There are many things about Avengers: Endgame that are likable, and of course plenty not to like, but one of the things that I like the most was how both Tony and Thor were able to go back in time, even to an alternative timeline, and get some kind of closure from the parent who died suddenly in their lives. To a certain extent, it could be argued that a similar dynamic existed between Steve and Peggy in that he exited her life very suddenly, and although he got some time with her years later as she was dying, we all know that's not the same, especially when someone has Alzheimer's. It doesn't really make sense that both Tony and Thor would be content with moving on with their lives after the events of Infinity War, and yet somehow Steve, who had nearly 10 years to adjust to the 21st-century out after being found in the ice, making friends and forming a family, possibly even dating someone new, was spent 30 seconds staring at Peggy in the 1970s and decided it was worth bugging out of the primary timeline for an alternative one. Let us not forget, Dr. Strange said that there was only one out of over 4 million alternative timelines in which the Avengers win, meaning that the primary timeline, the one in which they did win, was the only one that was known to have been righted in the end. Any other alternative timeline, including the ones that Tony and Thor and Steve would later visit, were going to be ended by Thanos. It doesn't make sense that Steve would spend so much time in the movie talking about moving on and building a new life, ignoring Peggy who told him to do the same in Winter Soldier, to go back permanently to a timeline that he knew would eventually end at Thanos' hands. According to the directors, we are to believe that Steve spent 80 years in this alternative timeline, disrupting Peggy's story arc with whoever she married and had kids with, retroactively saying it was Steve all along, and then after she died and presumably right before Thanos snapped his fingers in that timeline, he took the shield from his still ice incased form, and jumped back to the primary timeline, now an old man, to give the shield to Sam. That just doesn't make sense. What would have made more sense was that, like Tony and Thor, Steve was able to get closure with Peggy when she was still young and whole, and then returned back to the present timeline where he belongs. The story is an attempt to fix that. Enjoy.
The correct ending
Bucky knew. From his hug and his words before Steve stepped on the platform, it was evident that his oldest friend definitely knew what Steve's plans had been. It was a testament to the kinds of friends that they had been, that Bucky knew better than to try and talk him out of it, maybe even give him away before they sent him back to put the stones back where they belonged, which would have resulted in someone else going back. But instead of stopping him, his friend had let him go. Maybe it was the knowledge that Steve would not be altering their pasts by doing what he planned to do, but instead needing to make choices for his own happiness that he otherwise would not have had a chance to do without the time travel and Prym particles.
Steve wasn't entirely sure at what point the decision was finalized in his mind. He thought he had come to terms with never being able to see Peggy again following the Decimation, especially since the Decimation had also taken Sharon, with whom he had been trying to form a budding relationship, but his fugitive status for two years had kept them apart more than together, and her sudden disappearance with half of the life in the universe had left him bereft of ever trying to find companionship again. He tried not to focus on how he was being something of a hypocrite, urging those in his support group to move on when he himself, having thought he had, had only to see Peggy for 30 seconds during his trip to the 1970s, realized that he had the ability to travel through time to an alternate timeline where he could be with her, and decided that this would be his decision within only a week. He briefly thought about Sharon, and his heart twisted a bit. He knew there was potential in a future with her, for she had returned from the Decimation as everyone else had, and had briefly contacted him to say that she was moving in with her cousins, Peggy's children, at their estate in Virginia because apparently in the previous five years, her apartment had been rented out to someone else. She had encouraged him to look her up if he got the chance, and he had not replied. He hoped that whatever became of him after this endeavor involved someone telling her that he had been simply lost in the time travel incident. He knew it would probably upset her, but he truly believed that she was probably better off without him, finding someone else born around the same time she had been, and not to deal with 100-year-old man out of time who couldn't get his issues straight.
And so, his decision made, and telling no one, he had carefully straightened his room and organized his belongings, tied up whatever loose ends he could do in a week following the defeat of Thanos, and had taken the stones and stepped on the platform. He always felt a little nauseous making the time jump, for as some of the others seem to enjoy flying through the quantum realm, he never quite got over the disorientation, even though he was a man who frequently jumped out of planes without a parachute, landing on his shield in the middle of an enemy compound. He wasn't sure why the two would be so different but apparently they were. The quantum GPS that Tony Stark had invented that allowed them to pop into any timeline at any specific time worked like a charm to bring him right to the point where all of his friends had gathered the infinity stones from past alternate timelines. Some of these trips were even a little amusing. Thor's mother Frigga was actually waiting from him around the corner from where she had had her conversation with time traveling Thor, from her perception only a minute or two before. Steve had calmly handed her the stone and she had smiled, clapped him on the shoulder, and walked away, to what Steve would know would eventually be her own death. He snuck back into the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, deftly dodging Howard and Tony Stark having their conversation, himself sneaking out of Peggy's office, to return the stone that Tony had gathered. Returning the one he had taken from himself at the battle of New York prove trickier, since now the Hydra guys had their ears perked up from the oddity of the situation, and he had been obliged to take out two of them in order to slip the stone back into the transport van where it would have eventually ended up. He didn't have to do much on Vormier, as soon as he materialized on the cliff, a familiar evil cackle had said "Hello again, Captain," and the stone had vanished from his hands. He had bugged out of there before he had even realized he had heard the Red Skull's voice. Once he was done returning all of the stones, the protocol had been for him to return his GPS quantum to the date and time where he had left the remaining Avengers behind, but instead, he pointed it back to another timeline, one that none of them had visited, and set the date for two years after he had crashed the Valkyrie bomber. He set the location at his mother's old apartment in Brooklyn, which he knew would be empty, and found himself materialized they are just as expected.
What followed next would be a bit trickier. He had not allowed himself to bring many items from the future, lest he disrupt the timeline he found himself in, but he had managed to dig up some money that had been printed and minted in the 1930s and 40s to bring with him to use for currency, some ways to disguise his appearance, less risk being recognized, and the one bit of technology that he allowed himself besides his suit, was his cell phone and the charger which was loaded with pictures and videos of his friends from the 21st-century. He knew it was a risk bringing it, but if he was honest with himself, he rather regretted not telling them all goodbye, telling them what he intended, and he didn't want their faces to completely fade from his memory over the years he planned to spend in this timeline. He had taken off the quantum suit and had carefully retracted it. He was going to have to hide it in a very secure location, which he had not decided upon yet, and he also had to come up with either a story to tell Peggy, or a way to tell her the truth. He had no idea what her reaction was going to be either way. He was obviously a few years older than the last time she had seen him, which in her perception had only been a few years prior, so he was going to have to explain that anyway. He figured some version of the truth was probably best, though he debated over which details to tell her. He hid out in the apartment for another week getting his bearings and re-familiarizing himself with the 1940s which, if he were honest, seemed a little strange to him now after nearly a decade in the 21st-century. Ironic, he thought to himself, that he was once again a man out of time having returned to the time in which he thought he belonged.
Contacting her proved to be a little bit more difficult than he envisioned. It's not like they had cell phones or LinkdIn in the 1940s, which he admitted would make things a little bit easier. He actually had to take a minute to relearn how to use a dial phone again. And even when he had remembered how to do it, he ended up hanging up the receiver a few times before trying to find her number through the operator. Would calling her be affective or should he just show up? After thinking about it, he realize that calling her would probably not be the best. For one thing, there were still phone operators in this time who listened in on conversations. And as far as the world knew, Captain America was dead. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he preferred it that way. Letting everyone know that he had survived in some way would likely obligate him to take up the mantle of Captain America once again in this time period, which would definitely disrupt the timeline, perhaps so severely that it might be felt in other timelines. He didn't really want to take that risk, so he figured staying low was probably his best bet. If anyone overheard him on the phone admitting to who he was, or trying to convince Peggy of who he was, he knew it wouldn't take long for word to get out that he was alive, and he would much rather stay legally dead. On top of that, he wasn't sure that Peggy would believe it was him if she only heard his voice, which he knew she would recognize, but being a spy, she would probably think it was a trap. No, showing up was probably his best bet. Peggy was still on active duty, even with the end the war, since that was the nature of her job. He knew there would be a lot of Nazis who had escaped who would later be found, and he had to squelch the urge to go after them himself, especially since he knew where most of them were, as those in this timeline did not. It was one of the things he had researched after he had awoken from the ice, he had to know how many had been brought to justice for what they did. The number was painfully low, and he allowed himself a brief thought of how many more he could bring to justice knowing what he knew now, and knowing that he had the skills to find them.
But he had to force himself not to think such things. He knew that coming back in time with his knowledge from the future of what was going to happen in the next century would be a problem, but he also knew that it was important that he not disrupt the timeline too much. Instead, he was going to have to force himself to remain hidden and not worry about the events of history, which he knew others would eventually handle. But that still left the problem of finding Peggy in person. It's not like members of a strategic intelligence division advertise their movements, and he knew that for many of them, the war would not be over from the world of spies for quite some time, if it ever ended. He also knew from his research, and from a few things Sharon had once said, that she had eventually gone on leave at a small rented house in a residential area just outside of the city to try to recuperate and come to terms with losing him and changes that were happening in her life. That and, fed up with all the trouble that seemed to follow her home from work, the headmistress of the boarding house where she had been staying had, not too subtly, told her to find somewhere else to live. He had to do a bit of calling around, but he was able to locate a few candidates of which house it likely would be, and set up a routine of walking past them in disguise to see if he could spot Peggy.
About a week later, his efforts paid off as he spotted her walking to a small house on a quiet street from a nearby corner store. She was carrying some groceries, and she looked heavily lost in thought, not at all like the woman who was always painfully aware of her surroundings as he had known her. His heart lurched thinking that he was the cause of her distraction and obvious sadness. He wanted to run to her right away, but then, unbidden, he thought about a few things Sharon had once said when describing Peggy's life following the war as she had known it, that Peggy had indeed been despondent and reeling from the war, but had thrown herself into her work, and had forced herself to readjust to the world in which she now found herself. That had included proving her worth to her male colleagues, coming up with some information that they had not been able to discover themselves, which included an ongoing plot to reestablish Hydra.
Briefly, Steve thought about the man that Peggy had married and their two children. For a minute, he stopped and considered. He did not want to be responsible for derailing any lies or preventing any from being born, but he told himself that in the primary timeline, the one he had just come from, they would continue to exist as they always had. What he was in, he told himself, was an alternate timeline. It was one in which he knew Thanos would win, but it was one of his choosing. If he managed to reconnect with Peggy, then those children would not be born as they were in the timeline he had just left, and the man that she married would go on to lead a different life, but they would not be wiped from existence. He felt a strong urge to reconsider his actions and return back to the 21st-century he had just left. But then he steeled himself. There were millions of timelines that Stephen Strange had apparently seen. In any one of those, Peggy might have lived many different kinds of lives. She might have been killed in World War II. She might have remained single all her life. She might have been killed in the line of duty for the SSR. She might have returned to England and married someone completely different there. There was nothing special about this timeline over any others, he told himself, and if they ended up together, then it would be no less of any kind of tragedy that her family would not exist in the other timelines that had occurred naturally. No, he told himself, this was what he always wanted and it was what he was going to do.
Initiating contact with her after she had believed him dead for three years would be difficult, though. He wasn't entirely sure how to approach her, even though he now knew where she was. Ultimately, he decided on the direct approach, and broad daylight in front of the house as she walked up. He figured she was less likely to just shoot him immediately on an urban residential street. At least he hoped that was the case. He had figured out about what time she would be returning from work, and so he positioned himself on the porch waiting for her arrival. He figured it was going to be the less shocking approach.
He was wrong.
She was running late. The sun would be setting soon and she should have arrived at the house an hour earlier, but there was no sign of her. Even when she made a stop on the way, she didn't often take this long, at least not in the week he had been watching her. He was in the process of figuring that she had gotten hung up at work, and was about to get up off the porch and try again the next day, when he felt the cold steel of a gun barrel press into his shoulder. He froze, listening, recognizing her breathing behind him. She had snuck up on him completely unaware. He must be losing his touch.
"Don't move. Hands where I can see them," came her voice, cold and methodical.
"Peggy, it's me. It's…" he started.
"Don't," she snapped. "Don't talk unless I tell you to. I don't know who you are or how you got this good of a disguise, but you're not fooling me. Who are you? Are you Hydra?"
"No, it's me. Steve. I know you must be shocked, but..."
She pressed the gun barrel harder into his shoulder and his mouth snapshot. "I said you don't talk unless I tell you too. A simple yes or no answer will suffice."
Steve sighed. This was not going at all how he had envisioned it. Truth be told, he wasn't entirely sure what he was envisioning, but a gun had not been part of the equation. In all of the possible scenarios of their reunion that he had gone through in his mind, most of them had involved shock on her part, disbelief, maybe even anger, but in the end they had all ended with her being glad to see him. Of course, they had all also included him being able to explain himself. He hoped he would get a chance before she pulled the trigger. Not that he was incredibly worried about his ability to get away from her. Even though he was seated with his back to her and his hands slightly raised, with her standing behind him with her gun cocked in his shoulder blade, he still was reasonably sure that he could move fast enough to disarm her before she caused any damage. Still, he would rather avoid that. He didn't want to hurt her, and he didn't travel all the way back in time to see the woman he loved only to be shot by her. He had already had quite enough of that.
"Let me lay this out for you," she said. "Steve Rogers is dead. Using his face as a disguise was not smart. I know he's dead, so that means you cannot possibly be him. Whatever you're using to change your voice to sound like him must be pretty good technology. But I don't buy it for a second. Now tell me who you really are, and what you're doing here."
"Can I use more than yes or no to answer that question?" he asked.
He felt her stiffen in surprise, like she was suppressing a laugh, and then she was all business again. "Start talking," she said.
"Look, I know how this looks to you, but it really is me. I know you think I died in that plane crash, but I didn't. I'll be glad to tell you the specifics of how I survived and how I came to be here, but I would rather do it without a gun pressing into my back. But I'm here now, Peggy. I came back to you."
"No," she said, "it's not possible. Steve…"
She didn't get a chance to finish the sentence as he whirled out of the chair to his feet, in the process flipping the gun deftly out of her hands. It took her approximately half a second to recover from her shock, and he had only just gotten the safety back on the gun when she attacked. Although she was right handed, she slammed her left fist into his solar plexus, then caught him with a right cross to the jaw. The blows would have flattened a normal man, and Steve admitted they certainly didn't feel good. But he didn't go down. Briefly he experienced a sense of déjà vu as he recalled that the last time he had sparred with Peggy's niece, Sharon Carter, that Sharon had hit him with nearly identical combination. And Sharon had left a bruise.
She hesitated for half a second, clearly surprised that he had not gone down, but then he had her. His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, immobilizing her arm, then spun her around into a bear hug, using one arm to secure her against him, and the other arm to quickly get the front door open and the two of them inside. If this fight went on much longer on the front porch of a residential area, someone was sure to call the police, if they hadn't already. Anticipating that she would do anything she could to get out of a pin, he moved his head to the side to avoid the backwards headbutt he knew was coming. Once the door was closed, he wrapped both arms around her, letting her feel how powerful he was, far stronger than any other man, and held her in such a way that he knew she would not be hurt, but she was definitely not going anywhere.
"Peggy, stop! Stop. It's me, it's really me. It's Steve. I came back. I'm not going to hurt you."
She continued to struggle for a minute longer, not entirely registering his words. But then slowly, it started to seep in. The unnatural power of his arms around her, his voice, his scent, even how he felt against her. He felt her begin to relax as she finally stopped struggling.
"Steve," she whispered, turning in his arms and throwing her arms around his neck. Mindful of his greater strength, he firmly pressed her to him. Without warning, tears began to flow out of his eyes as he buried his nose in her hair and inhaled her scent. Her shoulders shook it and he realize she was crying too.
"Peggy," he murmured.
Reluctantly, she pulled away and took a step back to look at him fully. Her hand came up to his face and her thumb traced the lines and angles, noting where there had been creases were previously there had not been.
"What happened to you? You're older. But not much older. But more than two years, unless something happened with the serum? What happened? How did you survive a plane crash? Did you parachute out? And where have you been?"
He reached for her again and ran his hands gently up and down her arms. "Peggy, I promise I'll tell you what I can. Just one question at a time, OK?"
She quirked the side of her mouth up and that half smile that he remembered loving about her.
"OK," she said, "but I should probably go out and get the mail and make a big show of it. I don't want my neighbors getting upset if they saw me pull a gun on you."
Steve nodded as she turned and went back out the front door. He peered through the drapes as he watched her slowly walk to the mailbox, retrieve the mail, wave to someone walking their dog down the street, and then make her way back sifting through the envelopes as if she were looking for something. Only given the fact that he knew her as well as he did let him see that it was all very exaggerated, purposely slow for the purpose of putting on a show for her neighbors. Letting them know or anyone who might have been watching that she was truly OK. When she reach the porch, she hurried back inside, and dropped the mail on the table.
She turned to face him. "OK, I suspect I'm in for a long story. Should I make some tea?"
He laughed. "You've been in America long enough to start drinking coffee. You're still drinking tea?"
At that she laughed, something he had not heard often from her even in the time he had known her. "There wasn't much to laugh about during war. If you want coffee, I can make coffee."
"I don't want you to put yourself out for me," he said, "I came to see you, not be waited on."
"Don't be silly," she said turning on her heel and heading towards the kitchen. "Best come in here if you want anything. I remember how much you used to eat."
He followed her into the kitchen as she pulled out the coffee pot and filled it with water in the sink, and put it on the stove to boil. She pulled out the canister of coffee, and began measuring out spoonfuls. Steve stifled the urge to tell her about Keurig Coffee machines.
"It'll be dinner time soon," she said. "Are you hungry?"
"Always," he quipped. "You know that. But let me help you."
She looked over her shoulder at him in surprise. "You know how to cook? Where have you been, Mars?"
"Hey," he said feigning outrage, "I'll have you know that I can cook up a mean MRE. Although yeah, my cooking skills are not up to speed. But I can assist."
"Can you chop up a chicken without losing a finger?" she asked.
"I think I can manage," he said.
As he pulled out items from the pantry in the icebox, smiling a bit at the sight of the old contraption versus the water and ice dispensing Frigidaire that had been in the Avengers facility, it occurred to him how little time he had actually spent with Peggy doing domestic or normal things. They had only known each other in a war zone, and had lived in different quarters. If there was any cooking or domesticity happening, he had never witnessed it, nor had she witnessed it in him. Simply put, he had never seen her putter around the kitchen until now. Unbidden, the image of her home back in the 21st-century timeline he had just left flashed into his mind.
He had visited once, after running into Peggy's son Ed, named after Edwin Jarvis, at the nursing home where she had been living. They had shook hands and he had invited Steve to the house to meet the rest of the Carters. It had been right after he had awakened from the ice, and he was still feeling disoriented, so his visit had not really registered in his mind that the people in front of him were Peggy's children and grandchildren. He could certainly see her resemblance in most of the people in front of him, but it was easy to write them off as unconnected family members in his mind, when his mind had still been wrapped around the Peggy of 1945 that he had left behind, in his conscious recollection, only a few weeks prior. He never quite reconciled in his mind that the people in front of them were her direct descendants. At any rate, Ed and his wife and children were living in the house that had been Peggy's for several decades before she moved into the nursing home. He had briefly shown Steve around, showing him some pictures, some of which were duplicates of the one in Peggy's room at the facility. Ed had told him that they had not really changed the decor much, only when they had updated the house to a more modern design, and update of the appliances.
The pale yellow walls of the kitchen and the white print drapes on the windows had been what Peggy had decorated. The placement of certain items around the house were unchanged in some of the rooms. Although Ed's family was living there now and had made their own modifications, the entire place still felt very much like Peggy, her personality, and everything about her was infused in the walls. She had puttered around that kitchen in which he had sat, having a hard time listening to her family go on about her as their mother and grandmother, something he had not been able to reconcile in his own mind.
He snapped out of his reverie to get back to helping her, as they made a mountain of chicken, vegetables, fresh bread, and a huge heaping of mashed potatoes. The changes he had undergone in Project Rebirth had ramped up his metabolism, requiring him to eat twice the normal calories of the average human man. In World War II, he had been issued small team rations, which he usually went through without breaking a sweat. In the 21st-century, he had been given specially formulated protein bars that had been designed for individuals lost at sea and were normally stashed on life rafts. They were tasteless and boring, but each one was 2000 calories, meaning he could normally eat whatever he wanted after that, as long as the emergency food bars made up the calories he didn't get from eating normally. He winced a little bit in guilt at the amount of food she had made for him, vowing to spend what little of his resources he had left in 1940s money to contribute to the groceries. He was definitely going to have to find some way to do for himself without drawing attention.
They sat down at the table and dove in. Well Steve did. Peggy contented herself with a few pieces of chicken, some potatoes and some carrots. Steve ate the rest. She left him alone for several minutes, giving him a chance to eat before looking at him and cocking her eyebrow up, indicating that she was ready to hear what he had to say.
"Well," she said, "let's hear what has to be a fascinating story."
"To be honest," he said, "I'm not really sure where to start. There's not exactly a clear beginning. I suspect you probably won't believe half of it. But you should get comfortable, because there's some time travel involved."
"Time travel?" she asked in a slightly disbelieving tone.
"Believe me," he said, "that was my response when I first heard about it. But I can tell you that there were Starks involved, if that helps."
"Ahhh," she said, the disbelief instantly leaving her face. "Well that explains it. If you are told me anyone else had been involved in something involving time travel, I would tell you the technology simply doesn't exist. But I soon as you said Stark, that was it. Go on."
Steve laughed. "Yeah, Howard has a son…will have a son, and he is every bit the genius Howard was… is, more even if you can imagine it. He's going to be the one responsible for most of it. Although there were others too. To be honest I'm not entirely sure how much I should tell you. As it was explained to me, I'm not going to mess up anybody's futures by coming here or by telling you this, but I'm still nervous. I don't want to be responsible for someone not being born because I tell you the story."
"Well tell me what you think you can," she replied. "Just how far into the future did you go? If we're talking about a son that Howard doesn't have yet, then it's going to be a couple of decades."
"70," he said. "I came to in the year 2012."
Her eyes got huge and she said back. "Oh Steve, that's, that's unbelievable."
"You are no ideal," he said quietly. And then he began to talk.
He told her about crashing the Valkyrie, about how the crash had knocked him out, and how he had briefly regained consciousness to feel the icy water coming in over his legs and working its way up his chest. He figured he was going to drown, and lost consciousness again expecting to die. Every so often he would become aware of his body, being freezing cold but not dead, and then darkness again. He told her about the sound of voices and lights and how they had chiseled him out of the ice block after S.H.I.E.L.D. had found him. He talked about S.H.I.E.L.D. in only the briefest of details, leaving out as much as he could about her involvement and Howard's involvement and its founding. He told her only that it was a government agency dedicated to addressing threats like Hydra, criminals who made use of super powered individuals to commit crimes. S.H.I.E.L.D. was predominately the answer to that.
He told her about feeling completely out of place and out of time and how disorienting it was. To wake up to find out that most of the people you cared about and loved were dead, had moved on and had children who are now grown, some of them even a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. He told her about briefly meeting Gabe Jones' grandson Antoine Triplett before the young man had left off to re-join Phil Colson with his S.H.I.E.L.D. team, the specifics of which Steve also left out. Phil's team had formed in the wake of the Hydra decapitation of S.H.I.E.L.D. He mentioned what he could about the criminal element existing within S.H.I.E.L.D., but left out that it was Hydra. He did tell her about the alien invasion of New York and the battle that brought the Avengers together, and told her what he could of the various members of the Avengers team, including Tony Stark.
"I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Howard settled down long enough with any woman to produce a legitimate child," Peggy said. "I mean I'm surprised he doesn't have a dozen at this point, I guess he's careful."
"I never asked," said Steve tactfully. "But from what I can tell, he loved his wife, Tony's mother. I never got the chance to meet her, but she must have been amazing."
"Someone who could tame Howard?" asked Peggy. "She must've been a saint."
Steve laughed. "That's pretty much what everyone thinks about Tony's wife Pepper. I could tell you the story of what she's put up with in the years she's been with him, and she still loves him and stands by him. I admire her, really. Some of the others think she might be a little wacky in the head to have put up with Tony all these years. But when I left, they were married and had the cutest little girl. So I got to see Howard's granddaughter."
Peggy smiled, still gently shaking her head as if she wanted to believe all he was saying, but was having difficulty. She sat sipping her coffee which she had moved on after the tea, decided she needed something stronger. He figured the spirits would probably come out if he kept on telling her what he had to tell her. He didn't go into too much detail about Ultron, mentioning only that the team had faced off against a problem that Tony had unwittingly caused, and how it had let them to the twins. He told her a little bit about Natasha Romanoff, leaving out the most recent developments with Nat, figuring he would get to that point soon enough. He told her about Clint, even about Thor and the Asgardians, at which point he could tell she was starting to lose her ability to suspend her disbelief.
"I know it's a lot to take in," he admitted, "and I haven't really even told you all of it. There's a lot I'm leaving out just because I don't want to overwhelm you. It's nearly ten years' worth of story. Believe me, I wouldn't have believed it myself unless I had seen it with my own eyes. And they checked me out pretty thoroughly, they say I'm not crazy."
"When are you getting to the time travel part?" she asked.
He shifted a bit. "You better get comfortable," he said. "This one's going to be even stranger. Everything I've told you so far is been leading up to all of this, the invasion of New York, the creation of Vision, all of these events are due to some objects called Infinity stones. The Tesseract, the cosmic cube that Red Skull wanted, was one of them."
"Howard found it," she admitted. "While he was looking for you."
"Yeah," Steve nodded. "Probably best to stay away from it from now. Because I know you're thinking of going down to the locker where it's being kept on looking at it."
She snorted and looked away, but didn't deny it.
He told her about Scott's idea to use the quantum realm to get past versions of the stones, told her what Banner said about not being able to screw up the future by meddling in the past due to the branching timeline theory, told her about fudging the first attempt to get the tesseract during the battle of New York, then traveling to another time, he didn't specify, to get it and seeing her.
"So you saw me there, I'm at 50 years old, from behind a window, and, then what?" she asked. "That was when you decided to come back, to now?"
"I missed you so much," he said. "I can't even describe how much."
"I think I have an idea," she said with a quiet smile. "When you woke up in the 21st-century, you mentioned that everybody you knew our loved was dead. Me too? Howard?"
"Actually, everyone but you. But you were…not well."
"Did you have to watch me die?" she asked bluntly.
"I didn't watch you die," he said wiping a tear away from his eye. "But I buried you. I was a pallbearer."
"They probably only needed you," she joked grimly. "But if everybody I knew was dead, I wonder who the other five were. Probably people I haven't even met yet. Probably people who aren't even born yet."
Steve shrugged, not sure how willing he was to mention that some of them had been her family members. Some who were not born yet, and maybe would not be. He had carefully avoided mentioning Sharon or any mention of her family. He had been selective with names and places and locations that she might be able to identify later, for he suspected that her memory right now was sharp enough to recall it when the time came.
"That must've been hard for you," she said, bringing him back to the present.
"It was," he whispered. "I kept thinking about all the things we never got to do, namely that dance. But I would never know what my life was like with you."
"But did you ever know how my life turned out?" she asked. "What I did with myself? Was I only about work? Or did I ever marry? Or move on? Did I spend the next 80 years grieving for you?"
"No," Steve admitted. "And I was told a bit about your life. So I know somethings, but that was another timeline, remember that."
"Who told you about my life?" she asked. "People I worked with?"
"Some of them, yes", said Steve. But he could tell from the way her eyes slightly narrowed that she wasn't entirely satisfied with his answer. She knew he was holding something back. He decided that telling her about Sharon, just a little, probably wouldn't hurt.
"Your niece told me a little bit too," he admitted.
"My niece?" She said. "I can't possibly have a niece. I had one brother, and he was killed in the war. Unless it was someone I married, and I have a niece through him."
"No," said Steve. "She's your niece. Your brother, Michael I think it was, has a son. As it was told to me, a girl he was dating back in England during the war discovered she was pregnant right before he shipped out. They did a rushed justice of the peace wedding and filed it with the British military so that she could get benefits in the event that something happened to him. You won't know about them for a while, although I guess you know about them now since I'm telling you. But his wife would take a few years to find out where you were. It's not like you're publicly listed in the phonebook. And it'll be a few years after that before she decides to come over here. God, her father is only a baby right now, maybe like two or three years old. That's amazing. But that baby will grow up to be the father of your niece, Sharon Carter."
"Do you know her?" Peggy asked.
"We crossed paths a few times," he admitted. "She followed you into the intelligence work. Apparently she's pretty good too. When I first walked woke up, she looked after me for a couple of years, living in the apartment next to mine. Actually she didn't tell me who she was. I think she was under orders not to. I found out how she was related to you at your funeral. That was weird."
"Not half as weird as hearing it," Peggy said. "I want to know more about her. And the life I had."
"It might not be a good thing if I tell you too much," said Steve. "I don't want anything I say to affect any decisions you might make, or anything that might affect Sharon. And I still need to tell you how everything ended up."
"OK," agreed Peggy, "but then I want some of the answers I asked for."
Steve nodded and continued with the rest of his narrative, finishing his story about how they defeated Thanos, and how he was given the assignment of returning the stones. How he was supposed to return to the modern era, but instead he had focused his time traveling device to this time period, So that he could be with her, now that his mission was completed. All told, the story took 4 1/2 hours to complete, and it was past midnight when he finally finished. At this point, Peggy had moved on to a bottle of wine and was on her second glass. Steve poured some for himself, simply because a gentleman never let a lady drink alone, even though he knew the wine wasn't going to affect him much.
By the time he was done and Peggy was on her second glass, she was holding her head in her hands. "Steve, this is a lot. I noticed you following me a week ago, and I admit I figured you were someone in disguise as Steve, someone trying to get to me. I'm not sure everything you've told me here is an improvement on the situation. For me, you've been gone two years, but you've actually been gone over 10. You're a different man, I can see it already in the way that you talk in the way that you hold yourself. I have so many questions about the 21st-century I know you probably won't answer, questions about me, and I don't even know if you're really Steve or if you're telling me the truth, or if you can even prove any of this."
He reached over and took her hand, and was relieved when she didn't pull it away. "What can I say or do that will convince you?"
"Tell me something from before when we knew each other that only you and I would know. Something an imposter wouldn't know. Show me this time travel device. Did you bring nothing back from the 21st-century that we don't have now? Anything."
Steve held her hand for a moment longer, then squeezed it. "Remember after Bucky fell from the train and you found me in the burned out remains of the pub where I formed the Howling Commandos? That was where I told you about my ramped up metabolism, and how I could drink as much as I wanted and not get drunk. Nobody was there but us, and I don't think anyone overheard that conversation."
She looked thoughtful for a moment, and then nodded. "I know it's you," she said quietly.
He held out his arm, pushing his wrist forward from the cuff of his jacket. On his arm appeared to be an oversized band with some device on it, not on watch, something much bigger, but small enough to fit on the arm.
"What is that?" she asked.
"Time travel device," he said. "It pinpoints an exact point in time on a timeline, and brings you there. But it doesn't work indefinitely. It works using a type of fuel, something called Prym particles, that haven't been invented yet it won't be for a long time. We only had a very small, limited amount. And while I theoretically could travel to a point in time on several timelines where they were invented to get some, I'd really rather not. I think I'm done jumping through time for a while. I only have enough for one more trip, and it would have to be an emergency."
Peggy took a hold of his arms and examined the device. It was clearly of a design that was futuristic to her eyes, and she had no idea how it operated or even that it was what Steve said it was. While she only had the smallest of lingering doubts that it was truly Steve in front of her, before she had been carefully studying him the whole night for any sign of subterfuge, and had found none, she still wasn't entirely certain that she believed the stories that he was giving her. How could any of this be possible? She wanted more than ever to call Howard Stark, or better yet just drop by his house for she didn't trust phone lines, show him this device and tell him Steve's story and ask him if it was even remotely possible. But that would probably result in his son not being born. This was definitely Steve, but had he suffered a nervous breakdown?
She let him go and he pulled his arm back. He looked at her sympathetically. "I'm a jerk. I've kept you up all night, shocking you half to death by just showing up, and drop this insane crazy story in your lap. Thank you for not having called the nurse insane asylum."
She laughed. "I admit, it's a lot to take in. But given what we saw during the war with the Red Skull, I am willing to keep an open mind about what is or is not possible."
"You should get some sleep," he said. "The couch in the living room looks comfortable if you don't mind me crashing on it."
"Of course not," she said. "Although I don't know how comfortable it is. By the way, what are you going to do? Hide out in a house for the next 80 years? It's not like you can easily come forward as Steve Rogers, Captain America. Everyone thinks you're dead, if you do come forward now then 80 years from now when you come forward again it will cause all kinds of problems."
"Yeah, I'm thinking new identity is the way to go. Maybe dye my hair and grow a beard. Go find a nondescript job somewhere."
"You'll be happy doing that?" she asked, seeming like she didn't quite believe it.
"For the chance to be with you again? Absolutely." he said.
Peggy felt a mild sense of unease. It had been two years since the war ended, and she had begun work at the SSR. Steve had come back out of the blue, but was behaving as if it was only a day or two since the last time she had seen him. He had been so busy telling her about what he had been up to, he had not had the chance to ask her about or listen to what she had been up to. And frankly she had quite a lot to tell. How she and the Commandos had gone to Russia and found that freaky school that trained children to be assassins. Faustus. Zola. Dottie Underwood. How Howard Stark had been framed for murder and how she and Daniel and Jarvis had worked to clear his name.
Daniel.
Suddenly she felt her heart lurch. It had taken her two years to realize she had feelings for the man. The first year she had worked at the SSR, it had been about battling sexism and proving her worth to her colleagues, while also coming to terms with losing Steve. She had not allowed herself to entertain the notion of a personal life beyond work, not just yet, especially having already failed at one serious relationship and engagement before the war, which her brother Michael had busted her chops about. And now she was grateful for that, for Michael have been right, she would not have been happy. Steve understood her need to work at what she was good at, and wouldn't try to stop her, but there weren't many men in this day and age it would be that way. But Daniel was. Facing discrimination himself because of his disability, he was constantly having to prove himself as an agent and a man. Given his perspective, he was one of the few who had not immediately written her off for being a woman, even respected her enough to know that she was probably several steps ahead of him and the others. And to utilize that. She hadn't realized how she felt about him until he had asked her out and she had backed away, afraid that it would mean the end of her career, only to see him date and later become engaged to someone else. It had actually twisted her heart, and she had stuck her neck out to tell him how she felt. She had been the one to kiss him first, and it had been a lot more wonderful than she had expected.
She had not yet had a chance to tell any of this to Steve. How would he take it? Now that he was here, did that mean that everything with Daniel was now over? Daniel had only just ended his engagement a few weeks ago. He would be terribly hurt.
Peggy suddenly realized what an untenable position she was in, with Steve suddenly turning up like this. She had a mountain of issues going on at the SSR, and she wasn't all certain that Steve would stay out of them. But if he interfered, there could be lives at stake. And she had absolutely no idea what to do about Daniel. For a brief moment, she actually felt a flash of irritation at Steve. This was quite a disruption in her life, but she buried it quickly. She was enormously grateful to see him, to know he was alive, and she recognized the second chance at a relationship that he was giving her by showing up like this.
Without thinking, she moved into his arms and he kissed her. It was a desperate kiss, born of being forced apart the way they had, two years for her, but close to ten years for him. She had no idea how long it went on, but she felt him begin to relax as she wrapped her arms around him. It was not certain which one of them moved first, but the next thing she knew, she was backing up down the hallway, bringing him with her. She wasn't sure that this was the right thing to do, especially with so much on certain and her believing he was dead only 24 hours previously. But she had also learned the hard way, through war and through work that one should never take for granted the present, or the assumption that someone would be in your life tomorrow. And if offered a second chance, you damn well take it.
Steve hesitated only slightly, as if giving her a chance to change her mind about the fact that she was pulling him slowly into her bedroom, but when she close the door behind them, he seemed to accept that this was indeed what she wanted. It was a little awkward, and they were both glad for the darkness. More than once, one of them would laugh nervously, and Steve nearly chickened out for fear of hurting her. When he entered her, she yelped slightly, but then kissed him forcefully to assure him that she was not in pain. He tried to move slowly, to give her time to adjust, but eventually neither could hold back, and it was over with in what had to be only about five minutes. He manage to maintain enough control to pull out, thankfully right after he sent her crashing over the edge. It would have sucked if he had reached completion before her. She whimpered in slight disappointment, but both understood. Contraceptive in this time was iffy at best, and neither of them had any condoms. Steve well knew that what they had just done was risky itself, and he hoped they wouldn't end up regretting this later. After cleaning up a bit, they snuggled together in her bed, and Steve drifted off, content but also restless as well and he couldn't place his finger on it. This should have been the happiest moment of his life. So why did he feel something was off?