Day Two: When Timelines Collide

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It was only sheer luck that Peggy happened to visit Howard that day. Well, sheer luck and the fact that he had called her fifteen times at her apartment, on the car phone in Jarvis's automobile, and at work.

Finally giving in, she strode into Howard's workshop with decidedly clicking heels. "What…" she started to demand - and then froze.

Because half the room wasn't there.

A good six foot hole in the air - she couldn't think of a better way to describe it - was hovering in the middle of the room, golden shapes and angles flickering around the edges. And on the other side of that hole-

Peggy committed the inexcusable sin and dropped her gun.

It went off, of course, narrowly missing Howard, who howled and hopped in an attempt to dodge the bullet that had already passed him.

"Pegs!" he cried in delight, turning to see her. "Peggy, look - this is amazing - you'll never guess who!"

But Peggy couldn't do much else other than look. She couldn't even blink - just stared, the name of the man on the other side of the hole trapped breathless on her lips.

Because on the other side of the hole in the air was Steve Rogers. He didn't look much better - standing stock still with wide eyes full of mingled surprise and pain - looking at her as though he could touch her with the strength of his gaze alone.

"Hi," he gasped at last.

Howard looked back and forth between the two of them for a minute. "Well," he said. "Nice to see everybody again, huh? Pegs, make Steve tell me where he is in our time. He says he'll be frozen another sixty years or so and not to keep looking for him."

Peggy swallowed hard and started to sit down - then realized there was nothing to sit on and remained standing instead. "What did you do, Howard?" she demanded hoarsely, though she didn't take her eyes off of the captain.

"Me?" Howard put on an air of innocence that hadn't fooled anybody since he was twelve. "Absolutely nothing. Just tinkering with this," he gestured toward Schmidt's glowing blue cube, which Peggy noticed for the first time was sitting on the workbench dead in front of the hole, "And suddenly they just came out of nowhere."

"Actually, not nowhere." A dark-haired man popped up on the other side of the hole beside Steve. He too looked back and forth between Steve and Peggy for a minute, in a gesture so like Howard's that it was almost ludicrous. Then he flapped a hand and proceeded. "We're from the future. And we need that cube to save the world."

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Gradually it all came out, in bits and pieces. Evidently the cube - "the Tesseract," as Steve's friend insisted on calling it - was one of a set of others. All together, they had proven deadly to the future - a future which Captain America had somehow lived to see, even though Peggy herself had not.

She knew that without words. The captain wouldn't look at her like that if an older version of herself was still running around. Good heavens - she must have been nearly a hundred by that point.

"We need that," Steve's friend was saying. He'd introduced himself as Tony, but the way he'd left off his last name made Peggy think he was holding something back. "With this stone, we have a weapon - we can fight back, have an advantage for the first time. The Tesseract isn't just a cube - the cube part is a box for the power inside."

Howard's eyebrows flew upward until they were in danger of falling off. "More power inside? How do we get it open?"

"Um yeah - shouldn't have said that," Tony muttered. "You don't," he enunciated more clearly. "You don't mess around with it."

"But you have no idea what I could do with it!" Howard protested. He had fairly lit up with ideas - one could almost see them spinning around his head.

Steve's face twisted, became more grim. "Believe me, I have a very good idea. You want to save the world, Howard? Do some good? This is how you do it. If you give us that cube-" he hesitated briefly, and then his jaw hardened and he leaned closer to the surface of the hole. "If you give us that cube, you'll be potentially saving trillions of lives. Trillions, Howard."

Peggy blinked. "There can't be that many people on earth by then, surely," she managed.

Steve's eyes flickered up to meet hers. They were so sad. He looked tired, worn out, old before his time. "There aren't," he said. "This isn't just the earth we're talking about."

Heavy silence settled in the room. For a long time, Howard looked at the cube. It flickered, blue light dancing across his face, glinting in the dark waves of his hair. From the other side of the singularity, Tony watched closely, lines tightening around his eyes, betraying his anxiety.

Steve watched Peggy.

And she watched him.

"Is - are you…" he stopped, cleared his throat, addressed her directly for the first time. "How are things?"

The lump in Peggy's throat grew exponentially at the sound of his voice. This was all so impossible.

"Fine," she managed, voice thready. Her chest hurt. "I've kept busy." I've missed you, she wanted to say, but couldn't get the words out.

He nodded. The look in his eyes was almost physically painful, but he smiled. "I know. You'll do well." He swallowed hard. "I've missed you."

Because of course he could say what they were both thinking - at least that part of it.

"Can you come back through?" she asked at last, gesturing towards the gap in space and time. It was selfish to ask, but she needed to know.

She knew before he shook his head sadly. "I'm here for good, Peggy," he told her, and managed a halfhearted smile. "It's not so bad. They need me. Besides, this is everything we've got, right here." He gestured at the hole in the air. "We won't be able to put together another one like this."

At the workbench, Howard abruptly straightened with a jerk. Blue light seemed to linger in his eyes for a moment, but then he shook his head and it was gone. On the other side of the singularity, Tony took a deep breath - almost as though he was relieved.

"Fine," Howard said. "Fine. How do I…" he gestured, "...do I just stick it through the gap?"

Evidently the answer was yes. Picking it up with a pair of long-handled tongs, Howard approached the hole in space. He hesitated once more, and shook his head.

"Well, goodbye fame and fortune. Only for you, Steve - only for you."

And then he shoved it through.

It was as if an invisible membrane stretched across the gap - Howard had to put a lot of muscle into it. Something tensed, bulged - and then gave so suddenly that he stumbled and almost went through himself. Peggy grabbed his belt, galvanized into action. The tongs opened, shaken by the motion, but Tony was there and ready with a case, catching the cube neatly and clapping a lid on it.

Somehow it felt like a crisis had passed, some subtle tension in the air had vanished, and everyone breathed a little easier. The creases in the captain's brow lightened, and a real smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he looked across at her.

Howard drew back the tongs, but as they came back through the invisible barrier, they crumbled into ashes at his feet.

Then the opening in space and time shuddered. The golden lines and angles surrounding it flickered in and out. Peggy's heart jolted in her chest as it began to shrink. Steve half flung out a hand, and then caught himself. His face creased in helpless despair for a moment. Then he forced it back and held her gaze with his own - so securely, so warmly, that it was almost like a physical touch.

"Peggy," he gasped. "I-" He paused, groped for words. "Stay safe?" he finally managed.

It wasn't what either of them had wanted him to say. Peggy held her head high, nodded once. She would not spend their last moments in tears.

"You too," she whispered.

His eyes were so very, very blue. He was alive - he would survive the awful crash - so why did it feel like her world was ending as the closing circle slowly blotted more and more of him from view?

Something touched her arm, and Peggy jumped. It was Howard. He jerked his head towards the singularity and smiled - a sad, understanding little smile, very unlike him.

"Go to him, Peggy."

Peggy gasped. On the other side of the hole, Steve made a choking sound, but when she looked back at him he was shaking his head, looking particularly miserable. The dear, self-sacrificing idiot.

"There's still so much for you to do," he told her earnestly. "We don't know what it would do to you."

The hole continued to shrink - now only a yard across. Peggy swallowed hard, measuring it with her eyes. "Howard?"

Howard shrugged, and then leaned in to plant a quick kiss on her cheek. "No idea." he said. "Best of luck, Pegs."

She looked at him, looked around at the world she knew. Then she lifted her chin decidedly. Never let it be said that Peggy Carter shirked her duties - or broke her promises.

She stepped forward.

The closing time dragged at the ends of her hair, at her dress. She pressed on, digging her feet in, fighting for purchase - and then she was through, and the way back winked out of existence behind her.

Cement stretched hard and cold beneath her feet. The room might have been some sort of lab, severely damaged by battle.

Peggy didn't see any of it. She had eyes for only one person. Steve was staring at her, stunned. Beside him, Tony grinned like a Cheshire Cat.

She cleared her throat, raised her head with all the confidence she could muster. "I believe I owe you a dance, soldier."

The captain tried twice to breathe, and failed utterly. Just as Peggy was starting to wonder if she'd broken something by coming, he finally lunged into motion, crossing the room in two steps and sweeping her into his arms in a wholehearted embrace that filled her entire existence and sent warmth racing from her fingers to the tips of her toes. He was shaking. She wound her arms around him and held him tightly, the tears she'd been holding back finally escaping down her cheeks as she smothered a sob of her own in his shoulder.

They'd never had this before - but evidently jumping forward through time was a good enough excuse.

Something exploded outside, and Tony flinched beside them, though he still looked overwhelmingly cheerful about this whole thing. "Whoops, looks like they've found us. Hey, we've gotta get out of here now, Steve. Steve? Steve, listen up, buddy. Like I know you just got your girl back, but still…"

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Eventually they did get out of the building. At the sound of approaching chaos, Peggy reached for her gun, only to realize she'd dropped it in Howard's lab, seventy years before. The sheer scale of what she'd just given up was finally starting to hit her, but Steve was beside her, and Steve's hand was warm on her back, and that was enough for the moment.

"Here," he said, offering her a weapon as Tony scuttled on ahead. "You'll want one of these in case they come this way. Wakandan make - it's vibranium based."

Peggy did indeed want it, very much. It fit her hand nicely - she couldn't wait to try it out. She figured at some point she would need to get around to asking who they were, and where they were, and why they were blowing up wherever this was, but in the meantime she took it all in stride.

"Peggy?"

She looked up from her new toy. "Mmm?"

Steve looked very hesitant, very guilty. "We can't send you back."

She nodded, dashed one hand across her wet eyes, and thought of Howard's tongs, crumbled into ash as they went back through time. She had just given up her home, her loved ones, her life's work all in a moment for the chance to be with the only man who had ever filled the gap in her heart. "I know. It was my only chance."

Another explosion shook the ground, nearer this time. Steve reached for her, took her hand deliberately - her left hand - and gently touched the base of her ring finger with his thumb. Then he looked up at her.

"Marry me, Peggy."

Peggy raised a cool eyebrow that was very much at odds with the wild, unsuppressed state of her heart at the moment. "Why, because I'm stranded and can't go back?"

He shook his head. "No. Because we waited too long last time and I will not do it again."

She cupped her free hand under his chin, and raised it, scanning his features carefully, ignoring the need for haste, stretching out the moments they had. He looked older, more tired, disillusioned, though the old familiar kindness still persisted.

"Any other women?" she asked archly, though she already guessed the answer. The captain's ears turned pink, which charmed her, and immediately she knew. Older he might be, with years of age and trouble and separation which had taken their toll, but the soul of him was still the same good man it had always been.

"Um, no," Steve managed. "That is, I went out with a few, but - not really, no. You've - you've always been it for me, Peggy." He must have liked what he saw in her face then, for he started to smile - his own, true smile - and gathered both her hands in his. "If we live through this, will you marry me?"

She nodded, heart too full for words. Then she drew his head down and kissed him with everything she had, feeling the sharp-edged fragments of her soul begin to slot together, coming into place as he kissed her back.

"Yes," she whispered, and the joy in his tired face was brighter than the sun.

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Yes, I know this is a lazy train wreck, and there's more plot holes than there are in a block of Swiss cheese - but it's my train wreck, and I like it. I wanted Infinity War to give me an excuse to write it, but they wouldn't change their plot to accommodate. So here, and I hope you enjoy!

See you tomorrow!