Title: When Past and Future are Present
By: TriplePirouette/3Pirouette
Spoilers: Set in my "We're Not Done Yet" Universe
Disclaimer: They're not mine.
Distribution: . Anyone else please ask first :)
Summary: A few years after Peggy's brought to the future by the Eleventh Doctor, they have a run-in with another incarnation during a mission.
Feedback PLEASE at:triplepirouettephile Or just hit the little button there.
AN: for SteggyWeek2k16, Sunday's challenge, "AU/Crossover." I decided to dip back into this universe because it's one of my favorites. If you haven't read "We're Not Done Yet" all you need to know is that Eleven and Clara brought Peggy to the future to be with Steve (that's the super SHORT version. I would suggest reading the fic). Oh- and Tony Stark might be a time lord. That's still up for debate.
I meant to write a ficlet- this is 13 pages. Oops.
The door to the TARDIS swung open, the Doctor's head peaking out, short-cropped hair and big ears appearing first. His eyes went wide at the red lights and blaring sirens before he slammed the door shut. He ran back through the TARDIS, bouncing up to the control panel with a dour look on his face. "That is not Barcelona!"
"Spain?" Rose asked, trying to peek through the frosted windows, the din from the sirens gone with the sealing of the doors. "I think we might be a ways off."
"Planet, actually." He sighed, banging at the control panel before he trotted to the other side, flipping and hitting switches with abandon. "And yes, we're quite the long ways off."
Rose ambled up to the Doctor, only slightly concerned by his mania. "What's on the planet Barcelona?"
He huffed, pushing away from the console and rounding it to pull another set of levers. "Well, I can't very well tell you now, can I? You'd be horribly disappointed since there is not where we are." He hit the edge again, exasperated. "Come on!"
"What's wrong?" Rose asked, starting to feel fear rising up in her.
He shook his head. "She won't leave."
"Who?" Rose asked, slipping to the Doctor's side.
"The TARDIS." He scrubbed at his face and turned towards the doors. "Insists we need to stay, even though there's lights and sirens." He looked at the column of the TARDIS. "Lights and sirens usually mean run the other direction."
Rose looked between the doctor and the console, a small, mischievous smile playing at her lips. "Usually…" Her word bounced around the cavernous room with a melody, hanging in the air and waiting for him to join her train of thought.
When the Doctor smiled and straightened his leather coat, Rose knew she had him.
"Peggy, stop moving!" Steve shouted over the sirens.
Peggy held her breath, balancing as best she could. "Would you like to try this, darling? It's not quite as easy as I make it look." She looked down to where Steve held her feet high above his head like she was a cheerleader, a sweat breaking out across his brow. The abandoned elevator shaft they'd been tossed in was crumbling apart, any weight either of them attempted to put on the cement and it would disintegrate beneath their fingers.
"Well, I suppose I could give it a shot if you wanted to hold me up," Steve joked back, a lightness creeping in to his voice. "One more try then I need a quick break."
Peggy sighed, looking up to the edge of the wire hanging three feet over her head. She could just barely brush it with her fingertips. He'd had her over his head for nearly half an hour trying to reach it. She was so exhausted she didn't know what she'd even do if she got it into her grasp now. "One more- then we'll reassess, Captain."
Steve took a deep breath, grasping her foot tight. He counted back from three, and pushed even higher, but all Peggy could do was barely brush the tips of her fingers against the frayed edge as she threw them both off balance. She tumbled from his hands, but Steve reached out quickly enough to catch her, toppling them both to the ground.
"Are you alright?" he asked, out of breath but concerned.
Peggy nodded, taking in big gulps of air. "Yes… yes, I am." She looked him up and down, covered in sweat and still barely red, white, and blue under all the dust. "You?"
"Yeah." He sat up, shifting her to his side and brushing off her black fatigues. He looked around the shaft, the red lights and sirens of the core breach bouncing around the cavernous chute. With his enhanced abilities, the sound was piercing, and had started a throbbing in the back of his skull. "We need another idea."
"So where are we then?" Rose asked, wincing as the siren blared around them.
The Doctor carefully led her through abandoned hallway after abandoned hallway. "America." He took a deep breath, wrinkling his nose up dramatically as they passed a small office that was tossed into disarray. "Early 2020's I should say. He ran his hand against the cement wall, and then licked his finger. "Somewhere south of the Mason Dixon line but north of Florida."
Rose rolled her eyes at his theatrics, cringing again and finally covering her ears at the shrill blasts. "Any idea about the siren?"
The Doctor stopped short and pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. "Right!" He pointed it at a small, non-descript looking box, and with a high pitched wine and small, disappointing spark, the siren ceased. "Better?"
"Much." Rose nearly skipped to his side. "Any idea what it was for?"
"Danger, I assume," He smiled down at her. "Shall we take a quick peak?"
Rose slipped her hand around his elbow, gesturing forward. "Lead on."
"You're not throwing me up there!" Peggy nearly shouted.
Steve sighed, leaning against the wall and releasing a cloud of dust and cement. "We're running out of options."
Peggy looked up the shaft at the hole Steve intended to toss her through. Almost three stories up, it was still filled with the blinking red light of the evacuation signal despite the ceasing of the sirens. "Not that I don't trust your accuracy…"
Steve stepped to her side, grabbing her hand tight, "But?"
"But a thousand things. I could miss." Peggy's adrenaline was wearing off, now she was starting to feel frustrated and scared.
"Then I'll catch you." Steve set both of his hands on her shoulders. "Ok, let's see if we can think of something else first."
"Do you hear that?" Rose asked, starting a jog toward a dark corridor.
"Hear what?" The Doctor said, taking long strides with his sonic screwdriver in hand.
Rose stopped, and she could hear just the murmur of voices another hallway away. "Sounds like a man and a woman." Rose's eyes went wide as she moved closer, "And she sounds posh!"
"He sounds American, and upset." The Doctor took the lead, striding towards the voices.
He rounded another corner with Rose tight on his heels, stopping when he saw something on the ground before him. The voices were getting clearer, but sounded far below them now. "Doctor?" Rose asked as he moved toward the object. "What is it?"
He stooped down, turning the shining silver dish over to reveal the red, white, and blue patterning of Captain America's shield. "It's the shield."
"Like out of the comics?" Rose asked, leaning forward and running her hand over it. "Like that Captain guy, right? Mickey used to read those."
"Not quite. He was real, Rose." He turned and smiled a gigantic toothy grin at her. "And I think we're about to meet him!"
"We have to get out of here. How much time do you think we have left?"
"The last I heard from Tony, full breach from an explosion that size would take an hour at most. We've got… maybe twenty minutes, if we're lucky." He looked Peggy up and down, unsure of what to do. They were stuck, he didn't have his shield, and there were no good plans to get them out. He started on his gloves, pulling them off finger by finger. The walls weren't that sturdy, but maybe he could climb up just far enough… He'd rip his fingers to shreds on the crumbling cement, but he'd be able to get out and find a way to get Peggy out of there.
Just as he was about to open his mouth to explain his half formed plan, he heard a voice call out.
"Oy! You lot! Everyone alright down there?" The Doctor's voice carried through the empty elevator shaft with a dull echo. The bright blue of his sonic screwdriver cut the musty air until it landed on them like a searchlight.
"Sounds Northern," Peggy muttered under her breath as she looked up. "We could use a way out!" She shouted, trying to see the shadows beyond the blue light.
"Two shakes!" The Doctor called back. "Don't go anywhere!"
Steve looked at the now empty doorway, puzzled. "I thought all the Hydra agents left when the alarm went off…"
Peggy turned, whispering to him. "Does it matter if he's Hydra or not? If they get us out, we can fight our way out once we get back up there."
Steve smiled down at her just as a rope ladder tumbled down the side of the wall. "There's my girl." He gestured for Peggy to start up the ladder, but she stepped back and out of the way.
"You just spent several hours staring at my backside while you held me up, I'd like to get at least some of that back- you first."
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Why do you carry a rope ladder?" Rose asked as she stared at the anchored apparatus that the Doctor had pulled from his jacket pocket only a minute ago.
"Why not? Never know when you'll need one!" The Doctor turned back over the edge and held out his hand. "Up you go!" He pulled Steve up and over the edge, who turned and helping him pull Peggy up next.
"Thank you…" Steve started, waiting for the man to fill in his name.
"Doctor. I'm the Doctor, and this is Rose Tyler." The Doctor shook Steve's hand manically, moving over to Peggy as the two looked at him with wide, gaping mouths. "I'm a big fan of the way you've defeated Hitler over two hundred times."
"Thanks," Steve muttered, still in disbelief. "You're… the Doctor?"
The tall man in leather bounced as he stood, grin wide despite the way it fell from his eyes, a clear signal to Rose that all was not as it should have been. "The one and only. Why?"
"We've met before," Peggy muttered, looking back and forth between him and Rose, "at least, I think we have."
"As much as I'd like to figure out what all of you are talking about," Rose said, handing Steve his shield, "maybe we should focus on why there were alarms going off when we got here?"
Peggy nodded, moving out and not waiting for anyone to follow as she talked. "Containment seal breach for a new fission reactor."
"Oh, that's bad," The doctor remarked, lighter in tone than his words implied.
Steve turned them into a small room, fishing lock pick out of his pocket. "Not what we're here for, though." He bounced over a desk and set to work on a solid looking safe, clicking his tools in place around the lock, slipping the pick in and hitting a button, revealing far more technological workings than it appeared to have.
The Doctor set about scanning the room with his screwdriver as Peggy knelt at Steve's side. "Based on these readings, the containment will fully breach in seven minutes."
"How can you tell?" Rose asked, her eyes shifting between Steve and Peggy attempting to break into the small safe and the Doctor who was scanning and analyzing as fast as he could.
He spun dramatically, showing her the screwdriver read out. "Radiation levels, sound levels, heat levels. Lots of levels."
"Still think he's Hydra?" Steve whispered to Peggy as she helped him use a laser to disarm the alarm on the safe.
Peggy rolled her eyes, slipping the laser back in her pocket and pulling out a small suction cup handle to hold the door in place while Steve worked on the hinges. "The Doctor has about as much Hydra in him as you do, Steve."
Steve chuckled as he managed to work through the first hinge. "Good point."
"Need any help?" Rose asked, peering over at them, the Doctor idling next to her.
Steve shook his head. "Nope, should be in in just a…" The Door opened with a heavy crack, falling to their feet as Peggy and Steve jumped back. The small safe held only one box, and Steve grabbed it quickly, shoving it in a duffel bag he pulled from his pocket.
"That is?" Rose asked as they started back towards the front at quick pace.
"Dangerous," Peggy supplied, pushing the girl forward. "That's all you need to know."
"And what's all the weirdness when you met?" Rose asked, poking at the Doctor. Steve and Peggy looked at one another, but didn't say anything as they led the way through the halls. They didn't need to.
"I have my suspicions that they've met me already." The Doctor replied loud enough for them to hear. "I'm right, aren't I?"
Steve looked back at the man over the edge of his shield on his back, "Well-"
Peggy turned, walking sideways for a moment. "When we met you-"
The Doctor cut Peggy off. "Don't say any more." At Rose's quizzical look he shrugged. "Their past, my future. The more I know, the more I can screw up." He smiled. "Best not to know about my own future."
"Problem with being a time traveler, I suppose," Rose mused.
The Doctor lowered his voice, leaning down to Rose. "I need you to cause a distraction."
"A what?" Rose asked. Before the words were even fully out of her mouth, the Doctor hand pushed his hand square between her shoulders, shoving Rose into Peggy and sending them both tumbling to the ground.
Steve dropped to his knees, helping them both up. As he did, the Doctor slipped the bag with the small box from the safe away from him for just a second. By the time Steve had Peggy up on her feet, the Doctor was helping Rose up, smiling innocently at her. "Did ya trip?"
"Must have," Rose shot back, sore and unforgiving.
"We've got to go," Steve called urgently, pushing Peggy ahead of him as he picked up the bag with the small box in it. "We have less than five minutes."
"We're never going to make it to the bike in time," Peggy started out at a jog, just a slight limp slowing her down.
The Doctor stopped and gestured down a different hallway with his head. "I've got a better idea."
They tumbled into the TARDIS just as an explosion from the hall set the facility rocking. "Everybody in?" The Doctor called as Steve, Rose, and Peggy righted themselves. "Fantastic!" He flipped a switch and the sound of the universe filled the air around them.
"Where are we going?" Steve asked, carefully making his way around the console.
The Doctor flipped a few switches, avoiding the man's gaze. "Just a few miles out of the way, to be safe." He smiled widely, suspiciously. "I'll take you back to your bike in a second, after we're sure the blast is done."
Steve watched the man, so different from the last one he knew- so much taller, and wider, so much stronger and gruff, than the happy man in the fedora that he'd met. The face was familiar, though, from Howard's drawings. He looked across the room, and Peggy and Rose were already smiling and chatting.
"Go on, ask." The Doctor hadn't looked at Steve, but his words told the soldier that he'd never stopped paying attention.
Steve looked at the man, waited for him to meet his eyes. When the Doctor's gaze met his, steady and open, Steve felt very small. "I'm… not really sure what my question should be."
The Doctor's voice dropped low. "Ok, then, I'll tell you what I know." The Doctor pressed his lips together as he looked at the man. "I know that I've never met you before, so that means I meet you in my future, which at this point is your past. I don't like that. It's happened to me before and it gets messy." The Doctor shrugged. "I know who you are- I've read about you. Like I said, I'm a fan- but that doesn't mean I really know anything about you at all. I don't know if you're really a good man, or if that serum they gave you really worked or it was all just a publicity stunt." When Steve moved to protest, the Doctor held up his hand. "I don't want to know. At least not right now. Like I said- your past, my future. Makes it messy."
The Doctor leaned on the console, his voice low and dramatic. "I know that you love her, and that your timelines are intertwined across space and time, so whatever happened- it was a big deal. Which is why I can't know anything."
"Are you really the same man?" Steve blurted out, unsure if it was still the right question. "He looked… different."
The Doctor nodded sadly, his voice still low. "Yes. It's difficult to explain, but yes. I'm the same man you will meet."
Steve nodded, watching as the Doctor moved to flip through the console switches again, their conversation as if it hadn't happened at all.
"I just ran into the TARDIS and never looked back," Rose finished with a soft shrug. "Not much to it, I guess."
Peggy laughed. "I know grown men that wouldn't have done what you did!"
Rose smiled widely, excited to finally have someone to talk to that didn't seem to have ulterior motives. "Yeah, I guess. Just did what needed to be done, you know?"
"Oh, do I!" Peggy smiled at the girl, running a hand down the fantastic ship's columns. Last time she'd been in it, it had been so different, now, it seemed so much more organic, so much more alive. "Must be amazing, still- all of time and space at your fingertips."
Rose looked down at her hands, playing with the small phone the Doctor had supercharged for her. "Yeah- most of the time."
"But?" Peggy prompted, glancing quickly at the two men at the console.
"Sometimes I miss home. My mum." Rose shrugged. "The Doctor- he's amazing, yeah? Everything he's shown me, everything I know now- I'd never have had that chance living with my mum on the estates back home. But now? How do I ever go back?" She searched Peggy's face for an answer. "How do I go back to everything being normal after this?"
Peggy knew they met the Doctor in his future, and knew that Rose was not with him then, but any of a million things could have kept her from being there, even something as simple as time marching forward. Peggy didn't want to break the girl's heart, so she said the only thing she knew she'd want to hear, the only thing she'd ever thought about her and Steve. "What makes you think you'll ever need to leave him?"
The TARDIS touched down on the abandoned road where Steve and Peggy had stashed their bike without any kind of signal aside from the Doctor's big smile and the slowing of the engines. "We're here!" He announced. It had only been a few short minutes since they'd all piled in the TARDIS, but it seemed like ages.
Steve shook the Doctor's hand while Peggy and Rose hugged quietly. When the Doctor opened the TARDIS door, there was a heavy, acrid smell in the air. They could see the cloud of smoke rising from what used to be the Hydra facility.
"We got lucky," Steve announced, turning back to see the Doctor leaning against the doorway of the TARDIS, Rose smiling by his side.
The Doctor bounced his head on his shoulders, trying to decide how to respond. The TARDIS had known that Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter were in trouble, and that's why it had refused to move. Time itself was protecting these two, and that meant the Doctor would likely end up their official guardian angel more often than not. "Suppose so. Right place, right time and all that."
Rose looked up at the Doctor, still suspicious of his motives, but said nothing to him. Instead, she smiled at the pair in front of her. "Get home safe, yeah?"
Peggy smiled at the girl, holding Steve's hand. "We will. Where are you two off to next?"
Rose shrugged. "Well, we were supposed to be in Barcelona, the planet not the city, right now, so I suppose we should give that another go."
"Barcelona, right." The Doctor nodded as he popped off a mock salute. "Captain, Ma'am." The Doctor and Rose slipped back into the TARDIS quickly, and with a rush of wind and the wheeze of the universe they were gone.
Only after the noise had completely disappeared did Steve's radio come to life in his ear, with Tony rambling a mile a minute. "Steve, good lord man if you can hear me will you please just say something I feel like I've been talking for hours and I'm about to put the suit on and look for you guys!"
Steve smiled as he hit the transmitter. "No need, To-"
Tony didn't even let the man finish, just blurted out what he'd been trying to warn the man about for an hour. "Code Purple! Starkonium readings are off the charts, He's-"
Peggy just laughed. "Yeah, a little late on that one, Tony. The Doctor's already been and gone."
Rose followed the Doctor around the console, suspicious in how he very pointedly ignored her following him. "Alright, give it up- what did you do?"
"Me?" The Doctor put his hand on his chest, feigning innocence and shock. "What ever do you mean?"
"I mean, what did you do? You tossed me at Peggy just so you could get your hands on that bag." Rose looked up at him. "My wrist hurts from the fall and everything. Now give! What did you do?"
Instead of answering, The Doctor just took Rose's hand in his and started to run his fingers over her wrist, massaging gently, then tugging this way and that until she squeaked with surprise and pain. "Sprain. Minor one. Should be able to get you fixed up in a jiffy."
Rose pulled her hand away, "Stop stalling." She poked him hard in the chest. "You did something. Give."
The Doctor sighed, shaking his head. "It's for the best, you have to understand that."
"Things aren't sounding good, Doctor. Tell me." Rose stepped back, folded her arms across her chest, and waited.
With his lips pursed, the Doctor pulled a small metal box from his pocket- smaller than the one that Steve and Peggy had taken. "It's called the Star of the Vortex, but knowing those blokes they called it something stupid like 'time gem' or 'super shiny stone.'" The Doctor rolled his eyes at the thought. He held up a finger at Rose. "When I show you, you mustn't touch it under any circumstances, yeah?" Rose's nod wasn't good enough for him. "I mean it."
Rose lifted her hands and threaded them behind her back. "No touching."
The Doctor slowly lifted the lid to reveal a small gem that shone like a bright orange star, shimmering with energy and nearly blinding Rose for a moment. "Its as old as time itself, and there are stories about how it came to be, but the only thing about it that matters is that it's very powerful and very dangerous."
"What were they going to do with it?" Rose asked, leaning close to the gem.
The Doctor snapped the box shut. "Don't know, don't care." He pocketed it again. "Even the most revered and powerful Time Lords could barely control the power in that, in human hands it would be more likely to simply destroy the person holding it than actually do anything."
"So you're… protecting them, yeah?" Rose asked, hoping for the answer she wanted to hear.
"No one should have this, Rose. Not even me." He looked down at her, his expression softening. "Yeah- I was protecting them."
Steve, Peggy, and Tony stood around the small lab table, staring at the open box. "This… can't be right," Steve muttered, still in disbelief.
"We did all of that… all of that… for this?" Peggy's astonishment flitted through her voice.
Tony just shrugged, fiddling with another piece of tech on the bench. He was at home back in his lab at Avenger's headquarters, but he still seemed to have too much energy, was a bit too nervous, for Steve's liking. It was what always seemed to happen when the subject of the Doctor came up around Tony. "I don't know what else to tell you. The radiation signal is there. It's definitely not from this planet, based on all the tests I've run so far."
Peggy nearly rolled her eyes at the man. "You're telling me that's an alien banana?"
Tony just threw his hands up. "There's that word again!" He looked askance at Steve, stepping over to his desk. "Did you tell her to use that word?"
"That can't be what Hydra had." Steve sat back onto a stool, sliding halfway across the room to get Tony's attention. "Why would they put a banana in a safe?"
"Maybe they didn't put a banana in the safe." Peggy mused, joining them and wrapping an arm around Steve's shoulders to lean on him. "Maybe that's just what we ended up taking home."
The sound of the door to the lab startled them, but they returned to their conversation without a beat when Sam strode in, holding up the battery for his wings that needed to be docked and charged in the lab. "Elaborate, please, Miss Carter," Tony requested without even looking her way.
"You and Steve told me you've caught him stealing stuff before- why would this time be any different?" Peggy shrugged, stepping out of the way to let Sam into the area behind her.
"Good idea in theory," Steve looked up at her, sliding the stool slightly to the left to let Sam back out of the small space again, "but when?"
"When Rose fell on me. Perfect chance to make a switch." Peggy stuck her foot out and gave her ankle a small circle, wincing when there was a small pop and a sharp jolt of pain inside her boot.
"That wasn't that long, though- you were on the floor maybe fifteen seconds at the most." Steve grabbed her hand gently from where it dangled over his shoulder, threading his fingers through hers. "That's not a lot of time to make a switch."
"It's enough," Tony mused, putting down the gadget he'd been fiddling with to look at them both. "What did we think was supposed to be in there?"
"The records said it was a power source," Peggy shook her head with a sigh. "They weren't very specific, but based on all the data we had it should have been something similar to the tesseract."
Tony's nod was perfunctory, "Enough to get the Doctor's attention, I'm sure. But why would he- Sam!" Tony had turned his head to gesture to the box, but instead saw Sam standing there, happily chewing on a bite from the intergalactic banana that's he'd picked up and peeled.
"What?" Sam shrugged his shoulders and took another bite. "I am starving and you always have food stashed in this place." He shrugged taking another bite. "It's good- really sweet. You'll have to tell me where you get your secret fruit stashes from." Before they could even protest any further, he was out the door again, humming his way down the corridor, taking another bite.
"I uh-" Tony swallowed hard. "I'm pretty sure it isn't a good idea for a human to eat that much radiation."
Without another word, all three were on their feet running down the hall and shouting Sam's name.
In the future, the same man with a different face and a bright red fez, stood in the storage room of his TARDIS. He ran his hand over the small metal box, feeling the power surge through him. "She looked different," he mused out loud, talking to his ship or time, neither of which would ever answer him. He'd just left her, Peggy Carter, in the living room of captain Steve Rogers. It had been hard to avoid popping into their future, just to see how it worked out, and then he'd remembered.
He'd remembered a man with big ears and a Northern accent, running across the universe with the blonde who'd made him remember to care, who'd made him a better man after the Time War, and running right into Captain America and a woman he'd called Peggy.
He'd tried to forget, and it had been so long since he'd been that man that it had been easy to bury the memory. The Doctor knew the day would come when they'd meet again, and when that day came he didn't want to remember the dusty man and his banged up shield or the pretty woman who looked at him like he hung the moon in the sky just for her. He never knew when it would be Volcano Day, he never knew when he'd have to say goodbye to someone, and he didn't want those memories to stop him from whatever needed doing.
"Doctor?" Clara called from the hallway. "Are you in there? I think we've stopped."
"Be right out," he called back, letting his fingers drift over the case. He'd made the right decision, burying that memory and this gem deep away. He never would have been able to do what needed to be done if he thought that woman had been someone else, or had remembered her there.
The TARDIS hummed, energy seeping from her walls. Peggy Carter was with Steve Rogers now, and his past was their future. At least he knew how it went, and the hum of the TARDIS told him all he needed to know: those two together made the universe a better place.
As long as they didn't find this little gem, that is. He slipped his old leather jacket over the box and piled some hats on it for good measure. He had a very strong feeling this wasn't the last time he'd be seeing these people. After all, when time itself wanted something done, there was only one person who could do it.