I'm tired, I'm just, I'm really... just really tired," he says.

"I know," she says quietly. "I know. Me too."

So: boxing up the labs for a new adventure. Packing up all of their traveling bags. By the time that Howard thinks to ask, someone has cleared out Erskine's office. And the orchids, what's become of them? —Gone. Because: what use, to a martial endeavor...?

The wunderkind gone, Howard gets drunk with Carter. They pass a bottle back and forth on the laboratory rooftop. Spring has sprung and now they're in the loose coils of summer. It's evening, and the last light sags over them. Carter kicks her shoes off. Howard admires her arches.

"You have excellent feet," he says. "From an engineer's perspective."

Carter sighs. "Can you not stare at my feet, please, Stark."

"All right." He tips his head up towards the sky instead. "So. Going home."

"London. Yes. England. Blighty. I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand..." She trails off, staring into the shadows. The stars are appearing overhead. So many stars, out this far into the boondocks. They remind Howard of the huge distance between other parts of the universe and him.

Eventually, Carter asks, "What will you do? About your company, I mean?"

Howard shrugs. "There's a war on. We'll postpone the flying cars."

"Won't you lose money?"

"I don't give a damn about money."

"Oh, Mr. Stark," Carter says wryly, "I know that's not true."

"All right, I do; but I don't just want, you know." His throat's tight abruptly. He doesn't know why. "This was supposed to be," he says, "different, I don't know, I don't know, I thought— He was just so— "

Carter watches him silently as he struggles to swallow.

"You know," she says, "his family were shot by the Nazis. Before he left Germany. He never talked about it. I only know from the file."

Howard puts his hands over his face. It's a helpless reaction. He thinks: What next, what next...?

Chapter Text

London, England: July 1943

When Howard looks back at the time he spends in London, he will remember it as Edenic, perhaps as the happiest era of his life. But the fact is that he feels at first as though he's been kidnapped. He's stuck in a bunker underground— at first, they have no accommodations beyond what were once airmen's barrack-rooms, windowless, and with narrow creaking cots inside— and it's cold, and it smells like a moldering castle, and the food is—

"I don't eat margarine," he tells Carter, looking at his toast. "It's disgusting."

"If the king and queen of England can eat margarine, Stark, you'll eat it." Carter herself is calmly smearing her toast with Marmite.

"I can get butter, you know. I could even buy myself a cow. I could buy all of us cows. The king and queen, too."

"Who's going to milk the cows? And where are they to be stabled?"

"We'll work out the details later. Pidgeon can milk them."

Pidgeon, as unlikely as it may seem, is the name of Howard's new Canadian lab assistant. Thus far he in every respect resembles his namesake.

"Will he?" Carter asks with interest. "Will you, Pidgeon?"

Pidgeon looks up from his bowl of oatmeal, nudging his glasses up his nose. "Only if the butter is going to the boys at the Front, ma'am. Otherwise— sorry, Mr. Stark— it wouldn't seem entirely correct."

"Deserted," Howard says in disgust. "Deserted by Pidgeon." He bites into his dry toast savagely.

—So, the food's not so good. And while Howard's equipment crosses the Atlantic, he's stuck asking for favors from various British institutions, none of whom cares for him much. He knows, in a very vague sort of way, what it is they object to, the higher-ups at these British institutions. He's flashy; he's crass; he's greedy; he shows off; he's maybe even new money, by their reckoning, since his great-grandparents were... he honestly doesn't know what, aside from Austrian, or Prussian, maybe. (Shopkeepers? That was what people did in the past, right?) But really, Howard thinks, when people talk about new money, what they mean is new manners. New world manners. Manners for the not-yet-formed order of things. Old money— old money is old world manners. The old, slow world. The mausoleum house. Are you trying to embarrass...? There's a way things are done. Others worked to build this family name. Sinking and falling. The well of gravity threatens. He feels it in the ancient stuffy offices of Cambridge. He has to fight, fight, fight to escape.

He's angry a lot, and Carter's away a lot. She leads SSR agents on covert missions to the Continent, working with partisans in France and Italy. She brings back Hydra toys from her little trips: several examples of some type of neutron disruptor, one of the energy bombs that the Germans call blaue augen, a working model of a gravitic reversor (damn it, Howard seethes, damn it, damn it), and several technical manuals written in German, a language that Howard— fortunately— reads.

"I didn't know you spoke German," Carter says, sounding surprised.

"I don't speak German. I read German. Had to, to get my PhD." Howard is, for once, not paying her attention. He's absorbed in the specs of the gravitic reversor. (Damn it! Damn it!) It's not so far off his own plans, but the energy source is stronger; if these calculations are right, it's got to be the same blue fuel he's seen them put in the bombs... but what kind of element could—

"Why don't you use it?" Carter asks.

"Hmm?"

"You're a doctor, but you don't ask people to ever call you 'doctor.' Mr. Stark, not Dr. Stark. I was just wondering."

"Oh. Well..." Howard hunches his shoulders. He's not modest, never modest; he just feels physically uncomfortable talking about these things. "I'm not going to use it, right? I mean, I'm never going to teach, or anything like that. I just did it cause I wanted to, really. Seemed like a harmless way to pass the time."

"A harmless way to pass the time. A doctorate in physics and mechanical engineering."

"Yeah. Why not?" He pretends to be deeply interested in an oil-spot on his shirt-cuff. "Anyway, physics, it's all in German now. I mean, not all of it, but that's the whatchamacallit."

"The lingua franca."

"Yeah. Comes in handy now, I guess."

"Yes, I suppose it does." Carter's watching him still, thoughtful.

"What," Howard says. "What. Stop staring. Have I turned radioactive? Have I grown an antenna?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Carter says. "It's just— you surprise me."

"Well. That must sometimes happen, even to the great Agent Carter." He waggles his eyebrows, and she hits him with a sheaf of paper. He shields himself with a clipboard, and listens as her footsteps recede: that clack, clack, clack of short, sturdy heels, the meter of his life, the pacekeeping.

Carter goes to Denmark. Upheaval's building at this time there; resistance to the Germans grows every day, and the SSR's hoping to smuggle some of its agents further inland. They suspect there's a Hydra base located somewhere near Bremen. None of this matters to Howard, or only in the most indirect way. The point is: Carter is gone all the last week of July, and when she comes back she is subtly changed.

Howard comes in late at night to avail himself of the bunker's horrible chicory coffee— "If the king and queen of England can—" "I'll tell you what the king and queen can do"— and sees her there in the early, cave-like light, sitting alone at the table. Her back is very straight and proud, and he notices that for the first time, like he might notice the line of a Roman sculpture. As he gets closer, he says, "Jesus, Carter; I thought Pidgeon was the one who'd been burning the coffee." Because there's an odd burnt smell in the air, something that's almost more like woodsmoke. Or— woodsmoke and melted glass and feathers or hair.

He rounds the table and sees her face, which is pale and composed as ever. Still, he knows; he has this presentiment of dread; her body communicates it somehow to him.

"What is it," he says. "Did something happen? What went wrong?"

Carter looks at him. She says, "Nothing went wrong. It was absolutely flawless." One fingertip taps an irregular code on the table, a code that Howard doesn't know how to interpret.

"You smell like smoke," he says. "I thought the coffee was burning."

"Hamburg was burning," Carter says.

"But you were in Denmark."

"Yes. Across the border. It's— I don't know, perhaps a hundred miles." She pauses. "We could see— I was with Genfærd, from the resistance. It was like the fire was actually rising off the earth. He said, It's not possible. But then the trains kept running. So quite quickly we heard from people who had come out of the city. They said... terrible things." Carter's gotten a cigarette out while talking, but she makes no further move to light it. She simply holds it nervelessly between two fingers.

"I don't understand," Howard says.

"I don't know why it's this, why this is the thing that... I mean, I went to meet a contact once, and when I reached her house, they'd nailed her hands to the doorframe. Like a warning, you see? With a bullet hole here, between her eyes. And her husband. Her children. This was in France. It'd been days before I got there, so... But with that at least you think, or you try to think: we're not like them."

"It was our bombs," Howard says. He feels immensely stupid, and moreso from the way Carter looks at him, like: you infant, you moron, what did you expect? For an instant he's ten years old again.

"Of course it was our bombs," she says. "Whose bombs did you think? Did you think the Nazis would bomb their own bloody city?"

"I thought— It could have just been a fire."

"But it wasn't. It wasn't."

All of a sudden he can't take the marble look on her face, like she's a saintly statue, a martyr in a church. "Well, they're Nazis," he says, "and we're trying to win a war. What, we're not supposed to drop bombs on them? Come on. You know what they do."

She looks at him without any emotion. "Yes," she says. "Yes, I know what they do, Stark."

Something in her voice unsettles Howard. There's an implication: do you know what they do? Do you, Howard? Do you? He says, "You can't—"

"Please don't," she says. "Please."

He subsides. "I'm sorry."

"You don't have to—"

"No, I really am sorry." He pauses. "I think you're the only person I've ever apologized to, you know."

She rolls her eyes, snapped out of her trance. "Oh, give it a rest, Stark."

"No, I swear. It's true."

He sits beside her and casually steals her cigarette to light it. Blows smoke at her exaggeratedly. She takes it back. "God, you're a pest."

"I know. But what can you do? I'm a genius. Reportedly."

They pass the cigarette back and forth, silent, reflective. The gray smoke drifts up and into the arches.

Carter says, after a while, "Bodies cook, you know. Like meat. Even before we heard what happened, I think we already— we already knew, because we could smell it. It's a difficult smell to get rid of, as it turns out."

Howard hands her the cigarette. He leans his shoulder against hers. He doesn't say anything. They sit there through the dawn like that.

He turns twenty-six in August, two weeks later. Can you believe it? A year ago, he was fishing hypothetical atoms at Berkeley.

He was so young then.

Teller writes. He's in New Mexico. No address: just a P.O. box number. He's got a kid now. Just imagine: a kid. He's at war with absolutely everyone, as is standard, and madly obsessed with his Superbomb project. Apparently someone has told him that the fusion reaction cross section for deuterium is larger than imagined, and Teller has turned this into a whole new crusade. I include calculations, he writes, for your infantile mind to consider. Also included are some notes on gun diagrams, which Howard could improve a thousandfold. Come to the Wild West! is scrawled across one page.

Oh. But: Howard thinks, I belong in London.

It's difficult to explain this sentiment. Howard loathes London. He loathes the narrow chalky buildings, the damp seeping rain. He loathes that everything is higher or shorter than expected, like the whole world has undergone a Wonderland size shift. He loathes the bunker's windowless prison cells, and then— when he buys a house, and installs everyone in it— he loathes the house; he loathes the wallpaper, which looks ancient, and the plumbing, which creaks, and just— all of it. He sleeps in his lab, but loathes its underground twilight. And: God, the chicory coffee, burnt by Pidgeon, and: God, Pidgeon! Pidgeon! Pidgeon, with his tweedy Canadian sweaters! With his twittish round glasses! With his general air of obsequiousness!

Howard's never loathed things before, or not really. He's always had the option to run away. He can do anything he wants; who's going to stop him? He's rich; he's brilliant; he owns his own airplane; the chief constant in his life has been his total freedom. (Even when he was a child: well, poor little Howard. Haven't you heard, you know, the family history?) So he's never learned that there's a relief in being stuck; never learned that it can be a liberation to complain; never woken up knowing, with grim satisfaction, where he'll sleep when night comes.

He belongs in London, where in fact he's sleeping very little, and smoking a lot, and probably drinking too much, in the way that all of them are drinking too much around then. In London, Carter's often trying to track him down, give him orders, and he likes knowing that sooner or later she'll show up to say, "Christ, Stark, can't you keep your things in some kind of order; this is a military installation, not a rubbish tip; Mr. Pidgeon, are you just going to let him blow himself up?" And even when Carter's gone from London, he knows that she'll be back to keep an eye on him.

("Stark, where's your minder?" Phillips likes to bellow, when she's gone. Or, if he's in a temper: "Where's your little birdy friend? He get eaten by a house cat?" Pidgeon isn't Phillips' favorite agent.)

But at the end of the month, the SSR command staff heads south. The head of Hydra, Schmidt, has been waging his own war in the Alps, and Phillips wants to be at the front. He takes the staff with him. That means Carter, and it means that she's gone for a week, with no news out of Azzano.

Howard doesn't think about it. He's working with vibranium alloys. He's thinking about building a suit of armor, or bulletproof vests— better than the manganese ones, and definitely better for stealth ops. So much to deal with, and he's dealing with it. So:

"Go ahead. Shoot me. Shoot me!" he orders.

Pidgeon, across the room, quivers in anguish. "Mr. Stark, I think there might be a regulation against this."

"Don't be a girl, Pidgeon! Give it your best shot!"

"I have a nervous temperament. I don't like aggressive behavior."

"Your coffee is what I'd call aggressive behavior. This is just shooting me in the chest."

"Mr. Stark—"

Then, from the doorway: "Mr. Stark, Agent Carter is on the line from Italy. It's urgent."

Clanking a little from his bulletproof armor, Howard crosses the room to take the call.

"Listen," Carter says. "I haven't much time, and this is strictly illegal. You know how we've got that Twin Beechcraft in storage? You're always bragging about your pilot's license; how do you feel about flying across the Continent?"

Rogers looks the same, when Howard sees him: America incarnate, everything that Erskine would've wanted. Seeing him is strange, like seeing a ghost in a body. Carter's voice turns tender when she talks to him, and Howard feels himself whet his own voice like a knife. He could be nice, but: well, he isn't. "It's the wunderkind!" he says. "Looking good! How's the dancing business? Girls keeping you busy?"

Carter withers him with a glance. "Not now, Stark," she says.

Later, when they've dropped Rogers into his war zone, they fly in silence. Howard wants Carter to say To hell with this. He wants her to say, You're right, Howard, actually; fondue sounds lovely. They could head for the border. It's not too late. Somewhere on the edge of the Alps below them, Lucerne is tucked into its mist, a peacetime city where people sleep soundly. We could still escape, Howard thinks. Just say the word.

Instead, what Carter says is: "You know, you can be a bit of a bastard sometimes."

"But I'm here, and you knew that I'd come," he says.

"I suppose I did. Thank you anyways. Sincerely."

"So what's up? Are you in love with him?"

"I retract my thanks."

"Just curious, is all."

"Keep your nose out of my business."

He mimes offense. "But it's such a good-looking nose!"

She doesn't respond. Howard glances back. She's gazing out at the night, at the dark mountains lined with ghostly snow specks.

He doesn't know what to feel. He finds it confusing; it's like they've been ripped out of their setting, crammed suddenly and forcibly into the past; or they'd kept the past crammed down inside of themselves, and now someone's reached in and torn the lid off. He hadn't really been ready to see Rogers again. It's not jealousy; he doesn't expect, anymore, that he'll marry Carter. They know each other too well now, he thinks. He couldn't make her into a wife. It would hurt to deform her. So maybe she marries Rogers— whatever she wants, whatever makes her happy. He just keeps thinking of Erskine's hand on Rogers' chest: his last touch, like he was tapping out a blessing. A blessing he hadn't extended to Howard. But that's fine; it's okay, really. It's not like they were close. To be close, you'd have to need someone else. And Howard doesn't, which is something he can't help. So he hadn't expected— well, anything.

He glances back again, to Carter huddled in her jacket. He says, "If you are, you know, that would be— fine. If you were—"

"I can't tell you how gratified I am by your permission."

That's cold. "You could cut me a break here. Jesus Christ."

"Just fly the plane, Stark," she says brusquely.

So they fly on in a thin-strung, brittle silence until they reach the Army's Italian base.

Of course Rogers gets back to London covered in glory. Captain America! The wunderkind has been promoted! Every newspaper in Britain has a field day. The rest of the SSR? Well, they straggle in behind him, feeling less glorious.

Howard stays in his lab for the first week. What a good idea it had been to put a cot in the lab. One of the many brilliant ideas for which he is known. He moves from sleep to work to sleep without much transition. The two gradually become a kind of single rolling daze. He's going to build Rogers an untouchable arsenal, he's decided. This is a wholly reasonable course of action that has nothing to do with Carter. He scraps the vibranium armor; carbon polymer will work, and he wants to use the vibranium for a shield instead. In fact he makes six shields, and some modified handguns. All of this is after blowing himself up a couple of times. (Hydra's blue energy source turns out to be a bit of a kick in the head.)

Pidgeon says, "I'm sure Captain Rogers will be speechless, Mr. Stark." Howard suspects condescension.

Carter comes by at the end of the third day. She says, "I wish you'd just be angry with me when you're angry with me, instead of behaving like an imbecile."

"I have work to do," he tells her. "Scientific work. Unless you understand the atomic structure of Hydra's unknown element, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave."

She gives him a very long-suffering look and exits, her heels clicking hard.

The next day, Rogers himself comes by. He looks like an overeager dog who's been scolded. From what sense Howard can get from him, he's been told off by Carter. Grimly satisfied, but perhaps also slightly guilty, Howard sets him straight.

"I didn't think—" Rogers starts.

"Nor should you, pal," Howard says grandly. "The moment you think you know what's going on a woman's head is the moment your goose is well and truly cooked."

Rogers seems appropriately impressed by this sage and colorful advice, and it's certainly drummed into his memory by the fact that Carter fires a loaded pistol at his shield moments later.

Have to refinish the vibranium, Howard thinks. Damn.

Rogers' shellshocked look says he's been underestimating Carter. Howard might also feel grimly satisfied by that.

The thing is, though, that Rogers comes back three days later. He has that same shy look, like he's expecting a rebuff. And he's carrying a cup of coffee in each hand. Real coffee, as in: made from those precious roasted beans, those sweet decadent kernels, redolent of foreign climes, rich and perfect and real coffee. It's real coffee. Howard can tell by the scent.

"Um," Rogers says, his expression nervous. "I brought you coffee. I hope that's all right. Agent Carter mentioned—"

Howard demands in a rush, "Where did you get coffee?"

"It— It's not rationed, is it? I asked, and Agent Carter—"

"No, it's not rationed, which means there's no rations. None. Le cafe, il n'existe pas."

"Uh, I don't know what that means," Rogers says.

"Never mind." Howard tastes the coffee. It is heaven. There is no other way to describe his feelings about it.

"Some ladies sent me a package," Rogers says, "with all sorts of things in it." He blushes. "I guess I have a lot of fans."

Howard can't be bothered to cross-examine this remark. He's too absorbed by the cup he's holding. Vaguely, he's aware that he's possibly being bribed, or even set up, but this seems an acceptable trade to make. Shortly thereafter he recognizes the size of his error.

"Peggy said," Rogers rushes, "I mean, Agent Carter said that you two were, that you were having a problem, and I didn't know if that was because of me. I'd hate to think that either of you lost a friend on my account." He blinks his blue eyes, perfectly earnest.

"There's no problem, pal," Howard says, hating himself. He claps Rogers on the shoulder. "I told you, I stick to work. Now, maybe Agent Carter has a problem with me, but that's neither here nor there. Like Schrodinger's cat. You know about Schrodinger's cat?"

"Not really," Rogers admits.

"Schrodinger's cat means: why worry about it. Tell you what: let me show you a grenade. You like grenades?"

Rogers likes grenades. How about that. Howard also likes grenades, so they throw grenades for a while. The SSR has a testing range at a bombed-out estate, and by the end of the day, both men are deafened and covered in brick dust. Howard's slightly drunk, having brought along a bottle, and he's happier than he's felt in days, maybe weeks. Rogers, it turns out, is actually pretty good fun. When excited, he becomes somehow even more child-like. He loses his gawky, solemn air, and breaks out in a boyish grin. He even punches the air a few times in triumph. Howard thinks it can only be healthy. The human body needs to blow things up sometimes.

"I like you," Howard pronounces as they stagger back into the bunker. "I forgive you. I give you my blessing."

Rogers looks bemused. "Forgive me for what?"

"Doesn't matter. Blood under the water. Water under the bridge." Howard stretches out on his cot in the lab.

"Do you—" Rogers inquires, looking around in confusion— "do you live here?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake— sorry, Steve." That's Carter's voice: not sounding very happy. Howard looks up and sees her stalking towards them.

Rogers looks like he's been caught red-handed, doing whatever Rogers would consider sinful. From what Howard knows of him: enjoying himself, probably.

"Leave the wunderkind alone," Howard says with a wave. "It's my fault. Always. In general. It's generally my fault. Except when it's Pidgeon's fault. In fact, where is Pidgeon? He should be here to take the fall. I think that's his job."

Carter says, "Pidgeon doesn't live here. Pidgeon has better things to do."

Howard approximately mimes a death-blow to his sternum. "A hit! A very palatable hit!"

Carter turns her eyes up to the ceiling. "For goodness' sake. Steve, you're dismissed. I need to speak with Mr. Stark."

Rogers looks uncertain. He offers, "We were weapons-testing?"

"I'm sure you were," Carter says dryly. "Don't worry; I'm not going to kill him and eat him. Rationing isn't quite that bad yet."

"Speak for yourself," Howard says. "Besides, you eat Marmite. If that's not a mark of desperation..."

He watches as she takes Roger's hand, whispering something to him briefly. He hasn't seen them together much, not before now. It's remarkable how their faces light up. He'd thought that was just a turn of phrase, but they do, they really do, like sun stirring through a cloudburst. He almost wants to look away. It's too private, that moment. He has to protect it. He pictures it cradled between his hands: that light, that warmth, little and egg-fragile.

"I'm drunk," he announces, blinking.

Rogers is gone. How did that happen?

Carter says, "I know." She pulls a chair up, sits.

"I like Rogers," Howard tells her. "He's a good kid. Good pitching arm."

"He's not a kid, you know; you're practically the same age."

"Maybe I'm a kid. Never said I wasn't."

"That's true." She looks down at him. "Does this mean you'll stop doing whatever it is you're doing?"

"I'm not doing anything. I'm making weapons. I'm working. I work."

"Machines work."

"Your voice changes when you talk to him. It goes all... girlish."

"I thought you didn't mind."

"I thought I was supposed to keep my nose out of your business. Which I've been doing, by the way."

She's silent for a moment. Howard closes his eyes. He wonders if he can get away with feigning drunken sleep.

"I didn't mean," she begins, "... to be cruel, I suppose. It's difficult, with you, because you do invite it."

"Sometimes I deserve it."

"Yes; that's also true." She pulls her hair to one side, twisting it in her hands, a thick dark coil. Howard is reminded of an earlier moment, of an earlier age— that fierce, distant, and queenly expression. Somewhere in the mausoleum house, there's a drawer that holds her rubies. She deserves them, and nothing could ever ruin her. She was wrong. Her wealth can only increase. Someday he'll give them to her. When? The future.

"I'm happy for you," he says. "Really, I'm glad. Rogers is good, he's..." Simple. Physical. Like Erskine's hands repotting an orchid, settling the roots into new dirt, the warm smell of earth permeating the workspace— Erskine muttering in German, Ach, du Teufel, du kleine Teufel! as Schubert creaks from the gramophone behind him. That was the blessing, Howard thinks; that's what Rogers had, that he couldn't: that good, simple, physical self. He wants that for Carter. He can't give it to her.

"You're not required to be happy," she says. "But thank you." She rests her hand on his shoulder, lightly but warmly. 'Will you move out of the lab? It's distressing to everyone, having you here. You snore when you sleep."

"Make Rogers give me more coffee."

"I'll see what he has." She smiles.

Their eyes meet. There's this strange exhaustion, like the air when a storm has passed. Howard feels optimistic, really optimistic. We'll be all right, he thinks.

Around this time they all feel that they're winning the war, also. The Germans are turning desperate. They're making errors. The destruction of the factory has hit Hydra hard; and people like Rogers. They feel like he's— what? Their good angel. That he's come out of nowhere to keep them safe. It's not so outlandish to see the future as golden, as full of promise. They're so young: don't forget. They feel like they're ancient. But they've got so much life left, so much life still due to them, and when they look at it, they think that they're moving forwards. Moving towards it. They're making progress.

Howard especially thinks this way.

1944

Rogers goes off to Austria to be a hero. He's gone for weeks, months at a time, he and his gang of raggedy soldiers. When they come back, they bring new demands. Rogers is a surprisingly decent thinker; he's unformed, and he doesn't have an engineer's brain, but he has the right way of looking at a problem. He comes to Howard: "I need a timed explosive device, something about, maybe so big?" Gesturing with his hands. "And not very heavy. Something that we could attach to a truck, say. But not something with a big explosive charge, because we can only get about a quarter mile from it." Or: "What about an electric sniper rifle? We need to take this guy in, get some information from him. But it would be easier if we could knock him out first, from a pretty good distance."

Howard draws up some schematics. It's actually fun. It's like playing a very elaborate game. He doesn't have to think about atomic physics, about firebombings, about the blue element that's still sitting in his lab, about an initiator for a fission bomb. He makes exciting guns for Rogers, who fights with a shield, which is all you need to know about Rogers, really.

In the spring of 1944, the Allies are planning an invasion. The SSR's tasked with keeping Hydra weapons out of France. This is helped by the fact that Rogers keeps blowing depots up. But still, the tension gets to them. There are hundreds of routes. There are thousands of trucks. The pace required is frantic. Howard starts having dreams about grenades. He comes close to moving back into the lab.

Still, a small triumph: he remembers Carter's birthday. April ninth. What to give her, what to give her? He'd only earn a disapproving look with any attempt to subvert rationing, so: no butter, no sugar, no oranges, no cows. No orchids, and certainly no jewels. So: so: then what?

It's the dreams that suggest it, oddly enough. He thinks he dreams about grenades because they're fatal in your hand, in a way that guns and aerial bombs aren't. You carry it with you, a box with death in it, no bigger than your heart; and then someone pulls the pin. In his dreams, they always open the box too early. Then the lock is broken, and it escapes: his death, the death that he puts inside each box.

He builds Carter a music box inside a grenade shell. It plays "Nimrod," Elgar's ninth Enigma Variation, when you turn the key made out of the pin. She'll hate it, he thinks. A cheap joke, a gag. He should have just made her an actual grenade.

But when he gives it to her, and she turns the key and hears the music, she says, "Oh, Howard!" and her face goes all strange.

"It's nothing," he says, immediately panicked. "It's just a toy; I had some time on my hands."

"You filthy liar. No, you didn't. Howard, this is lovely."

"Well, good."

"I mean it."

"Let's not talk about it, ever."

She gives him a look that speaks of tried patience. "All right, but you'll have to hold still for a moment."

"Why? What are you—"

She wraps her arms around him, very careful, very gentle, pressing him close. Just for an instant. "Thank you," she whispers. She smells like brass and lilies and gun oil. Howard doesn't know where to put his hands, what to do.

"Yeah, sure," he says awkwardly. "Happy birthday."

Her scent stays on his shirt for a long time. Lightly floral, violent.

In June: the invasion. They don't sleep for weeks. They live and die via telegram.

Howard sits down at his desk one day and starts to draw. It's an idle thought from the back of his head, leaking through the barriers of exhaustion. Maybe he doesn't even think about it. He just jots the design down: a Po210 kernel layered with a beryllium shell, but not like the shell of a candy almond. Wrinkled, like a walnut shell. Machine irregularities into the surface. That's what he writes. He seals it up in an envelope and sends it to Teller. God knows he owes the man a letter anyhow. After that, he gets distracted by Phillips' demands: new radio transmitters for the maquisards; stealth boots for Rogers, and how is Hydra fueling their tanks? He can't figure out how to derive fuel from the energetic crystal, so he doesn't know how to make the tanks jam, and the point is, the point is— it's hardly the feature of his month. To be perfectly honest, he forgets about it.

Come December, two of Rogers' commandos get grounded: Barnes and Falsworth, both with shrapnel wounds to the shoulder. "Ambush, I'm afraid," Falsworth explains with a grimace. "The others got off rather more easily."

Howard knows neither of them particularly well. Falsworth's dashing, verging on flashy. Barnes is a dark boy who always looks hunted, and who has to be encouraged to speak. The two haunt the SSR's bunker, playing poker and drinking all the whiskey, testing Howard's guns and Carter's short temper. By Christmas, everyone is feeling claustrophobic. So it's a great relief when the holidays arrive. Half the staff go on leave, and Falsworth invites everyone who's left to a Christmas shindig in the nearby town of Bletchley. His girl is a secretary there, doing war work, "And she's got a whole team of friends," Falsworth promises, "superb young ladies, clever and elegant as anything."

Falsworth is genuinely one of God's optimists, sweet, sympathetic, and cheerful. He's also graceful as hell, effortlessly so, almost a caricature of a gentleman. It should be easy to hate him, but he makes it hard, because there's something earnest about everything he says. Like the upper-class Rogers, Howard thinks, but then— that makes a difference.

No one in the SSR can resist his charm, so they all end up at the so-called shindig: Howard and Carter and even Pidgeon, as well as the perpetually gloom-faced Barnes. The train to Bletchley takes them through cold English country, rocks marking the landscape and fields lined with frost. They're laughing— Falsworth can make anyone laugh— and crowded into the narrow seats. The train smells of warm wool and coal and woodsmoke. Howard passes around a monogrammed flask filled with plum brandy, and everyone partakes. By the time they disembark, their faces are hot, and they sing breathless carols on the hike into town. (Unsurprisingly, Pidgeon is tone deaf.)

The party's at a big Victorian manor, and most of the guests are likewise half-drunk. Falsworth's girl is a sharp-tongued blonde who turns out to have a title, and whom Howard rather likes. She seems briskly and prosaically tough. She leads him around the room, introducing him to oddballs, all of whom for some reason want to talk to him about electronic valves. "This is Monty's Howard," she says, "the American machine man," just as though she's never heard of his last name. Very quickly he figures out that the oddballs are mathematicians, and further that all of them are working on codes, and he passes a pleasant hour discussing his thoughts on quantum entanglement. It's strange being in a room with men whose minds keep up with his own.

The place is, as Falsworth had assured them, packed full of women— witty and well-bred, ruddy-cheeked girls. Howard flirts half-heartedly with maybe a handful, but he finds he's too happy; he can't quite summon the spirit. He likes them too much; he sees what Falsworth meant: they're superb. So he leaves them alone, and goes out to take the air. Just in time, too: he can hear more caroling begin, this time with the ballroom's piano involved.

He's surprised to find Barnes outside in the dark. Snow is floating around him in specks. The cigarette in his mouth burns red as an ember. At the sound of the door, he glances over. His light eyes are wary, but relax. "Hey," he says. "Getting stuffy in there?"

"You got it." Howard waggles his own cigarette. Barnes tosses him a lighter.

They smoke in silence.

"It's peaceful here," Barnes says after a while.

"Better than Austria, huh?"

"Yeah. You bet." His voice sounds, for some reason, halfway to bitter.

Howard's a little taken aback. He says, "I thought all you boys were 85% sunshine. Something wrong?"

Barnes manages to shake his head and flinch in one quick gesture. "Nothing. Just don't like being injured. 'Specially when I'm the only one."

"Hey, Falsworth's here, too."

"I mean—"

"—Rogers," Howard realizes.

"He's got no one out there to watch his back."

"Well," Howard says, "give me some credit; I did build him a bullet-resistant suit. It could have been bulletproof, but he wanted the damn shield."

"Right." Barnes gives him a fleeting smile. "Gotta have the shield."

It's obvious there's more going on in Barnes' head. Howard waits it out, lets him figure his way through it. The snow keeps falling around them, so thin that it vanishes on the ground. Light flickers from the house, from the lamps inside.

Finally Barnes says, "You're the one who made him like that, huh?"

"Who, Rogers? Sort of. I guess I helped."

"Why'd you do it?"

Howard studies him. "You know, nobody's ever asked me that?"

"Well, sure, you take a guy, you pump up his muscles, make him punch real hard, I guess it makes sense. But that's not why you did it."

"No." Barnes has haunted eyes, he thinks. It's strange, because he looks like such a kid; you forget he's a soldier, you forget how long he's been a soldier. He never would say what they did to him, in the weapons factory that Rogers destroyed. Just that he was fit to be deployed. Phillips sent him out with Rogers, three weeks later. He was right, after all; he was fighting fit. Howard says, "Erskine, the guy who— I think he wanted to protect people. He wasn't great at that. As it turns out." He wishes he were drinking. He feels slightly sick. "He wanted to win the war. He thought that was important."

"And what about after the war? What happens after that?"

Howard sees the problem, of course: he's a genius, our Howard. It's just never before really occurred to him. You design a tool for one purpose, and not for others. You design a gun, but you don't make it play music. You design a shield, but it doesn't double as a dinner plate. When the war's over, you buy a gramophone, new china. You don't worry anymore about the other things. They have no place in the peacetime world. The peacetime world! What a concept. The witty, well-bred girls will settle down and have babies; these gawky, killer soldier-kids will go back home, get office jobs. The future stretches out to the horizon; the life they're due is coming for them.

"I don't know," he confesses. "Guess he thought it doesn't matter. Or maybe— we win the war, sure, but does the war really end?"

Barnes smiles at him, but his eyes stay haunted. "Right," he says. "Right. That's what I thought you'd say."

Inside, the piano's stopped, but a new song has started, a woman's voice, solo, singing in French: Quelle est cette odeur agréable, bergers, qui ravit tous nos sens? Howard knows the song, but he doesn't know why. It makes him sad for a reason he can't place, not the sadness that comes with remembering loss, but the sadness of remembering something you loved. He watches Barnes scuffing the ground with his troop boots. Someday he'll remember this, he thinks— the snow, the music, the smell of brandy, England... the way Barnes suddenly goes still, hope rising in his face, at the sight of a figure on the road up from the station. And not just hope, but something more painful, a joy that claws at Howard's heart with its familiarness.

"Steve?" Barnes hollers. "Stevie? Is that you?"

Howard squints into the dark. He can't quite make out a face. But in a minute he sees the glint of the shield— Rogers never goes anywhere without it, these days— and he knows that it's true, and goes to find Carter.

It's as close as he's come to seeing her cry. She's so eternal; it's hard to remember she's his own age. Younger. She gets as far as the doorway, and sees Rogers there. Then her lip quivers; her eyes get wide and liquid. "But you're supposed to be in Germany!" she says, which is typical, really, typical Carter. The first thing she thinks: why aren't you where I put you?

Rogers shrugs, looking a little bit scared. "Colonel Phillips said to tell you Merry Christmas? If you want, I can go away—"

"Don't you dare!" And then she flings herself at him, laughing and sniffling, and it's such a disgustingly heartwarming scene that even Howard's heart is warmed a little.

He looks over at Barnes. Barnes' expression is shuttered. But his whole body's marked by that visible joy, a radiance that he can't wholly suppress. It's hard to look at, hard to look away from. Howard has to hold in his breath or else, he thinks, he'll say something, do something, and he's the last person who— anyway, he just can't. He can't. But after a while he thinks, well, fuck it. He touches Barnes' arm. Barnes flinches back.

"Whoa, there. It's fine," Howard says. "See, everything's fine. He's here, and he's fine. Everything's going to be okay."

Maybe he really thinks that everything will be okay. It's not hard to think like that. Harder to imagine outright disaster. They're here, after all, and the night is peaceful. Snow is beginning to blanket the earth. A bell tolls from the church green down in Bletchley. Carter has her face pressed to Rogers' shoulder; one of his broad hands rest soft on her hair. A high noise of laughter rises from the ballroom. The world they live in, in spite of all Howard knows, does not seem cruel.

Howard says quietly to Barnes, "Come on, pal. Let's get some Christmas cheer in you."

He leads Barnes off to where the champagne punch is waiting, to where the superb girls are waiting, to where all the warm flares of lamps are lit; to where a voice is shouting, "Oh, Monty, don't be a spoilsport; start us off!" And then Falsworth's voice, breathless with merriment: "I can't; I'm drunk; I don't remember the words!"

But he does remember, at least enough to start with, and soon the others around him join in:

I'll sing you one, oh
Green grow the rushes, oh!

1945

Falsworth's girl comes to visit at the end of January. Her name is Sarah, The Honourable Sarah, which Howard resolves to call her because he enjoys it. It annoys her, but she needs a little fun in her life; already, just since Christmas, she seems paler, tireder, somehow injured.

"I'm just bloody worn out," she says to Howard, flicking a cigarette with red-tipped fingers. She's perched on the edge of his desk, watching while he tinkers with a new attempt at a reversor. "I keep thinking, you know, at any minute, it'll all be over. I mean, God! I'll be glad of it."

Howard isn't sure he feels this way. But The Honourable Sarah is tired of Bletchley, tired of living in a village; she misses London and Paris and her friends in Vienna. She misses coffee and sugar and nylons and nightclubs. She misses— she's enumerating quite a long list of complaints, apparently finding him a sympathetic spirit, and has just gotten to "laughing, really laughing; everyone says to keep your spirits up, but then they treat you like you've just blasphemed Saint Winston if you so much as..." when she stops, and covers her mouth abruptly.

"Oh, God," she says. "I'm sorry; I can't, I can't— You've got quite a high clearance, haven't you?"

Howard can think of few people who have a higher clearance than he does, and he tells her so.

"I thought you must have, if they let you in Bletchley. The thing is, they've got us breaking codes up there. No one's supposed to know. They bring us the German dispatches, and we turn them round to plain English. Only— last week they brought me a folio of papers, and they said, Can you rush it, we've just had it off a captured plane. Which, all right, but there was blood on the papers. It hadn't finished drying yet. Do you see? It hadn't even finished drying!"

She looks like she wants to cry, but she doesn't. She just sits there, very still and white-faced. Howard doesn't know how to comfort her. He pours some whiskey in a glass, and hands it over. She drinks it gratefully.

"It's not the death," she says, "although, you know, I think about him dying. He was a person, he wasn't a set of papers. Was he still alive while I was— but I can't know that. Then I think, well, what if he'd killed Monty? But it's the coldness that gets to me, the coldness, the coldness. Like none of us were ever really people. I miss laughing. God! I wish it were over. I can't stand this."

In February, the Allies bomb Dresden. The fires can be seen from two hundred miles away. People fleeing into shelters, basements, bunkers, are killed by the smoke or roasted alive. Afterwards, piles of bodies are burned in the street. There's no time to bury them, and often no one to do so.

There's no point talking about it. The war's almost over. You'd think that would mean relief, but what it means, in fact, is that they're always busy. So what's the point of bringing up things that are done, things that none of them can change? Just keep your head down, keep plowing forwards. Stick to work, like Howard always says. They're so close to making it out alive. Just a little further, a little further and then—

Here's how it starts: Carter stands in the doorway. She says, "Barnes is dead."

It's late at night and Howard doesn't understand at first what she's means. "No—" he begins, puzzled, as though he's going to correct her. As though he's going to correct her! As though she's made a very stupid error. Barnes is a warm weight leant on Howard's shoulder as they stagger to the station, laughing quasi-breathlessly, smelling of champagne. Holding up Howard's hip flask so it flickers in the snowfall; announcing, too loud and over-fervent, To victory! Victory— Then on the train: his sleeping face like a child's, stripped of sadness.

"Killed in action," Peggy says. "We've had word from Rogers. He's en route with Dr. Zola; the... mission was successful."

Howard keeps staring at her, just—

Her expression is stony. A perfect war-picture, a patriotic print; and then all at once it cracks, leaking despondence. "Oh, Christ, Stark," she whispers, pressing her hand to her mouth. "Christ, Christ, I don't know what to say to him."

Howard himself doesn't know what to say to Rogers. He thinks: best leave it a while, let Carter do the talking. But when he creeps up to the commissary sometimes the next morning— well, past midnight the next day— Rogers is there, sitting alone at a table. There's nothing in front of him.

"You want a drink?" Howard asks. His voice sounds loud, but he think it's just the silence.

"No, thanks." Rogers says, "I wanted to talk to you."

"You're talking to me now."

"Could you sit down, Stark. Please." The raw tone's not like him.

Howard sits. He wishes he'd had a drink first.

Rogers looks beaten— not defeated, but bruised, as though someone's taken a rifle-butt to him. Howard's always called him kid, but he's never looked so young, or so old at the same time. What it is, Howard thinks, is the grief, the grief— you can't carry that weight and be a kid. So when you are, then what does that make you? Not one thing or another. A young-old monster, a creature from legend, like a fish with a lion's head. Who are your people, if you're that fish? No one. Where do you live? What— God help us— will you grow into?

Rogers starts off with: "You and Peggy."

"Nope. Nuh-uh!" Howard throws up his hands. "I swear to you: never."

"No, I know— that's not what I was saying." He pauses. "You know I'm going after Schmidt, and I might not come back."

"Listen, once I've rigged up that bike of yours—"

"Stark. I might not come back." There's a plea in Rogers' eyes. Don't do this, is the plea. Don't make me pretend. "You and Peggy, you've always been close."

"What, you're going to tell me to take care of her? Carter? You may not have noticed, but she takes care of me."

"No, Peggy can take care of herself. I know. I just... I don't want her to be alone, if— Because I never thought, before this, and then— see, I had her, I had Peggy. And if I didn't, I don't know—" He bites his lip, and for a moment he seems very close to tears. "Just promise me, promise you won't make her do that alone."

Howard says, uncomfortable, "Of course I wouldn't..." He doesn't like this; doesn't like this conversation.

"Good. That's all I wanted to know."

"But you'll come back. You're the guy who comes back." He feels like he has to articulate this, has to make sure that Rogers understands. "You and Carter, you two were meant to be together. Neither one of you's going anywhere, pal."

"You think that," Rogers says. He's looking down at the table, at his two hands folded into fists. "You think that, until—"

Howard leans forwards and puts his hands on Rogers' shoulders. He feels the warm muscle under his hands, the living flesh that Erskine brought into this world, in a sense his only surviving descendant. He loved you, he thinks, and he didn't even know you; he had no reason to want to love anymore, but you're here, and you have to stay here. You're the future and we made you. We need you; everyone needs you so much. "Listen to me," he says. "You're coming back, you numbskull. Are you kidding me? Of course you're coming back."

Rogers doesn't come back.

Back up a scene: the night before their assault on Hydra. All the good kiddies are still alive, still safe in their beds. Well: safe in their military installation. Howard himself is safe in the lab. Where else would Howard be? He's wiring Rogers' motorbike's circuits. Since when do motorbikes have circuits, you might have asked, if you didn't know Howard. He holds the wires together. Sparks fly from their tail-ends. His hands have to be very steady for this.

He's aware of Carter when she enters the room. Is it possible she could enter a room, and he not know it? If nothing else, he knows her scent, knows that click-clack sound: narrow heels on the lab floor. For a second, he closes his eyes and thinks, or doesn't think— loses himself in that familiarness— the feel of circuits under his fingers, ice shifting in a glass on the table, smoke seeping from a just-extinguished cigarette; and Carter's regard, like a tender abrasion, the prickling scrape of being seen, like she has lifted his skin off yet left him more whole. That physicality. Howard, are you happy? Are you happy, now? —Yes. Yes. Just for this second.

Carter touches his elbow. "Stark, you should sleep."

"I will. I will. In a minute."

"We might actually need you tomorrow." A wry, teasing note in her voice.

"I'll be fine. You know me."

"Yes; all too well. Thus my concern."

Howard lets the wires drop. He pushes his goggles up his forehead. He feels strange, superstitious and shaky, but he doesn't know what's at the root of this feeling. "Don't go," he says, turning to her in appeal. "Don't go to the base tomorrow."

She smiles at him, gently mystified. "What are you talking about? I'm leading sixteen men out; I'm not going to not go—!"

"Don't. Don't go, let's just—"

"Stark, if you're going to propose we go have fondue—"

He almost says, Yes, let's. It's the same impulse, the same breath of oncoming disaster. They could still escape; that peacetime world is still out there. They could still get out of this. The image comes to him unbidden of a gravitic reversor, a diagram, perfect and complete, and he knows how to make it work; he knows how to put it together. He could hold down that animal force forever. No laws in his world, only marvels and wonders. The car sails off, into the clean blank future, the electric world where things are so easy.

Carter takes his hand in hers and holds on hard. Her eyes are very dark and steady. She's always believed in looking at things straight-on. "It's going to be all right," she tells him. "Have faith."

Howard says, "Peggy—"

But he doesn't know how to finish the sentence.

What do they say after that? Nothing that matters. "Don't forget to tell Phillips—" "I got it, I got it. I'm just going to finish up here." "All right, but will you sleep?" "Yes, all right; are you happy? I'll see you tomorrow." They part. He turns back to the circuit board. He's aware of the moment she leaves the room— that scent of lilies and guns going with her.

He won't see her again for more than a year.

Arctic Sea: March 1945

Howard had never known there were so many empty places on earth. On a map they look small; you can cover them with your hand. When you arrive, though, they're vast; they're insurmountable. He knows that under the ice there's life in the water, that nothing on the earth is truly empty, but then— what does it mean to be empty, if this isn't it? —All around him the sea, continually rocked, the same bricks of ice, the same slate gray waves.

For a long time they had radio contact. It still comes in bursts through the static some days. The Germans bombed the Isfjord station, but sometimes the boat can manage to reach Svalbard. The rest of the time there's nothing.

After a week, Pidgeon says (yes, Pidgeon the unshakable, Pidgeon the un-get-riddable, Pidgeon, who— as it turns out— gets seasick), "Sir— Mr. Stark— We may have to consider the likelihood—"

"We don't have to consider anything," Howard says. "This is my mission, and if the U.S. government wants me to keep writing checks, they'll let me do whatever I damn well please."

"Sir, I'm Canadian," Pidgeon points out.

But he keeps scanning the radar.

After a month, Pidgeon says (Pidgeon, who looks tired and ever-grimmer, whose bones are starting to show beneath his skin), "There are three more letters from Colonel Phillips in the mailbag from Spitsbergen. He wants to know what he should do with your equipment. Senator Brandt has requested Captain Rogers' effects, but the Library of Congress is filing paperwork that argues—"

Howard isn't really listening anymore.

March 28, 1945

Falsworth Manor
England

Stark,

What the hell are you playing at? The war hasn't ended, you know. Col. Phillips says you've run off to sea. You're bloody lucky he hasn't filed charges against you. I would've done. I won't mention the more obvious dereliction; your conscience is your own. As it is, there's about ten thousand papers in London that need signing, so you'll need to get the hell off your boat if you want to end the year still owning anything at all.

I'm laid up at home— caught a bullet with my kneecap— meaning you haven't the excuse of not being able to reach me. Write to me. Have your manservant do it if you must. Or: Get the hell off your boat.

J.M. Falsworth, Viscount Towton

10 April 1945

P.O. Box 1663
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Dear Stark,

I hear it's you we have to thank for the dappled initiator that we're using for our gadget. It's an excellent design & a very good solution. We are currently in the process of refinement & manufacture and plan (assuming all the best) for a test in July. For the love of &c why don't you come work on the project for a while. All clearances can be arranged & we could use a practical hand. Also not to put to fine a point on it your ideological presence (i.y.k.w.i.m.) would be a political boon for Oppie & me.

Whatever have you been up to in Europe all this time. Charlotte sends her regards as well. Assume you've heard about Teller Jr god help us, am only grateful you remain as yet unreplicated. Charlotte says But what if he's married an English countess to propagate the imperialist overclass. Think we would have heard but let us know if you have, address affixed.

Best wishes,

Bob Serber

After a month and a half, Pidgeon says nothing (Pidgeon, who's turned very inward and quiet, Pidgeon, who no longer gets seasick, Pidgeon, who has taken it upon himself to reply to all letters, regardless of what Howard tells him). He gives orders to the crew in an undertone. He's grown pale. Howard himself is thinner and whiter. They get sunlight, but the sunlight is weak and strange. At night, sometimes, there are auroras in the sky. Howard knows they're radiation, but they look more like ghosts. Ghosts moving in the geomagnetic region of the earth, ghosts trapped somehow between the earth and space.

He's rational, really. It's just: he goes a little crazy. Time passes very differently out here.

He could have gone back after the first week. But he'd thought: I'll find Rogers. I will. Nothing will be different. Nothing will have to change, nothing at all.

And after that—

He hasn't really broken his promise. If Rogers isn't dead, if he's somewhere out there, then he's going to come back— just a little late. If Howard brings him back, all will be forgiven. No one will have a choice at that point; they'll have to forgive him. All his sins; all his negligence— everything.

He dreams once that he's back in the house on Long Island. He knows it's a dream and not a memory, because he has very few memories of his childhood, and because what memories he has are curiously chaotic— like looking through a prism, and often in the third person, as though he were not really in his body. In the dream he's himself, and he's walking through the house. He's looking for a room, a room that he's lost. When he gets there, he doesn't have the key. He can't get inside. He rattles the doorknob. There's someone inside, and they're waiting. A person? Two people? More than that? Their voices are too low to hear when they talk. A floorboard creaks; laughter climbs like music. I'm here, he wants to say, I'm here, I'm here; please let me in. But in the dream he's still a child, and he doesn't yet speak. Doesn't: or does he not know how? But it's such a simple mechanism! Howard, if you can read, then you must know how to speak; you must know the words, so why, why, why won't you say them?

A shadow moves under the door. He can smell a woman's perfume, a bright floral lily and orchid scent. The air from an open window, sunlight in autumn. The leaves are falling, but it's not yet cold. Howard pushes his hands against the painted wood. In the real world there would be a lever or engine, something he could build, something that he could use to get in; but the dream world has a less merciful structure.

He holds his breath and listens, heartsick, for that laughter, those voices.

When he wakes up on the boat, he isn't crying. But when he touches his face, his cheeks are wet.

After two months, Pidgeon puts his hands over Howard's. He's grown ginger whiskers, Pidgeon; he looks gaunt and somber. Pidgeon the un-get-riddable, Howard thinks. Pidgeon, by whom— as it turns out— he wasn't deserted. Pidgeon looks at him with a gaze that is infinitely compassionate and unbearable. "There's good news," he says, "We just spoke to the Svalbard station. The war in Europe is over. The Germans have surrendered. Hitler is dead."

They're drifting between two angular icebergs. So far, they've covered the smallest fraction of the Arctic Sea. It all looks the same, from one day to the next. Only the alien shapes of the icebergs change. There's still the inland, with its solid masses. Howard could spend the rest of his life searching, looking for that one human thing under the ice. He could probably even just about afford it.

He pulls his hands away, and stands up, and goes to look out at the ocean.

"The crew want to go home," Pidgeon tells him.

"They'll go where I tell them to go. I'm the one in charge here."

"They've been at war for five years, sir. Some of them longer. They want to go home and see their families."

"Let 'em go. I'm a genius, Pidgeon; I'm a wunderkind myself; I'm a mechanical engineering prodigy; you think I can't figure out how to steer a fucking ship?"

Pidgeon stares at him steadily. "I think you're tired, Mr. Stark. And no one blames you for that. For being tired."

What do you know about it, Howard thinks.

Pidgeon says, "I'll keep searching. If you want. Someone should."

"No. You don't have to do that."

"I don't mind. Mr. Stark—" Pidgeon says, like the start of an unspoken question, or some other kind of statement, something that can't ever be wholly put into words.

Howard looks at him. Their eyes meet. Pidgeon's young, but he looks old, and God, God, Howard's what: twenty-seven? He's forgotten; it never seems to matter, in war. He feels, all at once, ancient and hugely weary. The war is over, he thinks; time to go back to our ages; time to force ourselves back inside our old skin. He feels sick, but also resigned to the prospect.

"All right," he says. "So: take us home, Mr. Pidgeon."

Chapter Text

New Mexico: May 1945

Howard washes up at 109 East Palace Ave. in Santa Fe, New Mexico, drunk as a doorknocker and ungodly sunburned. For an hour he's been wandering through the streets of this strange city, if it is a city, and not a sunsick fantasia. The buildings all still look like they were built by the Spanish, with rough tan walls like deerskin. The dominant colors are turquoise and umber. Women in black skirts and drifting white blouses pass through the streets, carrying baskets. Smoke rises, smelling of forests in winter. And the sun! and the blue mountains slumbering in the distance! and the lowness of the rooftops, outstripped by the trees!

It's been two weeks since he was in the Arctic. He feels like that was another Earth.

He fumbles with the handle of the door to the office. The sign on the dingy building says:

U.S. ENG
-RS

The woman inside has a gaze like a hawk. In a deliberate, motherly voice, she asks, "Can I help you, sir?"

"I'm," Howard says. "I wrote Bob Serber. Said I was coming. He couldn't give me the address. Of where. You know."

The woman doesn't seem impressed by him. She raises an eyebrow. "Mr. Stark?"

"That's me. That is my moniker, for sure." Howard leans against a desk. He has a strong suspicion he smells like whiskey.

"Mr. Serber didn't tell us when to expect you. Here, there's some paperwork. You're about thirty-five miles out still. Do you drive?"

He drives. He leaves the office and drives into the desert. He has to stop three times to throw up in the scrub brush. The sun is an enormous scouring eye. Some cows chew uncuriously at the side of the road. He washes out his mouth with whiskey. He sees a group of birds that he thinks are vultures, moving in slow circles through the sky.

He'd written to Serber in London, when he knew where he was going. Dear Serber, In transit, arange passes? Dont beleive what you read in the papers, will explain when I get there, tell C. as yet no propagation of the over class. Best wishes, HS. He'd been staying at the Savoy, sifting through a backlog of papers, subsisting on pink gin and tonic water in an opulent suite. The Savoy had butter and sugar and coffee. For Mr. Stark: anything. All that Mr. Stark wanted was to be left the hell alone. But certain types of money would always trump others, and so, when he'd been there about a week, J.M. Falsworth, Viscount Towton, made an appearance.

It was a surprisingly restrained appearance, given the tone of his letter, but it involved a great deal of pounding on doors. Howard was in a dressing gown and a rumpled linen shirt. He really hadn't known what time it was. The pounding was giving him a headache, was why he'd gotten out of bed.

Falsworth said, "Run out of gin in Greenland, have they?"

"You know, I didn't know you were a viscount," Howard told him. "You kept that quiet. Then again, I don't actually know what a viscount is."

"Not all of us feel the need to parade our fortunes."

Howard was drunk, but he had started to feel sufficiently angry that clarity was beginning to reach him. He noticed that Falsworth hadn't hit him, which was surprising, and that the likely reason for this was that Falsworth was leaning on two half-crutches. "Your letter said," he began, then didn't know how to go on. "—A bullet to the kneecap?"

"Several bullets across both kneecaps. The doctors saved my legs." Falsworth stared at Howard as though daring him to comment further.

"I didn't know," Howard said lamely.

"No; why would you? You were busy elsewhere."

"I was looking for Rogers!"

"Rogers is dead!" Falsworth spit the words out like venom.

Howard recoiled. He hadn't thought, stupidly, that Falsworth would say it. No one had said it to him; no one had suggested it, in two months. He hadn't let them suggest it.

"Rogers is dead," Falsworth repeated. "You think he wasn't human, that he was invulnerable? You didn't know him. You never saw him with bones sticking out of his body; you never saw him with a shrapnel hole in in his guts; he knew he could die; he knew he could suffer; and he did what he did anyway. He was human, and you don't get to use him to— to run away from having to live like the rest of us. How dare you. How dare you use him to cover your own cowardice. If you knew what Peggy—"

"Don't," Howard said.

"Christ, you can't even hear her name, can you?"

"I'm not, I don't—"

"You didn't even speak to her, you left her. Did you know she carried on? Just exactly as he did. Not a word of complaint."

"I don't want to hear this—"

"It's people like her," Falsworth said, "who won this war. And people like you get to go on living, while he doesn't, and I tell you what, it makes me sick."

Howard figured that must have been the very worst thing Falsworth could think of to say, because he left very shortly after that.

His limping steps on the hallway carpet were audible: first one crutch, and then the next, and the drag of feet that didn't work like feet. Howard wondered if he were going to get better. In his experience, people usually didn't. Erskine, maybe, would have known what to do. Erskine had been good with human bodies, with humans. What Falsworth hadn't said, hadn't known to say, was that it should have been him. Erskine should have survived, almost two years ago now. Not Howard. What use was Howard now? What use had he ever been? He couldn't mend any of the things that the war had destroyed. Erskine would have done that.

But he's the ultimate survivor. It's what he does. It's always been what he did. There was no use crying about it now. There was no use trying to fight it.

Howard knocks on the Serbers' door at about six in the evening. His suit is covered in dust and he's out of breath. A red sun is burning its way down the horizon; the desert dusk is full of crickets and birds. The dry air makes him feel thick-headed, drunker, or maybe some of that is down to the altitude. He's high up now. He's at the edge of the world. He leans against the doorframe, more exhausted than he's been in his whole life.

Charlotte Serber opens the door and says, "My God! Howard!"

They'd known each other before, back in California, but she's a fierce, sarcastic, ironical kind of woman, not overly given to demonstrations of affection. So he understands just how bad he must look when her first response, her instinctive reaction, is to wrap her arms around him. Then, of course, she smells the liquor, and she pushes him away, wrinkling her nose up in disgust.

"What on earth have you been doing to yourself?" she asks, swatting him on the shoulder, then calls to her husband: "Bobby! Howard Stark's here, and he's drunk, and looks like he's been dragged through the Jornada. Give me one reason I shouldn't turn him out again."

Bob Serber appears, looking deeply confused. "Stark? Oh, my God, you really do look— I actually can't believe they let you in here."

"I'm Howard Stark," Howard says, his voice somewhat wrecked. "Who's going to keep me out?"

"Yes, well, I suppose they're not worried about you selling national secrets."

"It would be pretty odd if they were. Why, are they worried about you selling national secrets?"

"Oh, me, Charlotte, Oppie; everyone."

"They think," Charlotte puts in, "that if you're a socialist, it means you send Christmas cards to Stalin. Honestly, just imagine it. But sit down, Howard, before you keel right over."

She settles him on a horrible couch with a sort of Indian blanket thrown over it.

"I'd offer you a drink," she says, "but—"

"I could use one. I ran dry on the way over."

Charlotte rolls her eyes. "Well, I wish I could honestly say you won't fit right in around here."

Bob is eyeing Howard with a different intensity now. "I'd forgotten," he says. "We're so out of it here— I mean, not that it's an excuse, of course, but: I'm sorry for your loss."

Howard doesn't know how to express the nausea that twists through him at this phrase. He doesn't know where it comes from. At least he'd been spared that, in the Arctic— everyone saying— as though it were his loss— and as though it were the only loss, too, the only one that mattered, the only kind of loss that could matter, and he just— he just— but he's drunk, and he controls the strange upsurge of disgust. "It's fine," he says. "I can't really talk about it. Classified information. You know the drill."

Serber nods: naturally, naturally it would be classified. What isn't, these days? They'll never mention Europe again. Just like that, the subject passes. Bob asks, "Have you got a place to stay? If you need to stay here with us tonight—"

"They gave me an address at the office," Howard says. "I just didn't know where—"

"Oh, please." Charlotte makes a gesture of dismissal. "Stay for tonight. Though I'm sure it's hardly the kind of thing you're used to, living like the proletariat; no one's in the lap of luxury..."

Howard thinks about his suite at the Savoy, with its gorgeous sheets and feather pillows, with its damask wallpaper muting the noise of London. He'd had to drink to sleep there, because it wasn't the Arctic, with the ice sometimes scraping the sides of the ship; it wasn't sea-smell and cold and the radar beeping and the waves crashing and always feeling vaguely sick, although he'd felt sick anyways in London, later, most of the time. He can't sleep anywhere that's not a narrow cot or a rickety bed, and when he tries to sleep in a rickety bed or a narrow cot, it's so familiar that he feels physically torn open. He's done this to himself, but God, he's paying for it. The idea, the notion that he might have living standards at this point, that such a thing would number high amongst his problems... He has to laugh, and then once he's started laughing he can't seem to stop. He balls his hands up into fists.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he manages to say. "It's just— it's been a hell of a war. Jesus Christ, I'm a disaster. I'm not usually like this. I came here to work; I can do the work. That's all that matters."

Charlotte puts a hand around his shoulder, light and unpitying. "Oh, Howard. It's been a hell of a war for all of us," she says. Her hand is warm; her eyes are dark and patient. "You'll be all right now. You've come to the right place."

He doesn't really understand what Charlotte means until he starts to meet the others. So many of them are exiles, refugees from Europe. Others left family there: fathers, mothers, siblings, wives. It's hard to know now if their families are still living. Better to know, or not to know? Dash, a junior physicist from England, knows his wife is dead, killed in a German bombing the week after he left London. Zuckerman, from Poland, waits endlessly for news. His wife and child were left in Warsaw. Now that the war's over, he thinks: any day a letter. He never says it, but you see him checking the mail, haunting the office in Santa Fe. Karl Fuchs left all his family in German prison camps, all but a sister in Boston, and another who— better to know, or not to know?— killed herself when her husband was arrested.

Howard likes Fuchs, who has largely taken over for Teller, who's off doing God-knows-what at this point, running some sort of Superbomb scheme. Charlotte had said, "You won't like Karl, but then you will get used to him, and then you will like him." His name is Klaus, really, but they all call him Karl. ("I really can't think why," Bob says, frowning.) Genia, Rudolf Peierls' wife, who is always in everyone's business, and whose sense of humor is accurate, if a little cruel, calls him "Penny-in-the-slot Fuchs," because he is so shy, and— Genia says— only ever speaks when spoken to first.

Fuchs is one of the few men on the Hill who has his own car, which is odd, as he prefers walking. He lends the car to Dickie Feynman, one of the junior physicists, whose wife is dying in a hospital in Albuquerque. She's been dying slowly throughout the whole war. No one talks about it. You would never guess if you met Feynman on the Hill. He's loony, irrepressible; laughing and motor-mouthed. Like Howard himself, a hundred years back, when Howard was still a kid. How, how does he manage this transformation?

"We have to work," Fuchs explains reasonably, in his lingering German accent, one afternoon on the Peierls' porch, drinking lemonade and gin. "When we come here, we leave the world in the world. We have our own world. We make the rules for this world. No pain, no suffering; only the work. Like a party that goes on... and on... and on."

It is like a long party, really. They're working eighteen-hour days to prepare for the test; they start critical-mass experiments at the end of May. Howard's trying to design a new solid core, a two-hemisphere solution that will shorten the travel distance for the fission neutrons that induce supercriticality. It's a hellish problem, but in spite of this, he's gone out drinking practically every night since he first got to the Hill. There's always a party; everyone has parties; and weekends they go into Santa Fe, often to wind up passed out on someone's couch because they've missed the bus back, and are too drunk to drive. They're having such a good time, such a really really good time here.

Charlotte is bored because her friend Priscilla, Oppenheimer's secretary, has gone and had a baby, and now stays home all the time. "Imagine," Charlotte says, "just imagine! —a baby." Charlotte is the Hill's scientific and technical librarian, and has no time for children. But that's the thing: you would think, wouldn't you, that no one has time for children; that they'd share some basic superstition about the notion, that they'd all be scared away. But they're not. Everyone on the Hill has children. It's alarming, the way they procreate. All those toddlers shrieking with laughter as they play, squinting up against the sun from their yards; all those young mothers wrapping freckled arms around their infants as they pick through fruit at the commissary. They walk the way all young mothers walk, hitching up their hips to soothe the babies, as the babies blink baffled eyes at the world, astonished, seeming always to ask, Am I the only one who finds this strange?

One weekend, he drives out to Frijoles Canyon with Fuchs and the Serbers and Peierls. You can see ruins there of the Indian pueblos. There are Indians now, of course; they live in shacks along the mesas, and they come to clean the Hill's houses and take the laundry. But no one lives, anymore, in the hollow cliff-dwellings, left standing with their log ladders and clay pottery. It reminds Howard of the Arctic, a little, the pueblo— with its odd play of echoes. He stands at a sandstone window, smoking, and thinks— watches Charlotte and Genia clamber up and down the ladders, racing to the top and down again; Bob peer, serious-faced, at a set of stone carvings. They look white and unreal under the shadows of the canyon, all of them, pale clueless creatures who poke and squeak, and for a moment he's seized by uneasiness. He feels hungover, and he can't seem to get his head clear. He braces his hands against the stone.

Fuchs comes up beside him. "It's peculiar, isn't it," he says. "You know, in Germany we are obsessed by this thing. The American West. Even Hitler, I think... We love in Germany these stories, cowboy and Indian. Americans say Old West, but in fact it is New West. That is what we like; we think— all new, no history."

"Hey; there's history here. You're standing in it," Howard points out.

"But, I think, not for you and for me. It is just so much of stones, a world of stones and earth and sun. A new world," Fuchs says, looking out at the canyon. Its walls are red where the sun is falling. He sounds sad, but then, he always sounds sad.

On the way home, they talk about the date of the test. July fourth. Rogers' birthday. (How Erskine had laughed.) The rough motion of the car on the road is soothing. In the blue mountain dusk, Howard's lulled half to sleep. He dreams about things that look like ghosts on the roadside, disturbing figures with bone fingers and teeth. When he wakes, he sees that they're just birch trees, absorbed into his dreaming. He doesn't feel reassured. He tips his head against the window, gazing out at the dark. Desert night turns the clear glass cold.

Feynman's wife dies in Albuquerque on June the sixteenth.

Working and drinking. Working and drinking. Designing and casting implosion lens segments. No, he thinks; those won't do at all. Doing it over. Discussing the strategic possibilities of an atomic thunderstorm. How could this be created? If a gadget were dropped in proper weather conditions, the area of radioactivity would significantly increase. The products would rain down on an area not already damaged by the blast. What area? Remind me: where are we using this thing?

A new fuse is developed that detects altitude. This is with the aim of maximizing fire and smoke damage. We want the gadget to explode in just the right place, so it creates a firestorm. You remember firestorms, right, Howard? Bodies cook, you know. Like meat. It's a difficult smell to get rid of, as it turns out.

As it turns out, the date of the test gets moved from July fourth to July sixteenth. All the military honchos come down for a reception on the weekend. To celebrate? But nothing's happened yet! They're all milling about, odd birds in a lounge room, talking too loudly and wired with tension. Howard's paraded out, which he's very used to: our Stark, our star, our own wunderkind. He wears his best suit and looks very handsome. He drinks drink after drink, little champagne cocktails. He grits his teeth so he can manage to grin.

"And this is Mr. Stark," General Groves says, "who, you know, worked with Captain America."

Then later: "This is Howard Stark, from Stark Industries. He was great friends with Captain America; good to have him on our team."

And: "Of course, Mr. Stark worked on the Captain America project."

And: "You may remember that Mr. Stark designed Captain America's shield and uniform. What a loss for us, all what a tragedy."

Until Howard is wearing a rictus, a shell of a smile, smoking cigarette after cigarette, head lurching in a way that suggests incipient nausea. Sure enough: an hour later, he's vomiting behind the building. He rests his head against the rough brick, exhausted and raw. A light rain is falling, spotting his clothing, hissing down into the dust.

Charlotte Serber comes out to find him. "Oh, Howard," she says— but nothing more than that. She sits down beside him, mindless of her floral skirt, and silently links her arm in his.

"You always say that— Oh, Howard," says Howard. "Like I made a mistake on a math test. Like I'm in elementary school." It's how he feels, although he never made mistakes in school. He was saving up, he thinks, saving up for this.

"You're so unhappy, and I don't know how to help you. Like Oppenheimer, really. He reads scriptures, you know, huge Indian scriptures. I don't know if they help. They never seem to. I think he just has an uneasy brain."

On some level Howard wants to say: Charlotte, look around you. Do you see what it is we're doing? At the same time, he can't quite face up to this notion. He can't hold all the logic of it in his head. He wants to end the war, and he doesn't know how else to do it. He doesn't care about the war, but needs something to do with his hands. He started moving a long time ago, and he has to go further, because there's nothing capable of holding him back; it's inevitable, all of this, so why try to stop it? Why try to make a stand? You see it now, the shape of Howard's problem. It's all gone to pieces inside of him. He looks like a person, but if you opened him up, he thinks, there'd be nothing, nothing person-like left.

16 July 1945

So now: pack your bags, we're going fishing.

Has Howard ever been on a fishing trip? Memory stirs: Howard, darling, stay out of the water! —But I want to catch a fish! Iron hands lift him up under the arms. He is astounded, affronted by his childish body: its inadequacy, its feebleness. He kicks out, but the old world cradles him close. It smells of gin, sweat and strawberries, of sun and cologne. So familiar. It laughs warm against the nape of his neck, and now he's caught: a spiked hook of love eviscerates him. He burrows close to his father's chest, already knowing, with memory's anachronistic foresight, how soon this will all vanish.

This fishing trip is not that kind of fishing trip.

They stand in the darkness at two in the morning: Howard, the Serbers, Fuchs, even Teller. The night has been thunderous and the ground is wet. The birds are not singing yet out in the desert. They're given sun lotion to put on their faces and hands. Very soon they all smell of summer. Some people wear shades, but not Serber or Howard. Serber's brought whiskey, and the two of them share it. They drink like it is water, passing the bottle back and forth. Are they drinking for their nerves, because they fear failure? There is a rumor going around that the gadget will not work.

By five am the sunrise has started. First light leaches night from the Jornada, turning the rim of the sky barely blue. The atmosphere is electric, uncomfortable. "Lord, these affairs are hard on the heart," someone says. The radio is broken, and though Howard is quite drunk, he helps Dickie Feynman fix it. Both of them are good at fixing radios, machines. Then they can hear the voice of countdown coming over the channel.

They turn up the volume and there is a flood of light. Somewhere that little walnut shell that Howard drew in London dissolves; suddenly a door has been opened in a darkened room, and what was outside had always been brightness. It seems to last forever, light around the body, light pouring in through every pore. Howard feels full of light, supersaturated almost. His heart beats faster as the cloud explodes. A great tree of life grows tall on the horizon. It is a new thing. It is a marvel and a wonder. He is clean and weightless and empty as air.

Dust scrapes and rattles the windshields of cars. It is done now, and the dark is returning; we have done it now, and we are through.

Dead rabbits are found throughout the desert near the blast. A farmhouse three miles away is destroyed. Cattle turn white from the effects of the fallout. At the center of the blast, once outlayed with asphalt, a kind of strange green glass is found. It is hard and translucent and looks like a gem. People take it as souvenirs. Some make it into jewelry.

Buses take them back up to the Hill after the test. The sun is really rising now. The day has just started. There's breakfast to be cooked and children to be greeted. There is going to be a lot of paperwork.

On August 6, a bomb (no use, now, calling it a gadget) is dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

On August 9: another on Nagasaki.

A New York Times headline on August 12 reads: We Enter a New Era— the Atomic Age.

September 1945

So here we are: the Atomic Age. We thought it would look different! Is this the future that Howard once dreamt of? He doesn't think so. When he looks around, what he registers dully seems to look mostly the same. He had a vision, once, of strange new cities: exact and electric, areas of harmonicity. He thought that cities of the future would look like circuits on a board. He has always found circuits so easy to read. This is still New Mexico, only slightly more lethal. He feels dispirited. He might have been homesick, except: he doesn't have a home, he thinks.

The war in Japan is over. Celebration's seized the nation. And celebration is something the Hill does well, with a manic and focused ferocity. There are parties practically every night now; there's dancing at La Fonda; they run through case after case of whiskey and gin. Sometimes the lights go out— electricity's short, but what's a blackout, in this new Atomic Age? What's a water shortage, when the water, too, runs short? They can bathe in tin tubs, like pioneers. It's the Old West. It's the New West. It's the Event Horizon, or what we mean to say is: the Last Frontier.

Howard wakes up facedown in a sage bush after a weekend fiesta. He trudges home shoeless, his tie undone. "Home" is a prefab McKee housing unit. He hasn't seen much of it during the last few months. He sleeps on the Serbers' couch a lot, under the awful Indian blanket. He has nightmares. He dreams that ghosts show up when he's sleeping. They're not frightening ghosts; he's just aware of their presence. They don't bother him at all. But they shouldn't be there.

On September 22nd, the British Mission hosts a gala. The gala to end all galas: "In Celebration of the Birth of the Atomic Era." There's roast, there's hundreds of boxes of trifle, there's bottles of port wine. Someone enacts the gadget test onstage, via the medium of a flash pot and a stepladder. The crowd shrieks with laughter. A smattering of applause breaks out. They're all crammed in: dozens and dozens of bodies, sweating frantically in a small enclosed space.

Howard shows up to toast everyone. England. America. The king. The president. Captain America, Jesus, oh, Jesus. All the brave young fighting men. And, of course, let's not forget yours truly, the Manhattan Project, who brought this war to its rollicking close; let's raise a glass or two to them. Let's raise the whole damn bottle. Howard looks around; he sees rows and rows of dazed faces. Reality has not begun to set in. In his pocket, he has a letter from Bob Serber. Bob's in Japan now, investigating the gadget's effects. It's remarkable how little they ever actually tested. Well, it was wartime: what can you do? This is their experiment, really, their lab; Serber's findings are the first that have been recorded. So he writes letters, and Howard opens them up, but then he finds them very hard to read.

A week ago, one of the Hill's physicists, Daghlian, died from radiation. A mistake with the core, a stupid blunder, one tiny, two-second slip of the hand. It took him twenty-five days to finally die. The skin sloughed off of half his body. He was unrecognizable by the end, a hairless mass that mouthed at tubes, just a heap of no-longer-wholly-human flesh. So it's not like they don't know what happens. Serber, at Nagasaki, is seeing the same thing.

Howard slips out of the party post-entertainment. He thinks: I'll just take a walk, have a cigarette, get some cold air into my lungs. Because it's cold in the desert, at this elevation, as the sun-tilt of autumn sets in. People never expect that; they think it will be warm. That was what Charlotte had said: We thought it would be warm, when we first came down here. We thought, There'll be lots of sun. Oppie never warned us— well, typical, really. Then there was sun, but it was cold sun. We shivered all winter. But we had no choice; so we just got used to it. After a while, you learn to adjust. She had adjusted well. All of them had.

When he gets outside, Karl Fuchs is there: standing under one of the street lamps, scribbling something on a piece of paper. His face is very concentrated. That's Fuchs for you, doing equations during a party; unless he's writing a love letter, which: Howard can't imagine it.

Howard says, "I thought we were supposed to be through working."

Fuchs looks startled. His head jerks up. "Stark," he says, sounding relieved.

"Stark," Howard agrees, swaying slightly to one side. "As Stark as it gets."

"I thought you would be celebrating in there."

"I was. I have. I've already done it." He holds up a half-empty port bottle as proof.

"You'll have one hell of a headache," Fuchs says.

"Don't I always."

"I don't know. Do you? Why ought you to have a headache?" For an instant, he looks fiercer than normal; but then he blinks, and the look is gone. Fuchs is peculiar; he has this strange quality, that it is difficult to say what he feels. Expressions vanish from his face quickly. Sometimes Howard feels that Fuchs' whole life is a mask, designed to stand between the world and his particular tragedy, and it works so well that other people scarcely notice. So why is Howard immune? —Maybe better not to wonder.

Instead he says, "I've got no fucking reason, pal. We won the war; we won the war, right? We won? We won the war?"

It's possible he's drunker than he'd intended.

Fuchs softens. "Yes, Stark," he says. "We won."

Howard teeters from one foot to the other. Strange auras come glancing off the street lamp. Like in the Arctic: ghosts between earth and space. "Sometimes it feels like," he says slowly, "I kill everything around me. I don't think I know anyone more fatal than I am. Fataler. Is that— an adjective, or a noun? Do you think?"

"I think you're drunk. I think you should go home." Fuchs reaches out and puts both hands on Howard's shoulders. Hard and warm. He says, oddly urgent, "Go home, Stark. Home. You see what I mean? You should get yourself out of this."

"I can't, I—"

"You can. You can do anything you like. Many times, you tell me so." He half-grins. See? Peculiar. Because then the grin is gone, and something vulnerable, solemn takes its place. "You have a heart, I think, Stark— so cultivate it. We must try to do more than this. Better— I say more, I mean better."

Howard stares at him, confused. He'd thought Fuchs, of all men, would be happy about the war. But he doesn't seem happy. "...Are you going back to Germany?" he asks.

"I don't know. Maybe not for a long time, still. I hope... I hope to see my father again." Something shows then in the bones of his face, in his basic structure. "Sometimes I am thinking, in these times: How can I make my father proud? But you know, my father, for him he thinks: How can I make my children proud. He thinks of a time when we shall all meet, and then at last we shall have lived to be proud of one another. Even if it is not in this world. So."

With that, he turns away, walking down the road to his car.

"Karl," Howard says. "Karl!"

Fuchs stops.

"Are you going to be okay?"

There it is, that elusive, inscrutable expression. Fuchs tilts his head. "Are you going to be okay?"

His rare smile gleams for an instant in the dark. Then he's gone.

Howard watches his car till it pulls away. Locusts are humming in the night trees around him. He can hear the party heaving on: high voices, the pop of cheap champagne, saved up since the start of the war, perhaps. Now ripened at last by victory. He can't go back there; he can't go drink from those little port glasses, from the endless fragile champagne flutes he's sure that even now are being dug out of cupboards. He can't do it. He's skewered; the barb of some emotion has been thrust hurtfully right through him. He doesn't know what to do; he's never been good at acting, at acting out the unreadable desires in his body. He only knows that he's tired. Perhaps he's never been so tired.

He doesn't think very much about it. He gets in his car and he starts driving east. By the time he sobers up, the sun is rising. He watches it from the outskirts of Amarillo, Texas, where he sits drinking coffee on the hood of his car, and he feels like a meteoroid that has traveled some distance, through the outer reaches of the universe, only to be caught at the last by Earth's own well, in the warm palm of its gravity.

He goes back to New York. To the house on Long Island. Nothing about it has really changed. He (well, the company) pays someone to come and take care of it, in his absence, do all the taking-care-of-it things that remain, on the whole, mysterious to him. He's never met this person, and doesn't really care to. The point of them is that he doesn't have to see them, that he doesn't have to see the house, but he knows it will be there: its cream-colored stones and heavy doors concealing each familiar patterned carpet, each polished hallway. As they do now: so that he enters through the front hall as though into the past.

He walks for a while. He's aware of himself an intruder. He disturbs each room he enters. He always has; he remembers skidding, falling, hammering his fists against doors in silent rage; then talking too fast, his words a heap of ill-timed babble, too technical for others to understand. And now: now the disturbance is more subtle. He's unclean in a way he can't express. Literally, of course— he'd barely stopped driving since Texas, a few hours for some roadside naps, and he's unshaven, still wearing the same shirt and trousers, stinking of port wine. He's haggard.

At the same time, a deeper kind of uncleanness dogs him. He's got the sense he can't scrub it off his skin. He walks through room after room, avoiding mirrors and windows. He's trying to get somewhere, but he doesn't know where. Is it somewhere in the house? Is it somewhere he can reach if he walks far enough? Library, parlor, bedroom, parlor, parlor, sun room, library— his destination floating, receding before him, he wanders till— in some anonymous bedroom, on the duvet of some anonymous, immaculate bed— he collapses at last and sleeps without dreaming.

He wakes to someone leaning over him. He blinks, regarding this stranger. The stranger regards him in turn. He has a displeased expression. He's wearing a brown tweed blazer. All of his clothes are very neat.

"Those are Chinese silk pillow shams. They're not for sleeping on," says the stranger.

"I'll do what I want. They're my pillow shams," Howard says.

"Are they," says the stranger. "Are they."

They regard each other some more. Howard comes to the realization that it's daytime, that the light at the window is long past morning; that he's wearing the clothes he drove to New York in. He shifts up to his elbows, feeling hungover. At some point in the night he's shed his shirt, so he's wearing just trousers, an undershirt, and suspenders. He is not, he's prepared to admit, looking his best. "What time is it?" he asks, rubbing his face.

"It's half six," the stranger tells him, managing to sound disapproving. It's probably the English accent. "In the evening. I take it you'll be Mr. Stark."

"Will be. Have been. Might be, at the moment. Who knows."

"You're not meant to be here."

"I'm not meant to be here?" Howard stares at him. "Who the hell are you?"

"I," the stranger says stiffly, "am the Stark house's curator. Edwin Jarvis."

"The house has a curator?"

"Caretaker."

"You mean you're the housekeeper."

"I'm a licensed antiquarian. Sir. I used to work for Sotheby's."

"Then why in God's name are you working here?" Howard decides to risk sitting upright. It's a decision that, on balance, he only half regrets. "And since you are working here, could you provide me with some coffee— black, very strong, and also about four fingers of whiskey, quality not important."

"I'm not a butler!" Edwin Jarvis, licensed antiquarian, looks flabbergasted. "I'm a curator. I was hired to curate the collection."

"Think of me as part of the collection," Howard suggests.

"Tables," Jarvis says. "Louis Quatorze tables. That's my speciality. Alternatively, minor French portraiture, with an eye to investment."

The conversation is beginning to strike Howard as surreal. He suspects it will end in disappointment, and possibly in shouting. He says, "Look, I'm just going to show myself towards the liquor cabinet. Don't worry about me; I'll be out of your hair in no time."

He stands; stretches; aims to do just that. But Jarvis blocks him.

"You can't possibly touch things in the house while you're like... that." He appears genuinely distressed by the prospect.

"Sure I can." Howard pats him comfortingly on the shoulder. "Like I said: I'll do what I want."

"No. Stop. No." Jarvis covers his face with one hand. "Right: here's what we'll do. Sir. Come with me; you can bathe in the servants' quarters. I'll get your coffee; I'm sure I've some clothes you can wear, reasonably inoffensive clothes—"

"Why do I have to bathe in the servants' quarters?" Howard asks, mystified.

"Well, it's not like we're stocked up on linens; you'll have to forgive me for not expecting a visit; no one's lived here full-time since 1927, and—"

Howard must make a face or something. He's not aware of doing so. It's just that it's unexpected, and he's tired, still, and he's in the house already— which puts him at a disadvantage.

"—I'm sorry," Jarvis says immediately. "That was unforgivable."

"It's fine. Actually, I used to live here in the summers. It's no big deal. You're right, it's not like I bring guests around. It's fine, really. The servants' quarters'll be fine."

He can see from Jarvis' expression that it's not fine, really; but there's nothing overtly pitying there, so it's not quite to the poor little Howard stage. Maybe Howard's already been too much of an asshole. Which: Good, he vindictively thinks. Good; he doesn't need, he doesn't want that. He's a man, he's an adult now, he can split open an atom; he can draw a picture on a piece of paper, and that picture can kill a hundred thousand people, people he has never seen, people whose faces he can't even imagine, whose numbers he can't imagine: all those human bodies. So. Good. That's good.

"I was doing war work," he says out loud. "That's where I've— I mean, maybe you read the papers, I don't know, I— but now it's over, the war's over; I was out West, and I thought— so—" He runs a hand through his hair, uncomfortable. He's wrong-footed; this isn't what he meant to be saying.

Jarvis just studies him for a moment. Something complicated happens on his lightly worn face, something Howard can't quite follow. Then he says levelly, "Come with me, then, Mr. Stark. Let's get you settled. I'll put on some coffee."

Howard spends the next two months in the servants' quarters, sleeping a great deal and interfering in Jarvis' work. "It's like we adopted a child," Mrs. Jarvis comments— there is apparently a Mrs. Jarvis, a dark-haired Polish emigre, oddly glamorous when compared to her husband. The two of them, Jarvis and Mrs. Jarvis, have no children of their own. They live alone in the house, though there's a housekeeper who comes once a week, and a gardening staff, and various other personnel, all of whom Jarvis apparently oversees. It seems a strange life to Howard, but he finds it oddly soothing. And neither Jarvis nor Mrs. Jarvis ever asks questions— about the war, about his work, about his sudden appearance. They wouldn't dream of it. It would be the apex of impoliteness. He rewards them by suggesting an army of improvements— not to their life, but to the house generally: "If you took out that Chinese garden and replaced it with— I don't know— rocks, something, I could work up a blueprint, then you wouldn't need to worry so much about the fish."

"Is that what you'd like me to do, Mr. Stark?"

"It would make sense, is all I'm saying."

"The Chinese garden was installed by your grandparents in 1889, and is a exact replica of a 18th century design by the eminent architect William Chambers. However, if your heart is intent upon destruction—"

"I didn't say that. Fine, you know what? You like the fish? Keep the fish."

He looks forward to these arguments, which are basically ornamental. He can win or he can lose; there's no meaning to them. And Jarvis knows, as Howard doesn't, the histories of the house, all the structural facts Howard's never learned, or has unlearned, or has, anyways, ignored because— they're just stories, right? Just a bunch of stories about men and women he'd barely ever met, who happened to be related to him.

"But what if," he suggests, "we took out the fountain in the courtyard, and put in a fourteen-inch refractor telescope? We've got all this space; it seems like a shame not to use it."

"That fountain," Jarvis says, "was commissioned by your grandfather from the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, and is considered to be a particularly fine representation of his early work. Be that as it may, if you feel—"

"It's practically giving you a heart attack just to think about, isn't it?"

"You do excel at producing that reaction, Mr. Stark."

It's a curious point that the more familiar they become, the more Jarvis adopts an attitude of arch formality. It's almost a joke: the lord of the manor and his dry as-ever-your-servant. A joke, because Howard's a wreck of a person, unable some days to get out of bed, drinking to get to sleep and living in a room meant for a butler; because Jarvis is older than Howard, and helplessly paternal (a reaction that Howard often seems to provoke from men).

"I've had a thought," Howard says, and Jarvis says, "Oh, do go on, Mr. Stark. Your thoughts invariably thrill and astound me."

"We've got space on the grounds here to build a workshop, an experimental lab, almost, especially if you knock out those beech trees by the East Wing. All my stuff's out at the residence in the city, but, I don't know, one of these days..."

Jarvis says mildly, "That seems like rather a good idea."

"It does?"

"You'll want to get out of the city from time to time, I'd imagine, and having a laboratory here would be so convenient. If you're thinking of going into Manhattan to make arrangements, I have some letters you might deliver."

So they slip cautiously towards the notion: that Howard's life goes on after this. By this point, Jarvis has hired a cook, although it's just the three of them, since neither Howard nor Mrs. Jarvis can so much as boil water. ("I thought all women learned to cook," Howard had commented to Mrs. Jarvis. She had stared at him somewhat haughtily before saying, "Some women.") He's taken to making coffee for Howard in the mornings, and to trying to ensure Howard's bathed and adequately dressed; he's had Howard's mail forwarded from— wherever— and keeps it sorted in neat little piles; when he came across Howard burning letters from Charlotte and Bob Serber (You've almost certainly decided, such is the melodramatic way you live your life, that you can add me to the list of the mortally sinned-against; but while I'm hurt, obviously, I will forgive you for your desertion, in the hope that my forgiveness vexes you horribly, from Charlotte, and long paragraphs from Bob about what Teller's proposing, which has— surprise— to do with the Superbomb) he'd simply waited till the ashes had finished floating down into the kitchen sink, then launched into some extremely boring story about paintings, about a painting he'd once bought or a painting he'd once seen, until the smell of smoke had faded from the room.

Howard goes into Manhattan. He contacts some builders. He puts in an appearance at his company— where they're astonished to see him, having almost forgotten he existed. There is minimal talk about the God damn war and Howard's role in it. When people ask what he's doing now, he tells them it's classified. He escapes at the end of the day with a box full of odds and ends from London that he takes back to Long Island.

That night, he invents an electric toothbrush— just for the hell of it, just because it's been years since he made something not meant to kill people, one way or another. Since Rogers' shield, he thinks. For a second he can feel it like he's holding it still: the smooth mute curve of the metal in his hands, the balance he'd tested until it was perfect, until it rested just right in Rogers' grip. He feels a grief more overwhelming than he can account for. It's not a grief for the object; it's not even a grief for Rogers, for anyone at all, or for the span of those two years. He doesn't know what it's for. For himself, maybe? —No, for another Howard Stark, whom he'd once thought he might become— a less fatal Howard Stark, embryonic then within him, whose nascent life he'd added to the number of his dead. It's such a selfish grief— I could have been more than I am! ... Though: I say more, I mean better, he thinks. Once upon a time, he'd been a man who made a shield. With great clarity he remembers touching Rogers' body, the day he first stepped out of the machine, and how simple it had seemed to bring life forth then. Then later: to make things keep living. How, how can he get back to that vision?

The next week, he goes to see Colonel Phillips.

That means Washington, where Phillips is now working, heading up the post-war SSR. Howard takes the train down and rents a floor at the Ritz-Carlton. He hasn't been Howard Stark for a while, but he thinks he has to be now, and Howard Stark doesn't do things by half.

Unsurprisingly, Phillips isn't thrilled to see him: "Well, well," he says, "if it isn't Harry Houdini, the man with all the escaping tricks." But the A-bomb's somewhat mollified his feelings since London, and Howard's Howard, so Phillips can't not take a meeting with him.

He sits there, looking exactly like when Howard had last seen him— well, he would; that was less than a year ago, Christ. Some more decorations on his uniform, Howard supposes, given that he's stationed here, in this ample office.

"What do you want, Stark?" Phillips asks. "I've got nine thousand problems in the brave new world of ours; the last thing I need is you bringing me another one."

"I want to make something," Howard says. "I mean, I want to start something, really. Like a Manhattan Project, but not for war. For peace. Like the SSR, but not the SSR. We'd bring together all the best people we could get our hands on, so they could protect us against scientific threats. Threats from all over; not just Hydra, but everyone."

He'd half-thought Phillips would laugh him out of the room. But Phillips looks intrigued, or whatever passes for intrigued with Phillips, who could probably win at poker when playing with God. "And what brought on this sudden ecstatic vision?"

"It seemed like the right time. I've got the money. Now that the war's gone, I've got time on my hands."

"Uh-huh." Phillips sharp eye sizes him carefully. Howard feels him noting the fine lines of sleeplessness and wear, the shaky hands he keeps tucked in his pockets. But Phillips says only, "And who did you imagine dragging into this colossal boondoggle of yours?"

Howard hadn't, honestly, considered this. "I'm sure I could convince some of the folks from the Hill— that's the base out at Los Alamos—"

"Jones. Dugan. Morita. Falsworth. Who's the little French guy again?"

These names produce a sinking sensation for Howard. "Sir—"

"If they were good enough for Rogers, they're a hell of a lot better than good enough for you. And I know you know what name I'm going to say next. She's even in New York now, still on the job."

Howard says, "She won't do it."

"What, you talked to her already?"

"No." He can't meet Phillips' eyes. "Not since I... so. She won't want to work with me."

Let us pause here. Are we to think that in all these months, eight months since he last saw her, Howard's never thought of Carter? Not at all? That he's never dreamed about her, that in alcoholic stupors he's never dwelt on the specter of her face? To accept this would be ludicrous. It would invite ridicule. And yet it's what Howard himself would say; he would say I don't miss her, and Why would I miss her. After all, they had never been in love, never lovers; were they friends? "Friends" seems an inaccurate term. They had never known one another outside of wartime, and war is an experience that invents its own glossary. For two and a half years they had lived alongside each other, and like any two hothoused, close-quartered things, they had yearned up towards the same sources of light: as a consequence tangling up shoots and leaves. Removing one left the other oddly lopsided. At least, that is Howard's perception of things— that he'd lurched from one place to another without her, badly balanced.

He can't put a name to what he feels for Carter. He thinks that if he had been captured during the war, and tortured, it would have been the last secret he kept, the one part of himself he could never betray, because nothing he said would have been the truth. That's a source of comfort, though it means, of course, he can never tell her. He doesn't need to tell her; he has a lot of experience with not telling people things. So he doesn't think about it, that truth, that secret. Sometimes, in New Mexico, he'd think in passing about London and he'd feel like his whole body had become a weight, like he quite literally couldn't go on— if he let go of a table, or got out of a chair, he'd simply collapse to the ground. But he didn't associate that feeling with anything in particular. He refused to analyze it further. What could he do about it, at any rate? The thing had happened; their lives had fallen apart. Soon, too, it would no longer be wartime, and whatever it was that had once been between them would turn illegible. It would vanish from the page. There was no point in dwelling on it further.

So.

"Well, far be it me to wrest from you the hard-fought fruits of your imprudence," Phillips says, his expression dry. "I'd still recommend a telephone call. You'll have time to wrangle it out, because the rest of them won't come easy."

"They still hate me, don't they?"

"They'll have reservations about your leadership, for sure."

"I suppose I deserve that."

"You do indeed." But Phillips' face isn't wholly unkind. "I wouldn't be telling you to give it a shot if I thought all hope was lost, now, would I? Let's see how it goes. Besides, you and your little science club might be just what's needed. Got any thoughts on what you might call it?"

Howard does.

January 1946

"I'm starting a secret agency," Howard tells Jones. "Want to join? I was thinking about calling it S.H.I.E.L.D."

He'd gone to Jones first because Jones seemed the least likely to hit him. A serious, thoughtful sort of person, Jones. (It helped that he was in Washington, having stuck with the SSR— "At least," he'd told Howard, "they're integrated enough to let me head up a division. Phillips fought for me to get that much.") Howard had been relieved when Jones put proof to his guesswork and merely eyed him up and down before saying, "Good to see you, Mr. Stark."

At the mention of S.H.I.E.L.D., Jones turns more dubious. "S.H.I.E.L.D. as in...?"

"Oh, we'll work out the acronym later." Howard waves it aside. "Rogue science work. Like in the war: tracking down Hydra, people like Hydra. It's a whole new world out there since the war ended, Agent Jones. New world, new weapons..."

"Yeah," Jones says pointedly. "So I've heard."

That takes the temperature of the conversation down a few notches. They stare at each other warily. Howard thinks: the real reason he went to Jones first is that Jones is the smartest. Not just smart for a colored fellow, like people sometimes think, but smart like a general, like a strategist. He hides it well, he plays it slow and country, but there are these flickers where you suddenly have an uneasy sense of what he'd be like on the chessboard. If Howard can get Jones, then Jones can get the others. But he has to get Jones.

He fixes his eye distantly on the Lincoln Memorial. They'd met out in the open— even at this stage of the business, Howard has that much sense, he knows about wiretaps and so on— and Jones had suggested this spot: the Reflecting Pool. Howard's sure there's a reason, and probably a good one. He just doesn't know what it is. He feels uneasy in the presence of so much white stone; it's like he's standing in a tomb, or at least adjacent to one. "Look," he says. "It was always going to happen, the A-bomb. You think that's the worst of it? I can think of a dozen ways to make that bomb more deadly. I already have. I know three men, just off the top of my head, who are already working on some of them. So Hydra, with the kind of machinery Hydra was running— imagine what they could do, with our intel. And who's to say there's not another Hydra out there, in China or Russia? What happens if they get the bomb? Do they even need the bomb? What if they're years ahead of us?"

Jones thinks about it. "A dozen ways, huh?"

"I already have." Howard manages to meet his gaze.

"You're a dangerous man, Mr. Stark."

"I can't help it."

Jones hmms contemplatively. "But what if they don't get the bomb?" he points out. "This Russian Hydra, the Chinese Hydra? What if they don't even exist? What if we just keep getting the bombs, over and over? We've got you, after all."

Howard feels slightly wrong-footed by this approach. "That's not the point— The point is, the point is protecting people from the bombs; that's the whole point, protection. If we get the bombs, then we don't have to worry, because—" He has to stop, then, because he finds to his surprise that he doesn't actually believe what he'd been about to say. This is a discovery about himself, a new revelation.

Jones is watching him curiously. "So you do know," he says. "They haven't completely sold you."

Howard stares at him. "You were a soldier. You're an SSR agent."

"I'm a colored man in a country that hates my skin. You think I should trust that country?" Jones looks tired. He fishes for a cigarette in his pocket. "Rogers was a soldier, too. He didn't always trust his orders. He used to say that men think with their hands and their brains, you know? You touch something too hot, it's not just your brain that tells you. A man has to think with his hands, too, and that's us— we were the hands of the Army."

Howard offers him a light. They stand there smoking in a snowy wind, the snow too light to stick, but feathering the air.

"It's going to get too hot," Howard says at last. "Maybe it already has. Maybe— it got hard to tell for a while, and— I made mistakes—" He rubs at his temple, where a headache's beginning. It's been a while since he had a drink. "I want to do the right thing now. I want to get back to the way it was supposed to be. That's why, S.H.I.E.L.D. as in..."

"Yeah," Jones says. "I get it."

"Help me do this," Howard says.

He thinks for a minute that Jones is going to say no. He has the feeling that Jones doesn't trust him much. But Jones just shakes his head and looks almost amused, mystifyingly, for a second. "You know I'm not the one you should be asking, right? I mean, I know why you wouldn't want to knock on her door. And I'll join your little secret organization, because God knows you're going to need some good hands. But Stark... I'm not the one you should be asking."

In spite of Jones' advice, Howard goes to see Dugan next. Or rather, that had been his intent— but Dugan, Jones informs him, is now inseparable from Morita. They've opened a bar together on the Upper West Side, a hole-in-the-wall joint called The Hercules. Jones calls them up and finagles a meeting. Howard doesn't know what he has to say to get them to agree, but they're there, anyway, when he shows up on a Sunday afternoon: Dugan wearing his omnipresent bowler hat, Morita chain-smoking over a coffee. The bar smells of old wood and beer already, that late-night, soaked-up bar smell that mysteriously accretes; Dugan and Morita exude ownership of it. This is their territory, into which Howard has intruded. There's an old Star-Spangled Man tour poster on the wall, a display case full of captured Hydra insignia next to that; a Howling Commandos patch pinned over the door with a dagger.

Dugan's polishing a glass. He says, with faux-casualness, "Stark."

"Mr. Dugan."

"Welcome to our humble tavern. What can I do you for?"

"Actually, I'm coming to you fellows with a notion."

"A notion."

"What you might call a service opportunity."

Dugan hasn't stopped polishing the glass. The motion's started to strike Howard as menacing. "Huh. See, Jimmy and me here, we've done our service. We stuck around to see the last of those Hydra bastards put down, make sure we could do right by Miss Carter—"

So Howard can see the direction this is taking. He sighs and rests his arms on the counter of the bar. "I fucked up, all right? Look," he says, "look, I was trying to bring him home. I thought maybe if I—" He spreads his hands. He doesn't really know what he thought. Hard to articulate what had been his head. "And then the war, and there were things that needed doing, and— I didn't know what to do, all right? I'm not him."

Morita makes a derisive hmphing noise, like: thanks, Stark, for that clarification.

"Anyway, Jones told you what I'm trying to do, so I figure you've made your minds up already," Howard says, feeling slightly dispirited. He'd made the trip out to see them because he thought he had a chance; the idea that Rogers' friends might have tried him and found him wanting is— humiliating, he thinks, but that's not quite it. "If this is about the bomb," he says—

"Oh, right, because I'm Japanese, so it has to be about the bomb," Morita interrupts. "I can't just think you're a gutless wonder—"

"That wasn't what I meant; plenty of people don't like—"

"—who's got no fucking business holding any kind of command—"

"—the bomb, and I don't want command, I just want to work on—"

"—since you clearly don't understand the most basic fucking notion of—"

"All right, can it, the both of you," Dugan busts in. "Sorry, Jimmy, but you know what I said about getting worked up." He turns to Howard. "Thing is, Stark, I'm in, long as it doesn't interfere with the Herc, here. I'm always up for knuckle-jumping bastards. But I agree with Jim and Gabe; you've got no business giving orders."

Howard frowns. "So what exactly are you saying?"

Dugan shrugs. He says mildly, returning to his glass-polishing, "I guess I'm saying you might think about sitting down with the last person who gave us some orders."

Howard waits a month on it. Then another. He keeps thinking he'll screw up his courage, or that something will happen. What: that she'll show up at his doorstep? That another war will start, that an asteroid will destroy the earth? Once his workshop's under construction, he goes down to Washington. He doesn't have a house in Washington, though he'll probably have to buy one; for now, he checks himself into the Gouverneur Morris Hotel, installs himself by the pool, and calls for a telephone.

Over the next allotment of days, he spends most of his time in a prone position, sipping martinis and smooth-talking support out of U.S. congressmen. He pauses in this pursuit to call up Long Island, so he can manage the construction and hear Jarvis complain about the dust getting into the Red Salon, the danger to the Turkish carpets, the apparently panic-inducing possibility that somebody might damage the Rodin. Howard finds himself smiling without meaning to as he mm-hmms through these calls. He doesn't understand why he should respond like this, why he should put up with Jarvis saying, at the end of almost every call, "And please remember, sir, that dressing gowns are not a gentleman's attire, certainly not after the hour of ten in the morning, and that you are encouraged to occasionally eat something other than olives." When Jarvis fails to make this kind of remark, Howard's almost disappointed.

He drags Dugan down for a while, to play war hero for the subcommittees, so that Howard can badger them about requisitions and secondments; he notices with a surprise that it's spring already, as he watched Dugan ogle girls at the poolside. How time passes, and not disastrously for once. He's sleeping more now-- he doesn't dream so much-- and there are always things to be done, so he gets out of bed. He's even started reading his mail regularly, sent to him from the SI office. He reads dispatches from Pidgeon, still out in the Arctic, and doesn't collapse, doesn't immediately become nauseated— so he congratulates himself. He's doing really well. He lies out in the sun, slightly soused, a smirk and an expensive pair of sunglasses on, and he feels optimistic.

Into this atmosphere comes a phone call from Phillips.

"Stark, lest this be interpreted as a sign that I have some kind of interest in your life, let me assure you: that is not the case. However, if I'm going to be saddled with some kind of nominal responsibility for your nonsense, then I think it behooves me to make sure at least one person around there hasn't lost their goddamn mind. So get on it, because now's your time, man."

Howard has trouble making sense of this admonition. He says, "Excuse me?"

"Agent Carter is about to be fired from the New York SSR office. I suggest you snap her up before she's snapped up by some other lunatic."

This still doesn't seem to make very much sense. "She's being fired?

"Rather than take the matter in hand, I'm passing the baton on down. That means to you, Stark. Don't fumble it."

Phillips hangs up, leaving Howard staring at the phone. He struggles to interpret what he's just heard. Carter's being fired?

It takes him three calls to work out the bulk of the story, and to learn the name of the man— Ronald Flynn, whom Howard slightly remembers as a slack-jawed man, a minor functionary from the war years— who apparently feels able to fire Carter. It takes one call for him to straighten this nonsense out, albeit through some grand gestures that are probably, in hindsight, unwise. He could have just said, Tell her to call me. He could have said, Tell her to come out to my estate. But he had already slipped into that Howard Stark manner, the imperiousness they'd found so offensive in London, the dollars dripping from his voice. He can break it out quite easily, when he wants. He knows how to use it. He couldn't resist doing it then. "Tell her she'll be running S.H.I.E.L.D. with me."

Prophecy pulled him towards an odd certitude, and he knew as he spoke that he breathed the future into being.

Mr. Stark,

Perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me why I've been instructed— instructed, mind you; there's been no inquiry or request— that I'm to pack up my bags and move to Washington on your say-so, in order to run a poorly defined agency that appears not yet to exist. This seems an extraordinary state of affairs, and one that is surely the result of an error (on your part). We share no structure of command, so you cannot command me to do your bidding; the notion that you would be in a position to do so if we did share a structure of command stretches credibility unto its utmost. Neither do we share any form of intimate relationship, as might be evident from your inability to deliver this order in person. All of these issues being the case, I hope you will understand when I respectfully decline your 'offer.' Should its conditions materially change, you are of course welcome to contact me at the enclosed (New York) address.

Best wishes,

M. Carter

 

Carter—

Please— Please— let me make you an offer. O magnifisent M. Carter will you rule beside me. Every thing else imaterial & apologies fourth coming forever & ever—

HS

Mr. Stark,

I observe that your flair for the dramatic is unaltered, as is your inability to perform tasks as basic as spelling. The fact that you have been awarded the nominal administration of an extra-governmental agency is appalling on a number of levels. Concern for the future of this country dictates that I consider your proposal; I have also been in correspondence with Agent Jones and Colonel Phillips, who advise me that my presence in this 'organisation' is badly needed. Reservations persist regarding your fitness for even a shared leadership position; however, I am willing to consider the possibility of some involvement under a number of terms and conditions. I attach some of these.

Best wishes,

M. Carter

Carter—

You dont under stand you can have it all the whole damn organisation any terms you please. Its yours. Stay in NY if you like I can buy you an ofice hell I can buy you Mid Town. But I need you with me to do it and Ive always needed you with me to do it. Im giving you the keys to the castle darling darling darling Carter it just hapens to be my castle. Supose even that is to much to ask but you know me. All too well you once said.

HS

Mr. Stark—

Upon consultation, and following the drawing-up of contracts with Colonel Phillips, which I include here and am hopeful you will read before signing, I am inclined to accept your offer. Neither a castle nor Midtown will be needed; an office will do nicely, but perhaps you could consult with me before buying one, since it will, after all, be half my office. N.b. half— I refuse to take full responsibility for what is your notion in the first place, not to mention I know you'd be nosing your way in after two weeks had passed.
Jones and Phillips speak highly of your intentions; both of them offer the opinion you've changed, if minisculely and in uncertain direction. I've told them, We'll see.

Best wishes,

Agent Margaret P. Carter
S.H.I.E.L.D.

What is there to say, when they finally meet? They had met before; there had been a day when they first laid eyes upon each other, in 1942, each knowing the other, yet also unprepared. In the long months since he returned to New York, Howard had sometimes been afraid that he might encounter her in passing, at a stoplight or street corner, and scarcely know her— or that, far worse and far more likely, her gaze would skip right past him without any recognition. As though everything he'd undergone, his strange tribulations, might have scripted themselves upon his face; and he couldn't have borne that, not being known by her.

When in fact he sees her at Columbus Circle, waiting for him by the Merchant's Gate, she's exactly as she was, exactly as he remembers. A tall, dark-haired woman with red lipstick, and a profile Klimt would paint. She turns, with the monument gleaming behind her, and he's fixed by the singular keenness of her regard. He finds he can't say anything he's planned. He simply stands and looks at her. He's aware of his grief: a stone in his body that he's carried all this time. He's back to the age when nothing ever seemed to fit into words, when nothing was a size that he could speak; it was so much bigger, all so painful. But he struggles on anyways: "Peggy— I'm so sorry— Peggy—"

She examines his face curiously, as though it's an artifact she's trying to interpret. "Yes— you are, aren't you," she murmurs. "Somehow I hadn't expected that."

"And you're— you're the only person I've ever apologized to, you know—"

"A terrible lie, which I have never believed."

He laughs chokingly. His chest hurts and he can't pretend it's the damp weather. "I can't fix it, Peggy; I tried to, but, you know—"

"Yes," she says. "I know."

After a brief hesitation, she curls her hand around his hand. He can feel the calluses on her palm, where the pistol must press against it. She still smells of gun oil and lilies. He would have known her on any street corner in the world. He wishes now that it were all written on his face: the little walnut shell at the heart of the explosion; the Serbers' couch with its Indian blanket; the canyon, and Feynman's wife in Albuquerque; vomiting in the dust, Daghlian dying; the letters he had saved and the letters he had burnt; and the shield's ghost-presence over it all. He can't say any of it out loud, he can't say, Peggy, forgive me.

How he longs to lay his head against her shoulder— just where the bone of her clavicle offsets her shoulder, the site of utmost rest, he thinks.

Chapter Text

New York: 1948

Early in the summer of 1948, a number of remarkable things happen. The first of these is that S.H.I.E.L.D. opens an official headquarters. Despite Howard's extravagant promises to Carter, the outfit's early years have been an ad hoc affair; it turns out that it takes more than money to run a secret extra-governmental organization. Who knew? —Certainly not Howard. For a while they'd run operations out of Howard's Manhattan residence—a large and sparsely furnished apartment on Central Park West— and out of the penthouse at the Gouverneur Morris Hotel (or the poolside, if the weather was nice and Howard was feeling particularly perverse); they'd used the Stark Industries laboratory, and sometimes its boardroom; they'd stored equipment at a warehouse that had once belonged to a pencil factory in Greenpoint; notoriously, they'd once run an operation out of a houseboat in Washington, where Howard had discovered that Carter detests the water, which makes her very grumpy and frequently seasick.

Now, though, they're getting called in more and more— sometimes the government refers them cases— and their staff has rather substantially expanded. They'd started out with four agents, in addition to themselves: Jones, Dugan, Morita (who maintains an unswerving loyalty to Carter, though he seems to prefer not to acknowledge Howard's existence), and, oddly, the formidable Mrs. Jarvis, who proves to have mastered the elements of tradecraft in some partisan context, though she claims that espionage is dull and she prefers knitting. To these they've added perhaps a dozen others.

(They'd been offered a science department, back in the spring of '47, when the U.S. had started shipping former Nazis in; part of the "intellectual reparations" owed to the Allies, it had been called; Operation Paperclip. Phillips had rung Howard up, said: "You want any of these bozos, Stark? I can call in some favors. Hell, I know I could get you Arnim Zola; I gave 'em the little bastard, they owe me on that one." But Howard had felt queasy about working with Zola, queasy about asking Carter to work with him. "Not Zola," he'd said. Phillips must have heard his ambivalence. "Well, you tell me when you make your mind up different," he'd told Howard. "Remember, these sons of bitches have got to do what we say now. Think of 'em like guns; anyone can use a gun, doesn't make the gun good or bad." The conversation had left Howard disquieted, oddly frightened. It had taken him a long time to raise the subject with Carter; he'd wanted it to just go away.)

So: after much argument with Carter ("If we set up shop in Washington, it's as good as declaring that we're not really outside the government; plus the National Security chaps will always be interfering" —to which Howard had replied, "But it'll look so official!" "Are we or are we not running a top secret organization?" Carter had asked) they'd settled on buying a discreet building on Fifth Avenue, between 16th and 17th Street, in an area where odd noises would go unremarked-on. (They anticipate odd noises, and often at odd hours.) There's storage, there's containment; there's even a reception, where Howard's convinced Mrs. Jarvis to occasionally sit, knitting huge, incomprehensible objects or filing her nails and listening to Didi Duprat. It's almost enough to make it look like they really know what they're doing, like they have some kind of encompassing plan, and not at all like they're dashing from one crisis to another.

Howard takes Carter to Le Pavillon to mark this occasion. When they walk through the door and she's confronted by the splendor, by the cherry-colored damask and the exquisite flowers, she rolls her eyes, which is something he enjoys; only Carter, he thinks, would react this way. He orders caviar, just to annoy her further, and then a magnum of champagne; she narrow her eyes. He suspects she still doesn't even eat butter on her toast. She's one of those people who's a socialist by habit, not belief. But she looks so gorgeous here, like a gem in its setting, and he's delighted by the thought that this is a game, that they alone in this room aren't serious about it. When they're done, they will go into the night whence they came, and laugh at all the Old World pretensions they've shammed. In a way, they were always secret agents, he thinks.

He raises his glass and says, "To the offices of the Strategic Hazard Intervention and... Christ, what did we decide to call it?"

"Oh, honestly, Stark; you could make an effort."

"I could, and yet I don't." He grins at her cheekily, which wins him the toast.

After they drink, she says, "I spoke with Monty Falsworth this morning."

Howard sets his glass down with slightly more force than he'd intended. "Great," he says. "Great, that's great." They'd tried to get Falsworth for S.H.I.E.L.D., or rather Carter had. Really they'd wanted all of the Commandos, out of some sense of war-loyalty, or else because they trusted Rogers' judgment more than their own. But Dernier, apparently committed to the embrace of national stereotypes, had gone into the wine-making business and wouldn't leave France. Howard didn't know what Falsworth had said to Carter, only that he hadn't come, and that he was still living in England, and that he apparently hadn't recovered from his war injuries.

Carter eyes him exasperatedly. "You don't have to pretend not to dislike him."

"I don't dislike him. I'm sure he's a very pleasant fellow."

"But?"

"But I know he dislikes me, and he has very good reasons, which frankly offends me even more. Also, you call him Monty. Since when do you call him Monty? Ridiculous name."

"It's his name, Stark."

"It makes him sound like he should be out hunting foxes."

"Well, he's not; he's flying aeroplanes."

Howard makes a face. "Is he," he says. "Is he."

"Yes; he doesn't have to use his legs, you see. He managed to be passed as a reserve pilot for the RAF."

"How heroic of him."

"It is, rather. But he was calling to see if we wanted to come in on a mission. You know the Soviets in Berlin have shut down all transport? The RAF have been flying their own supplies in, but they have to feed our half of the city, more than two million people, and they haven't got the pilots or the planes. Even if the Americans jump on, it's simply not possible. But—"

"So this isn't a S.H.I.E.L.D. mission."

Carter says, "Isn't it?" Her gaze is very steady. "Is saving lives not our mission? I thought it was our mission."

"What have we got to offer him, anyway? We don't have a fleet of planes. We barely have a staff!"

"We have you, Stark. That's what I'm trying to say. They need a better way to get food and coal in. More than the planes can normally carry, or more quickly. It seemed to me like it might be your kind of problem."

He says suspiciously, "And Falsworth actually wanted my help?"

"Well, originally he wanted me to steal your plane, but after a while I talked him round to this." A smile flickers on her lips. "I know how you love that plane."

"It's my baby." It's the Twin Beechcraft he flew during the war. He'd flown Carter across the Alps in it. He'd tracked it down and bought it; he still takes it up sometimes on weekends, when he needs to be alone, when he's feeling restless. "But you know, it gets awfully lonely flying across the Atlantic. I'd need a copilot."

"What, and leave the children in charge of the house?" She raises an eyebrow.

He's convinced her to come by the time they finish their trout, their venison, their fine coffee and ananas voilé. "Besides," he says, "you'll get to see Monty again."

Carter flashes him a threatening look. "I can still back out, you know. Don't make me do it."

"You wouldn't, though," Howard says. "Look at you. You can hardly wait to get back out there."

"So that makes two of us, then."

After dinner, they exit in the warm summer night, silhouettes against the pavement; lighting each other's cigarettes in the bright square of the doorway. They stand on the corner of 55th Street, strange and elegant in their evening clothes.

"Caviar; Howard, I can't believe you," Carter says after a moment.

"Yes, you can."

"Well, yes, I suppose I can. I'm certainly not surprised."

"We were celebrating!" Howard protests. "And we're about to go feed the starving in Berlin. I'm giving up heaps of my valuable time—"

"Oh, I take it back, you're a saint. Saint Howard."

He preens a little. "I like the sound of that. You've got to be a sinner first, you know, for the full saintly experience."

Carter says meditatively, "And you've got to time your conversion just right, I suppose. You can't live too long, if you want to be a saint."

So the second remarkable thing is that Howard finds himself in Hamburg. Yes: the city they'd bombed three years before, the city whose dead Carter had smelled burning from Denmark. You can still see the ruins where churches had been; the walls of standing buildings are faintly smoke-charred. Sometimes the stains look uncomfortably like shadows. These days the city is theirs, the Allies'— to the victors, etc; its people now their people, theirs to feed and to protect, just like the people of West Berlin, which Howard doesn't like; he has overall a nervous feeling about this change of status.

"It's the inconsistency of it," he complains to Carter (in response to her exasperated: "Honestly, Stark, what did you think war was?"). "Something real ought to have to change, something you can measure. Not just, Oh, we're in charge now, so we're not going to bomb you. It's like we're barbarians in the Stone Age, rounding up tribes."

"I think you're thinking of the Bronze Age. I always wonder how on earth you got so badly educated."

"I might have skipped a few years of school here and there."

"Well, that would explain a lot."

They don't really have much time to talk about it. They're in the mess at the RAF base in Fühlsbüttel, drinking watery tea and waiting for Falsworth, who, when he appears, looks done to exhaustion. He's leaning heavily on a cane and limping badly, but more than that, he's pale and droop-eyed and weary. He says, "Hallo, chaps. Glad to have you on board—" offering Howard a stiff nod and Carter an exhausted embrace.

"I'm just sorry we could only bring the one plane," Howard tells him. He's having trouble looking Falsworth in the eye. Falsworth, in regard to Howard, seems equally shifty. "I brought my toolkit, though, which is... well, I won't tell you how many planes that's worth. So why don't you sit down and tell me what you all need."

What they need is a lot. They need more planes, to start with; they need more pilots to fly the planes that they've got, which are currently being flown chiefly on coffee and benzedrine. But not even Howard can make planes and pilots from nothing. Failing that, they need to increase the loads— Berlin's got no coal or electricity, so they'll have to bring coal in, but how, when it's heavy? Furthermore, there's alcohol and X-ray film and ether— for the hospitals— and salt, which'll eat at the insides of the planes— and the basic facts of the food, which they haven't yet sorted out. Butter bursts, and fish can't be loaded in barrels. It doesn't help that the loaders are all starving, and some of them haven't slept in days; like the pilots, they haunt the base looking gaunt and ragged. Pilots sleep the instant they're not in the air— crewmen will open cockpits on landing, and find them already asleep—or they sleep in sharp nods without noticing they're drowsing. Howard remembers this from the war, when it sometimes killed men.

He holds these problems in his head, as though they hang suspended in the air around him. He says, "I'll need a plane— one of the C-47s'll do— and a couple of cars, a truck, hell, anything we can scrap. But first I'm going to need a very dark, very quiet room and about... let's say seven sheets of paper."

He paces the room and thinks for a little more than two hours. What is there to be said about the way Howard thinks? It precedes thinking, really, or what we would call thinking. It's a mass of formless shapes, moving at great speed, out of which words and images perfectly arise. He has no conscious sense of calculating their perfection; he plucks them like fish, wholly formed, from the water. In fact what he needs for them is emptiness— a feeling of not being quite in his body. It's when he's too much in his body that he makes mistakes, that they wriggle in his grasp and slip, or he grips them too tight and breaks their spines. Alas, alas: poor little fish.

When he emerges from the room, his eyes are slightly unfocussed, his hair's a wreck from running his hands through it, and he knows how to reinforce the undercarriage on a C-47 so it will carry almost twice as much weight. He can do it with car doors and a welding torch and drill. He also has some ideas about insulated storage for the butter. He writes this all down quickly, aware of eyes upon him. "Okay," he says, "okay. Everyone ready? Here's what we're going to do."

Six hours later, with the help of a ground crew, he's managed to get the plane in the air, with Falsworth in the co-pilot's seat beside him. Carter, in back, yells, "Stark! How sure are you this thing's airworthy?" She has to shout because they're flying into a thunderhead, and because his makeshift additions are rattling up a hell of a storm on their own. In the back of the plane, they've got six tons of coal. At least, Howard thinks, if they go down, they can bargain with the devil...

He yells back to Carter, "Come on, sweetheart, you think I'd get us all killed?"

"Actually, that sounds exactly like something you'd do!"

"Brace yourselves!" Falsworth shouts. "Stark, what the bloody hell do you call that; you call that a bank—"

But they make it into RAF Gatow and land in the storm, wheels skidding madly on the tarmac. Crewmen unload the coal inside a rain-pounded warehouse. There's no electricity; everything's lit by headlamps; and it's strange, with the rain, the wind, the hulking cars and shadows. It's like they've flown into another, eerier world. The crew shout good-humoredly in German, heaving boxes of coal into trucks. Occasionally lightning crashes overhead. Howard sags against the plane, gone limp with adrenaline. Falsworth looks at him and starts laughing quietly. After a minute, Howard joins him, faintly ragged at first— not sure why he's laughing, feeling rusty at it.

Carter, barefoot in the mud, appears, wringing her hair out in a damp straggle. "Well, that was fun, wasn't it?" she announces. "Are we ready to do it again?"

They do it again. They get six of the modified planes up the next morning, and by dawn of the following day, Howard's assembling insulated tins for the fish and the butter. He smells like— well. But he's no worse than Carter, who's a walking mud-stain.

"Is the weather always like this?" he asks Falsworth. Falsworth's watching him work with dazed, empty eyes.

"Like what?" he asks. "Oh— the rain. Yes, so far. Two solid weeks. One rather gets used to it."

Howard glances over at him, sees his glazed look. "For God's sake, man, get some sleep!"

"I think I've forgotten how."

"Pretty sure it's like riding a bicycle."

He goes back to layering lightweight insulation. When he looks up again, Falsworth's still sitting there, turning a teacup round and round in his hands.

"Listen—" Falsworth begins.

"No. Nope. I don't want to hear it. No—" He waves his hand vaguely in the air. "Emotions."

"Well, then let me say thank you. For doing this."

Howard sits back, wiping his sleeve against his brow "I didn't do it for you; you're not even doing it for you."

"You—" Falsworth shakes his head. "All right, enlighten me: Why are we doing it, then?"

Howard has to think carefully how to express this idea. "...Because we're the men who do something," he eventually says. "We can't not do something."

Falsworth frowns. "I don't think I like that answer. I think I like to think it's something nobler."

"You really think you'd catch me doing something noble?" He throws a balled-up piece of tinfoil at Falsworth's head. it lodges in his damp curls and gleams there like tinsel. "Now go get some sleep, or Carter'll say I killed you."

It's exactly like the war again, except it isn't; except that they're older, more remote, and somehow they're been barred from ever quite getting back to that space of innocence. When Howard sees the little urchins haunting the streets, here in Hamburg and there in Berlin— though the Berlin ones are starker, scarier, like little rag dolls— he thinks: we would've killed them. Their deaths would have been nothing, possibly unnoticed. One more smear of charcoal amidst the flames. And now they were children. But what did that make the dead ones, now? The dead women, the soldiers whose faces had turned into boys as they died?

He stays quiet about it. Anyway, they're feeding people now. He likes the feeling of doing a good thing. He doesn't have to examine it from so many angles, anatomize it so many times in his head. When he lies down to sleep, he sleeps almost at once. He's sleeping in the same room as Carter, on cots, and no one thinks about the propriety of it— why would they, when get them in sight of a bed and they're face-down, dreaming. Except for once:

Carter, at rest, balancing her cheek against her palm: "Where is it you go when you're working?"

Howard's shucking his shoes off. "What, you mean my workshop? Out on Long Island?"

"No... When you're working, when you're thinking, it's like you go someplace different."

"Not really." He keeps his back to her. "I'm just... thinking."

"Sometimes I think you've got outside things somehow, like you're looking at them from a very vast distance. Like a little owl in a tree, way up above the earth."

Howard turns slowly, with dignity, and gives her the most offended look he can muster. "I am not an owl," he says.

She snickers, which is extremely childish. So, to retaliate, he hurls his pillow at her head. For an instant they're children; they've crossed that unspannable gap. She hurls the pillow back and it catches his shoulders. They collapse in snorts of laughter onto their cots, as someone in the next room over yells, "Oy! Shut the 'ell up!" Which, of course, sets them off again.

Later, when they've subsided and at last they're almost sleeping, Carter very drowsily says, "We should take Falsworth with us. Back to the family. Back to the fold."

"He won't come."

"He'll come."

"What happened to Monty?"

"Oh, shut up, Stark. Go to sleep," she says.

"I can't," Falsworth says. "No, really, I can't. Anyway, you've got no use for me; I can hardly walk."

"You've still got a brain, haven't you?" Howard asks. "Or at least as much of one as you had to start with."

Carter smacks him on the arm. "Stop it, Stark."

Falsworth honestly looks wistful. "I can't, though," he says.

"Oh, for heaven's sake. Just tell your father you'd rather your brother takes the God damn title," Carter tells him, exasperated. "Think of how much time you'd save on worrying, everyone would be happier; you'd never have to sit at that horrible dinner table again—"

"I can't; you don't understand; it's not the same as with other people—"

"I should think after six months of—"

And they're off in some private conversation, one that Howard finds hard to follow. He's astounded by this. Hasn't Falsworth been conveniently on another land mass all this time? Hasn't Carter been testing ray guns with Howard, drinking his high-quality gin, saving him from Latverian mafiosi, fighting robots with him in Chesapeake Bay? How has she found time to express interest in Falsworth's business? How has she learned so much about his family?

"What exactly's going on here?" he interrupts them, waving his arm for attention.

"Oh, we speak on the phone from time to time," Carter says offhandedly. "Since you did the thing, with the thing... You must know what I mean."

Stark Industries had laid down transatlantic cables for international telecommunication. It had been their most profitable venture to date, and had singlehandedly restored the board's faith in Howard. He's regretting it now.

"I can cut those cables, you know," he tells her, just as Falsworth slams his cane against the ground.

"The hell with them!" Falsworth announces abruptly, defiant. "The hell with all of them, and the hell if I'll stay!"

So when they fly home to New York after two weeks in Germany, Falsworth comes with them. Falsworth! Riding in Howard's plane! Just as though Howard were his personal taxi.

But in fact it's nice, in a way, having Falsworth around. He is, unsurprisingly, a top agent, quick-witted and dry-humored—Howard notices that he's gotten more sarcastic, post-wounds and with age— and charming in a way that the best spies must be. So he can't run; so he can't always do surveillance; well, they've got other men to run and do surveillance. And with Falsworth there, something vague and absent coalesces. His imperiousness somehow makes them a team— not that he's imperious, per se, it's just something commanding in his manner. "He was going to be a baron," Carter explains. "But when he came back from the war, things were... different. Suddenly— family not so keen."

"And Falsworth not so keen on family, I'm guessing."

"Right. This is better, in a way; no one has to say anything nasty. No one has to speak to one another at all. He signs over the title to his brother, runs away to America, gives up all of his money..."

"Geez, you British never do things by halves, do you?"

"Oh, not me, I'm frightfully middle class. Didn't you know?"

He's never really thought about it.

"My father's a solicitor; my mother was a typist. I would've thought your family would be more like that; but there, you see, it's so different here."

"—Yes," Howard says.

They've never talked about their families at all. In general, Howard's opinion is: don't. So he doesn't.

The point is, with Falsworth here, they have a lot of fun. They're out all the time at the Hercules, where Morita and Dugan are doing quite a business. If you can put up with Dugan singing horrifying love songs when he's drunk and the constant, ongoing comedy routine that comprises Morita's attempts to make him shut up, it's not a bad place. Even Mrs. Jarvis comes, with her enormous knittings. She helps Jones practice his German and his French, and hopes one day to teach him Russian. ("I am a woman of the world," she says rather ominously, whenever someone asks her how she came to speak all these languages. Then she makes snide comments to Jones in German, and they chortle together, which is unfair, really.)

Christmas 1948: they take a sort of company photo. They're all at the Herc: Howard, Carter, Falsworth, Jones and the girl that Jones is dating (a field agent called Rosa Marie Jennings, who has a Cajun drawl and a marksman's eye); Dugan, Morita, Mrs. Jarvis, and Jarvis himself: not the life of the party, but persuaded to drop by occasionally, "if only," he tells Howard, "because you appear to have seconded my wife, and I happen to be aware, additionally, of your sizable capacity for ill-advised behavior. Sir."

What a photo! Everyone: smile for the camera. There's Mrs. Jarvis, looking sweetly murderous with her knitting needles; her husband, with the wide beam of the tipsy and kind-natured; Jones bent to whisper something to Rosa Marie who, in a scoop-necked party dress, doesn't at all look like someone who knows how to wield a Wundagorian chaos whip. (Oh, how appearances can be deceiving!) Then Dugan, with tinsel wrapped round the bowler hat and mustache especially bushy; Morita lifting a frothy mug in a toast; Falsworth, gazing adoringly at Carter, looking as though he's halfway through a laugh. Perhaps she's just said something amusing. (Strange how clear these pictures capture the past, clearer sometimes than we see ourselves.) There's Howard, off to one side for once— not at all his preferred location, it's true— eyelashes lowered. You can't catch his cryptic eye. And then— it's Peggy, it's always Peggy, like the filament of a light bulb, holding its charge for an instant after the light is dimmed, a strong, fierce, sharp and faithful heart, shining and shining and—

October 1949

"The problem is," Bob Serber says, "that the Soviets have got the bomb now. So the whole question's fundamentally changed."

Howard leans back, exhaling smoke at the ceiling. "Is that what Oppenheimer told you?"

"I'm just telling you what they're going to tell you."

It's late. They're in Howard's Manhattan apartment, at Howard's minimalist table, and they've spent quite a lot of time drinking. In two days they'll be in Washington, acting in their capacity as members of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission. You see, we're not at war now, so the feeling is: the military shouldn't make all the decisions. Thus we have the Atomic Energy Commission: a civilian panel that oversees and develops America's atomic power, or rather makes recommendations to the government about this. They're not scientists themselves, of course, so: the General Advisory Committee, on which Serber, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Howard, Conant, and Rabi sit.

Right now the AEC has a very big problem. A month and a half ago, a WB-49 clearing northeast Russia picked up a radioactive cloud. What this radioactive cloud means is: fission. The Russians have got their own atom bomb. Against this backdrop, suddenly the nuclear Superbomb's attractive. Edward Teller's day has come! The day of his dreams! For seven years, he's suffered, he's been sidelined; he's been laughed at and treated impatiently. Now, at last, his stars have aligned. Congress has come to his door, saying, Tell us about the Super.

"You know, he used to have—" Serber says— "Teller, I mean, he used to have, during the war, he had a blackboard in his office with all his weapons plans on it, and the last one, the biggest, was something called Backyard. I said, Edward, what's Backyard, I've never heard you talk about Backyard, and he said, Well—" he affects a Hungarian accent— "it's not so useful, because however you build it, it's probably killing everyone on earth."

"Jesus," Howard says.

"I can't even say Congress wouldn't buy it."

The problem is that Congress almost certainly would. They want to buy the Super even though the Super's not real, even though it's just a fantasy— what if we could build an even bigger bomb? What if we could keep building them bigger and bigger? —Let's get right on that, let's get down to business. That's what they want the General Advisory Committee to say.

"It might be impossible," Howard says. "For all we know."

Serber eyes him shrewdly. "But you don't really believe that."

No. Quite often, Howard has a sixth sense about problems, a sort of tactile sense, like a ghost limb with which he feels out the contours of what he's facing. Long before he can tell you the solution to a problem, he can tell you with some certainty that there is a solution. He can feel, very far off in space, the cleanness of it resolving itself.

"I think," he says, "if I thought about it for— a few weeks, at most, maybe—"

Serber says quickly, "Don't tell me. Whatever you were going to tell me."

They stare at each other, vaguely alarmed. The room is heavy with smoke. It has that sort of sepia glaze, like the whiskey they've been drinking has seeped out of their tumblers and gotten all over the angular chairs.

"Christ," Serber says. He drags his hand across his face. "Christ, what a mess."

"They won't build it, though. Oppenheimer's against it."

"Yes, Oppie's thrown his cards in with Conant, it's 'morally reprehensible.' But then they'll say, well, why this and not the A-bomb? What's the difference? We did it once already, and you helped us."

"In other words, we're damned already, so we might as well keep sinning."

Serber says, "Yes, that's the gist of it."

It's strange seeing Serber. He'd come without Charlotte. He looks older, and Howard thinks: Do I look older? Time passes so quickly. He's thirty-two now. He'd spent his last birthday trying to shut down a smuggling ring bringing Hydra weapons into the United States. He'd accidentally sent Carter trekking through several miles of Ontarian swamps, in what turned out to be the wrong direction. There had been a boat, a bat colony, several irradiated frogs... she hadn't spoken to him for forty-eight hours. "My birthday gift to you is not shooting you," she'd told him. But in fact he'd later found a small statue of an owl placed in the middle of his cluttered S.H.I.E.L.D. desk. Its eyes were wide open; it looked comically offended. He'd known then that he was forgiven again.

Does age tote along wisdom? Howard wants to think so. It's why he'd agreed to be on the committee. He'd thought enough time had passed that he could think about the bomb, and he could think about it rationally, without the knee-jerk of nausea that comes from regret. Looking back now at the war, from this distance, it seemed that for a time they had all gone slightly crazy. He couldn't pinpoint the moment when it all had first started; it had been a long slow avalanching thing, so that no one ever noticed how odd, how bizarre... it was just the natural order. Yes, of course we'll kill civilians. They make better targets. Yes, of course we'll burn churches and art galleries. War bred its own logic, like cultured cells.

So he goes with Serber to meet up with Oppenheimer, and then to Washington, and they spend a day debating the question. Should they build a bomb with unlimited explosive potential? Is it immoral to build this bomb? Is it moral to build it, but not to use it? Will the Russians build it if we build it? Will the Russian build it anyway? Can we even build it? (Howard keeps quiet.) It is altogether an exhausting day, during which the end of the world is a constant topic. Howard keeps thinking: there was a time when we didn't talk in these terms. During the war, we didn't talk about the end of the world; we thought that would come from the Nazis. There was a sense of goodness, he thinks, that seems to have been lost. He looks around the table, at all the tired faces.

In the end, what they write in their formal report is: "It is clear that the use of this weapon would bring about the destruction of innumerable human lives... a super bomb might become a weapon of genocide... We believe a super bomb should never be produced."

Fermi and Rabi take a stronger stance. "The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light."

So that's that, Howard thinks. At least it's something.

But that's not that, because three weeks later they meet Vanko, and he tells them about Department X.

Anton Igorevich Vanko is quite literally delivered to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s doorstep. Three weeks after he walks into an embassy in Finland and declares his intention to defect, Howard opens the front door of the 5th Avenue building and is confronted by a six-foot-tall Russian. Vanko grins ingratiatingly at Howard. His hands are in cuffs. The CIA agent behind him says, "Mr. Stark? I've been ordered to transfer custody of this enemy alien to you. Colonel Phillips authorized it on your behalf."

"Oh, I bet he did," says Howard, staring. "I just bet he did."

"If you could just sign here," the agent prompts.

Howard signs. The agent unlocks the cuffs.

"Hello!" Vanko says brightly. "My name is Anton Igorevich Vanko. It's so nice to meet you, Mr. Howard Stark!"

The agent disappears into a taxicab. Howard, open-mouthed, stares after him beseechingly.

Vanko is angular, gawky, and prone to accidental destruction: of stacks of paper, of office supplies, of coffee cups on desk edges. He has an oddly elfin face that makes him look younger than he is, and a foolish grin that seems faintly apologetic, as though he's constantly saying, Yes, it's me! Sorry! I know, but what can you do about it? It's a face that fundamentally wants to be happy, which is probably the most aggravating thing about it— especially because Vanko has such a dearth of reasons to be happy.

"Well," he says, when Howard's taken him upstairs and introduced him to Carter, "How to explain. I am Russian, I was born in Murmansk, I was very smart, a child prodigy. Most gifted child in the Soviet Union! Then they sent me away to do physics, I do physics; they said, Make us a bomb, so I helped to make the bomb; then they said, you are so very smart, Anton Igorevich, you are an extraordinary person, and what we do with extraordinary people is, they go to Department X. But me, I don't want to go to Department X. I said, I have made you the bomb, long live Soviet Russia, but— I won't do this. So I know then they won't kill me, because I'm so very smart. But they will hurt me a lot, I think. So I run to Finland. So much snow, my God, I wish to never see such snow! Weeks in the snow. Never again. But I get to Finland, and so on and so on. They send me to West. Here at least I think, amongst the imperialist bastards, maybe at least I am a man, and not only a weapon."

He takes a sip of coffee. He smiles winningly at Howard and Carter. "Such good coffee! I don't know Americans make such good coffee!"

Howard and Carter look at each other, not even sure where to begin.

"Department X," Carter ventures finally. "What is it?"

"Ah, you don't know Department X? Better that way, maybe, for you. It is, hmm, Department of Winning Wars Department, maybe. Department of How to Win Wars. They cut off the last head of Hydra, you know. They say, Oh, no, Oh, no, we are not Nazis! We hate these Nazis! So what we will do is, we will kill these Nazis, and then we will take their armory."

Howard can see Carter's face twitch, the only hint of a reaction. "That's impossible," she says. "Hydra died with the Red Skull. We destroyed their bases after the war ended."

"Ah, but you didn't go to Russia, did you? You should go to Russia, it's nice in the winter. Well, it's not nice in the winter, but it's better than in the summer."

"You're saying that Hydra had bases in the Soviet Union?" Howard presses. It's not hard to believe— they'd long suspected as much, but there'd been no news since the war, and they'd assumed that the Soviets had had their revenge for Stalingrad. They'd never imagined any sizable armory; certainly there'd been no suggestion of the factories that had studded western Europe.

"Hydra has its little legs everywhere, my friend. Like these multipedalous insects. I don't know if there are these, in America. So many legs! What can they use them all for? Well, for digging little bunkers all over my nation, and then for putting their little guns in these bunkers."

"But Hydra's dead now."

"Indeed! But when the parent dies, the child inherits. What a house to be inheriting! So we have now Department X, Department of Keeping Hydra's House."

Howard says, "What is it they do? I mean, if all they've got is a bunch of slightly outdated Hydra weapons—"

"You think for this they need physicist? Please. Department X is Military Technology Department; this means also making new military technology. Military technology. My God! They make men into weapons. Little girls into weapons. Monsters making men into monsters, who make more monsters. And so on and so on. So you see. I made a bomb— well, Mr. Stark, you understand this. But I make a man a monster— "

His eyes flicker to Howard. Howard's struck by a sense of being perceived, by an intelligence at odds with Vanko's over-clever prattle. He thinks that maybe it's the mark of horror. You can't be really intelligent unless you have a certain kind of encounter, the world peeling back your skin like an autopsy, peering inside: let's see what you're made of. Some people from the Hill have undergone this transformation. Nowadays it puts them out of step with the favored kind of thinking. They're looking at things from the wrong sphere, the wrong angle, the mainstream opines. Their arguments are hard to understand.

"—also I make myself a monster," Vanko says. "So you see. Really: self-preservation. Always I'm out for myself." He grins, quick and sharp and unapologetic.

I don't believe you, Howard thinks. He's reminded of what he told Falsworth. We're the men who do something. Falsworth saying: I like to think it's something nobler... Howard had been trying to put into ordinary language a vast and morally neutral idea, that they moved things forward, that it was what they did. There was some kind of future that irresistibly pulled them, a North Pole, and they advanced towards it slowly. They did this not because the future was good, but because it was the future. Really they were just trying to stay alive, that was all. If there was a principle, it was: life is better than death.

Carter says, "Well, we'll certainly investigate your claims."

Howard says, "What kind of physics did you say you did?'

Howard and Carter go to Washington to talk to Phillips. He's in the same office, the SSR office; only the size of the stacks of paperwork have changed, and the air of slightly apprehensive tension. Secretaries rush in and out of the doors down the hall, the soft neat curls of their pretty hair bouncing, their little heels going click click click, which sparks a memory, a memory of war... Howard looks at Carter. Her face is unreadable as she knocks on Phillips' door.

"So, ladies," Phillips says. (Howard rolls his eyes.) "If you've talked with our new friend Anton, you'll know that we have a problem."

"Could he be making it up?" Carter asks. "So we won't deport him? It's happened before."

"We don't believe that's the case."

"We," Carter says.

"Let's just say I have external confirmation."

"You mean you've been going behind our backs with the CIA."

Phillips gives her a Look., a formidable Look. "Agent Carter, allow me to offer some strategical notes on your organization. One, it is disorganized. Two, it is minuscule. Three, it is utterly unprepared for any large-scale engagement. Four, it has no established intelligence apparatus. Five—"

"We take your point," Howard says.

"Good, because this is not the CIA's business. You know how many of them dealt with Hydra during the war? They're still thinking in terms of little toy guns; half of them have barely gotten their heads around the A-bomb yet. They're retrograde, gentlemen, and this is the future." He stabs his finger down at his desk, as though he's pinpointing— what? Some site high in the Soviet mountains where crates of Hydra weapons are being unpacked? Or something larger and harder to get that finger on, harder to point to with that pin? Phillips says, "I put my backing behind this little amateur hour because I could see where we were headed. Schmidt took the genie out of the bottle, and everyone thinks that if we just ask very politely, it'll tiptoe right back on in."

"In this analogy, Department X is the genie's new master?" That's Carter, looking troubled.

"Different name, same war."

"That's not—" Howard begins. "We're not a wartime organization."

"I'm talking about the bigger war, Stark. The war to keep the peace. You think I want to see this country calling up soldiers?"

No. He doesn't. Howard knows that. He knows that Phillips feels each death of a soldier. He's a good commander, a good man. "So what are you saying, exactly?"

"Containment," Phillips says. "That was our mistake with Hydra. We let them get too much power. Hell, they got more powerful than Hitler! We don't let it get to that point. We tackle threats now."

"That sounds... aggressive." The unhappiness is audible in Howard's voice.

"You think Rogers never flicked that damn shield of his at a Nazi?" Phillips pauses, presumably for rhetorical effect. "Cause I can tell you he did, and he didn't lose sleep about it, either. You say you're going to protect someone, you pick up that shield, you better be damn sure you're willing to protect them. So if you're having second thoughts, Stark, you better speak 'em now. I need someone who's going to be willing."

Howard shifts uncomfortably. "No, I— understand."

He darts a look at Carter. She isn't looking at him.

Phillips gives him a long, penetrating stare. "Good," he says. "Good. Then we can get down to business."

He's giving them the old base at Camp Lehigh. So: good, that's good; they liked working there. But he's giving it to them because they'll need a military base. Because they'll need that level of security, if they're going to bring the Paperclip scientists in.

"You can't be serious," Carter says, when Phillips suggests it.

"Have I ever appeared unserious, Agent Carter?"

"But not Zola," Howard says.

"Dr. Zola too." Phillips holds up a hand to their protests. "I don't like the man, I don't trust the man, but I sure trust myself with him a hell of a lot more than I trust anybody else. You'll treat him like a prisoner of war, which is what he is. I told you, Stark— they're weapons, that's all. A weapon in the shape of a brain. Most of 'em are just your Wernher von Brauns, anyhow— pretty harmless; their worst sin is being a coward. They like America; they'd rather be here than Berlin, that's for damn sure. So they're not going to shoot you in the back."

Howard thinks inescapably for a moment of Karl Fuchs, who'd wanted to see his father again. They'd lost touch; Fuchs wasn't involved with the Commission. Howard wonders if he made it back to Germany. If his father had turned out to still be alive. His father, who'd been imprisoned for not being a coward, for protesting, for smuggling refugees. Fuchs had wanted to make him proud. He'd said, Cultivate your heart. Howard misses him suddenly. Which is strange; they hadn't been particularly close, not like Charlotte and Howard. But Fuchs had been a steadying presence, had made him think harder.

"I guess," he says slowly, "if they're prisoners of war—"

"Which they are, essentially," says Phillips.

Howard looks at Carter, whose expression is unreadable. "What's the worst thing that could happen?" he says.

Later, on the evening train to New York, he stares at the deepening dusk through the window and thinks about the argument he didn't make. Not to Phillips, but to Carter. She's reading now, a dime store novel, eating peppermint candy absently. He's struck by an overwhelming need to tell her, maybe what you would call an awareness of sin.

"I don't want to talk about it right now, Stark," she says without looking up. As though she can read his mind.

"Fine," he says. "We'll talk about it later."

All he wants to do is ask her a question: Have they done anything that's worse than what I did?

They've put Vanko up in one of Howard's apartments, or, whatever, one maintained by Stark Industries. Howard goes to visit him just before Christmas. S.H.I.E.L.D. hasn't decided what to do with him yet; what do you do with a nuclear physicist you're not completely sure you can trust? Make an agent out of him? For now, they simply have him under surveillance. Vanko hasn't, so far, done anything. When Howard enters the apartment, he can see why: Vanko's been busy. Busy... building a two-foot atomic model out of silverware? Palladium-107, unless Howard's mistaken. It's oddly beautiful, each concentric circle showing where the electrons of a shell might be. All the forks and knives and spoons are freshly polished, and welded together, so it looks a bit like some very modern art installation. But why...?

"It's just an idea with which I am recreating," Vanko says with a quirk of his little grin. "Don't worry; I won't build a bomb in your basement."

Howard walks around the model slowly. There's something about the outer electron shells— palladium's atypical, of course, but laid out like this, the possibility... He can feel it moving towards completion; he has that sense of a far-off edge where the chord resolves. But it's not quite there yet.

"Yes," Vanko says. "I know. I can't get there either."

Howard blinks, because he hasn't said anything.

Vanko, apparently oblivious, flops down on the couch and sticks his hands behind his head. "Do you think about bombs much, Mr. Stark?"

"No," Howard says.

"Me neither. I never think about bombs." He turns to look at Howard. There's something in his eyes, that ghost intelligence. "Never," he says. "But, do you know, they're going to build them? So what do we do, hmm, what do we do about this."

"They're not. You're in America now, you know. We've got a civilian commission that recommends on these things. They've already decided against it. Democracy in action, pal." Howard tries to sound as though this is something he believes.

"Oh, yes, I see, I'm so stupid. My God. America." Vanko lapses into silence.

Outside, snow falls in streams past the window, fast and dry and glittering. The suffocating fog of an early dusk is building dark in the streets. It's cold in the apartment, though the radiator bangs. There are times in New York when it's just simply cold, when the system of a building can't produce enough heat. He thinks, perhaps because Fuchs has been on his mind, of Charlotte saying, —Well, typical, really. We shivered all winter. But we had no choice. They'd adjusted so well. Maybe they'd wished they could go back to California. They had, in fact, after the war's end. Bob had gotten a job at Berkeley. But at the time, there'd been the war. In war, you did have choices, he thought, but they were big and they were few, and you mostly made them right at the start. Are we going to fight this war? —Yes. Well, then. It all unfolded from that, then, in immaculate order. The same question governing the logic that came next: Are we going to fight this war? —Yes. Then. Yes. Then.

"I'm sorry about the snow," he says to Vanko. "I know you said you don't like it."

Vanko shrugs fatalistically. "What can you do?"

"Maybe it'll be better in the new year."

"All things in God's hands."

It strikes Howard as a strange expression. He supposes it must be from the Russian, or maybe he's just never heard it. Badly educated, as Carter said. He pictures the whole round shape of the earth held carefully in the cup of two hands, like an egg, or something else you're afraid you might drop. Something very delicate. Surely it's meant to sound secure, to make you feel a little more safe, but Howard finds the image unsettling. What if God were to trip? What if his attention wandered elsewhere, or there were a sudden rainstorm, or he simply found, in the way that Howard often finds, that the more intent you are on not breaking something, the more likely you are to break it? For no reason at all, he finds himself remembering the sun— the fish— the lake— his father's hands— himself settled close to that living body, the smell of the sun, his father's laugh—

He shoves his hands into his pockets. "Anyway," he said. "I just came to say Merry Christmas. We're working on what we'll do after the holiday, but just let me know if you need anything. More forks, I guess."

"I will," Vanko says. Then, as Howard's leaving, he calls out: "Merry Christmas! —Just by the way. And good luck with not thinking of bombs."

January 1950

New Year's Day: the anni mirabiles are over. Howard, of course, wouldn't put it this way; Latin's never been one of his strong suits. But the sentiment seems to apply nevertheless. The age of miracles and wonders is done; now we are moving on. Where? —Always towards the future.

In that future, the Atomic Energy Commission will conduct secret experiments in which radioactive products are released over American towns. In a highly clandestine military lab, the fourth failed Super Soldier Mark II candidate will die from massive cerebral hemorrhaging. The Joint Chiefs of Staff will hand the President, in a few weeks' time, a memorandum that comprehensively discards the AEC General Advisory Committee's recommendations. Renounce the Superbomb? "It would be foolhardy altruism for the United States voluntarily to weaken its capability by such a renunciation... The peace of the world generally, and, specifically, the security of the entire Western Hemisphere would be jeopardized."

Well. If that's the case: "What the hell are we waiting for?" the President will ask them. "Let's get on with it."

Everyone seems to think of themselves as preparing for war. How, how has it come to this? It's a question that no one seems able to answer. It's not one thing or another; it's a signal in the air, something intangible, passed from glance to glance and hand to hand. It's a note of terror in newspaper headlines, and Teller rallying the forces to head back to the Hill. The whole nation seems to decide: well, war is coming. As though peace were a dream that they'd all woken up from, a pleasant evening drowse they'd shared, but now they have woken and found, unsurprised, they are still within the house of fear. They know the floor plan well, though now it seems stranger. In the dark, the house is full of ghosts, but very familiar. They think to themselves: Yes, we belong here.

In the second week of January, Howard goes out to Lehigh with Carter. They haven't been there since the summer of 1943. The place is shut down; has been since just after the war. It's a ghost city, desolate, and moreso in the snow. Roofs have started sliding off of the old Army buildings, walls sagging. Tall weeds poke up here and there through the snowbanks, where the swamps have started claiming the land as their own. Inside, everything's more or less as they left it: a little dustier, the windows grime-slathered. There should be a shelf of orchids; there's the cinderblock top of the old lab. Their shadows should have cut black outlines on it. Howard thinks of Indian cliff dwellings, petroglyphs. But everything's erased. He and Carter wander through the— let's be honest— ruins. The close-pressed sky with its colorless clouds gives the sense of an immense whiteness.

"We'll have to build a bunker," Carter says after a while. "We don't want it to look like we've reopened the base."

She'd been silent all the way out there, as their Jeep pulled through the snowfall, leaving tracks across New Jersey.

Howard coughs. His breath comes out white and explosive. It's very cold here, so close to the woods. "We don't have to do this," he says, when she says nothing further. "If you don't want to, just say so; I don't want you to think—"

"I didn't say that," she says. She sounds cross. She hugs her Army green parka around her. "I don't know what you expect me to say."

"I don't expect anything, I just want to know what you're thinking."

"I'm thinking that none of the Commandos will like it."

"Yeah, well, none of the Commandos even like me."

She doesn't try to correct him, which is a surprise; lately she's been set on insisting that Falsworth and Jones, at least, don't despise him. She just looks down and scuffs her boot against the earth. "I'm seeing Monty," she says at length. "Monty Falsworth. I kept meaning to tell you."

Howard watches his white breath move out and in.

It's not a shock, really. Really, it's not. He's seen the change in Falsworth, since the war: some of the light charm bled from him, and seriousness suddenly taking its place, as though he'd grown it, like a muscle that, once torn, comes back stronger. But it wasn't the actual wound, Howard thinks; it was Rogers, and Falsworth's family, and flying, all the losing and gaining things. He looks like a man who can live for himself. Rogers looked like that. Carter looks like that. Like inside her is a compass that she's always carried, so it's impossible for her to lose her way.

"Okay," he says.

"Is it really? I mean— are you really?"

"Are you going to marry him?"

"Oh, I don't know. It's a bit early to tell."

"But you think you might."

She sighs. "Stark..."

"Will you quit working?"

"Don't be an idiot."

"So you won't." So you won't, he thinks to himself, leave me.

"Of course not." She peers at him, tilting her head. "Is that really what's worrying you?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"We said when we started that we'd do this together."

"That was just because you didn't want the blame. You said I'd nose my way in."

She laughs: visible laughter, a peal of white breath. "I'd forgotten I said that. It's true, though. You would've. You are incorrigibly nosy."

"No, I'm not. You just wanted to blame me."

"Not just that," she says. "But if you like, I'll say it now, without the bit about you nosing your way in— let's do this together, come hell, marriage, or high water."

Howard shrugs diffidently. "Yeah, all right," he says.

She smacks his arm. "You can't say yeah, all right. This is a solemn pledge; you've got to give it effort."

Howard looks at the wrecked buildings around them. "Will you still want to say that, if...?" He gestures.

Carter studies him. "What's the worst that can happen?" she says. An echo. "So they're personally repellent, so we can't ever trust them, so we wish they were in prison, or dead. They're still doing what we tell them. You know, it was Zola who told us about the plane, the—" She has to stop and struggle for breath. She bites her lip. "So we'd be dead, actually, I suppose, if it weren't for him. If it weren't for him wanting to save his own skin."

"We were at war," Howard points out.

"Does that make the rules different?"

"... I don't know." He scrubs a hand through his hair. "I don't know; it doesn't feel like laws and math feel; it feels like there aren't any rules, and I don't like that. It feels confusing."

"Yes."

"I don't trust myself."

"I don't either. Trust myself."

This surprises Howard. "I trust you," he says. It comes out awful, simplistic and awkward, and he wishes at once he could take it back. "Not that, I mean— never mind." He doesn't want to hear her say that she doesn't trust him.

But what she says is: "Good. Well, let's try to trust each other. All right?"

"Come hell, marriage, or high water. Together." He sticks his gloved hand out, like he's striking a business deal.

She rests her smaller hand in his. He squeezes it lightly, and that's it: they're done.

"And now let's get out of the snow," Carter says, "because it's bloody freezing."

So they head back to New York, to start drawing up plans.

It's hard to know what to do with Vanko while the bunker's being built. At first Howard just feels sorry for the guy. He'd crossed how many miles, through the snow, through the mountains, to get to America— and Howard would bet he hadn't told him the whole story, that it was worse than that, because he could see already that this was to be expected of Vanko— and here he is in that promised land, and it's a narrow apartment on the north side of Hell's Kitchen. The snow builds up on the brick window ledges and the building doesn't heat all the way. Vanko's not a person you can easily imagine keeping inside, either; he seems essentially, somehow, the jailbreaking sort.

They've got surveillance on him, just in case he does try to jailbreak. The CIA vetted him pretty good, so they don't really think he's a double agent. But he could well panic and run, or the Soviets might try to kill him, and it's better to be careful, just in case. So a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent stays in the apartment next door, and they have listening devices— Howard developed them specially, for use in the field; they fit inside lightbulbs.

"He talks to himself," Rosa Marie Jennings tells Howard, when he asks her about Vanko. She's the one who's taken over babysitting him, though she'd smack Howard if he called it that. "And he has nightmares."

"He talks to himself? What does he say to himself?"

"You think he talks to himself in English?"

So Howard charms Mrs. Jarvis into listening for them. She sits playing Parcheesi with Rosa Marie in the kitchen of the apartment next door, tapping her perfect nails against the table, translating, editorializing as she goes. "He says, electron this electron that. Some words I don't know, science. I don't know! So sue me. Now he says, why is it I come to America when still it's so fucking cold. Bad decision, why I'm always making such bad decisions. Now he talks very fast about maths. I need a cigarette. He doesn't say that, that's what I say. Howard, I do this for you and yet you don't buy me cigarettes?"

And then Howard has to go buy cigarettes— the good ones, the expensive ones, "not like with which you'd bribe a German soldier." And when he gets back, Mrs. Jarvis will be saying, "He's a nice boy, he misses his family, his hometown; Howard, why you have me eavesdrop on this boy?"

"Because he's a Soviet defector, Mrs. Jarvis."

"So, you think this country's so bad, only bad people come to it?"

"No, we just want to be careful."

"Well, he's a nice boy, a good boy, but just so sad about the war. Maybe you'll talk to him about maths, Howard, make him a distraction."

"Maybe, Mrs. Jarvis."

Vanko has nightmares about wolves, but when he talks in his sleep, Mrs. Jarvis won't translate what he says.

Inevitably, one afternoon, Howard stops by to speak to Vanko— and there's Mrs. Jarvis, at his kitchen table, just as though this is where she belongs. She smiles placidly at Howard and takes a sip of coffee. Oh, yes: there's coffee, by the way, and half a lemon pie, and some slightly wilted flowers, looking suspiciously as though they've come from Howard's garden.

"Howard!" Mrs. Jarvis says. "Come in, I'm talking to Anton Igorevich."

"I can see that," Howard tells her. "How very intrepid of you."

"Did you know, Anton Igorevich has hardly ever eaten a lemon."

"Hmm. How about that." Howard probably looks as though he has eaten a lemon. "I thought you didn't cook."

"You know we have a cook out at the mansion. When I ask, she's only so happy to make this."

"My cook," Howard says. "At my mansion. So you're feeding Mr. Vanko my pie."

Vanko grins at him through a mouthful of Howard's pie. From the look of the crumbs of crust left on his plate, he's already worked his way through a significant quantity.

"Sit down, Howard. Eat pie, " Mrs. Jarvis commands.

Resentfully, Howard sits down to receive a plate of pie. It's very good pie, as it should be, since he's paying for it.

Mrs. Jarvis pours him a porcelain cup of coffee. "It's good in winter to eat lemons. Good for the bones," she tells him.

Vanko laughs. "That's what my mother always says!"

Mrs. Jarvis pats him on the head affectionately. She slides Howard a narrow, superior look. "You see, Howard?"

"I didn't say anything!" Howard protests.

Vanko says, "We don't have so many of lemons in Murmansk, though. It's such a northerly place, above the Arctic Circle. But a great city, such a majestic city. Well— maybe not so much majestic, I disclose. But still a great city to go to if you like industrial shipping!" He cheerfully pours more sugar into his coffee than a man should really be able to drink.

Howard steals a glance at him. Vanko seems genuinely happy, which for Vanko is kind of a strange thing. Howard had thought he might be one of those brittle people who laugh a lot but inside are all made of glass, all cold and hard and sharp and jagged. But that's not what he sees in Vanko right now. What he took for hard edges are contoured like ice, bright and quicksilvery, melting under your hand. "Well," he says mildly, "we've got plenty of lemons here. One of the pluses of capitalism."

"Ah, yes. The pluses of capitalism. My God, I forget."

"Hey, we took you in, pal. The Communists were going to kill you."

"Not kill me," Vanko says calmly. "Only torture. And also I'm a Communist."

"You can't still be a Communist."

"Why not? Just not a good one." There's a touch of that unhappiness. "In theory, yes. In practice, I'm very selfish with my brain. I won't give it all to the good of the people. So, I came here instead. Land of lemons. Trying to sell you my brain. Maybe I'll get a good price for it."

"It wasn't your brain," Howard says, "that was the problem, was it?"

He looks at Vanko. Vanko tilts his head. His eyes are a very rich warm brown, like the hardwood center of a log when it's split, the oldest, strongest, and livingest part. Howard feels like they're thinking in synthesis. It wasn't the brain; it was some other organ. Something that Vanko couldn't cut out of himself and still be himself, and that's what they'd wanted from him. There were Roman soldiers— Howard's sure this is true, although maybe he's mixing up his eras again— who would cut off their own arms if that's what the nation demanded. Probably Rogers would have done that, cut off his arm, if that's what he thought was best. Lose an arm, an eye, a leg for the nation. But at some point there's a limit— at some point you're not you anymore, you're just a collection of not-yet-separate parts. You have to find that part you can't bear to part with, and when they come for that— Vanko would say, Start running.

"It wasn't my brain," Vanko acknowledges softly.

"No. I know. I'm glad," Howard says.

In the first week of February, Howard gets a phone call. It's Bob Serber. "Howard," he begins, and Howard already knows that what's coming is bad news, because Bob had used that confused and slightly gentle tone. When did that become the tone in which he was forced to speak to Howard, the tone of all their engagements?

"What is it," Howard says, with an abrupt spike of fear. "Is it the bomb? Just tell me, I can't—"

"It's Karl Fuchs, Howard. He's been arrested for treason."

At first Howard doesn't understand what he's saying. He thinks that Bob's saying— what, that Fuchs is being persecuted, like Oppenheimer's brother, who'd been hauled up before the House committee a few years back and stripped of his clearance for having been a Communist in college. People had said it was a warning to Oppie, that he was the one they'd really wanted. But Howard had thought: well, they'll never get him. People like Oppenheimer were too fluid and charming— too well-beloved. But he'd worried for Bob and Charlotte. He'd thought of Charlotte saying, They think it means you send Christmas cards to Stalin. Now he thinks: should I have been worried for Karl?

Then it penetrates, what Bob has said. "He's confessed, Howard. He gave the Soviets the bomb— our bomb. He did it, he gave it to them."

Howard says, "But he—" Then he stops. He doesn't know what he means to say. But he wouldn't have done that, not Karl? But he was kind to me once?

"Listen, you need to be careful," Bob says.

"I didn't tell him anything. We never really talked about physics."

There's a silence. "No-o," Bob says, drawing out the word as though Howard's being very stupid, as though Bob can't quite believe how stupid he's being. "Not because of that. They'll be looking for more spies now. They always thought we were all spies. I can't imagine they'd come after you, but— Howard, you should be careful."

"But I'm not a spy," Howard says. "Or a Communist."

"No. But it doesn't really matter, you know. You're a very big target. They'll want to use you in some way or another, to make a point."

"Well, I'm not going to let them."

There's silence on the phone line for a minute. Howard hears the faint sound of Serber's breath. He pictures Bob, nearsighted, rumpled Bob, who always has the air of someone who's forgotten something important and is half-distractedly trying to remember it.

"Are you worried?" Howard asks.

"Not too much."

"You sound worried."

"We've already— me and Charlotte, we've been through this."

Another silence. "Do we know what-all he gave them?" Howard twists the phone cord round his fingers, pulling it tight, watching the skin whiten. "I mean, did he just give them the A-bomb, or did he also give them the..."

"He can't have, can he? It is pure speculation?"

"As far as I know, no one's— I mean, Teller hasn't—"

"And he'd certainly crow about it, and you and I have the clearance, so I think it's safe to say—"

"No. No. He can't have."

The question that they don't want to speak aloud: Is it possible that Fuchs has given the Soviets the Superbomb? No one in America has cracked it yet; not even Teller, in his years and years of obsession. But is there any way— is there anything they've done that could lead an agile mind there— is there any progress, any information, anything at all that they wouldn't want the Russians to have?

Howard says after a pause, "Karl wasn't capable of that kind of work."

"You're talking about him like he's dead."

"...Will they kill him? I mean— will they execute him?"

Silence.

Serber says, "It depends." He doesn't sound certain. "I don't know. It depends on when he passed the information. And... it's the British who've got him. So. I don't know."

"Oh."

"... Howard."

"Yes?"

"You're capable of that kind of work."

Silence.

Silence.

"You didn't want to know. You said not to tell you," Howard says. Very quietly, as though someone might be listening on the line.

"What if they blow us all up? What if it's them or us?" Bob sounds faintly panicked. It's uncharacteristic, coming from him. He's frightened, Howard thinks. It's the shock that's talking. Keep it together, he wants to yell. Do you think it's easy for any of us? Do you think it's easy for me? "Maybe they're right, Howard; what if they're right, Teller and— Strauss and Borden and all their people, maybe we have to— I mean, what if it's just a question of survival, what would you do?"

"Go talk to Charlotte, Bob," Howard says wearily. "Drink it off or something, and forget you asked me that. You don't really want to know and you'll feel bad about it later."

He hangs the phone back up on the hook. He leans his head against the wall, so hard that he can feel where the patterned wallpaper will leave an imprint. He wants to take his own advice and forget the conversation. But he feels cold. He thinks to himself: I can't afford to.

April

Genia Peierls writes a letter to Fuchs. How dare you, is the gist of it. It's not even the treason she minds, she writes in her letter. What's a little treason between two friends? But they were friends, or so she thought, that's the real problem: all those sharp strange summer days out in the canyons, the home videos that somewhere exist of her teasing little Karl about his fear of horseback riding: —Honestly, Penny, a horse is just an animal, you know. —Ah, but, you see, it's so much more immense than I am. —Well what does that matter? You're smarter than it is. —So, I shall explain to it the quantum theory as it hurls me into the canyons? Or the long afternoons spent in her kitchen, hungover, the air somewhat sleepy with gin, laughing gently about the foibles of some self-important colleague. He had babysat the children of her friends. He had been very good with children; he'd seemed to understand them. He'd had this honesty, or so she'd thought, a child's honesty, sometimes hard to look at. And now— she cries on the phone about it to Howard. How dare he, how dare he.

Fuchs' letter back is unhappy, earnest, which hurts even more. He hadn't thought— he'd never meant—he hadn't wanted—he'd hoped that they could still be friends.

"Now they think that we're spies, too," Genia says, her voice wrecked. "Rudy and me— they think that we helped him. They're investigating us."

"They think everyone's a spy. They think Oppie's a spy, for God's sake. It doesn't mean anything."

"It does, Howard, it does, it does. They don't even care if it's true, they just want to ruin people's lives; they don't trust any of us, any of us."

Howard stays on the phone with her while she weeps. He remembers how he'd thought her cruel for poking fun at Fuchs' shyness. Fuchs had been so awkward, and Howard had felt superior in some way— then, in the natural course of things, benevolent. All along, had Fuchs thought them shallow, misguided? Why ought you to have a headache, Fuchs had asked. (Yes, it's time to play the conversations back, to scrutinize each inch of mental tape, searching for missed clues, nursing the betrayal.) But then he'd said, You have a heart, I think. Was the latter thing as untrue as the rest of his persona? This is the problem with espionage; it isn't just an action. It's a world you enter into where the laws of nature change. You have to redo all your calculations. You have to start back at the top. It's exhausting.

He ends up going to Long Island that day. He works in the lab till after sundown— Carter's been after him for a sort of long-distance xerography, so that documents can be sent over the radio wires. One issue, of course: can they make it secure. But that issue's secondary to the question of: can he do it at all, can he figure out the problem of the digital compression. It's one of the times when he gets really angry, frustrated enough to kick a lab stool over. He was born at the wrong time, is the problem that haunts him; they haven't yet built the machinery that's able to do what he needs the machinery to be able to do. It's a problem of substance, and not of ideas; not one of spirit, but one of flesh. But what can you do? You can't change the particular body you live in.

In the end he gives up, and goes down to the house to talk to Jarvis. Mrs. Jarvis is knitting in an armchair, with the radio on— some woman trilling about an accordionist in French. S.H.I.E.L.D. will have little need for Mrs. Jarvis, with the Lehigh base set up. There certainly won't be a reception area where she can stare strangers down while she knits. Howard wants to keep her on, but she's resisted becoming an agent; she doesn't like guns, they chip the polish on her nails, she says. Dugan has opined that she'd be equally deadly with knitting needles, but it seems like a worrying precedent to set; and anyway, they've got oversight now, from an office in the government, and the government would never stand for such a thing.

"Mr. Stark," Jarvis begins forbiddingly, coming out of the kitchen, where he's probably been repainting the silver or something like that. "I received a phone call from a Russian today, asking after your whereabouts. And allow me to remind you once again that I am not your butler or anyone's butler but the curator of this house, and a licensed antiquarian."

"Okay," Howard says vaguely. "Sounds good."

Mrs. Jarvis calls, "Was that Anton Igorevich? Howard, I give him your number."

Jarvis looks bemused. "Who is Anton Igorevich? Ought I to be feeling threatened?"

"Don't be silly, Edwin. He's like a little boy, and he's so far away from home."

"Vanko," Howard explains, feeling harassed. "The... Soviet."

As though summoned by this evil invocation, Mrs. Jarvis appears in the doorway. "Do you know, when Anton was a little child, he played the piano once with the Leningrad Philharmonic! Howard, you've got a lovely piano, you must ask him for dinner, we can all listen to him play."

It's true—Howard's got a lovely piano. Well, it's technically his. It sits in the Red Salon, and he's never played it. He thinks that someone— one of the lost uncles?— liked music. Was it his father, perhaps? Does he remember being held up to gaze into the innards, at the hammers and strings, his chubby baby hands reaching for the almost tangible vibrations, as though he could hold them, pin them in the air to look at later, like butterflies put under glass...? He doesn't like it when people raise volume of the past; he wants to keep it quiet. So he feels tense. He says tersely, "It's decorative. The piano."

"It's not," Jarvis says, voice mild. "It ought to be played. I hire a man to keep it in tune."

"Anyway, I'm not inviting him over. Why would I invite him over?"

"And you could invite Agent Carter," Mrs. Jarvis suggests, just as though Howard hadn't spoken. "We never see her now."

This is because Howard's trying to give Carter room, trying to make it clear that he doesn't mind her stepping out with Falsworth. They're a beautiful couple, despite Falsworth's lameness. He thinks they could be happy. He doesn't want to mess that up for her.

She'd asked him, after they'd talked about the—thing— the her and Falsworth thing— Why don't you find someone, Howard? Get a wife, have children? It was a fair question; lots of people had put things off, with the war, but the war was over now, and he was the right age for it. He couldn't explain that the thought evoked a kind of aversion, a fear, a kind of pulling-away. If they had been different people, if she hadn't given back the rubies, would things have been different, could they have...? Maybe. He doesn't think so, really. There would still have been this damage, like a bone inside him somewhere dislocated from its socket. An old injury, one that can't now be repaired. So.

He says, "I'm not inviting anybody over, so you can stop it right now."

"She could bring Agent Falsworth, he likes music. And he has good taste for an Englishman."

Jarvis makes a faint, offended squawking noise.

"What, I can help that you have such bad taste?"

Howard is thinking— Carter had been to the house once, but only very briefly. There was no reason for her to ever come out there; Howard was usually in Manhattan, and if he wasn't, well, he drove and she didn't. (Carter would argue she drove, but she didn't drive, she just sort of hurled cars in the directions of things.) Once he'd had her over when he was working on a submersible, something he'd back-engineered from the Hydra submarine they'd captured way back in '43. She hadn't seemed surprised to see the house. He figured she must have known about it; after all, she is a spy. "Nice little pile in the country," she'd commented dryly. Howard had said hesitantly, "It's just— it's too much." Carter must have heard something in his voice; she'd looked at him for a long time and then said, "Right, then. Show me this lab." So she hadn't really been to the house. No one has been to the house since Howard went away to college.

Mrs. Jarvis says, "Agent Jennings also has some taste, not terrible. And she makes very cold martinis. Not like an American. Very good."

"Stop inviting people to my house," Howard half-heartedly protests.

"But Howard, it will be so nice for everyone. And you want Anton to join your secret agents, yes?"

Yes, but Howard hasn't articulated this desire to anyone. In fact, he might not have known it was true until she said it aloud just now. He feels as though the past is in some sense dissolving, eroding like coastline under his feet. Maybe the British will execute Fuchs; would that stop the process? But he doesn't want that; he doesn't have the stomach for killing, which is ironic, really. So he wants something else to hold onto. And he thinks— there's something that Vanko understands, an important secret, and he would never betray it, he doesn't have the ability. That's all we can hope for in these times, someone who won't betray our secrets.

"Fine," he says. "Fine. You want to have a party, have a party. I can see the whole thing's out of my hands. Why should I get a say in it; I own the damn place."

"Don't be so grumpy, Howard, it wrinkles your face," Mrs. Jarvis says with deceptive sweetness.

In fact the dinner party doesn't end up happening till September. Other things intervene: by June, the United States is at war in Korea. Why Korea? Well: Communism. Everybody is spooked these days. We all feel like, anyways, like we're at war; this is just the outward manifestation. Why should Howard protest? It's good for business. So many toys that he built for Rogers in London have other uses these days. They belong to the military, after all. And it's hard to say no when the Army comes knocking and says, "American soldiers are dying in battle, is that what you want, is it, Mr. Stark." He's sold them the new submersible design. (It's wonderful, of course, Carter had said when she saw it, but what do you envision doing with it? I can't see it being much use at S.H.I.E.L.D. Howard had been tinkering, tightening a loose screw. We could go always go look for Atlantis, he'd suggested. Just you and me. It's got to really be something, right? Where's it supposed to be? Greece? The South Pacific? He'd imagined schools of fish like broken gems in the water, and statues of angels with pearls for their eyes; a city like the Roman Forum, which he'd once seen, all empty of people, with the white stone left, and huge sea creatures moving like clouds through the light. Imagine. Just imagine. It would really be something.)

Then, of course, there's also the base at Camp Lehigh. By July it's up and running. This means interacting with the Operation Paperclip scientists (whom Carter has taken to describing, collectively and derisively, as "the Paperclips"). This is not as troubling as Howard had prepared for. Several of them— Stirner, Zschokke, Breithaus— are eager to please and clearly repentant. Others— Wolfflin, Lustenberger— are wary, mistrustful, very much prisoners of war. Zola is— well, it's hard to say. He's wary, all right, and outwardly repentant, but sometimes when Howard turns away, he can feel Zola watching him a little too long. Or when he's standing across the room, the back of his neck will crawl, and he'll think— but then when he looks back, Zola is working. Just as though he's not aware of Howard at all.

Their conversations are not much less unsettling:

"I imagine your comrades are not so pleased by my presence, Doctor Stark," Zola says.

"I don't have comrades. I'm not a Soviet," Howard tells him.

"But you do have one working for you, yes? Yes. How very open-minded of you. Germans, Russians— a regular U.N. of science, here at S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Well, we try our best." Howard is trying his best to get out of this conversation. He has the sense that Zola wants something from him. No. That Zola's trying to pry something out.

"I approve! These are petty questions, of creeds and nations. After all, science is unmarked by ideology. Perhaps had you been born in Germany, Mr. Stark, you would be in my position. Don't you think? Or perhaps not. So many of our prominent scientists lost their positions... were stripped of their assets..."

Howard says shortly, "I don't know what you're implying."

Zola hmms noncommittally. "Merely reflecting on the strange hand of fate in our lives. Tell me, Doctor Stark, are you a family man?"

Howard says, "I don't believe in fate."

It's true that the Commandos aren't sold on Zola's presence, or that of the rest of the Paperclips. Carter had said something to them to bring them in line— possibly that Zola's being punished, possibly that working for Howard is his punishment— so they keep a minimally resentful face, and they come to the official opening of the bunker, but the general attitude is: We don't have to like it. Still, it doesn't really matter. Phillips has started recruiting and training agents, and S.H.I.E.L.D. is growing startlingly fast. There are fifty people at the opening of the bunker. Howard doesn't know all of them. They applaud Carter's speech in the politest fashion. They wear uniforms. Howard trails back up to the sunlight, feeling empty. The whole thing has moved somewhat out of his hands. He's not sure how that happened, when that happened. Maybe he's just had so much else on his plate. Fuchs is in prison in England; they didn't kill him. Teller wrote to Howard saying, Stark, I trust you. You I trust; you're a great man of this country. He wants Howard to work on his Superbomb. Howard doesn't reply.

He goes to see Vanko. "I didn't know you played music," he says.

"Mm. Famous Soviet musical prodigy. When I was a child." By this time, the apartment has become Vanko's apartment. He's painted it lemon yellow. Howard brings him books, and Rosa Marie Jennings brings him gramophone records, and Mrs. Jarvis knitted him an enormous, horrible, asymmetrical throw rug. Tentatively, Vanko seems to flourish. "I am most musical child of the Soviet Union. But you know, a child, he has no real emotions. He hasn't trained his body to feel a thing. He has no memories, so how can he play the music?"

"I don't think that's true."

"I'm supposing people say to you, You were never a child, though. I'm so much familiar with this."

"A lot of the time they say I'm still a child. Mostly because I like to cause explosions."

"It's the same thing, don't you think so? Still, never. They don't know how the child like you should look. But the child of the goose does not resemble the child of the falcon."

Howard frowns, not sure whether to be offended. "Am I the goose in this example, or the falcon?

"I don't know." Vanko grins at him. "Maybe you're not a thing that flies at all, hmm? Maybe you're a thing that goes by land, or a thing that flops about in the sea." He demonstrates, making a strange jerky swimming motion that's rendered comic by his too-long arms and legs. "What do you think? Maybe it's the rest of them that are the fliers."

Howard says, "I don't know. I guess don't know what I am."

So then in late September: all of the gardens planted for winter, linen tablecloth laid out, china lifted from its crates, the whole of the mausoleum house made lamp-lit. Howard lets Jarvis choose his clothing— "You really are more like my butler every day, you know," which earned him the iciest of glares— and winds up looking, he thinks, like someone from an older century. He doesn't recognize himself in the frame of the mirror.

"You look like your grandfather," Jarvis tells him. "I've seen photographs."

"I didn't know him."

"He came from Vienna to New York when he was very young. He wanted to make his fortune. He was a highly cultured man, highly respected."

"I know. Had very good taste in statues, right?"

"Among other things."

Howard wonders: Was he someone I want to look like? He'd never thought of growing up to be like anybody in particular. As a child, he hadn't known anybody like him, which perhaps lends credence to Vanko's theory. But if you're a sea creature raised in the air, how do you know what you'll turn out looking like? How do you learn to breathe, or to swim? It seems very complicated. Maybe better just to be yourself, the only one of your kind. To accept this.

Jarvis straightens the seams of Howard's jacket. Howard flashes him an amused look— butlering again. Jarvis sighs a long-suffering sigh.

"Is it my fault," he says, "that you are incapable of resembling a gentleman? It is not."

"Hey, I'm grateful. I'd be lost without you."

Jarvis rolls his eyes. "Oh, don't belabor it."

The party is a success, despite Howard's misgivings. He doesn't have to talk very much, which he prefers. Vanko talks enough for three people, in his loud and heavily accented English, and it transpires that he and Jarvis share an enthusiasm for a dead Italian architect, some of whose buildings Jones had seen in Italy. This is of no interest to Howard, but they seem to enjoy the discussion. Carter rolls her eyes when Falsworth is roused to defend England's honor, specifically as made manifest in the work of Inigo Jones, but, she explains to Howard, "I'm used to it. He's an incurable patriot. He'll end up one of those old men who cry whenever they hear Jerusalem."

"And what's wrong with that," Falsworth demands, indignant.

"Oh, Lord, you already do, don't you? I might as well give up."

"I confess to nothing. But one might argue, a hypothetical 'one,' that it is a very inspiring little anthem. We haven't built the city yet, you see. Someone came along and told us it was going to be here; they laid the foundations, and then they said, Right, you lot, it's up to you now. It makes me think... when I was in Paris, after the Liberation, I saw Notre Dame de Paris. It took almost two hundred years to be finished, did you know that? Men spent their whole lives laying stones for it, and died, and their sons became stonemasons, and their sons after them. Sometimes I suppose... that gives me hope."

As Falsworth is speaking, Howard watches Carter watch him. The slow build of light, like a very pale flush on her face. She's reached out and woven her fingers into Falsworth's. Howard thinks, She loves him. He's never before seen someone love in this way, or be loved. Rogers had died so soon, and other people didn't quite have the same capacity. They had smaller loves, gentler loves. Jarvis and Mrs. Jarvis were so much more private. Bob and Charlotte, needling one another wryly over coffee, cracking groan-worthy jokes about atomic physics, had never seemed in danger of bursting into flames, because they were not made of combustible stuff. Not like Carter.

After dinner, Mrs. Jarvis intimidates them all into the parlor. Howard should have just told Phillips to appoint her head of S.H.I.E.L.D.; the organization's efficiency would have improved by two hundred percent. He himself slips out of the room to go smoke on the terrace; he's not very surprised when Carter follows him.

"Jarvis has decreed that I am not allowed to smoke inside the house," he tells her as he lights his cigarette. "Or at the very least, not in rooms containing paintings."

"And it's Jarvis' house; you're just living in it." She leans forward to light her own cigarette from the flame. In the evening dark, her dress looks black, though in fact it's a very, very dark blue, and slightly out of fashion, which somehow makes it more lovely.

"I'm not living in it," Howard says. "I don't want to."

"I know. You don't need to explain yourself. Not to me."

He wants to, he wants to, he just doesn't have the words. "It belonged to my parents. They weren't... I guess they weren't very happy people."

"And you think that means you can never be happy in it?" Her eyes too perspicacious, as always.

"I don't know. Maybe? It's hard not to get superstitious." Fataler. Is that an adjective, or a noun? He has to push the thought of Fuchs out of his head. "Do you have family in England? You never go home."

"My father remarried after the war. So I've got a younger brother, but the two of us have never met. I suppose I will go back someday, but it doesn't feel like home. Just countryside with memories." She sighs, and brushes ash into the night air. "Do you remember that dreadful hotel in Washington, the one you used to drag me to for weeks at a time? Absolutely chokka with Continental pretensions, and colonized by oil tycoon twits?"

"Indeed I do. I still miss their martinis."

"—Just wait until you've tasted one of Rosa Marie's. The thing is, though, sometimes I'm nostalgic for that hotel. It was my home, and I loved it, even though it was awful."

"It wasn't that awful."

"You were drunk the entire time we were there."

"So?"

"I'm calling your judgment into question. You used to not even get dressed. You'd just drink by the pool and make 'phone calls all day."

"You've described my ideal working situation."

"I can't believe I agreed to run an organization with you."

"Well," Howard says, "I think we're doing okay."

Carter smiles, a real smile, full and happy. "For now," she allows.

They stand there for a moment, not saying anything in particular, just two people who are not careening headlong towards disaster, who can stand in the ambivalent warmth of the early autumn air, watching the white moon rise over the trees, smoking their cigarettes together. Then Falsworth's calling them inside, back to the parlor, where Vanko has apparently been bullied into taking a seat at the piano.

"But I don't play in almost a year at least!" he's protesting. "My hands, they're clumsy hands, I should have better left them in Finland!"

"Oh, don't be silly," Carter says, taking a seat beside Falsworth. "Like any of us can criticize. You must play!"

Howard says nothing. He's caught between the past and the present, as he watches Vanko touch his fingers to the keys. Vanko does have a pianist's hands, with long square-tipped fingers. They seem drawn to the keyboard magnetically. Vanko sounds out a few chords, tilting his head, checking the tuning. "This is a very good piano," he says, absently. "You shouldn't let me touch this piano!"

Jarvis says quietly, "It hasn't been properly played since the Twenties."

Howard glances quickly over at him, to see if— what? But by then, Vanko has begun to play.

Howard has perfect pitch, but very little musical knowledge. So he can pick out some of the individual notes that Vanko is playing— the C-sharp, D, C-sharp, E, E with which he begins— but he doesn't know the name of the piece or the composer. He only knows that it seems fragile, and indefinably sad; that every note is absolutely weightless in the air, as though it had always existed in some other form already, and Vanko has merely called it into being. It's hard to imagine that his playing is not perfect. It seems hardly to even exist. Crouched over the piano, Vanko's body takes on a logic that it otherwise, in the everyday world, seems to lack— ungainly limbs now graceful in motion, absurdly agile face at rest. Like this is what he was actually made to do, and all the rest of the time he has to fight against it.

When, at some point, the piece trails to a close, a kind of sigh runs through the room. Vanko ducks his head self-consciously, already slipping back into his ridiculous grin. "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, ladies and gentlemen! One more prodigious child. He's very good for the showing off, because he liked it so much himself, but my God, I think I make so many mistakes..."

Later, when they've both drunk too many of Rosa Marie's excellent martinis, and they're sprawled on the terrace with the doors thrown open, music drifting out from the gramophone within, he says, "Many times, when I'm in the snow, walking towards Finland, I thought of this sonata. It's very simple to remember, because: theme and variations. I was thinking: okay, we pretend I have before me a keyboard, so how am I playing? And I move my hands in the air, like this. Thus you can think you're playing the most perfect music, because it's only in your head."

"You should play this piano," Howard says vaguely. "No one else plays it."

"No?" Vanko's chin is propped on his hand. His mud-colored hair is sticking up like straw. He blinks sleepily. "But I'm afraid to play music, because I can't carry a piano on my back. Bad idea, to love a thing you can't carry. I know. They come for you in the night, then what are you going to do? Hmm?" He pokes Howard in the shoulder, to emphasize his point.

Through the doors, Howard can see Jones and Rosa Marie dancing slowly in a corner of the Red Salon. Rosa Marie's eyes are closed where she lays her head against Jones' shoulder. His hand just barely touches the curve of her lower back. Carter and Falsworth are curled up on the sofa. Carter's autumn-colored hair has come unpinned, and it straggles about the edges of her face. Falsworth keeps brushing it back for her, with a look of fond amusement. All of this, happening in Howard's house. In the mausoleum! Beneath the milky eye of the stone Rodin! A moment of panic: fear lurches through him, a sourceless and visceral remembrance of suffering. Maybe he is, as Carter said, superstitious.

Then Vanko gives an absurd yawn and stretches, arching his back like a contented cat. "Howard," he says, "I like your house so much, it's like a palace. I'm not a very good Communist."

The apprehension melts. Howard has to laugh. "That's okay, pal. Probably for the best, all things considered."

"Best, best for who? You," Vanko says crossly, frowning at Howard, "are a corrupting influence. With your lemons, and your imperialism, and your Bösendorfer piano, and, and—"

"Cigarette?" Howard offers, producing his cigarette case.

Resentfully, Vanko accepts a cigarette. "But I won't accept your imperialist lifestyle!" he tells Howard, gesturing with the cigarette unsteadily.

This is too bad, because Howard thinks that he might want Vanko to accept his imperialist lifestyle. Mrs. Jarvis was right; Howard wants to make him an agent. Howard wants to keep him. It's hard not to like Vanko; he's so hapless, like a child, a dangerous child. Howard thinks possibly he was ruined by his precocity. This is a familiar theme, albeit in a slightly new formulation. The prodigious child, the lion-headed fish. Does Howard see himself in Vanko? Of course, a little— enough to think that, glued together, the two of them might add up to one whole human being. But Howard has never found himself very lovable, and this is one of Vanko's notable characteristics. How did Vanko acquire it, this capacity to be loved? Is it something he does, a skill or art, like playing music? And if so, could one learn to accomplish this art? Howard wants to ask, but he doesn't want to betray this basic defect; he doesn't want to appear ignorant. Maybe in time it will come to him automatically, like learning to speak eventually did. If he surrounds himself with people who are loved, something will fire in his neurons and synapses. His body will start to perform the motions: very naturally, just like a natural human. He'll realize that this was what his body was made for. He'll be astonished by how easy it is.

An epilogue to the year: one of the Bletchley mathematicians publishes a paper. Howard thinks he vaguely remembers talking about electronic valves with the man, though honestly all of the Bletchley mathematicians had seemed equally strange and English. The paper is entitled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence." It begins: I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?"

The question is one that appeals to Howard. He spends a long time considering it. He sends it to Breithaus at Lehigh with a question: See ENIAC targeting posible future de encription process?

Chapter Text

1951

1951's noteworthy trial is that of the Rosenbergs, two nice middle-class American Communists who, on April 5, are sentenced to execution. Why? They were part of Klaus-called-Karl Fuchs' Soviet spy ring. They will languish in prison a little while longer, and at least their conviction takes the pressure off of Edward Teller, who had fallen under investigation of late. Teller? Yes! Unbelievable! Teller! They thought he was working for the Soviets, like Fuchs! They thought he gave the Russians the bomb! Howard laughs himself sick on the phone when he hears. Bob Serber, at the other end of the line, is not so amused.

"They honestly believed he might be a Communist," Bob says.

No one is more ardently anti-Communist than Teller; for God's sake, the man's from Hungary. His insane devotion to bombing the Russians has become his primary modern hallmark. But that's the problem with these witch-hunts: you can't just look for the obvious suspects, so you turn to the least-obvious. Howard assumes they will get back to the obvious ones at some point, having worked their way through to the third step of the logic, and so it will continue, on and on, in a sort of infinite loop. For the time being, he'll continue to be amused by imagining Teller's incandescent outrage at this, the least acceptable of accusations.

"Honestly," Howard says, "I honestly don't think they honestly believe anything anymore. They've got to just be doing this for kicks."

"Well, it won't be so funny, will it, Howard, when they start killing people!"

True, and yet: Howard can't imagine it. Maybe because so many people are already dead. Not least of all in Korea, where it is U.S. Army policy to shoot civilian refugees whom they suspect might be Communist infiltrators. What does it mean, anymore, to be a civilian? An ideology is a weapon of warfare, so when you think about it, really, there's no such thing. And the Communists are torturing American POWs. You're as good as dead if captured, probably better dead, there are no rules in this war, so can you blame the soldiers? Howard can't; he thinks about Jones and Falsworth, Dugan and Morita, everyone he's known who's been a prisoner of war. It's not hard for him to do the Defense Department a favor, send them new prototypes, but it never seems to do any good. All he ever sees are casualty reports.

And in the first weeks of March, Teller had teamed up with Stan Ulam, a talented Polish emigre, to produce a report on a scheme for how the Super might work. On Heterocatalytic Detonations I: Hydrodynamic Lenses and Radiation Mirrors. The ideas are Ulam's; the blueprint is Teller's. Howard had flipped through it and quickly put it away. He could see a way to make it better, and he wanted to keep that at a distance. Still: they're going to build the thing; of course they are. Every time he thinks about it, he hears Vanko's voice: So what do we do, hmm, what do we do about this.

Meanwhile Fuchs, at least, has been officially spared execution. He'll serve twelve years in prison, maybe less. Howard thinks about writing him a letter— Dear Karl, Why did you tell me what you told me? Did your father survive? Is he proud of you now? Are your children going to be proud? Please explain to me. But he knows the government would read it, and he's starting to feel— communicated by Bob's panic— a very slight sense of unease.

In May, two British diplomats defect to Moscow from the embassy in Washington: Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. They have apparently been operating as spies for a decade. Howard knows Donald Maclean, or at least has met him; he sits on the Anglo-American Combined Policy Committee for Atomic Energy. So, you see: you want to dismiss this nonsense, but you can't ever actually do it. Because there are Soviet agents, and there are Soviets building bombs, there are Soviet Tellers; up in Siberia, in a place called Krasnoyarsk, there is Department X— Howard's seen the aerial reconnaissance photos, of factories that look too similar to Hydra's; he's heard (from Vanko, wearing no expression) about trucks carting loads of bodies away, and convicts whose limbs were replaced with machines. It just all seems so distant from these petty affairs— going after Teller, or saying Oppenheimer was a threat to the nation because he'd once insulted you at a dinner party.

Someone has to do the real work, mind the real threats. And Phillips is starting to talk about retiring.

Howard spends a lot of time thinking about X-ray laser defenses. Then he starts thinking about targeted drone attacks. What if you could go on the offensive, but not kill civilians? What if you could sent a weapon in that would just take out the intended targets, eliminate the problems?

"But they're not problems," Vanko says. "They're people."

Howard spends a lot of time talking to Vanko about this, because he thinks Carter doesn't appreciate the scale of what's at stake. He doesn't want her to appreciate it. He pictures her hearing about Teller's blackboard of weapons, his orders-of-magnitude list, and Backyard, which would wipe out the population of the Earth, and saying, Howard, did you work with this person? He can keep her hands clean, or at least a little cleaner; he can make sure she only knows about some things, so that she doesn't have to say matter-of-factly, as she did in London, It's a difficult smell to get rid of, as it turns out.

"Well, what do you want me to do," he says exasperatedly to Vanko, "actually get inside their heads? I mean, we could think about some kind of deprogramming machine— I don't know how you'd do that; I don't know what an ideology looks like inside the brain, but maybe we could map it, and then... Would electricity do the job? Kind of like shock therapy? Electrodes, some kind of machine?"

Vanko looks away. "Howard, I can't speak with you about this now."

"Why not?" They're in Vanko's apartment, with the lemon-yellow walls, and the windows open, the noise of Manhattan coming in. It's too hot, and they'd been brainstorming loosely, draped over the furniture, drinking mint juleps.

"Because— because if we speak about this, I'm going to hit you, and this is not why I come to America."

Vanko is supposed to be the one who appreciates the scale. Howard feels irrationally offended. "You're the one who wanted me to fix them, not kill them!"

"I didn't say don't kill, and I didn't say fix!"

"Well, what the hell am I supposed to do, then? They've got my bomb— our bomb, a big team effort by both of us, thanks so much, and with the state this fucking country is in, they've probably got the one Teller's testing now, too! They could drop it on us any time they wanted, so tell me, I mean, I'd be delighted if you just could tell me what the hell it is I'm supposed to do!" He kicks the sofa in frustration. In a stunning allegory of futility, it moves perhaps a half an inch.

"You're not thinking good. You should go talk to Peggy. Or Gabe."

"Jones is busy; he's getting married in a month."

"So," Vanko says, drawing the o out, quirking his eyebrows up in his ridiculous face, "he maybe wants to stay alive for a month in this world, yes? So he has good reason to stop you making bad decision. So you maybe go to him."

"Fine," Howard says, short-tempered. "I can tell that I'm not wanted. I'll go."

"So go then." Without shifting from the couch, Vanko makes a uniquely Russian shooing gesture.

"I'm going."

"Good; you're acting like a child."

"Well, you would know all about that!" Howard glares at him as he collects his shoes and suit coat.

"At least if I'm a child, I am most musical child of the Soviet Union!" Vanko retorts.

Howard slams out of the apartment. He kicks the door for good measure, when he's in the hallway. He can kick it if we wants to, it's his door. Most things in his life belong to him. It's only people that are ever problems, only people that offer this resistance.

He finds both Carter and Jones at the old 5th Avenue office. They keep meaning to get rid of the building, but no one feels comfortable working at Lehigh with Zola. Well, none of the old crew, at any rate; the newer agents, they don't mind so much. The younger ones weren't even in the war. Nazis are cartoon villains to them, hard to connect to these mild little men in lab coats.

Jones looks up from paperwork when he hears Howard coming. He asks mildly, "Lovers' quarrel?"

Howard glares at him.

Carter says, without lifting her eyes, "I haven't time for you right now if you're sulking. Try coming back about a quarter to six."

"I'm not sulking." He throws himself into a chair and stares up at the ceiling. He taps his fingers against one leg. "If you could make people good," he says, "wouldn't you do it?"

Carter and Jones exchange a look. Carter puts down her ink pen and rubs one temple.

"I'm just saying," Howard says. "If you could reach inside their brains and sort of make them be good. Fix them. Isn't that better than killing them all?"

"Were we planning to kill them all?" Jones asks. "Did I miss a meeting?"

Carter says, "I'm guessing that Anton threw you out, which is why we are hearing this thrilling idea."

"No," Howard lies uncomfortably.

"Because it certainly sounds like something that Anton would throw you out for."

" ... I left," Howard's willing to admit. "He wasn't happy. It's just an idea; targeted drones are more practical, but he didn't like that idea either."

Jones says, in a neutral voice, "For some reason, I was under the impression that S.H.I.E.L.D. was a defensive organization. Howard? Was I mistaken?"

"It's not good enough to just wait and let threats come to us; that doesn't solve the problem!"

"The problem of evil, you mean," Jones says in the same flat tone. "Because no one in the history of the world has ever tackled that one."

Carter sighs. "Gabe, you're absolved of this discussion, I think. You have more important things to do."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Howard demands, but he lets Jones clatter out in judgmental silence.

Carter waits until he's gone before she says, "Now is not the time to have philosophical qualms."

"I'm not having qualms! Jesus Christ, I'm the one who set the damn remit! You think I want to kill people? I don't want to kill people!"

"No," Carter says, "I know. I think that's what the problem is. You really, really don't want to kill people, and you thought you wouldn't have to do it."

He stares at her, open-mouthed, derailed from his response.

Carter isn't looking at him; she's looking over his shoulder, looking nowhere, lost in thought or memory. "I once told Steve," she says slowly, "... this was after Barnes had died. I told him, you can't blame yourself. That to do so would deny Barnes the dignity of choosing his death. Later, he..." She falls silent. "I still believe that, I think; one of the things that makes us human is the capacity to choose what we'd rather die than do. Who we'd rather die than become. You can't choose that for another person. You don't have to agree with them or not. You only have to respect their right to that decision. Killing them might be the only way to do that. Killing a person is sometimes the only really human act. That's something soldiers know."

"But I'm not a soldier."

"You are now. Or effectively. I'm afraid you don't have that excuse."

Howard feels punctured, deflated. His shoulders slump. "That doesn't make me not a murderer," he says in a low voice.

She doesn't flinch. "I don't know if it does or it doesn't. If you are then I am, I would think. It all just comes down to a question of scale."

He knows that she knows exactly what she's doing. To call her a murderer would be beyond his limit. It is a thing he would never, ever do. This is a dirty trick, and she hasn't played it before. He has to admire the audacity of it.

"Talk to Anton," she says. "Or perhaps I should say: listen. He would have rather died than stay in Russia, wouldn't he?"

"I don't know." He feels so, so tired. "I guess. I'm sorry, I just—"

"You're panicking about the Soviets."

"Among other things."

She crosses the room to him, which is faintly unexpected. He looks up; she touches his shoulder.

"It's going to be all right," she says. "We'll make it through this. You'll see. Chin up. You have to dance at my wedding."

Howard stares. "Are you— Did he—?"

"Shh. We haven't told anyone yet. We didn't want to step on Gabe and Rosa Marie's toes." She's suppressing a smile, but her face is beaming. How does it do that, her face? He doesn't understand the physical process, how a person can look so happy.

He stands up suddenly and crushes her to him, wrapping his arms around her, breathing her in. "Congratulations," he says into her hair. "Congratulations, Peggy." He has such a visceral memory of this, of every time he's held her: her light sturdy bones and living flesh, the feel of her heartbeat throughout her body, a whole precious object that isn't for possessing. Something that will never, never be his. He has always loved that about her, he thinks.

He invites Vanko over to the house for the weekend: ostensibly to play the piano, actually to work in the lab. Incidentally, to apologize. "I was wrong," he says. "I just don't know what to do. I want to protect people, but it's so complicated all the time. I feel like a machine that hasn't been given orders. If someone would just tell me the right thing to do, I'd do it."

Vanko sits at the piano, his hands folded loosely in his lap. He's oddly silent. He thinks for a long time. "Sometimes," he says, "I'm feeling like a, a, a macro-scope. Like— this is the opposite of the microscope, yes? So, like a machine, which has a multitude of lenses. Yes. But for seeing things from farther away. When I'm in Russia, sometimes I think, I don't understand why they ask me to do this, I have a sense of, how do you say, moral disputation. I think— I have to get farther out to understand. Look from farther out to see the picture. Seeing the way things fit." He makes a gesture, as though he's trying to connect pieces to one another, or draw a line between two objects. "But I couldn't do it. So I get farther out. Okay, okay, I'm seeing more connections, I see more the cause and effect, but it's so much, so much, like— so much noise. Nothing makes sense. I'm so high above the earth, so far away, like I'm in the cosmos maybe, where it's very cold, colder even than the Arctic Circle. Not where human beings are supposed to live."

He's tucked his knees up on the piano bench. Howard doesn't think he realizes he's done it. He look, even more than usual, like a little kid: lost in his adult-sized body.

Howard says, "Carter used to say I got like an owl in a tree. She said it was like I went outside things."

"Trying to make sense."

"Yeah. Trying to sort of trace the pattern. It works for machines. Not so much for people. They're too..." He lifts his hand limply in the air, inadequate to the task of expressing people.

Vanko says, "Yes." He props his chin on the top of his knees. "There's so much life in them, you know? With a machine, the pieces stay as you put them— stay the size you put them. People, people have too much life; always they keep growing."

Like Carter, Howard thinks: moving on into her new life. Always excessive, out of his reach. "What do you think I should do, then?"

"Don't try to figure out a bigger pattern. Just let it go."

"I don't know if I can do that."

"Learn," Vanko says simply. Then, apparently unable to resist: "What, you think I'm born with all this wisdom?"

"Oh, geez, give me a break. Okay, Ivan the Terrible, enlighten me."

Laughing, Vanko unfolds himself from the piano bench. "Well, I have an idea, a new idea, it has nothing to do with X-ray lasers, so I don't know if you'll approve. It's just a thing, a thing I'm thinking about. Early days, early days. Let me see how to explain..."

Vanko's idea is this: The A-bomb operates on fission. Yes, fishing, our old friend. The new bomb that Teller is trying to build also uses fusion— the opposite of this process: if you can break one atom, then you can also force two together. In both cases, energy results from the collision. This energy is what turns into the bomb. So Vanko thinks: what if you could make it into a cycle? An infinite back-and-forth arc of fission and fusion, atoms breaking apart and being rejoined, a steady flow of energy?

Later he says, "I get this idea, you know, from reading your paper on the square. The square, this blue square you took from Hydra?"

"That was classified!" Howard says, indignant.

"Oh, please." Vanko waves his hand, dismissive. "This is naturally occurring, I think, in this element of square, only we can't see. So thus why when you break a part, boom! Explosion."

"That actually makes sense."

"I know, yes!"

"And you think— palladium? Is that what the palladium's about?"

"Well, I don't know yet. A problem still to be solved."

"We'd need," Howard says, thinking, "I mean, we can use the particle accelerator at the Stark Industries lab, and I can get us palladium, or even plutonium, if we need it, just to do some experiments— And we've got the staff down at Lehigh. I've got them building a supercomputer for calculations. If it's done next year, we might be able to use that. It's going to be better than the one the government's got."

"A supercomputer?"

"Yeah, it's— you'll see, it's going to be the next big thing. I thought we could use it to break encryption at S.H.I.E.L.D. And," he adds as an afterthought, "to play around with, try to start some programs running. Thought I'd put the Paperclips on it. Nothing real-world, just some wild hypotheticals, you know— machine intelligence."

Jones and Jennings marry in Washington in late September. It's a big ceremony at a Baptist church, with both their extensive families present. Jennings wears a white dress with a train that takes up half the aisle, and a coronet of seed pearls on her coiffured hair. Some kind of complex intra-agency negotiation has resulted in most of the Commandos acting as flower girls, tossing pink rose petals out of little silver baskets. Mrs. Jarvis is Jennings' maid of honor, and Falsworth serves as Jones' best man. Howard wonders what the families must make of the whole thing. He's personally delighted to see Dugan solemnly execute his floral responsibility and, later, kneel down so a little colored girl can tug with glee on his mustache.

There are lots of politics at the reception afterwards. Jones is outside of the military hierarchy, and as such hasn't moved up in the official ranks, but increasingly he holds quite a lot of power behind the scenes, in spite of the handicap of his race. He's effectively become Carter's second-in-command at S.H.I.E.L.D., since Howard's role is hard to define and less operational in nature. Some of Washington's less public figures put in an appearance— Howard thinks he sees James Jesus Angleton there (snooping around, no doubt, on Company business). And Phillips, of course, and news journalists with flashbulbs, who want to write about Captain America's friend's dashing romance. At least it gives Rosa Marie a chance to dazzle the cameras. She seems to enjoy it. She might as well; there's little enough glamor in the S.H.I.E.L.D. life— and, like Carter, she plans to keep working.

The band plays French chansons, and everyone dances. After Howard's had about a bottle of champagne, it starts to feel like the war years. Well— they're at war now, he supposes, but for him, for the entirety of his life, there will be one set of war years. He leans against a table, and watches Jennings— no, Rosa Marie Jones, now— spin in her gorgeous, impractical dress, and Jones showing off the moves that Howard's fairly sure Dernier taught him, such a long time ago in London or Italy.

Everything feels so soft-edged, so sated and golden, that he's caught off guard when Falsworth buttonholes him. (No dancing for Falsworth, of course, which is a pity for Carter, though she's never been much of one for dancing.) One minute Howard's listing vaguely to one side, thinking about acquiring more champagne, and the next Falsworth's limping up beside him.

"Stark," Falsworth greets him.

Howard says equably, "Falsworth."

"You're looking lightly toasted."

"I am..." Howard considers. "Deeply toasted. Profoundly toasted. I am toasted to a crisp."

On the dance floor, Dugan and Morita seem to be demonstrating some sort of elaborate twist, to the general amusement of a gaggle of Jones' lady cousins. Jones and Mrs. Jones have collapsed into chairs, looking flushed and worn out and happy. Over at a table, Carter is talking to Colonel Phillips, who is applying military precision and seriousness to a large hunk of wedding cake. It's... good, it's really good; Howard thinks, This is what I wanted. When I said protection, this is what I meant.

Falsworth says, "I... Peggy told me she spoke with you."

"Have you set a date yet?"

"It won't be a big ceremony; she doesn't want the press. We thought some time in April, maybe."

"Bad weather."

"That doesn't matter so much." Falsworth looks at Howard carefully. He's gotten more careful in general, and gentler somehow. Howard remembers when he was always charging off on the attack. It can't be Carter's influence, God knows, though maybe she engenders it in those around her. "Listen, can I ask you—"

"I'd probably prefer you didn't."

"But is it really— I mean, things won't be strange between us?"

"Why would things be strange?" Howard isn't looking at him. "Carter's my friend. We've been friends for a long time. I want her to be happy."

"Ah. All right, then." Falsworth doesn't seem satisfied. He leans against the wall, rubbing his jaw in thought. Then he says abruptly, "Look, I love her. I never— I never expected it to be possible, especially after the war, that I could love someone so much, and— I mean, so much. And I know that I can't— that I'll never be him, and— I must seem a pretty poor substitute, all things considered—"

"Jesus, stop," Howard says, appalled. "No one wants you to be Rogers."

"I know that people look at me and think it. He was a great man, and I'm—" He gestures at himself: at his cane, his stiff, slightly crooked legs. A wry smile, painful, crooks the corner of his mouth. "Well, I am what I am."

"I think..." Howard pauses. "People change, you know. Carter isn't who she was then. None of us are. We keep getting older. Her and Rogers, sure, it was something special, and maybe if he'd lived... But he would've changed with her, then, and he didn't. He couldn't. He's dead. But you did. You grew into someone she loves; she loves you. That's all that matters." He stops, feeling abashed. "You... have my blessing, I guess. If it makes a difference."

"It does." Falsworth swallows. "Because I know that you— well." He doesn't finish the sentence.

"Yes," Howard says. "Yeah, I— yes."

They stand and watch the last dances, then the flurry that ensues as Jones and Rosa Marie try to exit. Howard's packing them off to France as a wedding present; they can visit Dernier, drink wine, practice their French, and— if Howard knows Jones, or, for that matter, his wife— utterly fail to keep their noses out of S.H.I.E.L.D. business. Howard pities Falsworth, trying to take Carter on honeymoon. Even now, she's still talking Phillips' ear off, probably hatching plots to invade Latveria or something. Yes, she's got that determined look in her eye. Howard has to laugh.

Falsworth says, "We've done all right, though. Getting older."

Dugan and Morita waltz past, each with an ecstatically shrieking child on his shoulders, the children pitching gilt and silver paper confetti at each other from both tiny fists.

"Well," Falsworth amends, "some of us."

Howard feels suddenly very sentimental. He snags champagne from a passing waiter, passing one glass to Falsworth. "A toast," he says. "To getting older."

"Oh, lord. In ten years, you'll take that back."

"Come on. One little toast."

"Twist my arm." Falsworth sighs. "Very well. To getting older," he says.

1952

James Montgomery Falsworth and Margaret Penelope Carter are married on April 14th, in the old 5th Avenue S.H.I.E.L.D. office. ("Well, it's secure," Carter had said reasonably, "so we know that no one's going to hijack the wedding. That goes for the press, too; I refuse to have my marriage turned into a story about Captain America for the tabloid papers.") Both of them wear their S.H.I.E.L.D. uniforms— no white dress for Carter, though she does break out the reddest of her red lipsticks— and the whole thing's officiated by a military chaplain. No one from either family's present, but Colonel Phillips beams like a proud father and even cries a little, surreptitiously; Howard also, to his astonishment, sees that Jones is rather damp-eyed. Then there are drinks afterwards at the Herc, which Dugan and Morita have done up in their own fashion (that is to say, more sweetly than Howard had expected) with cheap white candles and flowers and lace; there is even— Howard fulfilling his promise to Carter, waltzing with Mrs. Jarvis— a fair amount of dancing. Everyone spills out into a warm, damp Upper West Side morning at a little after three AM, still laughing and whistling and arguing amongst themselves; Vanko mounting a passionate and incoherent defense of the city of Murmansk.

Carter and Falsworth spend the night in the city before heading to Europe the next day, in Howard's wedding present: the old Twin Beechcraft.

"You should have it," he'd told Falsworth. "I don't fly much anymore, and I know you miss it. It's not a bad little plane; I've made some modifications here and there."

Falsworth had given him a knowing and slightly disapproving look. "At least tell me it doesn't shoot flames or, I don't know, fly straight through mountains."

"No, although both of those would be exciting improvements, and I can't imagine why you'd complain."

So Carter and Falsworth fly off: off into their future. Howard stands on the runway, watching.

Dear Stark,

I write from the Dernier family vineyard. Well, "vineyard" does not give quite the right impression— it is an expanse, an ocean, a nation of grapes. Jacques clearly has plans to found an empire, and is populating his home accordingly; did you know that he and Lucie have four children already? Four fat infants who toddle about the countryside, babbling incomprehensibly and perfecting that look of suspicion so particular to the French. Lucie, bless her, has her work cut out, but luckily the business does well, so they can afford a nursemaid. Jacques insists that I ship a case of wine to you, so I shall. (I know nothing about wine, but am sure you'll find it perfectly acceptable, as you seem to drink whatever's put in front of you anyhow.) The making of it suits Jacques, at any rate; he is every inch the Wise Old Man of the Country, and seeks to convert Monty to this church. I have told Monty under no circumstances will we be acquiring a Country Manor so that he can play out his repressed aristocratic fantasies. He looks at me very sorrowfully and quotes Wordsworth to give weight to his opinions, then goes off into the vineyard with Jacques and talks about dirt. You would not believe how much there is to say about dirt. I certainly can't believe it. Clearly I must get him away from Jacques post-haste.

This is chiefly to tell you to expect the wine, although I suppose it will be slow in the shipping. But also to provide you our expected addresses in Paris and London (enclosed) so that you will be able to send mail, should the need arise.

All is well, and more than well. Best wishes to everyone.

Yours,

Carter

Carter,

Good God youre keeping your name arent you— because I dont think I can identify you with out it!! & Dont think I cant see the proding in that letter, you want me to keep you updated on work, which is strictly forbiden as you well know. STRENG VERBOTEN!!! Relax and trust Jones tho he is proving a dictater in your absence his lust for power has clearly gone to his head. For example he tells me that if I want to borow S.H.I.E.L.D. employees I have to explane why, well I just say "research vital to the national expense" dont I. Says Jones "what research" so I said "mixing martinis and blowing up crokay balls for the most part" very honestly as I think you woud mandate & aprove. Not good enough for Jones tho who sighs and shakes his head. Very disapointed in me Jones is. Cant see why. May be he is fond of crokay.

Enjoy the image of you & Falsworth drunk all the time, you too have become a pair of reguler lushes I imagine. Tsk tsk.

All right a bit of work news— the Paperclips have finished work on my super computer!!! O celebratery day!!! Opened a bottle of champane in the lab & didnt give Z. any just to see his sour litle face. If all gos well with the testing Anton & I have a new project for it. The Clips can run calculations for it which will keep their Boshy noses ocupied. Youll like this project I think, well see early days early days.

As ever

HS

p.s. Remind JMF the country is full of SHEEP!!

Dear Stark,

I've no particular objection to being Agent Falsworth, but I think that two would be confusing. We never have really settled Jones & Jones, have we? I find I'm forever calling out 'Other Jones!' after getting the wrong one. And I dislike the rather smirking expressions of men when they utter the prefix "Mrs", as though they are somehow marking one's military demotion. Col. Phillips has discussed bringing in the title of 'Director' as a transition to a more formal protocol, but for now, I think I shall remain Agent Carter.

Jones has not given up on you as I have, so you must show him mercy. And please ensure that you clear all interactions with the Paperclips through him. You haven't always a tactical mind, which I trust Jones to have. I know that by and large we accept them, but obviously I would still prefer some secrets. I worry about them, in that bunker.

We are in Paris now, which is much changed since the war. I remember it being so grey. Now there are flowers on every street corner. We went to Notre Dame de Paris, and it was exactly as Monty said at your dinner party ages ago— do you remember? I think about that often, I suppose I've never forgotten it. You don't fully understand until you see the scale of the cathedral. Very strange.

You can still buy any number of war souvenirs here— also very strange. I almost bought Anton a Red Army hat, but then thought it might be in poor taste. Monty found a photo of himself, would you believe it? In a newspaper from, I don't know, 1944. All of the HCs, looking so young and so grim. The vendor insisted on giving it us for free. How strange— but then, I've already said that. We go to London next, and I suppose that will be stranger. We seem to encounter our past selves everywhere we go. Talked with Monty about it— he says it's like laying ghosts to rest. I think ghosts can be quite useful, at least they often seem to be in stories, but at the same time I can see what he means.

Hope you are well. We are well and happy.

Yours,

Carter

Carter,

You dont trust me at all do you. Im deeply ofended. Of course I tell Jones every thing if only to see his face make that expresion. Well you probably don't know that expresion because I just bet he never makes it at you. He gets a little wrinkle right between the eyes & clenches up his lips and sighs through his nose. He makes it at Anton when Antons being particulerly Anton but not nearly as much as he makes it at me.

Anton says hello by the way. Well he says 'Strasvoy' & insists I write that down. We have had great suces with the super computer so far and hope to begin testing our own calculations in the winter. Listen a man from the FBI has been buy my office wanting to talk to me, its about a friend of mine from New Mexico, Oppenheimer, I told him I dont know what something something about juresdictions and agencies. Want to put him off till youre here to sit in on the meeting. Not a worry for me but hes a good man and they want to tar him with the same old brush— commies commies commies. Make sure I dont say something stupid will you.

Oops not suposed to talk about politics etc. Strike that.

Every thing is fine around here! Dont worry!!

As ever

HS

Stark,

Would you believe that I have not one but two infant siblings? Well, half-siblings, I suppose. I have now met them and duly impressed upon them the glory of their Carter lineage. Their names are Freddie and Eliza. Monty's rather good with them. He tips them upside down and tells them stories about aeroplanes and battles. How peculiar to think that they were born after the war. They have such short memories.

You must tell me honestly if you are worried about this FBI business. I mean, I imagine you aren't, because you feel you are untouchable, but no one's untouchable, and you are mentioning it to me, which I take as an alarm bell. Never mind; we'll manage it. You might cozy up a bit more to the Joint Chiefs, just to be on the safe side. Didn't you sell them a submarine or something? Perhaps you could sell them another. That should put a smile on their collective face.

We're off to Cornwall, and then home in a short while. If you behave nicely to Jones until I return, I shall bring you a seashell or something.

Yours,

Carter

"Well, did you bring me a seashell?" Howard asks Carter first thing, as she's disembarking the Beechcraft. He's brought his car to the airfield; he's leaning against it with a swagger, like: aren't I dashing, aren't I charming, look at me, look at me.

She adjusts the brim of her hat. "You didn't behave for Jones. I said you had to."

Howard's indignant, appalled. "Who told on me? Was it Jones? Did Jones sell me down the river?"

"Well, he does work for me, after all. I expect him to be honest."

"Loose lips sink ships, Agent Carter. Haven't you heard?"

He offers her a hand to help her into the car, then goes to fetch Falsworth and the luggage. Having ensured that all her possessions— suitcases and husband— are securely stowed away, he clambers into the driver's seat and says, "All set, Milord, Milady. Back to the Colonies we go."

When he drops them off, Carter takes his hand for a moment. She slips something in it: a small ammonite, an amber fossil, smooth and perfect. She smiles and says, "There you are. More permanent than a shell."

It's all exactly the same as it was before, of course. Of course it is.

They put the FBI off till November. By then, quite a lot has happened. A nuclear fusion weapon is now a reality.

On October 31st, at 7:15 AM, in the Eniwetok Atoll of the Marshall Islands, the United States explodes a super bomb with a 10.4 megaton yield. 10.4 megatons, what does that mean? You can't imagine it. You can't do the multiplication of forces in your head. The immediate result is that the island of Elugelab vanishes. That is: it simply ceases to exist. In its place: a mile-wide crater, a two-hundred-foot hole in the ocean. For an instant: black smears in the air where birds had been.

(On November 15th, a B-36 bomber drops a second bomb, a simple fission bomb, a bigger, better version of what Howard once helped make. Its yield is 500 kilotons— hardly worth noting, these days! Technicians video the explosion. It's quite beautiful to witness.)

Howard is building a new submersible, a nuclear submarine. Does he pause and contemplate the swimming of this vessel, the charts that its navigators will make? Does he think back through the years— not so very many years, Howard!— to the University of California, Berkeley; to the wooden maps that he couldn't understand, the charts of the Marshall Islands currents? Will they have to be remade now, each reed spine re-bent and re-broken? Or must the navigator simply remember to say, Elugelab was there, but it's not anymore. Change flows out from that hole in the ocean. Currents alter. The knowledge of generations no longer applies. The wind carries the fallout away.

"Were you aware at this time that Dr. Oppenheimer was a member of the Communist Party?"

"So far as I know, Dr. Oppenheimer was never a member of the Communist Party, and even if he had been—"

"Gentlemen, what Mr. Stark is saying is—"

"So if you had known Dr. Oppenheimer to be a member of the Communist Party, this would have presented no moral dilemma to you?"

"Look, I frankly don't see what difference it makes if—"

"Stark, do please shut up."

"Did you yourself attend any gatherings at Dr. Oppenheimer's home during your time in California?"

"No, I really didn't know him well. I was practically a kid, for Christ's sake."

"But you were friendly with Dr. Robert Serber."

"Yes, we're still friendly."

"And you knew that his wife, Charlotte Serber, had worked for the Communists in Spain?"

"She campaigned for a relief organization. There was nothing sinister about it!"

"Did Dr. Oppenheimer seem close to Dr. and Mrs. Serber in California at this time?"

"I— suppose he did, I really don't know, everyone was friendly. Even Teller was friendly in those days."

"That's Dr. Edward Teller, who has been the subject of investigation by this department?"

"Gentlemen. It doesn't seem to me that Mr. Stark is able to significantly aid your investigation. That being the case, perhaps it's time that you leave."

A strange and wondrous event, to end this alarming year: at the start of December, Rosa Marie announces that she's going to have a baby.

"Now?" Howard says with a look of consternation.

Carter smacks him upside the head. He fixes her with a look of reproof.

"No, not now. Next spring," Rosa Marie says exasperatedly.

They go to the Herc to celebrate. A second generation of Commandos! A second generation of S.H.I.E.L.D.! Someone to carry the banner into a new age! There are a lot of toasts. Dugan and Morita arm-wrestle over who will be the better uncle. Anton— and when did he become Anton? Did we notice? How has he snuck past our defenses this way?— tries to convince Jones that the baby should learn Russian, not German, as its second language.

"Well, that would look wonderful to the government, wouldn't it," Carter says.

"Russian is language of poets! German is language of, of, of— tank people!"

Howard rolls his eyes. "Anton's had enough to drink."

"Bach wrote cantatas in German," Jones points out. "Mozart wrote operas in German."

"Ah, but only because they did not know Russian, yes?"

Mrs. Jarvis says, without looking up from her knitting (no baby will go without mittens while she is at hand), "Antoshka still holds his war grudge."

"Of course I hold grudges! My God, I was so hungry, I'll never be so hungry as in the war. No coffee, no sugar... I think I'll die at that time."

Rosa Marie rules, "The baby's going to learn French. And it's not going to have any war grudges, either." She presses her hand against her belly, as though she can communicate this to the unborn child that swims inside her— miraculous to think of! a child inside her!— the child that can't even open its eyes yet. A child that will crawl its way into the future, learn to speak and walk in the unimaginable years ahead; a child whose life they have to provide for, a life that will stretch out beyond their own span. How, how is this possible? Howard tries to picture the child: dark-skinned and little, laughing at nothing. Reaching up for its mother and father with small hands, demanding to be loved.

1953

Howard dredges himself up from the depths of 1952 to be greeted by snoring. Peculiarly Russian snoring, once he thinks about it. He groans and shifts his head a fraction to the left, squinting his eyes and taking a look. Sure enough: Anton's face is smashed into a stray sofa cushion beside him. He appears to be drooling slightly. He's wearing the very rumpled remains of a tuxedo, sans bow tie, his white shirt open at the collar. There is a suspiciously strong smell of gin and lemons in the air.

Upon further inspection, Howard appears to himself be wearing a tuxedo. The words New Year's wander disconnectedly through the back of his head. Ah, yes. It is New Year's Day, in the Year of Our Lord 1953, and he is lying on a very expensive Turkish carpet, under the vast crystal chandelier of the Red Salon. Jarvis, he thinks vaguely, is probably going to want to disembowel him for letting Anton drool on the pillows, and if they've spilled any kind of food or drinks on the carpet, which— well, Christ, of course they have; there's a long string of lemon peel dangling from Anton's bare foot, and another draped over the Louis Quatorze table... Howard distantly recalls some kind of discussion of superheated gaseous motion, but why had they used lemons...? Oh, the lemons had been for the gin, which they had apparently thought was the right way to wrap up an evening that he distinctly remembers kicking off at a S.H.I.E.L.D. party with champagne.

He gets himself painfully to his feet and stands scratching his head, staring out the broad glass doors onto the terrace. It's snowing. The snow falls soundlessly from a white sky onto the already extant drifts. Further out on the lawn, the trees are leafless. Their dark lines oddly mirror the white shapes of the embracing bodies in the Red Salon's Rodin: Christ and Mary Magdalene, embedded in strange white ghostly stone that both gives way under and imprisons their limbs. It's a cold statue, he'd always thought as a child. Looking at it had made him feel trapped. He stands considering it for a moment, not sure how he now feels, before padding off down the hall in search of a blanket.

Returning, he settles it over Anton's sleeping form. Anton sighs and snuffles open-mouthed into the pillow, mumbling something in Russian. Howard remembers him playing the piano the night before, inventing a dramatic accompaniment to some fiction about the Dreadful Walrus of Murmansk, his long hands dancing on the keys till he was laughing too hard to do it, and the soundtrack descended into protracted hiccuping. He'd waved a helpless hand— "One moment! Mинутку, минутку!"—and then slowly collapsed off the piano bench, until he was a tangle of limbs giggling drunkenly on the carpet. Howard had felt such helpless affection that it froze him. It was almost like fear, like being frightened, the little hairs standing up at the back of his neck.

It echoes now in the chamber of his body. He doesn't know what to do with it, so he wanders back down the hall, past door after door. The snow at the windows makes the light pale and thin. There are winter flowers on the little ornamental tables. Howard is powerfully reminded of something, something— a memory eludes him, flicking back into its tide-stream, a too-quick and too-slippery silvery fish. He pauses, rests his hand against a door; presses his fingertips to the painted wood.

Stella Jones is born in the last week of April— the first, small, perfect, astonishing S.H.I.E.L.D. baby. In May, Rosa Marie brings her into the 5th Avenue office, where she is regarded with a mixture of reverence and bemusement, passed from person to person with exaggerated care. She's so tiny: a tiny lump of life, wrapped in a blanket, her skin exactly the color of cocoa powder, her wide eyes suspicious, and dark, and cranky.

"She looks angry," Morita observes. "Are babies supposed to be that angry?"

"Well," Carter says sensibly, "wouldn't you be? If someone suddenly booted you out into the world?"

Dugan adds, "And you had to deal with your ugly mug staring you in the face?"

Morita jabs him with his elbow. "Shut up, Tim, that doesn't even make sense."

"What?"

"Why would I be staring myself in my own face?"

"Well, Jim, what I'm saying is..."

Rosa Marie shuts them up by handing Dugan the baby. His eyes goes comically big. He's such an enormous man that the whole thing ought to be funny, him standing there, his beefy arms uncertainly bent in a cradle, but somehow it isn't. He looks down at that little scrap of something like she's the best thing in the world, like he's slightly in awe that she even exists, and his face breaks in a smile as she wrinkles her nose. "Well, hey, there, little bit," he says softly. "It's a good thing you look like your momma, huh?"

Gabe takes away his baby privileges for that remark—"Although she does look like Rosa Marie, she's got those cheekbones"—lifting Stella up and onto his own shoulder. Stella seems amazed by this, lifting her downy eyebrows in alarm, pursing and unpursing her bow-shaped lips. The palm of Gabe's hand rests gently on her back. As he turns, swaying back and forth to soothe her, Howard sees his face. On it is an expression he's never seen Gabe wear, a kind of worn and blurry tenderness. It frightens Howard because it seems so fragile. Like the baby herself— anything in the world could hurt her, and he can't stand to think of that, he'd die before he let that happen. The strength of this feeling frightens him more. He can't breathe all at once; he has to leave the room.

He sits in the stairwell and smokes a cigarette. He thinks of nothing at all, nothing, until his heart's no longer beating like a winged stone, sanding away the center of him.

After that, Rosa Marie brings the baby in almost every week— whenever she's got work she has to do in the office. It's practically a kind of free childcare service: there's always an ex-Commando (and usually two or three) who wants to compete for a chance at being the favored uncle. They bring toys, pull faces, and sing off-color marching songs (until caught at this last one by Rosa Marie). Never has a baby been so doted-upon. Carter comments that Stella will grow up thinking she's a little empress, since all she has to do is so much as pout or whimper and she's got every grown man in the room rushing to her side. But Carter herself has been known to exhibit unmistakable distress when nothing she does will elicit a gaseous baby smile, so this is the clearest hypocrisy.

"I never asked you if you wanted kids," Howard says to her one wet muddy day, as they're driving down to the base at Lehigh.

"No, you haven't."

"Am I not allowed to know?"

"No, I'm thinking. It's just— strange. Strange to talk about with you. I'm a bit old for it, I suppose."

"No, you're not. You're a spring flower."

"Don't make me hit you."

"I'm serious, though. Seriously. Do you think that, all things aside, you'd want it?"

She purses her red, red lips together. "I think so, yes. It's the most difficult thing you can do, at least I've always thought so— raising a child is. Certainly the most complicated. Not, you know, feeding them, keeping alive and so forth, but actually raising them. Raising them to be a good person."

"And you've never shied away from difficult things."

"I find it slightly terrifying, to be honest. But, yes. I'd like to try it. I'd like to try it with Monty."

Howard's silent. He looks at her, the sun coming through the windshield lighting up her profile for an instant, the damp air sending her dark hair astray. A line or two at the corners of her eyes perhaps hints gently at age; she's not, after all, the girl who met him in New Jersey. Yet here they are, the two of them together, on the roads of that same state, and it's almost summer, and they could still sit up on the rooftop, smoking cigarettes, never having to speak, not at all, not if they don't want to, and he wants to say to her, he wants to, he thinks—

But what he tells her, honestly, is: "I think you'd be a wonderful mother."

She's surprised; he can see it at the corners of her mouth. Surprised, and—pleased? But: "Eyes on the road, Stark," is her only response. "On the road, and back in your head."

He drives out to Long Island in the middle of the day, slightly drunk, and goes to see Jarvis. Jarvis is working, poring over art catalogues from auction houses, taking international phone calls, and doesn't want to be seen, but— well, good luck getting rid of Howard. Eventually Jarvis gives up and regards him sourly over his reading glasses. "Yes, sir, may I help you, sir; may I remind sir that sir is likely to crash sir's car if sir continues drinking martinis for lunch and then driving."

Howard pouts. "It was gin and tonic."

"Ah, I see. I am duly reprimanded."

"Why did you and Mrs. Jarvis never have kids?"

The words come out in a rush, and he immediately regrets them, because he sees the way that Jarvis' mouth goes tense.

Jarvis takes off his glasses, folding them precisely and placing them to the left of his hands. "Irena had a daughter," he says. He isn't looking at Howard. "... As it happens. She was married before the war began, in Krakow."

They sit in silence in the small office. Howard can hear rain on the roof, high above. Rain falling on the new wet grass.

Jarvis says, "Is there anything else you'd like to know."

Their eyes meet.

"No," Howard says.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, noted Communist spies, who helped pass notes on Howard's atom bomb to the Soviets, are executed by electric chair on the nineteenth of June. So, Howard, tell us: is it as funny now that they've started killing people? Do you feel any different?

Howard doesn't always read the papers (Carter's indignant voice: "You founded an intelligence agency, for Christ's sake, Stark!"; Howard's reply: "Well, that's why I put you in charge of it!") so he doesn't, honestly, notice. He'd made plans that weekend to go flying off on a mission with Falsworth. They're jetting to Los Angeles, to retrieve a bit of tech that's been smuggled from China. They're trying to determine if Department X has a foothold there. It would make sense: the exchange of Communist ideas accompanied by the exchange of other dangerous things, and it's worrisome, because they don't have a network in China.

A busy weekend, a pleasant plane flight; Howard talking Falsworth's ear off about China's technological potential, and Hydra power sources, and the innards of this particular device, until Falsworth threatens to throw him out of the plane and tell Carter that he'd richly deserved it, "which," Howard concedes, "she would find pretty easy to accept." Very little time left to think about about anything else, much less some dead Soviet spies.

Late in the summer, Bob and Charlotte Serber come to visit. Howard had wanted them to stay with him; he remembers all those nights sleeping one off on their sagging sofa, all those chilly, star-filled wilderness nights up on the Hill. He ought to somehow repay them, he thinks... Besides, he's got the house, with its eleventy untouched bedrooms, and he has people over more often now; and he's got his place in Manhattan, so surely they could— but Bob had been strangely terse on the phone. He'd said, "I think we'd better not, Howard. It wouldn't be good for you."

"What do you mean by that?" Howard had asked, puzzled.

"Just— trust me, can you, it's not a good idea right now, and at worst it could— look, we've been warned not to get in touch with Oppie, that it will only cause trouble for him. I'll explain when we see you, I think it's better not to talk on the phone."

—Which had left Howard staring at the receiver, thoroughly befuddled.

Instead, they arrange to meet at Grand Central Station. It's the one place in New York that never really seems to change, its cream stone walls exactly as they were when the child-Howard hurtled down to the Lower Concourse, eager to get to the train tracks, eager to run, run, run away. The chandeliers that hung in the air shed the light of the Old World on him, but under this antique skin, there was electricity. There's talk now of building a skyscraper above the station. Some of the old New York voices, of course, disagree, but Howard likes the idea; wishes he were an architect, almost, and not an engineer. He can picture it in his head, the bright chrome ornamentation, the glass panels, taller even than the Empire State; not a needle piercing the sky, but a hand stretching out for the cosmos, for that permeable pause in the clouds where earth and space are intermingled. Maybe highways of flying vehicles would meet there one day, or spaceships, even. He won't be the one to make them; he's turned his hand to other projects. But if, as Falsworth had said once, we're all stonemasons, really, maybe it'll be his son or Carter's son or, hell, little Stella Jones that will get them off the earth. Maybe. Someday.

Waiting outside the Oyster Bar, he spies Bob and Charlotte from a distance. He hasn't seen Charlotte in— God, since the British Mission party, 1945, almost eight years ago now. She looks tougher somehow, fiercer and sharper, though she's smartly dressed in a skirt set with Cuban heels. She would never have worn Cuban heels out in the desert. Her fashionable hat would have blown away. She rushes over to him, footsteps echoing under the high ceilings, and greets him with a kiss, European-style: her cool lips brief against his face. "Oh, Howard," she says. So much has happened between them, so much has happened since the Hill, that he doesn't know if there's anything else to be said.

They eat lobster and talk about Oppenheimer.

"His lawyer got a call," Bob says, "at the start of the summer. Warning him to get ready for something bad coming."

"But surely they can't prove anything in court," Howard says. "They've tried hard enough; they would've done it already. And there's nothing to prove, anyway, is there?"

"Of course not! Of course not." Bob closes his eyes briefly. He looks exhausted. "They won't take him to court. They don't need to put him in prison. They don't even need to prove anything. All they need to do is crucify him in public. He'll lose his security clearance, his reputation; Christ, he could lose his job at Princeton."

"Well, he and Kitty have money, don't they?"

Bob says simply, "Howard, it will kill him."

Howard stares down at his drink. The ice cubes moving of their own volition, shifting in the whiskey, changing shape. "Why didn't you want to talk on the phone?"

The two of them exchange a glance. "We think we're being wiretapped," Charlotte admits quietly.

"That's not legal."

"Well, of course it's not legal. But we can't do anything about it, don't you see, it would only make things worse." She hesitates. "We almost didn't come. It would be terrible if we got you in trouble."

Howard says in disbelief, "You think they'll come after me? They can't come after me. I'm a Stark; I make weapons for the government; I—" He stops. They don't know about S.H.I.E.L.D. "I was friends with Captain America," he says instead. "Even Teller thinks I'm a goddamn patriot."

"Oh, Teller," Bob says crossly.

"He'll sell Oppenheimer out?"

"Undoubtedly. The sad thing is, he probably believes it. Everyone's a Communist, compared to him. I wouldn't trust anything he says."

They sit in a disheartened silence. Howard says after a while, "Is there anything I can do for him? Oppenheimer? We were never close, but I feel like... He was the one who pulled me in on the project, in '42. He was the first person to treat me like I wasn't some huckster. So if there's something..."

"I don't really think so," Bob says. "We just have to wait and see. I wish he'd do something for himself. He's gone on vacation. It's like he's not— like he can't take it seriously."

Charlotte pushes her hair behind her ears. Her eyes are distant, as though she's looking beyond the vaulted room. "He really can't believe," she says, "I think, that someone could not want the truth. He thinks that the truth will set him free, eventually. He's always thought that. You know, that truth is good, that it has some kind of intrinsic value, apart from all other things. But it's not about that. I don't know if it's ever been about that."

She sounds sad. She is different from how Howard remembered. He has done her a disservice in his memory, or perhaps she's changed in the intervening years, gained more insight. He reaches out on impulse and covers her hand with his own. "It'll be all right," he says. "I promise. I'll see what I can do. I'll pull some strings."

Perhaps he really believes this. Perhaps not. Saying the words, he certainly feels optimistic. Perhaps he, like Oppenheimer, believes that the truth has talismanic power. Howard is, after all, at heart a scientist. Scientists are prone to this fallacy.

In November, Howard and Anton take a trip down to Lehigh. They're bringing the lab there a set of blueprints for a second-generation nuclear submarine. They're also bringing notes on their private project, which Howard generally refers to as the arc gadget. (Why has Howard chosen this name? Each time he says it, he's back in New Mexico for a second. The gadget, that was what they'd always said. Even after the end of secrecy, when there could be no more doubt about what they'd made, when there could be no more dodging around the subject— still they'd speak casually about "making the gadget bigger." It was just habit; there was nothing sinister about it. But it had an effect, all the same. Now, Howard senses some early, formless, tentative relation between that gadget and this one. Is this relation one of penance, of absolution? To be honest, he doubts it. He doesn't believe in sin, or at least its erasure. Some things are written on the past in letters that cut, in hard engravings, petroglyphs.)

Anton's been to Lehigh before, a few times. Really, he ought to be working down there; at least, that was Colonel Phillips' opinion— "He's here because he works for us, he ought to be working for us 24/7, and frankly speaking, Stark, your security's not worth a damn." It's true that Howard leaves security up to Carter, but Phillips perhaps doesn't appreciate the depth of the feud between Russians and Germans. Anton loathes the Paperclips, and is visibly uncomfortable around them; they return his animosity and distrust his science, making a point of re-checking his calculations, and whispering derisively about his clumsiness. Well, all right, a few of them aren't so bad— Breithaus and Stirner have turned out to be perfectly nice young men. Howard's even had a drink with them a time or two. But though Zola makes a point of being polite, his eyes go dead and unpleasant when Anton's around, in a way that makes Howard feel slightly protective. So in general it's best to keep everyone separate and peaceful.

The bunker is humming when they get there. Howard always manages to forget how big S.H.I.E.L.D.'s gotten. They've got a hundred and fifty operatives now; they've trebled in size. He doesn't know these people, but they all seem to know him: they salute him. This never fails to make him feel like he should know them somehow. He has a sense that he's responsible for them.

Down in the lab, Zola is doing something with the supercomputer, issuing terse orders in German.

"I thought we'd decided English was the lingua franca around here," Howard says faux-jovially.

Zola's eyes flicker to him, unreadable. "Ah, Dr. Stark. As this is, after all, your laboratory, we of course will use your language. A momentary lapse. One often speaks in one's natural language without thinking. I am sure your Soviet friend understands. He is, like me, a stranger in this country."

Anton has been hunching his shoulders, trying to go unnoticed. At this, though, a look of dislike sears his face. "Not like you," he says. "I didn't lose a war."

"Ah, you're correct, of course, Dr. Vanko." Zola looks serenely at Anton through his small round glasses. "In fact there are so many differences. I have never betrayed a nation, for example."

Which is a lot further than Zola usually goes. He must be having a particularly bad day in the lab. Well, good— Howard approves in theory, but in practice it's a nuisance having to negotiate peace after Anton says something vicious in badly-accented German— "Zumindest ich nicht meine Landsleute wie Tiere ermorde!"— that Howard can't quite understand.

"You know what," Howard interjects, "we'll leave you to it, Dr. Zola. Our project is for Dr. Breithaus."

Zola smiles his small, private little smile. He says serenely, "A pleasure as always, Dr. Stark, Dr. Vanko."

In the hall, Howard says to Anton, "You can't let him provoke you. That's what he wants. It's Zola 101, you know that."

"He's a murdering bastard," Anton says vehemently.

"Again, Zola 101. But there's nothing we can do about that, and he's useful."

"You think so? He makes himself useful. You don't ask why?"

"I know why," Howard says. "He wants to live. He wants to live here, and not in Germany. You didn't see what it was like there after the war."

Anton stares at him. He's grinning, suddenly, but it's not a nice grin. "No," he says. "I didn't see this; I see what it's like in Russia after the war. For years, I see this. So you're right, always right, I'm so so ignorant, of course."

Howard says, "That's not what I meant." Guiltily, because he did, of course, mean that. He forgets, sometimes, Anton's previous life. He has a deficit of imagination when it comes to this. And Anton doesn't speak about it often. Or he doesn't speak about anything tragic; whatever he's talking about, he makes it into a joke.

Anton says, "In Russia, we would have taken a man like that, and: pk!" He aims the fingers of his hand like a gun, mimes firing the gun, makes the noise with his lips. He drops the gun. His face has no expression. "A man like that," he says, "we would have shot in the head."

1954

January brings news recoiling around Washington: the Atomic Energy Commission has formally charged Oppenheimer with being a threat to national security. There will be a panel, a hearing, an ugly political trial. All the old accusations have again been churned up: you associated with Communists, you made friends with Communists, you are related to Communists; you may or may not have been a Communist yourself; to these is added the fact that Oppenheimer had opposed the hydrogen bomb project. More than that: he had spoken out against it. He had tried to persuade others not to participate. This is now perceived as a kind of crime. How dare you, the AEC— the government, the nation— is now saying. How dare you decline to build us our bomb.

Howard sees him at a physics conference in Rochester that month. He looks tired— apparently he's been ill— and gaunt, now, where before he'd merely been thin. So many of the boys of Los Alamos are there: Fermi, Feynman, even Teller. Howard thinks, Who could've imagined. Who could've imagined that we'd be where we are now, that it would've come to this. Everyone drinks a lot and no one talks about the charges. The snow piles up in drifts outside the conference hotel. The atmosphere gets more and more depressed. Howard's brought Anton with him (they're presenting on their fusion research, though they're not ready to reveal the arc gadget yet) and after a while they give up on socializing altogether. They retreat to Anton's hotel room with a bottle of vodka that Howard had bribed the lounge bartender to give him.

"My God," Anton says morosely, staring out the gray window. "I thought I've left Soviet Russia."

Howard says, "I bet the vodka's better there."

"Mm. Vodka like very cold water. Volga water." He takes a slug from the bottle. "But we put the knife in the back just the same."

Sprawled on the bed, Howard stares up at the ceiling. "It's just all so ridiculous, the whole damn thing. If it weren't for him, we never would've had the A-bomb in the first place!"

"Better for everyone, maybe."

"Better for Oppenheimer. He should've stayed an ordinary person."

Anton flops backwards onto the bed. He turns his head towards Howard. His wayward hair is in disarray. Howard resists the urge to reach out and neaten it, as one would for a child. He doesn't know where this impulse comes from. Maybe from the vodka.

"Howard," Anton says, "you're not an ordinary person, either."

"No. I was never an ordinary person. You know."

"Yes, I know. Also I feel this way." He falls silent. His eyes flicker closed. For a second, Howard thinks he's drowsing. Then he says pensively, "But you don't worry, Howard?"

"Why would I worry?"

"That they come for you in the night." Anton has this obsession with people coming in the night. Some terror left over from the days they don't speak of. "That you wake up one morning and they have put the knife in your back."

Howard laughs. "Why, are you worried about me? Aw, Antoshka, I'm flattered."

Anton screws his nose up in a sleepy, petulant expression. He mumbles, "No, don't call me this."

Both of them fall asleep and miss the afternoon conference sessions. Howard wakes first, as dusk is going to darkness. Snowfall's the only source of light in the room, reflecting street lamps' lower glow. He can hear Anton's slow breathing. Howard's changed position in his sleep. His arm is curled around Anton's shoulder. He shifts; there's a sick taste in his mouth. From the vodka? It tastes like adrenaline. What was he dreaming about? Was he dreaming he was falling? Sometimes he does dream this, because of the war, he guesses, because he can't every really get over it, or because he's an uneasy person by nature.

He remembers what Charlotte had said, during the war— that Oppenheimer had an uneasy brain. Really, Howard thinks, that's what they'll get him for, in the end. Charlotte had said brain, but she'd really meant heart, and it isn't wise to admit to one of those. The heart is a sympathetic organ, and sympathy's so often a crime, these days.

In 1946, a new swimming fashion had taken the world by storm. Howard remembers sitting poolside at the Gouverneur Morris Hotel that summer, about to signal the waiter for another martini, Dugan asking, What is that? Howard saying, It's a bikini! It's a bikini, it's explosive, it's "the atom bomb of fashion," a journalist writes, and in fact, a competing style is called an atome. They've split the atome in two pieces, don't you see? The bikini itself takes its name from the Pacific atoll. A bit of a harmless joke: it's an island paradise, but also the site of some early atomic tests. By now, 1954, the word is quite playful. It connotes some racy, daring fun. Girls in cat's-eye sunglasses with kerchiefs on their curls running down to the beach in the California sunlight. Bill Haley and His Comets on the radio.

Perhaps this is why there's something faintly surreal about March's Castle Bravo nuclear test, which unleashes a 15 megaton explosion on Bikini Atoll, and leaves much of the surrounding area unfit for human inhabitation. It's an accident, really; Los Alamos made a theoretical error. Oh, those absent-minded scientists! Oh, those boys up at the Hill! We can all understand an occasional error. They have a lot on their minds these days. As a result, the yield of the test is three times what's expected. They have to move very quickly to evacuate the hapless native islanders when the fallout starts to spread. That carefree island lifestyle, with coconuts and palm trees, is starting not to look so pleasant; radiation sickness rapidly shows up. Radioactive cesium gets into the palm trees, into the coconuts.

On the plus side, this is a perfect chance to study the effects of radiation. Like Hiroshima, like Nagasaki, it's an ideal, living lab. The Atomic Energy Commission organizes a program, Project 4.1, for this purpose: to study the "Response of Human Beings Accidentally Exposed to Significant Fallout Radiation." We expect there to be a lot of fallout radiation in our future, so it's important to know how to cope with it. And what else can we do? It's not like we can repack an explosion. We can't unchain the reaction. We can't take the bomb back.

Stella Jones has her first birthday in April. Morita and Dugan throw a birthday party for her at the Herc— a consolation prize of sorts, since they had failed in their campaign to ensure that her first word would be 'ten-hut! (Instead, it had been the more predictable Mama. This had also signaled defeat for Howard and Anton, who'd been hoping for atom.) Some (to wit, Gabe and Rosa Marie) had expressed doubt as to whether a bar was the appropriate place to celebrate a baby's birthday, but Dugan and Morita had promised to close up shop and be decent. And anyway, you try saying no to those two, especially when Stella's concerned. They adore her, and spoil her outrageously. They spend the first half of the party awarding her toy after toy, working her up into a fizzing frenzy of drool and grabbing hands.

"I don't know why they don't go have kids of their own," Howard comments to Falsworth at the party, later, when the inevitable tantrum has commenced, and Morita and Dugan have been duly chastised. "Aside from the fact that I've just appalled myself; can you imagine a miniature Dugan? Or three? Or four of them, God help us?"

Falsworth gets a thoughtful look in his eye. He says, "I'm not sure they're the sort that get married."

Which is, you have to admit, a pretty ambiguous statement, and one that Howard doesn't feel energetic enough to address. Instead, he sips his bourbon and watches as Anton scoops the fretting Stella up. He bounces her gently in his arms as he walks back and forth across the room, singing to her quietly in Russian: "Что стоишь качаясь, тонкая рябина... Головой склоняясь, до самого тына..." which sounds nice, but probably means something horribly depressing.

Gabe tells him, mock-threateningly, "You better not be teaching my kid the Communist Manifesto, Vanko."

"Don't worry," Anton says, "I haven't set it to song yet, although now you give me such a thought for a scheme..."

It's not very funny; at least, it doesn't feel very funny. Not at the moment. Oppenheimer's trial is underway; the New York Times has recently broken the news as a front-page exclusive: RED TIES ALLEGED! Howard's lawyer has told him to stay the hell away from the whole thing. It hardly matters: the AEC's General Advisory Committee, of which Howard still occasionally forms a part, and which has so long been sidelined for the sin of opposing the H-bomb, has been refused the right to testify on Oppenheimer's behalf. It seems clear which direction things are going. Recently Howard wakes up every morning feeling breathless, as though he's being hunted in his dreams. Is it the Oppenheimer trial that troubles him, or the Bravo shot, or—? Maybe it's just the pressure of work. He's close to cracking fission-fusion arc reactivity with Anton, he thinks, and they work late most nights in the lab; but S.H.I.E.L.D.'s also sending a team of agents into French Indochina, to hunt down rumors that Department X agents are working with Communist rebels close to the Chinese border. So that means new weapons, new uniforms for a jungle climate...

Carter sits down next to him and offers him a plate of birthday cake.

"Thanks," Howard says tiredly.

"Drinking on an empty stomach, no wonder you look so sad."

"I'm not, I'm just... worn out." He attempts a smile. "My boss is a real taskmaster. You should meet her— terrifying dame."

"Oh, is she."

"Men run screaming."

"I think I'll have my cake back."

Howard covers the plate protectively. "Did I say 'terrifying?' I meant 'spectacularly alluring.'"

"Well, all right, you can have the cake, but I'm taking a bite."

They end up sharing the cake in silence. On the other side of the room, curled up in a booth, Rosa Marie is falling asleep with her head in Gabe's lap. Gabe, his eyelids drooping, looks like he's only about a minute or so out from following her.

"Do you think we're getting old?" Howard, watching them, asks Carter.

"I certainly hope not. Middle-aged, maybe." She follows his gaze and smiles. "Just think, you don't even have the excuse of a baby."

"Well, I do work with Anton, who arguably qualifies."

Carter scrapes her fork across the plate to catch the last of the frosting. She hmms thoughtfully as she sticks the fork in her mouth. "No," she says, "we're not even middle-aged, are we? It only feels that way. I suppose we're all of us, really, a bit confused, because we thought we wouldn't come back, or— not that we wouldn't come back, I mean during the war, but we knew it was a possibility. You can't make plans like that; you can't envision your life. Now we think we might survive for a good bit longer. We have to think of the bigger picture, not just one day at a time. It's exhausting. I can't make up my mind if I dislike it."

Howard makes a sound of agreement. He lets his eyes slide closed. On impulse, he tips his head to the side, till it rests just lightly against Carter's shoulder.

"Monty will be jealous," she says, sounding amused.

"No, he won't; he never gets jealous. Even though I try and try."

"You do try," she agrees. She brings her arm affectionately up around him. "Perhaps you could try a bit harder to not work yourself to death."

He twists his head to narrow his eyes at her. "All right: who are you, and what have you done with Agent Carter?"

"Oh, hush, you. Speaking of which— I have some news. You know I've been nudging Phillips about retiring? We've decided on the autumn."

'"If we can just keep him from keeling over before then. Man's going to have an embolism one of these days."

"We were thinking we might use the transition to bring in the Director title." She sounds cautious.

"Director Carter?"

"Well— what do you think?"

He thinks— "You've always been Director Carter in my eyes, you know." It's supposed to be a joke, but it comes out sincere. Damn it, damn it; he swallows hard.

"I know," she says softly. Then: "Still. The two of us, all grown up, with no supervision?"

"Hmm. Do I get a new title?"

"You don't have a title now. You're just Stark."

"Not true. On occasion I have been known as 'Damn it, Stark."

Carter says dryly, "I suspect that is a title you will retain."

"I could be Premier Lord Consul Stark," Howard suggests.

"Anything is possible, I suppose."

"Co-Emperor Stark. Lord High Overseer Stark. Imperial Vice-Commander-in-Chief."

He keeps it up until he makes her laugh. Then they're both laughing, quietly but uncontrollably. Carter dabs tears from her eyes. "Oh, I can't," she gasps, still laughing, "I can't, I'm wearing mascara."

Howard says, "God, I've missed this." He feels like he doesn't see her anymore; or when he does, they're working, and they're both under stress. He knows why, of course, and he understands, but all the same, all the same...

"And me." Carter's arm around his shoulder tightens briefly. She looks fondly down at him, where he's sprawled across the seat. "You should have us out to the house. We should all get together."

"I see. Inviting yourself over."

"Shut up. You should."

"I will," he says. "I will." And he will, because anything is possible, as she'd said; the mausoleum house has become a home to him, a place where the living now outnumber the ghosts. Maybe, he thinks, maybe one of these days he'll move back in there— actually, really relocate. He conjures up an image of it hazily: his house, a wife, a home, a future. He can see what Carter means— it's strange to think of two, eight, ten years out. It requires a sort of innocence, a sturdy faith: nothing will change, everyone I know now will still be alive then. His past has not prepared him for such an idea.

Still. Anything is possible. He watches Stella sleeping against Anton's shoulder. Anton smooths her dark curls absently against her head. Her tiny baby fists grip at nothing, nothing visible; her eyes move behind their eyelids, widening at dreams only she can see, visions she can't articulate yet.

On May 23, Oppenheimer is stripped of his security clearance. The board convened to hear the charges against him finds that his "continuing conduct and association have reflected a serious disregard for the requirements of the security system," that he has a "susceptibility to influence which could have serious implications for the security interests of the country," that "his conduct in the hydrogen bomb program [is] sufficiently disturbing as to raise a doubt as to whether his future participation... would be clearly connected with the best interests of security."

The head of the board writes in his majority opinion: "Loyalty to one's friends is one of the noblest of qualities. Being loyal to one's friends above reasonable obligations to the country and to the security system, however, is not clearly consistent with the interests of security."

Later in the year, there's the whole business with Breithaus, which— should Howard have seen it coming? He scrutinizes himself, after; fine-combs his memories. But Breithaus had seemed all right. He was young, serious-looking: a somewhat awkward, fair-haired German, and he hadn't even been Hydra, as far as they could tell. Howard had rather pitied him; he was so artless, and so obviously eager to please. He always looked as though he expected someone to hit him. But he'd still been a Nazi, was the thing, and they shouldn't have forgotten. Because in December the FBI receives an envelope— typewritten, with no postmark and no return address— filled with papers concerning Breithaus' job during the war. Apparently— as he had neglected to declare when recruited for Operation Paperclip— he'd been in charge of several Nazi studies that observed the physiological effects of radiation. Observed the physiological effects of radiation, that is, on dozens of unwilling human subjects.

So. No more Breithaus. It's really that simple. They ship him back to Germany.

It's not the first time this has happened with one of the Paperclips, but it's the first time at S.H.I.E.L.D. It's always been an Air Force or an Army problem, before this. It presents a number of obvious moral and morale problems: how do you return, the next day, to work on projects that you'd previously shared with an unethical, torture-endorsing Nazi? Do you toss the projects as irreparably tainted? But it's so much work; you can't for instance, rebuild the supercomputer, just because parts of it had touched his hands. So everyone hunches their shoulders a little harder, gets on with their work. It's almost enough to make Howard glad that he knows, at least, the worst about Zola. Almost enough to make him trust Zola a little more. Zola has no reason to hide his nature, his history; he doesn't bother to deceive them. Better the Nazi war criminal you know than etc, etc.

No one spends too much time investigating where the papers come from. Where the envelope comes from, the envelope with no return address.

He's distracted, is the thing, by his work with Anton. They're so close to achieving a theoretically stable arc reaction. It's required figuring out how to enrich palladium, neither a cheap nor an inexpensive process, but Howard had bought a mine in Montana and run the operation out of there. Stark Industries' miniature Manhattan Project, he thinks— he's reminded of the days when the Project had run a uranium separation plant out at Oak Ridge. He isn't sure the comparison should be comforting to him, but it is, for some reason; it's that same strange sense that he's mirroring his work, or perhaps completing it. The gadget and the arc gadget. There was an asymmetry he had to correct. There was something that he had to finish. He doesn't know if Anton feels this way.

These days, it's like he doesn't even have to talk to Anton. They communicate by glance, by minute gesture. Their minds run on the same track, and at the same speed. Sometimes, in the lab, Howard's struck by a odd feeling, as though a memory has flashed close to the surface of his mind. A silver fish he can't reach but can almost see. Is this what it was like in those first years of childhood? No; he'd had no one then who understood him. Only the silence is the same. Perhaps what he's remembering is an earlier dream. A dream of the world for which he'd been designed, a world of men whose minds moved like lightning; the sanded-down, supercharged world of the future. The radiant world. His native city. He hadn't thought he'd get there in this lifetime. But here he is, on the horizon of it.

Howard wakes Anton from a nightmare. It's late at night; they're in the lab, a lightbulb humming somewhere in the room, machines clacking as they process.

At first he'd thought Anton was just dreaming. They both sleep, sometimes, during these long shifts of work. He knows Anton has nightmares, but he's never seen one. Then he hears Anton make a sound under his breath— then another, a sound of protest, insistent and frantic

Anton flails against him at first, arms heavy and violent, before abruptly subsiding, as though robbed of a spark. He rakes his hands through untidy hair. His breathing is erratic and fast. "Из— извини— нет—" He shuts his eyes. "Sorry. I'm sorry," he says after a moment.

Howard wants to touch his shoulder, offer some comfort, but isn't sure if it would be welcome. He offers instead, "You were dreaming."

"Yes. Wolf dreams. Sorry. Sorry." He folds his hands together tightly and stares at them.

"From Finland?" Howard asks. He means: from when you ran. Finland: this is what you call a euphemism.

"Yes. No. I don't know." Anton makes an inscrutable gesture. "They tell you this. That wolves are in the mountains. Always, when I was a child, I hear stories... you know, don't go away from the road, wolves will get you. Always in the winter; that's when the wolves are hungry. To me, it is the biggest fear, so when I run from Russia, I'm always thinking: each noise could be a wolf, a wolf in the mountains, coming for me."

"I was kind of a brave kid, I guess. I don't remember being scared of much." Howard pauses. He could explain, he could say so much more, but still, now, still, he doesn't, he can't. "No wolves on Long Island. Just in stories."

"No wolves, only— what's this other animal, which Jones says? Like a hornet? A wasp?" He's grinning.

So Howard laughs. He thinks: Anton makes everything into a joke. But he doesn't mind, really; he understands. He goes back to taking notes in his chicken-scratch writing

In the spare light, Anton watches him work. Head tilted; eyes unreadable, tired. He looks bruised, as though sleep has pummeled him. Howard has rarely seen him so stripped of laughter, so uncharacteristically serious. It seems like a long time later when he says quietly, "To me the wolf is— he doesn't reason. He just comes for you; you can't explain to him, No, I'm not the one you should want to eat, you can't make a bargain with him. You're just a dumb animal to the wolf, who doesn't speak your language. It doesn't matter how smart you are. He doesn't understand."

There's a bleak look in his eyes that Howard doesn't like. Are we still talking about wolves? he thinks.

Anton says, "When you're eaten by the wolf, or else— or else— that's when you know what animal you're living inside of. I mean what animal is living inside you. Under your skin."

A week later, they crack the calculations.

Howard shows up at Carter's doorstep, drunk and exuberant. Well— Carter and Falsworth's doorstep. He bangs on the door until they let him in.

"Oh Lord," Falsworth says, lifting his eyes to the heavens. "Peg— I believe we've agreed that when he gets like this, he's your friend."

"Colleague," Carter corrects. She eyes Howard with fond exasperation. "When he gets like this, he's my colleague."

Howard reels onto their sofa. It's very— English, it's a very English sofa, stiff and yet somehow sagging. On the side table is a book— a biography of Churchill, with dogeared pages— and a cup of tea, and a little Tiffany lamp, and it's exactly what he wants their home to look like, and he feels a surge of affection for it. For the framed portrait of the Commandos on the mantle, for their sets of medals, Carter's and Falsworth's, each in a little glass case; for the crammed, untidy bookshelf in the corner. He heaves a contented sigh and tips his head back on a cushion.

"I," he says, "have done a great and wonderful thing."

"Have you," Carter says.

"It's going to revolutionari—revolutionary-ize science."

"Is this the thing you were working on with Anton? Where is Anton? Have you abandoned him in the street?"

"He's asleep," Howard says. "On the piano." He'd left Anton snoring into the keyboard, halfway through a triumphal march that he'd been composing in honor of their invention.

"Oh, dear," Carter says. Her voice sounds suppressed. Howard suspects she's laughing at him. "That's probably for the best; I find him quite exhausting." Howard hears Falsworth whisper something, and then Carter is laughing, a burst of warmth in the little living room.

"How dare you," Howard says without heat. "Don't laugh. I'm very rich and powerful, I'll have you know. I'm a genius."

"So you've told me," Carter says.

She lifts his legs up onto the sofa, and then a blanket's settling on him. He makes a vague noise of protest; she shouldn't treat him like a child, and besides, he was going to— he was going to explain— the arc gadget, the fission-fusion back-and-forth, the beauty of the math when it was finally complete, how they'd build it now, and it would be wonderful to look at, and it wouldn't kill, it would never be a weapon, it wouldn't kill anyone at all...

But he falls asleep with her hand stroking his hair back from his face, and the sound of soft voices over his head.

In November, the Russians test a nuclear submarine. It's a neat little submersible: in part based on an early Hydra prototype— An interesting object, Howard thinks. He remembers: up to his waist in quantum wiring. A queasy feeling. A smear of blood on his shirt cuff, from the cut on his hand...) with a set of advanced modifications so familiar that they strike Howard as eerie.

It could be a coincidence.

Howard goes to the CIA, trades some goods on Indochina, bargaining with them to get a better set of specs.

In the penthouse at the Gouverneur Morris Hotel, his haunt of old, he spreads the specs across a bed. He stands, smoking a cigarette, staring at the papers. A numb feeling is beginning to encroach on his organs. After a minute he goes and pours himself a drink.

Phillips had retired in September— he'd gotten a gold watch, a party, a riotous send-off, the whole shebang— and now, for the first time, Howard misses his presence. Phillips, he thinks, would have leveled him with that no-nonsense stare, would have said, "Well, Stark, what you've got here is a FUBAR situation. So tell me, what are you going to do about it?" That was Phillips' modus operandi, put the cards on the table. No gentleness, no niceties.

Whereas it takes Howard three days to work up the courage to tell Carter, because to do so will be to admit: someone at S.H.I.E.L.D. has sold the Soviets his blueprints. And he doesn't want to know that— doesn't want to know that at all, much less consider who that person is.

Carter says, "I don't understand what you are telling me."

She does; she just doesn't want to, either, admit it. Howard can tell from the look on her face.

It's just the two of them in a room. The Lesser Salon, at the mansion. It's a room that Howard almost never goes in, and for some reason this makes it feel safe, safer, although Howard can't face, right now, why that is. He sits in an armchair, Carter on a chaise longue. The air smells of leather book binding. Sunlight falls on the Czeschka silver cabinet. Late afternoon: winter lowering the sun little by little.

He says with difficulty, "It's— a second-generation design. I developed it last year. Anton worked on it with me. We gave it to Breithaus, so maybe..." Hope rises for an instant. "Is there any chance that he...?"

Carter shakes her head. "He would've given it up to avoid prison. He cut a deal with the German authorities. We can't rule it out, but..."

"No. You're right." He stares at his hands. "There were maybe a dozen people at Lehigh who worked on the blueprints. None of the rest of them were Paperclips."

"So."

So: one of their own. A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

At least at first, though, once they've got over the first panic, the problem doesn't seem that big. The immediate effects are very far away. The nuclear sub slips through Siberian waters, perhaps harassing the Baltic, feeding paranoia and dread; but no one's dead, no one's dying, no one's caught in the fallout, and shouldn't that count for something? Shouldn't that be enough, these days?

No further information leaks from S.H.I.E.L.D. They relax a little. They can keep this under wraps; they can keep it under control. There's no hint of what's coming.

Christmas: snow crisp on the Stark mansion's lawn. Electric lights strung gold through the trees. Uniformed waiters serve champagne in flutes. Half of S.H.I.E.L.D. is here— some Howard knows, some he doesn't. Jarvis, having been persuaded to accept that the house is not a museum, and that accordingly strangers may enter it, still hovers worriedly close to some of the more valuable works of art: the Klinger sculpture in the Grand Salon, the little Rodin, the Klimt portrait of Howard's Aunt Marguerite. Halfway through the party, Howard strolls up and presses a stiff drink on him.

"Jarvis," he says, "you've got to loosen up. It's Christmas."

"Be that as it may," Jarvis says with dignity, "I could never forgive myself if—"

"If what? If someone touched a sixty-year-old block of stone?"

"Sir."

"See? Look. No big deal." Howard gives the sturdy Klinger a gentle nudge.

Jarvis lets out a very strangled squeak of horror.

Howard pats the sculpture affectionately, eliciting another squeak. "Absolutely no harm done. After all, they've survived this long," he points out

Jarvis fixes him with an icy stare. "I'm filing a petition to have you declared a foundling," he says.

In the Red Salon, Mrs. Jarvis and Anton are seated at the piano. They seem to be playing "Heart and Soul," or at least some version of it; Anton keeps elaborating it into ever-more-flamboyant variations, which makes Mrs. Jarvis cross with him; they keep having to pause so she can swat him on the shoulder. He hunches, laughing, each time she does so; both of them are champagne-silly and red in the face.

Howard watches them for a while from the doorway of the room before he goes looking for Carter instead; he finds her in the Great Hall, where Stella Jones is toddling a few steps at a time over the marble tiles. Stella looks enormously confused as to how this locomotion is occurring; every time she pauses and thinks about it, she has to sit, at which point a flurry of hands appears to help her up.

Howard suggests, "Maybe we should get her a little whaddya-call-it, those chairs that royalty get carried around in."

"A sedan chair," Carter says. "Or possibly a litter?"

"Maybe we should get her one of them. Dugan could carry her around on his shoulders."

"He already does; she hangs onto his mustache."

"Now that I can't believe I've missed."

Howard leans against the wall, not really observing. His attention wanders. The house is almost fully lit, and someone— Jarvis?— has put up decorations: real fir boughs, silver tinsel, red and gold baubles. It looks like a house that someone lives in. The air is warm, and smells faintly of perfume and tobacco. There are caterers clattering, very far-off, in the kitchen, and the pop of a champagne bottle, and glasses clinking, and that sharp fizzing scent. He feels— nothing, he feels nothing about this all, as though he doesn't even exist, as though— he thinks of Anton's hands clambering, effortless, on the piano— he is finally, perfectly tuned to it.

"This is good," he says wonderingly, aloud, to Carter. "Isn't it good?"

Her eyebrows draw faintly together. She gives him a look that is kind, and difficult to interpret. "Yes," she says simply. "Howard— of course it is."

He smiles uncertainly. She touches his collar, looking as though she'd like to touch his cheek. He isn't sure if he wants her to or not. He feels peeled out of his skin, raw and peculiarly childish. He covers it by lowering his eyes, lifting his drink. He can sense Peggy's gaze on him, but he avoids it.

"Cheers," he says.

"Cheers," she echoes.

Their glasses clink.

Chapter Text

1955

Let us consider, for a moment, the bigger pattern. Let us try to get outside things. Let us travel high above the earth.

The FBI still believe, at this juncture, that Oppenheimer may be a Soviet agent. They surveil him through the winter, worried in case he tries to defect. They wiretap his friends. Some of his friends were already wiretapped. Senator McCarthy claims the government is infiltrated by Soviets. More than a few people are convinced. True, McCarthy is widely disliked; dissent against him has been voiced; but those who disagree with his methods might still admit: we're in danger.

It seems like every season Edward Teller has a new nuclear weapon, a new and more explosive atomic idea. His newest? Well, the X-ray lasers are still just a vision. For now, he wants to send bombs into space. He's working on several varieties of nuclear missile, but soon he will propose flying an atom bomb straight into the moon.

Don't laugh. Don't laugh. It's really not funny.

S.H.I.E.L.D. is a new agency, and not well-beloved. An upstart, the CIA thinks— as though the CIA itself isn't an upstart, re-kilned after the war out of bits and pieces of OSS clay. The FBI thinks: untidy rulebreakers. Which is true, which is fair, but still: a note of discord. Fundamentally, S.H.I.E.L.D. in this era's eccentric, and the most eccentric part about it is Howard Stark.

Oh, Howard. Howard has always been a problem. There really isn't anywhere that Howard fits. You can be a prodigy, Howard, or you can be an heir; you can be an engineer or a secret agent; you can be an adult or an enfant terrible; you can be a businessman or a physicist. You can try some combination of these, but it doesn't end well. It certainly doesn't make you many friends. People feel that Howard is odd at the edges somehow. They never quite know if they should trust him. There's always a sense that he is, himself, a performance, that he's constantly playing a role for them: heir, prodigy, adult, physicist, engineer, agent, all the costumes in his gallery. We don't like that. It confuses our depth perception: too much packed into too little space. A kind of tesseract in himself, Howard Stark is; he gives you vertigo. Not pleasant. No one likes that feeling.

Additionally: Howard opted not to work on the bomb. The Superbomb, the hydrogen bomb, we mean. In fact, he signed a statement that opposed making it. You remember: back in '49, with Oppie and the rest. Perhaps excusable if he'd gone back into business, if he'd leapt back into building his company, but instead he's running around playing secret agent. He couldn't even slip into academic life, like Feynman, Peierls, and Fermi. He just had to keep his nose in. He had to keep pushing; that's what he does; it's in his nature. The men who do things: dragging the future along.

Now, Howard's made a number of poor decisions. It's not just all about the bomb. Who are his friends? —Women. Foreigners. A family of elevated Negroes. A couple of low-lifes who run a bar. Physicists who've been accused of Communism. Wasn't he, at one point, even friends with Fuchs? That's what Teller says; he says they were quite friendly in New Mexico. He says they used to go on little trips. And then, of course, there's Anton Vanko...

Perhaps if Howard came from a different sort of family. But what do we really know about the Starks? An unfortunate bunch. So much money. So many tragedies. Their origins are a little vague. Vienna, yes— then the American bootstraps, a steel empire, a fortune. Exquisite cultural taste. But before that? Well, before that, the names seem to get a little bit foreign. The paperwork gets a little bit eccentric.

Eccentric. That word comes up a lot. We say eccentric, nowadays; we mean: we don't like it.

Falsworth sits Howard down for a conversation. "Listen," Falsworth says. "I need to ask you about something."

"Oh, Christ, what is it this time. Look, I swear, I thought the atomizing intoxicator would just make people sleepy, I tested it on Anton, and—"

"—Yes," Falsworth allows, momentarily distracted, "but Anton has the alcohol tolerance of a polar bear, Stark, and you could have at least tried to aim the atomizer—

"I did aim it; we can't all be sharpshooters, like your wife—"

"I'm going to tell my wife you brought her into this." Falsworth clearly knows he's won this round; he has a triumphant gleam in his eye.

"Oh, fine," Howard mutters. "It was my mistake."

"At any rate, this isn't about that. The FBI called today, and they were asking a lot of questions."

"They're just harassing us again. They do it for fun, when there's a slow day in the office."

"Well, I know that, but I think it would help if we could stick to a narrative."

Howard props his feet up on Falsworth's desk. "Is it Oppenheimer again? They seriously think he's going to hop a plane to Leningrad or something; it's insane, where do they dream up this stuff?"

"It's not Oppenheimer."

"Then who is it this time? Feynman? They're about due to start in on Feynman again." Feynman has no political sympathies that Howard's ever discerned, but something about him seems to offend the FBI, something in his very nature. Maybe it's just, Howard thinks, being a scientist; maybe that's what the FBI doesn't like. It would explain so much, if Communism and science had somehow, in their dictionary, gotten confused.

"Howard," Falsworth says slowly, "That's what I'm trying to tell you; I thought perhaps you knew already. They were asking about you."

It makes sense, doesn't it? The problem is that it makes a lot of sense. There's the Serbers, who've been tarred with the socialist brush; there's Fuchs; and the Peierls, whom he'd brought under suspicion; there's Teller, who'd been under investigation, and who's now so eager to name names; there's Feynman, suspected for just being Feynman; Oppenheimer's brother, the Communist-in-college; and Oppenheimer himself, of course: their king. Once you get started, once you start down that road, you can pick out one hell of a web: everyone becomes a suspect person. And half of what they said about Oppenheimer, after all, was just: He was friends with the wrong people.

"But what is it they want?" Howard asks. He's out on the mansion's terrace with Carter and Jones. Spring: the air is damp. Outside, no one can hear them. Out by the Chinese fish pond: a cloud of twittering birds. "They must want something; I'm too powerful, they can't just fuck around. I sell the military guns; they can't do me like Oppenheimer. I was friends with Captain fucking America— sorry, Carter, I'm sorry, but you've got to ask yourself: what do they want, what are they trying to get?"

Carter, pensive: "No— I mean, I agree, but I think it's the wrong question. No matter what they want, they know better than to make a play for us unless they've got something. So what we ought to be asking is: what have they got?"

All three of them stand in silence, with expressions of foreboding.

"Do we think it's the submarine?" Jones asks. "Do they think we leaked it to the Russians?"

"Well, we don't know who did leak it, do we?" That's Howard. They're still investigating Lehigh, still looking to find some source of a leak. It makes Howard uneasy; but then, Lehigh itself has never really put him at ease.

" But then," Jones says, "—why now?"

"They've got something." Carter's mouth thins, her eyes narrow. "They've got something that they're sitting on. Trying to see what-all they can get out of it."

"—Us," Howard says to Carter, still stuck on this syllable. "It's me they're asking about, but you said us."

Carter turns to him, surprise printed on her features. "If you were to go down," she says slowly, as though it should be obvious to him, "we wouldn't survive it. You fund the agency."

Howard has never thought about this. He pays for so much of what's around him that it seems natural: the natural, earthly order. Money isn't anything special. It's like grass or air. Why should responsibility come with it? (For some reason he thinks of the rag doll children who haunted the airfields of Berlin. Nazi children, their fathers strung up or run off, but they were here anyways, and we had to feed them. What made them ours to feed? Some bureaucratic bit of statecraft? Cheap wizardry with a map of Europe and a felt-tipped pen? He can't accept that, but every other prospect's exhausting.)The thing is: the thing is that he hadn't meant to make a promise, to promise I'll be good, I'll be good. He'd thought he was buying and not selling things. He feels horribly trapped by the idea that the reverse is true: that, without realizing it, all along he'd been selling himself, selling shares in the person he'd someday be. They owe him, so they own him; is that the deal? It's not any deal he'd signed up for.

"I'm..." he says. He's abruptly tongue-tied by terror. "I'll find out what they're onto. I'll call some people. Don't worry."

He wouldn't care, he thinks, if the FBI were coming after him. But suddenly the landmass of him is more than his body. He's an archipelago, an atoll; nuke one part, and the rest suffers. The sea shifts, the beaches go underwater. They'll have to boat out all the inhabitants.

Later that day, he finds a listening device inside a lightbulb in his workshop. The tech is laughable, easily dismantled. He looks at it and thinks: Soviet-made?

Which is more frightening: if it is, or if it isn't?

Howard spins it between his fingers, thoughtful, apprehensive.

He knows he has a friend on the Atomic Energy Commission— Andrew Pierce, a boyish attorney who, prior to his appointment as commissioner, had served as press spokesman during the Nuremberg Trials. He'd briefly been an intelligence operative during the war; Howard had met him in London, had liked him very much. And he knows that Pierce had spoken up for Oppenheimer, had tried to arrange it so the General Advisory Committee could testify on his behalf.

Pierce says, "Of course, I'm happy to help!" His blue eyes are concerned. "I hate to think it's come to this. Let me see what I can do."

He invites Howard to his home for cocktails. They discuss strategy. He lives in Georgetown, in a rambling Tudor house on a pleasant and leafy street. Howard meets Pierce's wife, a laughing woman named Martha, and his two children: a daughter and a thoughtful, fair-haired son.

Life goes on: with an ambient note of suspicion.

Now a few people are beginning to talk about fallout shelters. This will become a growing trend. We have to survive this new world somehow, this new world that has such creatures in it. The ideal fallout shelter is designed for one family: four people, maybe five. Every nuclear family for itself. It's got food, water, air filtration. Everything that you need to survive. Everything? Well, everything to sustain life in the biological sense. And it's tricky, isn't it, talking about life? Never before in the history of the world have we been so good at keeping people strictly alive. And we'll only get better! As the years go on, technology advances. So here's to the future: Hawaiian Punch and canned corn, Spam and Hershey's syrup, corn flakes, supplements, instant coffee... It sounds like a blast, a real good time. Not exactly Le Pavillon, but we'll take what we can get.

Howard looks down his nose a bit at those who build shelters. "You won't find me in one of those, pal," he says. Of course, he knows better than most what it means to be in the bomb. He remembers all the animals they had found out in the desert, after the test. Tortoises roasted inside their shells. Sometimes there'd be six dead magpies in a circle. Why had they died? —The bomb. But more specifically? —Uncertain. That was what the bomb did: it made things dead. Natural to die; unnatural to live on. The survivors were the wonders, but then also— oh, how'd they proved it— in some ways the unlucky ones.

Anton, on the other hand— "We don't have such a thing in Russia when I left!" he says, delighted, when he encounters the notion for the first time. "And anyways, in Soviet Union, we're not having so much food that we can keep it like this." He's enamored with powdered drink mix and, especially, Hershey's syrup (which he'll eat by the spoonful). Really, he has disgusting taste, as you would expect from someone raised largely on potatoes. And when it comes to isolation: "Just, in the ground, put a turntable and all the recordings of Mozart."

"You'd need a pretty good electrical generator."

Anton shrugs: careless, ingenuous. "So? You build it for me."

Joking again. It's started to fray Howard's nerves, or maybe Howard's nerves are just fraying. He can never quite see when Anton's trying to conceal within him that bleakness that occasionally rises to his surface like a vast sea creature, threatening and consumptive, and when it's just... jokes, that ragged and determinedly trivial patter. He can't help but suspect that Anton thinks about bomb shelters like a kind of forever-playhouse, a post-apocalyptic Never Never Land.

"And why not?" Anton asks, when Howard levels this accusation. "It makes things worse? No, It's not so bad, finally the worst thing has happened. At least you're safe, at least no one is coming for you in the night. To me it's like a holiday."

"For Christ's sake, Anton," Howard says, or snaps, really, in exasperation. "No one's coming for you in the night now. You're not in Soviet Russia anymore. You're in the real world, and it would help if you could act sometimes— just sometimes— like you're taking any of this remotely seriously, not like you're a little kid!"

Anton looks, for a second, like he's been slapped. There's a visible instant when he turns vicious, before he retorts, "The real world, really, like this place you're living? You're not living in this real world! You live in a fantasy province, with— your, your, your, your colossal palace and your little court running around, and you do what you like, you do always what you like, you live always in the upper regionalities of things, you never have to see the basement parts."

"That's a fucking lie," Howard says. He finds that he's absurdly, irrationally furious.

"Is it? Is it? You know— how people say in Russia is: the tallest building in Moscow is the Lubyanka, since from its basements, a person beholds Siberia. You don't behold this, Howard, you don't go down there, so you don't see how tall the building is!"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Since you don't understand, you don't know this!"

"I was in the war!" Howard shouts. "You think I don't get it? I lost friends! I made bombs! I didn't have to stop making them!"

"You make guns!" Anton shouts back. "You make guns, but you don't shoot them, you don't see the people they shoot, it's not you who gets shot, not ever!"

Which is factually true— it's mostly Carter doing the shooting, and Carter who, upon occasion, has been shot— so Howard can't even protest it, which he doesn't like. He wants to throw something against a wall, but he's in the workshop, so there's nothing that's safe to throw. He can't do anything but leave, which he does, grabbing his suit coat, but it's not very satisfying.

"It's not you, the one they take down to the basement!" Anton calls after him. "You know this, Howard? It's never going to be you!"

Howard tells Carter to take him shooting.

"What brought on this unsettling desire?" she asks.

"Nothing."

"Ah. We're grumpy and bloodthirsty, are we?"

"Leave it alone. Let's go shoot some guns."

She takes him to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s target range. They have a target range? A lot has been happening that Howard didn't know about. It's at Lehigh, where once they used to train soldiers. Like boys at summer camp, the soldiers had been. The soldiers at Lehigh are different these days: S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who comes from intelligence backgrounds. They wear navy uniforms with slim silver badges. Some visibly bear the scars of war; others less so. All of them seem to know Howard's face. This used to discomfit him; now it makes him nervous. I'm not in charge of you, he thinks. He can run a business, but he can't stand to run an army. It's not the same, not at all the same kind of thing.

The target range is down in the marsh-smelling bunker. It's dark; the walls are painted black. Howard's aware of Carter's presence, though he can't see her. He knows how to fire a gun; she'd taught him years ago. Still, it's not a natural act, like it is for her— as though there's nothing to it. As though the whole machinery of the gun is an extension of her arm. He feels awkward. He fumbles with the automatic pistol. He always forgets, somehow, when actually handling weapons, the way the body becomes involved with them. You pull the trigger, a force kicks back against you. It makes sense, mechanically, where that force comes from, but when you're in that moment, it feels like the gun resisting, the bullet saying no, you can't make me, no. Any flinch in your body will translate to the shot, feeding back into it, so you have to stay still. You have to be prepared. You have to absorb the resistance. It's not at all like pressing a button. The violence is there, it's present in your hand, your hand is a part of it.

They shoot for a while. Howard's aim is actually good. It's a disconcerting experience for him, because he has no conscious control of this fact. You can't think too much about where you're shooting. There's no time. The engine of your mind has to output action. He feels himself go wholly silent. No words anymore, just the fish in the water. Then the shot, the shot, the shot, the hook.

Afterwards, Carter says, "Well, that was bracing."

"I know I don't do it as much as I should."

"You're not bad. If you practiced, you'd have a talent."

They're sitting, of all places, on the rooftop of the old laboratory. You can still get up there, if you want to. Howard rests his forehead on the heels of his hands. He feels Carter lightly ruffle his hair with her fingers.

"What is it, Stark?" she asks.

"Nothing. It's nothing."

She waits.

"You know I've never killed someone? Not—" He gestures helplessly. "Not. I mean, I guess I've killed a lot of people. One way or another."

"One way or another, we all have." Her voice is very soft. He looks over at her. She's looking down; she isn't looking at him.

"There's a difference, though. Isn't there a difference? You... you know, you have."

"Oh, yes. Quite a few." She sounds— amused, exhausted. She combs her windswept hair behind her ears. "I don't know that it's that different."

"It just seems like it should mean something else, something more."

Carter gazes out over the camp, at the spreading swamp. It's summer and the land is very green. The sky is blue with an unsettling blue that hints at the black empty space beyond it. Their legs dangle off the roof of the building. It makes Howard feel like they're two little kids, at play amid some vast ruined fairground. Carter says, "You do what needs to be done, in war. It's not like I hated all of them. Some of them I did hate, or I suspect I would've, if I'd ever known them at all, but I didn't. I didn't know any of them, not really. They were in my way, and I needed to remove them. Strategically, I needed to remove them. So I did. I'm sorry if that sounds cold."

"No," Howard says quickly. "No. I don't think that."

"So much of war isn't about feelings at all, or ideals, or principles. I didn't want— there were a lot of things I didn't want. But when it comes down to it, part of being a soldier— and, oh, being an adult in the world, I suppose— is gritting your teeth and doing what you have to. Doing what needs to be done. After all, if you don't, then someone else has to."

It seems a very Carter approach. He remembers her drinking weak tea in England, eating her dreadful marmite. She'd saved up coupons to buy a dress, during the war. It had been a humdinger: hip-hugging and very red. Rogers had loved it. He hasn't thought about that in a long time. That dress, the rations; Rogers.

"Does that more or less answer your question?" she asks him.

He hadn't asked a question, not really. But he tells her, "Yes."

Andrew Pierce ushers Howard into his cramped office. "Well, you were right," he says. He has this way of making the worst news sound upbeat. "They've got something, and they're sitting on it, neat and quiet as a spider. Waiting to see who they'll catch in their web. MI6 did that with Fuchs, too, in England, you know. Oh, boy, did that make our friends the Feds mad."

Howard sinks into the proffered chair. He doesn't want to think about Fuchs. He's exhausted by a prodromal aura of dread. "So you've got it?"

"I don't have the actual papers. I'm not a miracle worker— alas! What I know is that the FBI got an unmarked envelope— your standard hack job, no return address— with info inside on your Soviet defector."

"Someone leaked them information on Vanko?"

"Not so much a defector, as it turns out."

Howard's silly with a great swell of relief. He can't help it; he has to laugh. "No, but— that's ridiculous, Anton, they're railroading us! I thought maybe they'd dug up something serious, but this is—"

"Howard," Pierce says. He looks worried. "This is serious, this is very serious."

"Trust me, we do not have a problem with Anton. The guy literally walked to Finland to get out of Russia. They were going to send him to Department X."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I know him! The CIA vetted him when he came into the country."

"A really good Soviet agent would pass the vetting process. I don't like it, but let's be honest here, Howard— the FBI, the CIA—" Pierce makes a dismissive gesture. "You know as well as I do they're hardly the sharpest screwdrivers. You know about the Philby rumor? MI6, one of their heads of counterintelligence— friends with Angleton, the patron saint of the CIA. Very deep in with Burgess and Maclean, so, as it turns out: possibly a Soviet agent himself. Hasn't defected— yet— but it certainly makes you wonder."

"You haven't met Anton, though. He's not— Christ, he's not a, what, a triple agent."

"No, I haven't met him. I've read a bit, though. Some kind of wunderkind, right? One of those kids that compose sonatas. Goes into physics, very flashy, gets a reputation, works for a while on the Soviet bomb. But oh, no, our boy, he's very principled, you see. He doesn't like making bombs. He likes American freedom, he likes tinkering and toys. Maybe he likes the finer things, he likes a good party. Any part of this ringing alarm bells, Howard?" His tone is still gentle, sympathetic, as though to say: none of this is a problem; as though to say: unfortunately, as you're probably starting to see now, I'm right— but we'll handle it.

"I don't know what you mean," Howard says numbly.

"Oh, come on; he's you, Howard! He couldn't have been more designed for you if they'd actually grown him in a vat! Doesn't that make you just the tiniest bit suspicious? Don't you start to wonder, just a little bit?"

Howard stands up. "I want to know what the papers say," he says. "The documents, the ones the FBI's got. I want to see them."

"I told you— I'm not a miracle worker."

"Then I don't believe it. You can say whatever you want."

"He sent your nuclear submarine plans back to Mother Russia."

Howard's nails dig into the palms of his hands.

"That's what the papers say. Well, part of it." Pierce sighs; he rumples his ash-fair hair. Howard is reminded of a photo from Nuremberg: Pierce in the foreground, almost out of frame, looking haunted, with his head in his hands. It had been on the front page of some newspaper in New York; Howard had seen it and thought, So that's where Andy Pierce ended up. He'd forgotten that till now, that moment of recognition.

"Look," Pierce says at length. "You don't have to believe me. You came to me, Howard. I've got no stake in all this! It's just, well— my concern is you. We've already lost Oppenheimer; he was a great mind, and this country needs great minds now. We can't seem to stop getting rid of them. I'm so tired of having to defend people from these sniping little wasps! I keep thinking, We're better than this. I can't stand to see you get dragged down in the same old way, just because it starts to look like you were— what was it they said about Oppenheimer?" He waits an ironic beat. "Susceptible to influence."

"I'm not Oppenheimer," Howard says.

"No. You've got more promise. You've got bigger goals. But you also have to be very careful, because until they decide to use it, it's an axe hanging right over your head."

"So, what? I don't believe it; you can't make me believe it."

"So then— you do nothing, you cooperate with the FBI; hell, you call up the FBI, you let them deal with your friend."

Howard fixes him with a cynical stare. "Because, as we've established, they don't make mistakes."

"At least you get ahead of the axe! Howard, what matters here is that you don't look like you're colluding. And if—"

"Oh, is that what matters."

"And if the worst happens and he runs—"

"For Christ's sake!" Howard shouts. "He's not a spy!"

Pierce holds a conciliatory hand up. "Just hear me out. Because if the worst happens, and he is a spy, and he runs— it would look very bad for you, all right, do you understand why it would look bad?"

"Yes," Howard grudgingly admits.

They stare at one another. Howard's thinking: Anton's not a spy, so it doesn't matter; he has no reason to want to run. At the same time he's thinking: If Anton knew that they thought he was a spy, if he thought that they might send them back... He doesn't particularly trust Anton to make wise decisions. Perhaps because Anton is so much like him.

So much like him.

"Just think about it," Pierce advises. "Logically, if you can. You've got to leave emotion out of it. Think about what's best for S.H.I.E.L.D., for the country."

"I am," Howard says helplessly.

He always is.

"Anton?" Carter asks incredulously. "I don't believe it."

Back on the terrace: now it's autumn, or nearly. The sun has grown heavy overhead; the stone balustrade no longer holds the same warmth. Howard leans against it and looks out at the lawn. The hackberry trees have veins of gold. Horse chestnuts lightly rust. There's a general feeling of overripeness.

He says, "I know."

Jones' head is tilted, calculating. "In some ways, it doesn't matter, though, does it?" Jones: always so good at chess. "These days, what matters is what it looks like. What it might be. What it could have been."

Howard says, "I told him I want to see the papers." He closes his eyes. He feels so tired of this.

"What did Pierce say?" Carter asks. "He's a very good lawyer."

"I didn't know you knew him."

"We met in Germany, after the war. He's very idealistic. He struck me as wanting to do the right sort of thing."

"He thinks Anton's a spy, and we should cooperate with the Feds. He thinks we should wash our hands of him."

They contemplate this prospect in silence. Carter can't meet Howard's eyes, he notices.

"If he's not a spy," Carter says eventually, "what's the worst that could happen? If they investigate him?"

"Oh, please, it's the FBI," Howard snaps. "You really trust them? I don't. They'll send him back to Russia!"

That's the worst that could happen. That's the worst thing. Anton back with the wolves in the snow. Anton in the Lubyanka basement. Anton locked up by Department X. Howard doesn't know what they'd do; he has no capacity to imagine. Perhaps this is what Anton had meant.

Carter says gently, "Howard, what do you think happens if you don't cooperate with them? And how will it look for you? Like you're trying to protect him."

"I am trying to protect him. He's my friend."

"But to the FBI. Think about what they could do to you. To us. A political trial would hurt everyone, it could be— catastrophic."

"I know!" Howard shouts. He hadn't meant to shout, really. He doesn't know what happened. He's just— he's just— His hands are clenched on the balustrade roughly.

"Let me ask you something," Jones says. His voice is careful, clinical. "—And I need an honest answer, please. Does it matter to you if Anton is a spy?"

"Of course it does. Of course it matters. For Christ's sake."

"Or is your chief concern here how to protect him? I'm really asking."

"I don't— I—"

Carter silently moves beside him. She puts her hand on his forearm, like she needs to shore him up. Her grip is very firm. He looks at her, unthinking. He's not feeling anything at all, really, except lightheaded, but she looks at him as though he might be gutshot.

"I need to know," Jones says, "because it's a strategic concern."

Howard says, wretched, "You don't get it. He's not, he can't be. He can't be a spy."

Howard finds himself thinking about Fuchs a lot. That night on the Hill, after the British Mission gala, Fuchs had been writing something on a piece of paper. He'd stopped for a moment to talk to Howard, still holding the paper in his hand. What had he been writing? What was written on the paper? It's easy to obsess about things like this. You think— If I'd only looked, if I had only read it, it might have explained everything. I might understand. Because he hadn't understood anything, from the beginning, had he? There had been times when he thought he'd seen a pattern, some beautiful structure that underlay all the events, that unified all the particulate matter, but it had always turned out to be nonsense.

Don't try to figure out a bigger pattern, Anton had said.

Howard can't believe it.

S.H.I.E.L.D. puts surveillance on Anton. "Because," Carter says, "if— for whatever reason, Howard— he tries to run, that would be..."

"I know," Howard says. "I know. Disastrous."

It was what had happened with the Philby case, with Kim Philby, the counterintelligence agent. Burgess had been living with him; how could he have not known that Burgess was a traitor? How could he have not known that Burgess was planning to defect? If he wasn't a spy, he was damn sure an accessory to spy-age. He would never work in intelligence again.

You can see the logic; it's very solid. But at the same time, something's missing from the whole story. People don't behave like rational beings. You can know something and not know it; you can choose amnesia; you can miss the obvious out of willful neglect. A spy might be gentle and good with your children. A spy might be an old and cherished school friend. Someone might look like a spy, and yet you know they're not, in spite of the evidence against them. There are forces stronger than logic and reason. They reach into dimensions we don't understand yet. They bind us together with covert attractions, and we are helpless in the clutch of their gravity. There is so much in this world that we can't account for. The facts we know are islands, protruding cleanly from the ocean. Meanwhile, the unknown moves in the deep: full of sea creatures, of living currents. We would like a map! we cry. We've lost the ones that we had! Lost; or don't know how to read. Our boats are carried onwards, though we don't know how to steer them. We trail our hands across the surface of the water. Something far down in the darkness gleams.

Anton, of course, senses something's wrong. He's not stupid. Well, that's part of the problem, isn't it? Part of the problem that is Anton.

He and Howard are overseeing the construction of the arc gadget at the Stark Industries factory on Long Island. Things through the end of the summer have been tense between them. Neither of them likes to apologize to others. Neither has apologized for saying what he said. Anton nowadays seems slightly older, exhausted. He often looks like he's caught between laughter and tears. Does he know at this point that he's under surveillance? If so, why hasn't he run? Is it, instead, the argument with Howard? Visions of the Lubyanka? Would a spy, Howard thinks, would a spy be afraid of the Lubyanka? He doesn't know very much about the psychology of spies.

He doesn't know, either, how to not act suspicious. He keeps bringing Anton gifts. He can't seem to stop. A red scarf. A bag of lemon candy. A Russian edition of Mandelstam.

"Tristia," Anton says. His mouth makes an odd motion. He stares down at the book. He bites his lip. "Howard, I don't want to take this. Keep it. Please don't give it to me."

"... All right," Howard says slowly. He doesn't understand.

He catches Anton watching him, sometimes, when he thinks Howard's not looking. His eyes aren't angry. It's hard to read them at all. They're warm: that odd warm inner-wood color. The part that's left when the rest has been stripped away. Vital, is maybe the word Howard would use. Like when we say vital parts: the heart, the lungs and things.

The two of them share an awkward dinner with the Jarvises. A soundtrack of clinking silverware. No one laughs very much.

They drink cherry brandy, after. Mrs. Jarvis sets her glass down with more than the necessary force. "Why so much sadness?" she demands.

"In this room, or in whole entire world," Anton says very flatly.

She gives him a piercing look. "Что случилось?" she asks him, which Howard can't understand. "В чем дело? Скажи мне. Anton. Antoshka."

Anton looks away. "Nothing's happened. No one's done anything," he says.

The untruth lodges itself in the air. Howard swallows hard. He says, "Anton—"

Anton stands and leaves the room without a word. Howard swears and follows him out, out into the early November night. It's cold, and neither of them's dressed for it. Frost crunches under their footsteps; Howard's exhales are ghost-like.

"Anton— Anton, wait," he calls.

Anton whirls around. He's panting, breathing hard. "I would never hurt you," he says. "Never, I would never, would never hurt you, Howard. Do you know that? Do you understand?"

Howard flinches. Shame warms his skin in a slow, searing flush. "I know," he whispers. "I didn't—" He doesn't know what he means.

Anton watches him, waiting for an answer. But there's nothing Howard can say. He would have to take knives to words to make them fit. He would have to take knives to his heart. He should've done it before. It's far too late now. So: no words. But they don't need words, do they? They have this other speech, without any language. They've perfected it. They are two twin fish at leap in the same water, swift and unlike the others. He looks at Anton, full of mute misery.

They're standing so close. Anton reaches out to touch him: cups his hands against the sides of Howard's face. "So don't, then," he says. "Don't, don't, don't, please, don't, Howard— please don't— please—"

Howard shuts his eyes. He doesn't say anything. After a moment, he reaches up to grip Anton's wrists. Not trying to move his hands; just holding him there. Feeling the pulse at the base of his palms: his heartbeat, so far-reaching.

Carter's very brittle these days. Howard sees her in the office. She's always sitting very stiffly at her desk. She looks careful, he thinks, carefully put together, composed as ever, but slightly frail in a way he can't explain. Like she's acting a part: stiff upper lip.

"I like Anton," she says out of the blue one day, as they're leaving the building, walking up Fifth Avenue. "Well, I find him quite trying sometimes. But I don't want him hurt. I would never want that."

Howard considers this statement. "You'd shoot him, though," he says. "Wouldn't you? If he got in your way. Like you said." He keeps his voice impersonal. He doesn't mean to accuse. They're having this very civilized discussion. The sun has set and they're walking through early darkness. Light spills from the storefronts, the upper windows. The shifting crowds pass, anonymous, around them, unaware that they're discussing the death of a man. What would those people say: the men in their fedoras, the ladies in felt coats and coy little hats? It's not relevant; they don't grasp the full calculations. Their opinion's uninformed. They don't know what's at stake.

Carter says, "If it were the right thing to do. Yes."

Howard nods shortly. It's what he'd known she'd say. "I need you to tell me," he says in the same casual tone, "whether it is the right thing. Because I don't have whatever magical sixth sense you have. You know that, right? Do you know that? I believe you when you tell me that there is a right thing, I believe you when you tell me the concept exists, but when it comes down to it, I am fucking colorblind, sweetheart. I mean, I am in the dark. So I need you to tell me."

She's stopped. She has a strange look on her face: almost wistful. "You called me sweetheart," she says. "You used to call me that in the Forties. I hated it."

"—You loved it," Howard says. He brushes a cinder off her coat collar. He feels inexplicably close to tears.

"I wanted to throttle you. But I didn't, because I knew back then that you were a good person, very deep down. It was just— no one had ever taught you the names for things. It was like somehow you were still a child. You had to learn what it meant to be sad, to be angry... right and wrong... I used to marvel at it. I suppose you're still learning."

He would have been furious once. He's never really liked being called a kid. Now he thinks: Just, please, explain it to me. She's right; he doesn't know what anything means. He's never known; he's always been blindly stabbing, sticking labels on things over-hastily— does this fit? Or this one? Till disaster struck, or he got it right, or something else happened; till Carter came along with her mercy.

"I can't do it on my own," he tells her plainly.

"You think you can't, but you will. I know you will." She smiles at him, encouragingly.

He doesn't know that this is true. He doesn't understand the system. It has nothing in common with math or physics. It gives him vertigo, just thinking about it. He's scared that other people can do this, and not him. There are certain fluencies he's never gained, he knows, ways in which he still finds himself mute. Will this always be the case? Is he physically different? Is there some wound he's missed, inside his body, like a broken bone that ought to have been set, and wasn't, and consequently healed badly? Sometimes there's nothing you can do about these wounds. Sometimes the bone needs to be broken again.

He walks on with Carter, towards where he'd left his car. In the shadow of the buildings, they seem very tiny. They embrace under a streetlamp. Before turning to go, Carter kisses his cheek: just the lightest, driest press of her lips— like a benediction, he thinks.

Pierce calls. "You need to come to Washington," he says.

Howard goes to Washington. It has always seemed a funereal city. It does so more now. All the white monuments like marble biers. There are a lot of flags in Washington, a lot of American flags. He's never liked the design much. It had looked good on Rogers. It'd had some kind of substance to it. God, he... for a moment, he misses the idea of Rogers. Not Rogers himself; maybe Erskine. It seems so long ago that Erskine was alive. He had belonged to another age. He'd told Howard that there were really no secrets, or at any rate not very many; that Howard himself would understand this when he was older. But he's older now, and it seems like the secrets breed secrets, and he thinks, Maybe Erskine was just born knowing— or he absorbed the answers, somehow, when he was an infant. There was a knowledge, a wisdom that's since been lost. At least: no one had ever shared it with Howard. It's too late, now; maybe if— maybe if— His life could have gone differently.

Pierce meets him in Georgetown: the rambling house. Frost white on the lawns of the leafy street. He's rumpled, wearing a pair of black plastic framed glasses. They make him look too young to have a teenaged kid. Jesus, imagine (Howard does) having a kid during those trials... a baby, a toddler, having to sit through that every day, realizing the world you'd brought that child into. No wonder Pierce had looked so haunted in that photo. Now he just looks exhausted. "Howard," he says. "—Come in, have a drink."

They sit in the kitchen: wood-paneled, well-used. Howard has never lived in a place like this.

He waits while Pierce pours him whiskey in a tumbler. There's a single file folder in the center of the table. Howard doesn't look at it.

Pierce raises his glass. He doesn't say a word. They're both so tired, Howard thinks; they work so hard, trying to stop terrible things from happening. It should be simple, it should be easy. It should be what everyone wants. But somehow it never seems to be.

He drinks. He asks Pierce, "Are those the papers?"

Pierce nods to the folder. "Take a look."

Howard hesitates. He opens the folder. Inside are diagrams, technical specs, calculations. There are handwritten notes in messy Cyrillic, Anton's messy, impatient script. He rests his fingertips over the writing. He says, "Anyone could've forged this."

"Anyone with access to classified information? With access to his writing? Anyone who speaks Russian?"

Howard remains silent.

"Howard—" Pierce leans forward. "I need to tell you something, but first let me explain. You're not well-liked in Washington. You; S.H.I.E.L.D."

As though the two were sewn together. As though they shared a network of blood vessels, a brain, a heart.

"The FBI," Pierce says, "doesn't like what you're doing. They don't like this extra-governmental crap. Can you blame them? It makes them nervous. They think you're— hell, I don't know, the American Hydra. The American Department X. You can see it, the parallel. No, don't— just let me finish. What they need, more than anything, is to know that the person running the joint is someone they can trust. Right now that's a problem. You're asking them to accept a hell of a lot: a woman— not even an American, Howard!— and a Negro? The Captain America connection can't carry you forever. And then there's you."

"And my pet Soviet spy." Howard doesn't recognize his voice.

"That's part of it. You've given them a lot to choose from. You haven't been very wise with your friends."

Howard pours himself another two fingers of whiskey. "I'm assuming there's more to this than a lecture," he says.

Pierce is watching him. His eyes are full of compassion. "They're going to arrest him. Vanko. They're making their move. For all I know, it's happening now."

Howard makes a sharp, truncated sound.

"I pulled a lot of strings to get you this information. The thing is, they don't want to take you down. They could do it, they could— I mean, Jesus. You know what they'd say if they put you on trial?"

Howard doesn't answer.

"They'd say: you paid for his apartment. And what were you thinking, by the way, Howard. They'd say: you gave him gifts, you brought him to your house. You know what they said about Philby and Burgess?"

"We're not—" Lovers? He can't bring himself to say it. Why, why should that word be so resistant? Why should it be so hard for him?

"It's what the newspapers like, though. The tabloids' favorite combo. Secret homosexual and Soviet spy. It would be the end. For you, for everyone you work with. For S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Why," Howard manages. His hand, on the glass, is shaking. "Why are you telling me this. I could—"

What? What could he do?

"But you won't, Howard," Pierce says. "Will you? Will you. You'll do what you have to do."

They stare at one another across the table. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimes: a homey sound, a quiet, domestic reminder. This whole room feels so alien to Howard. He can feel the alcohol inside of him.

"After the war," Pierce says, at the end of a long silence, "I— well, you know what I did. In Nuremberg, it was like... the end of civilization. You think you know what people do to each other, but you don't, you have no idea. Not just... but in Germany, too, where we had bombed the cities, the cathedrals... sometimes you could still find bones in parts of buildings. In basements. People had turned on each other like wild animals, like..."

Like wolves, Howard thinks.

"And then the bomb. Oppenheimer understood that. He knew what it meant. These government goons, they don't get it. They think they can treat people like numbers, numbers on paper. You can delete a number, you can just scratch it out. It doesn't leave behind bones, it doesn't leave anything behind. That's why we need you, Howard, that's why you have to survive this. What do you think happens if S.H.I.E.L.D. collapses?"

"But they'll send him back to Russia," Howard says numbly. "They'll send him back to Russia, Andy. He's a person too. He's not a number."

"The Russians won't kill him. Come on, you know how this works. He's too valuable."

"Valuable."

"Whether he's a spy or not— he's got a brain like yours. Not something they can afford to waste."

It's not his brain, Howard thinks, that's valuable. It's not his brain, at any rate, that was valuable to me. He doesn't go beyond this thought; he doesn't try to. There are parts of his body that Howard's not prepared to enter. There are some things he can't know; some knowledge has to be secret. —And after all, who can say he knows his own heart? Who would ever want to know such a thing, when our hearts are like unanchored icebergs in winter: huge, forbidding, and treacherous, slipping through the water, doing damage we can't see; changing shape, shedding parts, resisting maps.

He gets it— he comprehends the calculation, the sacrifice that Pierce is asking him to make.

For some reason, he thinks about Rogers in that moment. Rogers, Erskine's child: the future that Erskine had wanted to see. It had died young, still in its cradle, that future. A sacrifice made to some world yet to come, a world that was slow— it turned out— in arriving. They would get there; they had to; but it's taking so long. They drag the stones onwards, bit by bit. They can't see the shape of the cathedral, but surely, at some vastly distant juncture, it will be revealed. They will see it emerging out of the rock piles, out of the labor, the chipping and the cutting. They will see the roofs, the buttresses, the arches and walls.

He remembers Anton's hands, warm against his face. Please don't, he'd said. Howard please don't please.

Anton whom he'd——

Late into the night, they sit at the table, drinking. Pierce says, "I tell my children— I try to teach them to make the world better. Sometimes I'm afraid I don't know how to do that. How am I supposed to teach them to do something I haven't figured out yet? You know?" His gaze is distant, troubled. He's not seeing Howard. He spins his empty glass in his hand. "You ever think about having kids someday?"

Howard's quite drunk by this point. He shakes his head. He thinks of Stella Jones, now a dimple-kneed toddler who talks ceaselessly in her nonsense speech. She doesn't know how to put the words together yet, really. She knows how to ask for things. Children are selfish creatures; that's the very first thing they learn. Howard never asked for things when he was a child. He doesn't really know what his first words were. He wondered, later, but no one remembered.

"They can't imagine what the world is like. And you don't want them to know; you don't want to show them; but at the same time you worry..." His voice trails off. He pushes his glasses up his head, rubs his eyes. They're underscored by shadows. "Will they make the same mistakes, I guess."

Howard's worry would be different: will they invent new mistakes? It's a worry that, he feels, is well-founded. His generation has excelled at this.

He drives back to New York in the early part of the morning. The sun is not really visible yet. The air is like swimming underwater: heavy and blue. There's frost on the freeways. The wheels of his Speedster sometimes skid. He thinks about it, what it would be like to float off the tarmac, sink weightlessly towards the raw wet grass. Would he feel anything? He doesn't feel anything now.

When he gets to Long Island, he starts to drink.

He dreams that he is down in a bunker. A fallout shelter. It is very dark, but under the door, a very thin thread of light leaks in. It's bright, it's warm, like the sun on a hot day— not harsh, like the California sun, or cold, like the sun on the high desert mesas, but the mantle of sun he had worn in the summer, a long time ago, back in New Jersey. He had sat on the roof of the lab with Carter, and together they had surveyed their domain: the whole expanse of the natural world, the generations it presaged through flowers, through seeds. Their shadows had moved on the tar of the rooftop. Longer and shorter, darker and lighter. The mark they left on the earth where the sun had struck them.

In the dream, he thinks that the light is the bomb. Why else would he be in a fallout shelter? He's amazed that it could be so gentle. It hadn't seemed gentle at Trinity. Maybe the violence recedes, as you get closer. The wind and stones stop rattling. The force of the blast becomes light, pure light. There is something else at the heart of the bomb: a physical feeling, a weight in his body, a word that has been kept secret from him. Right where there is that certain sea-change, where the sand turns into glass, where there is this transformation of matter. He could go there, if he left the bunker. He could find his way to it.

But he's too afraid. He hugs his knees to his chest. He doesn't want to open that door. He stays there, hiding in the dark. This is a safe place, he thinks.

Carter comes to tell him that Anton's been arrested. Howard's in his dressing gown, drinking gin in the sun room. It's six in the evening. He'd considered not leaving his bed. But he likes being here, among the lamps and ferns. An artificial wilderness. He has been drinking for a long time, thinking of nothing. Watching, through the line of windows, as the hackberry trees move in the wind. The house is close to the seashore, but he never goes. He should go to the seashore more, he reflects.

"I did what I had to do," he says.

Carter says, "Yes. I know."

She doesn't say if she approves of it. He didn't ask her. He'll never ask her.

She sits down next to him. "Are you going to drink all night?"

"Probably. I haven't decided yet."

"All right." She pours herself a glass.

His mouth twists. "You don't like gin."

"I've been known to drink fouler concoctions. From time to time."

After Erskine died, they'd sat up all night like this. Before they'd left America, gone to war. No one's died this time. You can't really call it a wake.

"Things'll be different now," he says. "We'll have to be careful. But we'll do what we have to do to keep people safe. Right?"

"That's what S.H.I.E.L.D. is here for."

They don't look at one another. They look out the windows, at the night coming in. At the trees, whose leaves are coming unjointed, unconnected.

"I never actually asked you," Carter says, "why you picked the name S.H.I.E.L.D., did I? I mean, I know why, obviously, but— why that particular object?"

He's drunk enough to attempt an explanation. He turns his glass in his hand. "It was," he says, "it was the last thing during the war that I didn't make to kill people. A shield isn't made to kill people. It's made to protect. I just couldn't... keep killing people, after a certain point. I got so sick of it. I wanted to get back to... I don't know. Pretty stupid, in retrospect, huh."

She watches as he refills her glass, then his own. "It wasn't, though, you know."

"Not stupid?"

"Not the last thing. You made me a birthday gift. A music box, inside a grenade shell. You took out all the parts of the grenade. I thought it was so clever; I used to listen to it... It reminded me of England. It made me quite homesick, when I moved to Brooklyn. Or not homesick, but..."

"I used to get sick," Howard says. "In New Mexico. Actually, literally, physically sick. Not just because I was drinking too much. I felt like I'd gotten so far away from where we'd started. I just couldn't seem to find my way back."

"I still have that music box, somewhere. I loved it. I wondered why you didn't make more things like that. Not— toys, exactly, but not weapons, either. Just— beautiful objects."

He thinks about the arc gadget, the reactor. At some point he'll complete the construction of it. Electrons will rush from one point to another, breaking atoms apart, reconstructing them, as though it were the easiest thing in the world. An infinite loop of transformation. The energy thus created will run his factory. That's how much force it has. So much force. He thinks that Carter will admire it. It is a beautiful object. He doesn't think he will make something like it again. He feels like the skill has left his body, the knowledge of how to create like that. He had felt it in London, assembling the wheels and gears of the little music box. And here, again. It requires another language; and he has lost, he thinks, the fluency for it.

He says, in answer to her question, "I don't know. Not practical, I guess."

Carter being Carter, she senses the untruth. She reaches out and takes his hand, lacing their fingers together. He holds onto her tightly.

"Do you ever feel like," he says, "you can't escape the past— like no matter what you do, you just can't erase it, you can't ever get out ahead of it?"

"Sometimes I feel that way about the future. I find I can't ever hide from it, though I'd like to."

"I always wanted to get forward, into the future. I felt like I was a haunted house. But no matter what I did, the ghosts never left."

"No. They don't, really." She lowers her eyes. She knows a little bit about this. "You have to live with them, I suppose. That's all there is to it."

Howard finds this idea difficult. "But what if you can't?"

"I don't know." She smiles sadly. "Keep running?"

He pictures it: running, all his life, running. House to house; reinventing himself; moving to California, then back again. Cars, speedboats, airplanes, rockets; all to keep the past at bay. Marrying, maybe that would help; a child, as though it might be possible to say Here, take this piece of myself, you can have it to the ghosts, as though the child might somehow help shoulder their weight; but then finding the child was his own kind of ghost. (Well, what did you expect, Howard, when you gave him that name?) Drinking: like holding his head underwater, searching for the fish that once flashed like gold. Feeling the ache where, long ago, something pierced him, leaving a scar, a hole that remains.

Late at night, when he's alone with his ghosts, he will walk the halls of whatever house he's in, pushed by a force that he doesn't understand. Still running? Yes, but not running from them now. Running as though towards a point on the horizon where he knows a reunion waits for him, where all of those ghosts will be gathered together— at last, in the next world, given back flesh; restored to their whole, unwounded selves. He, too, will find that his wounds are gone. He will find that he finally knows the language; all the words he's withheld will come easily to his tongue; he'll say— Forgive me; forgive me; forgive me, and all those ghosts will turn to him with tender eyes, with eyes full of mercy, and they'll say— they'll say—