A/N: Years have passed. S.H.I.E.L.D. has two directors who don't quite see eye-to-eye. Our sweet little Rory was raised by a different kind of village.

A reminder that Lorelai was born two years later, 1970, the same year as Tony. Therefore, Rory was born in 1986.

"Why did you join S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first place?"

"My name is Lorelai Gilmore and my dad is Tony Stark."

"OK, so, your dad's Tony Stark. Why not just work for him?"

"I don't want to make weapons."

"You're at S.H.I.E.L.D. Slippery slope."

2006

THE TRISKELION | S.H.I.E.L.D. HEADQUARTERS

Lorelai cried, "She's not a spy, Nick!"

"Oh, really?" Fury opened the file he had brought with him. "Let's see here … top grades across the board."

"Well, that's Miss Perfect Work Ethic," she said factually.

"Combat, agility, marksmanship."

Lorelai tried to sound flippant. "So she's a soldier, at best."

"Espionage, first in her class."

"She's just a kid!"

"A kid who breezed through our Academy of Science and Technology," he said flatly.

"What happened to: 'She's too valuable to have in the field,' huh? 'She's too dangerous to keep around our hardware'?" interjected Lorelai. "Huh?"

Fury's tone turned to incredulity, "She got bored at the Sandbox –"

"You can blame her father, for that one."

"She survived Operations. Walked away with flying colours –"

"Just because she's a good shot –"

"The best shot. As good a sharpshooter as you, Lorelai. Maybe better."

"And with her speciality, she'll spend her whole career tallying every kill, and she'll be haunted by that number beyond the grave. I don't want that for her. She wanted to do her science thing at S.H.I.E.L.D., fine. I'd actually rather she'd chosen to blow things up with Tony as a civilian, but I accepted it."

"Kicking and screaming, from what I recall."

"I am not OK with sending her into the field. She's isn't made for this."

"You mean you don't want her to be. She's probably the most overqualified person we've got. She's done time at all three Academies –"

"'Done time' – a little too on the nose? All that steel and concrete. We should really get around to sprucing it up," Lorelai tried to deflect. "We could use a good spruce."

"Your daughter has been training for this since the day you brought her here."

"I didn't bring my daughter here. I needed a job."

"And now she wants one, too."

"She already has a job."

"I know you're against this, Lorelai, but it isn't your decision."

"It's mine, Mom," Rory said firmly as she entered the room.

Fury smiled, smug. "Madam Director, say hello to Agent 88."

"I didn't want to make weapons and now I'm using them," said Rory bitterly.

2009

STARK MANSION | MALIBU

"Jarvis."

"Welcome home, s―"

"'I am Iron Man.' Seriously?" a familiar voice scoffed, its owner unseen in the dark. "You think you're the only superhero in the world? Oh, Tony … You've become part of a bigger universe and you just don't even know it."

Nonplussed, Tony blinked as a familiar face came into view. "Lor?"

"It's Madam Director now, actually."

"Director of what?"

"Director of S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Huh."

"I'm here to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative."

"I avoided working for Dad because I didn't want to make weapons. Only now …" Rory sighed deeply. "Only now, he's out of the weapons game and I'm the one with blood on my hands."

2011

S.H.I.E.L.D. HEADQUARTERS | NEW YORK CITY

"How's our best girl doing?" asked Trip after Agent 13 hung up.

Agent 13 put her hands on her hips. "Should I be offended? I feel like I should be offended."

"All right," he grinned, "how is my best girl doing?"

She smirked. "Wrapping things up. Ready for extraction."

"How broken is the poor guy's heart this time?"

"Hey, Dugray!" she called across the room. "You can add another proposal to the tally!"

Thompson Dugray shook his head, added a mark on the board and joined them.

"Damn," said Trip.

"You know the company line," said Thom. "'You want someone to be seduced, you send Romanoff. You need a target to fall in love, you send 88.'"

"Well, you two would know," laughed Agent 13.

Trip crossed his arms. "I only have experience with the latter, thank you very much."

Thom shrugged, feigning poorly executed nonchalance.

"In your dreams," Trip told him.

"Not even in your dreams, Dugray." Agent 13 looked at Thom pityingly. "Not even in your dreams."

"Rifles are her specialty."

"88's gotta be one of the best marksmen in the world."

"Not that the world knows about that."

"Probably the best. If you don't believe the ghost stories."

"She's great with knives."

"Packs a hell of a punch, too."

"Chip off the old 8 block."

2012

S.H.I.E.L.D. HEADQUARTERS | NEW YORK CITY

Steve felt … groggy. Sluggish, even. He hadn't felt nearly so weak since he was a ninety-pound asthmatic. He could breathe, though, and breathe well. His lungs were still as strong as they had been since the serum, thankfully, so there was at least that.

"… our Commander-in-Chief, President Harry S. Truman, on the Manhattan Project …"

He could hear perfectly fine, too. His hearing remained excellent – both ears were fully functioning. He heard angry metropolitan traffic impatiently announcing itself outside, Kay Kyser softly crooning on a turntable, and a welcome voice to his immediate right.

"…Hiroshima, and then Nagasaki …"

A feminine, vaguely familiar voice. It sounded almost like … Rebecca Barnes.

"… according to Howard Stark …"

Oh, God, thought Steve. Bucky's sister. What was he going to say to –

"Becca?" asked Steve, sitting up quickly.

His eyes landed on … not Rebecca.

A young woman sat comfortably on a simple white chair, carefully folding the yellowing newspaper she'd been reading from. Judging from her attire, she could have been an off-duty army nurse, in her white blouse and dark olive skirt. It looked a little strange, though. Not quite right. Something about the way her clothes sat on her delicate frame was not quite right. In fact, just about everything in this room seemed not quite right.

"Captain," she smiled kindly.

Steve blinked. He knew that smile. But it was on the wrong face.

She laid the old newspaper at the foot of his bed and said, "You're awake," apparently relieved. "Good morning." She checked her silver watch. "Or should I say, afternoon?"

Steve squinted to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. It wasn't like he was colour-blind again, but … He made a fist, flexing the muscles up one arm to check if the super-soldier serum had worn off or something. Nope, he found out. He was perfectly fine – yet, he was seeing things. He was hearing things. He was seeing and hearing things that were not quite right: a beautiful dame that sounded eerily like Bucky's little sister Becca, and looked an awful lot like Bucky's youngest sister Abby, but had the exact same smile as Bucky's baby brother Bobby. Her eyes, though. He had never seen eyes like hers before. Big. Bright. Blue. Vividly blue. Like the cube.

The cube! The Valkyrie! He had crashed that flying monstrosity into the ice.

"How …?"

He wasn't dead. He should have been dead.

"I don't understand," said Steve cautiously. He slowly got off the bed and backed away from her. He needed to distance himself from this woman who was familiarity and wrongness in one. "What's going on?"

"You've been asleep, Captain Rogers."

"I gathered," he said, gesturing to the single bed he had woken up in. He picked up the newspaper that she had been reciting to him while he woke. He skimmed the headlines and checked the date. It was August – apparently, he had been sleeping for four months. "It's over? We won?"

She sombrely eyed the grainy black-and-white photo of the mushroom cloud accompanying the news article, seriousness shading her otherwise fair china doll face. "Something like that."

That sounded about right, Steve thought sadly. It was war.