Howard got back very late that night. Steve was already in bed, but not asleep – instead, he'd sat up reading a copy of National Geographic he'd found in the study, with an article about the mission to Uranus Tony had mentioned. He heard the door bang when Howard came in, then Howard and Maria's voices, quiet at first but growing steadily louder until they were almost shouting. The words were indistinct, but Steve thought he heard Florida, and wondered if they were arguing about Tony.

It was tempting to get up and ask. This was none of Steve's business, of course, but Steve Rogers had never been very good at minding his own business. Take your damn kid to Florida like you promised, Howard, wouldn't even be the bluntest thing Steve had ever said to him.

Instead, however, he just marked his page, settled down in bed, and turned off the light. Steve was a guest here, an interloper in not only this household but this entire world. Until he found his feet, he was better off keeping his mouth shut.

As he lay there in the dark, Steve did wonder if that were just a rationalization. Maybe the truth was that he was scared – Steve's own father had died when he was very young, so he had only a few, hazy memories of the man. That was enough, though. Maybe he was scared of finding himself on the receiving end of that again.

Maybe he was scared of seeing Howard Stark, the friend he respected and loved, become that.

The argument didn't last very long, but the silence that closed in afterwards was somehow worse. It took Steve hours to fall asleep.

Tony was not at breakfast the next morning, and Maria looked pale and dark-eyed, as if she hadn't slept very well, either. Jarvis was stiffly silent as he served breakfast, and did not comment when Maria poured a bit of liquor into her mug. The only person who seemed at ease was Howard, who munched his toast and sipped his coffee as if nothing were wrong in the world.

"Good morning," Steve said cautiously, hovering in the door. He didn't want to enter uninvited.

"Morning, Steve," said Howard cheerfully. Jarvis set a plate down in front of him with a napkin, a glass of orange juice, and two aspirin. Howard ignored the juice, and washed the pills down with his coffee.

Steve seated himself. "I wouldn't mind some juice, Jarvis," he said, for the sake of saying something.

"Have mine." Howard pushed the plate and glass towards him.

"Thanks." Steve picked it up, but didn't try a sip yet. He wanted to diffuse the tension in the room a bit before he ate. The unpleasant atmosphere was enough to give somebody indigestion. "Tony was showing me some of his work last night," he offered. "He said he'd worked on a robot arm for the space shuttle."

That was a mistake – Maria glanced up from her drink but didn't speak, and Howard visibly stiffened.

"Yeah?" Howard asked, around his mouthful of toast. "Damned obvious what was wrong with it, really. I don't know why I didn't think of it myself." He didn't have Tony's talent for saying significant things as if they were trifles, and the bitter edge to his voice was obvious. Steve could imagine him poring over diagrams late at night, frustrated by his inability to find the problem – how had he reacted when Tony figured it out?

"He's a bright kid. Chip off the old block," Steve said. When all else failed, compliments usually helped Howard's mood.

"He's brilliant," Howard agreed. "Smarter than I ever was, that's for sure." For a moment, his voice softened, and for the first time, he actually sounded as if he were fond of Tony.

Steve probably should have stopped there, but he couldn't resist poking just a little deeper. "You must be very proud of him."

Howard's gentler expression immediately melted back into a bitter scowl. "Yeah. I am."

"You should tell him sometime," Maria observed dryly, sipping her spiked coffee.

"He knows," Howard said, and stuffed the rest of his toast into his mouth. "Damn kid knows everything."

It was actually not until several days later when Steve found the time to go to the library. The agent he'd seen in her office on his second day awake, the black man with the bizarrely cylindrical hair, came into her office to discuss something with her, and when it became plain that this conversation was going to take some time, Steve excused himself and slipped out of the room.

He wasn't sure why he felt he had to do this on the sly. Something in Steve's gut told him he couldn't quite trust anybody here, not even the people he thought he knew. He almost decided to go back upstairs when, on his way across the lobby, he happened to notice the man who'd asked him to sign a comic book for his son – Agent Troy. Troy saw him, too, and his eyes flicked over to the door as if he understood that Steve was sneaking out. Steve hesitated, not sure if Troy would try to stop him, but all the man did was wave briefly and then return to leafing through a folder. Steve waved back, relieved, and pushed through the revolving doors.

So far Steve had gotten only glimpses of the city. He saw the streets go by from the inside of Howard's car, and there'd been that brief look when he'd tried to flee SHIELD on the first day. In 1945, when he'd seen it last, Manhattan had been a crowded, chaotic, dirty place. Four decades later, it was still all those things, but on a different scale entirely. Traffic on the streets was so thick that in places it slowed to a crawl, with buses, taxis, cars, and bicycles all mired in the same jams. People of every possible size, colour, and social status elbowed past one another on the sidewalks. There was graffiti on the walls and garbage in the gutters. Signs made of illuminated tubes sizzled or blinked with the same garish messages of merchandise or events that Steve had once seen painted onto brick walls or pasted up on posters.

The impression Steve got was that New York had just kept barreling along, gathering up material like a snowball rolling down a hill until it was bigger, lumpier, and filthier than ever but still made of all the same things.

Peggy had told him it was the middle of spring, so Steve was not surprised to arrive in Bryant Park and find the trees putting out leaves or heavy with magnolia blossoms, and tulips blooming by the wrought-iron fences. People were walking their dogs and the ever-present pigeons were cooing underfoot or watching from ledges. Despite the veneer of this new decade, the place felt comfortably familiar. Steve went around to the front of the library, and found it looking exactly as he remembered it. The columns and arches of the old sandstone building gave it a timeless feel, as if it would have been equally at home in the 80's, the 40's, or the Roman Empire. He climbed the steps and headed in with a smile on his face.

A librarian – an elderly black woman with frizzy white hair in a bun and enormous owl-eyed glasses – was working at one of the circulation desks. Steve approached, clearing his throat politely.

"Hello," he said. "Sorry if I'm interrupting you."

"Oh, not at all," she replied immediately. "That's why I'm here. What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for... uh..." Steve swallowed. "I'm looking for information on the Manhattan Project." He had no reason, based on what Tony had said, to expect there was anything wrong with the request, but something in him still expected everybody in the room to look up an gasp, or a gaggle of secret agents to come rushing out of nowhere to knock him to the ground.

"What kind of information?" the librarian asked. "Is this for college? Or just general interest?"

"General interest," Steve decided. "I don't think I know as much history as I should."

The librarian found him two books and two magazine articles, one of them also in National Geographic, and got him settled at a table in the big Rose Reading Room. There he sat for perhaps half an hour, reading about the history of American nuclear research, until he heard a voice say, "Captain?"

Steve blinked and raised his head. There were four men standing over him – one black and three white, all of them in dark sunglasses. He didn't recognize any of them, but the nearest one flashed a SHIELD badge at him.

"Captain," the man repeated, his voice low in deference to the fact that they were in a library. "We're going to need you to come with us."

Steve carefully put down the book he'd been reading, turning it upside down so that they wouldn't see what it was about. Even considering that he'd left the building without telling anyone, four hulking agents to retrieve him seemed like a bit of an overreaction. No matter what decade it was, Steve was a grown man. "Am I in trouble?" he wanted to know. Maybe he'd been right to worry.

"Madame Director is a little concerned," the man replied.

Something about the choice of words made Steve want to laugh, but his escorts all looked as if Madame Director's concern was a very serious matter indeed, so he controlled himself and let them escort him back out to Fifth Avenue. There was another sleek black vehicle waiting for him there, with one police car in front and another behind for an escort. When Steve got into the back seat, he found Peggy herself there waiting for him. She didn't look angry – she looked scared.

"All you all right, Steve?" she asked, looking him over for signs of injury. One of the agents shut the door behind him, and he saw it lock automatically. He hadn't noticed that before.

"Am I all... of course I am." Steve frowned. "Why wouldn't I be? Was all this," he gestured out the window at their police escort, "really necessary?"

The car pulled away from the curb, but Peggy was not reassured. "Have you spoken to anyone?" she asked. "Did anybody follow you here, besides Agent Troy?"

So Troy had told on him. Steve would remember that. "I don't think so," he said, but since he hadn't noticed Agent Troy he supposed he couldn't take that for granted. "I talked to a librarian. She helped me find some books. Other than that, nobody." He felt like a naughty child being scolded... and maybe he ought to, since he had after all left the building without letting anybody know. It wasn't a feeling he was used to getting from Peggy, though. She'd always been the one to help him get in trouble – how had she become the authority he was in trouble with? Was it just the unfamiliarity of seeing her in that role that made it so difficult to trust her?

Peggy sat back a bit, relieved. "Steve, why didn't you tell anybody where you were going? I would have assigned you an escort. You can't just wander around on the streets!"

"What do you mean?" asked Steve. She was talking as if he were still five feet tall and had just wandered into a rough part of town looking for a fight. "I went to the library. Is this what Howard meant, about you wanting me baby-sat?"

"No!" Peggy replied at once, but then had to correct herself. "Not exactly. We're not worried about what you're going to do. We trust you. We're worried about what somebody else might do to you. You saw those headlines the day you got back, Steve," she added, slightly reproachful. "You're not a secret."

Steve had seen them... and he suddenly remembered the other thing Agent Fletcher had told him, when she'd suggested he looking into the Manhattan Project. She'd said he already had enemies here. "So you would have kept me a secret if you could?" he asked. What did that mean? That they would have locked him up for his own safety?

"We certainly wouldn't be planning a national tour for you," Peggy sighed. "If we'd found you ourselves then no, nobody would know who you are, and we wouldn't have to give you publicity. Unfortunately, the news in Canada announced it when the prospectors found you, and now we're stuck with it. Congress is talking about you, the UN is talking about you..." she shook her head. "Captain America! Everybody's wondering if we have Erskine's formula and what we're going to do with it if we do. Even our allies are worried about what we might do with you. They're talking about countermeasures. You can't go out without a bodyguard."

"And that's why you wanted me to stay in the building," Steve said, remembering the argument she'd had with Howard that first afternoon. "Why didn't you just say so?"

"Because you'd only just woke up, and I didn't want to frighten you or put too much pressure on you," Peggy replied. "Besides, you've never taken restrictions well, and I figured you were bloody-minded enough to sneak out on purpose to annoy me," She met his eyes evenly, not saying but certainly conscious of the fact that she'd been right.

There it was again, as if she were a schoolteacher talking to a misbehaving student. Steve didn't like that, and couldn't quite believe he'd actually brought it upon himself. Besides, she'd said other things that were just as troubling, if not more so. "What do people think you're going to be doing with me?" he asked, but then decided the answer was obvious enough. "They think you brought me back as a weapon."

"Yes, they do," said Peggy. "It's a very tense world we're living in, Steve. It's been on a knife's edge for years. People think everything might be a weapon, and you... well, you have to admit, the way you were used during the war, it's hard to blame them."

"I wasn't used," Steve said stiffly. "I volunteered. I was doing what I wanted to do!"

"What you did during the war, then!" Peggy corrected herself. "You were a weapon. You were made to be the perfect soldier, and you were a propaganda piece. The newsreels, the comics, that's what everybody thinks we have. A superman. A weapon."

Steve hadn't considered that – he hadn't thought he'd be terribly important in a world that wasn't at war. It hadn't occurred to him to think how the fictionalized representations of him would affect people's memories in a time when most of the people he'd actually known were dead. If that was all anybody knew, and they thought the US now had a weapon they didn't... Steve might well be the cause of the war, rather than a soldier in one.

"Is that why you brought me back?" he asked. It was an awful question, but he had to know.

"Of course not!" said Peggy.

"Then why did you?" Steve asked. "After forty years, you didn't have to."

"Yes, we did," Peggy insisted. "You were alive! We could save you! How could we not, after we failed to save you all those years ago?"

"You didn't fail to save me, I ditched the plane myself," Steve reminded her. "On purpose, to save people's lives! I wasn't planning on being saved. It might have been forty years ago for you," he reminded her, "but for me that was last week. I told you, this is my choice."

Peggy shut her eyes for a moment, then sat up a little straighter, making a visible effort to compose herself. "We can talk about this alter," she said. "Right now we need you at SHIELD. That was the other reason I had to send somebody to collect you," she added. "Don't you remember what today is?"

Steve had, in fact, totally forgotten – now, too late, it came rushing back, and this time he felt honest shame as he sagged in his seat. "I'm supposed to meet the president today, aren't I?"

"Yes," Peggy said. "Yes, you are."

Steve wasn't sure what had happened to the uniform he'd been wearing when he crashed the Valkyrie. He supposed that after forty years in ice, it might well have deteriorated far more than he had. That would be why they'd put him in a t-shirt and slacks to wake up in the recovery room. He expected them to have either a version of the old costume or an army dress uniform for him to wear to meet the president, but instead they dressed him up in a red button-down shirt and a white suit, with a stars-and-stripes patterned tie to add a patriotic note.

"No costume?" he asked, as Peggy knotted the tie for him.

"We hoped to have one," she said, "but we ran into some legal difficulties. It seems a comic book company currently holds the rights to it, and we can't let you outside wearing it unless we want to pay them a truly absurd sum of money."

"What about my shield?" Steve asked. He hadn't seen it yet... had they found that, too, or was it still in the ice somewhere?

"The same," Peggy said. "It's trademarked – and now that you're back the value of your merchandise has skyrocketed, so we don't think they'll be letting go of it any time soon. We're going to take them to court, but our lawyers honestly aren't sure we have a case. A copyright is a copyright."

"So you have it, then?" Steve asked.

"It's in storage," Peggy said. She finished with his tie and stood back to look him over. "Yes, I think that will do," she said.

They were the same words she'd used the day he'd chosen the shield out of the collection of prototypes Howard had presented with him – for a moment he was back there in the warehouse, cowering behind the metal disk she'd just shot five times, staring in infatuated awe as she walked away from him. Then he was back in the present, where this woman he'd adored was somebody placing restrictions on him and not telling him why, and he knew he needed to ask.

"Peggy," he said, "where's my shield?"

"It's in the vault downstairs," she replied. "You can't take it out with you today, Steve. I know it's stupid, but we could really get in legal trouble for it."

"I don't want to take it out with me today," he promised. "But I do want to take it home with me. Or back to Howard's. Whatever. It's mine, I want to hang onto it."

It was probably a silly, childish request – just as sneaking out without telling anybody had been a silly, childish action. Peggy, however, seemed to understand the symbolic importance of it. Steve's shield had been almost more part of his body than part of his uniform.

"Gentlemen," she said to the agents in the room, "will somebody bring Captain Rogers his shield, please?"

One of them returned a few minutes later with a cardboard box about three feet square and six inches deep. Peggy took this from him and, standing up straight and formal as if she were officiating some kind of ceremony, removed the lid. Inside, the shield was cushioned in layers and layers of bubble wrap. She cut the tape and pulled the shield itself out to present it to Steve.

It must have been cleaned since they'd taken him out of the ice, but it hadn't been repaired. When Steve took it from her, he found the strap that had broken in the fight with Schmidt was still there. So were the scrapes in the paint from the fight on the train. He ran his fingers around the edge, feeling the familiar texture and temperature. Howard had explained once that because Vibranium resisted vibration, it warmed up very slowly.

"Thank you," he said to Peggy.

She nodded, biting her lip. "Just... keep it in the box until you get back to Howard's, please. The last thing we need right now is to be sued over this nonsense."

Steve hated to do it. He hadn't realized how much he'd been missing the thing until she'd put it in his hands, but now that he had it he never wanted to put it down again. How many nights had he spent in the middle of nowhere, in trenches or forests or bombed-out building, sleeping with this shield for a pillow? How many times had it saved his and his followers' lives? Now, while he'd been sleeping, somebody had apparently decided that nobody even had the right to look at it without their consent, when they hadn't even been the ones who made it! What kind of world had he awakened to?

"Madame Director?" somebody asked from the doorway. "The president is waiting."

"Of course," Peggy nodded. "We're on our way."

Reluctantly, Steve put the shield back in its box and wrapped it up again, and went out to the car with it under his arm. "Where exactly am I meeting the president?" he asked. Several locations had been discussed, but he couldn't remember them ever settling on one.

"The Maine Monument," said Peggy. "We thought it would be best if it were somewhere public, someplace people don't automatically think of as high-security. We don't want anyone to think we're hiding you."

Steve probably should have kept his mouth shut, but he couldn't help observing, "that's ironic."

"It's public relations," said Peggy. "It always is." She sounded as if she were resigned to that.

Columbus Circle in 1945 had been a ring of little shops and hotels with dozens of painted billboards advertising everything from mattresses to toothpaste, with streetcar tracks in the road rather than automobile traffic. The Maine Monument had stood proud at the corner of the park amid young trees and open lawns.

In 1986 the streetcars were gone, the trees were taller, and many of the buildings had been replaced by new structures in harsh glass and metal rather than friendly sandstone and brick. The plazas around the obelisk and subway entrance were crowded with people and food carts, but the area near the monument itself had been cleared by the police and roped off with yellow caution tape. Cops were waving people out of the way as the SHIELD car pulled up. Half a dozen vans with the logos of various news channels or papers were gathered around, and flash bulbs were going off everywhere.

The four men who'd collected Steve from the library were there as bodyguards, waiting on the pavement around the monument with sour expressions on their faces. With them was a much shorter man with snow-white hair – Howard Stark. As the car pulled up, he came to meet them with a beaming smile on his face.

"Steve," he said, as one of the guards opened the car door for them. "Fashionably late, as usual."

"We had to take care of something," Steve said, glancing at the box on the seat beside him as he swung his legs out of the car. He was kind of reluctant to leave... what if they took his shield away and put it in storage again? It wasn't just Howard who was waiting for him, though. The entire gathered crowd of reporters and citizens were craning their necks to see. With a sigh, Steve grabbed the edges of the door frame and got to his feet.

"Nice suit," Howard observed. "Peggy sure can pick 'em."

"She told me there was some difficulty about my uniform," Steve said.

"We're working on it," Howard promised. He led Steve over to the foot of the fountain, where a microphone had been set up. Two speakers had been mounted partway up the monument, so everybody would be able to hear what was said. "Ladies and gentlemen!" Howard said, then winced as the speakers made a loud, high-pitched ringing sound. It died out after a moment, and he tried again. "Ladies and gentlemen, it is my immense honour to present to the world an American hero, and my own good friend. Back after forty years, Captain Stephen Grant Rogers – Captain America!"

The crowd applauded politely. Camera flashes popped. Steve did his best to smile and wave, with Howard's arm around his shoulders, but he felt like a fool. He was on display again, the performing monkey. Howard and Peggy knew first-hand how frustrated he'd been with that part of his job, and yet here he was. Maybe they didn't really know what they were going to be doing with him, either.

As the applause died away, the speakers began playing a brass band rendition of Hail to the Chief. It was just slightly off-key in a rather familiar way, and Steve wondered whether the original recording had been made at one of the events he'd attended during the war. Before he could follow that thought any further, however, another car pulled up – this one a white limousine. The bodyguards surrounded it, and one opened the door for the president to climb out.

When Steve had tried to imagine President Ronald Reagan, he had pictured the dashing young man from the Brass Bancroft movies he and Bucky had used to watch at the nickelodeons, but of course that wasn't who he saw now. Like Peggy and Howard, and indeed the entire world, Reagan had aged: the man who approached Steve was gray-haired and sunken-cheeked, his skin spotted with rust. With him was a tiny woman in a white coat, with short blonde hair standing out all around her face. She didn't look anything like Jane Wyman as Steve remembered her from You're in the Army Now. Both these people, however, had bright, energetic smiles on their faces.

"Ron!" Howard said cheerfully, with a glance at Steve to make sure he'd noticed that Howard was on a first-name basis with the president of the United States. "Good to see you."

"Good to see you, too, Howard," Reagan said, shaking Howard's hand.

"Mr. Stark, always a pleasure," the woman in the white coat agreed.

"Steve," Howard added – with the same glance at the president to make sure he knew Howard was on a first-name basis with Captain America. "This is President Ronald Reagan, and his wife, Nancy."

"Mr. President," said Steve, shaking their hands. "Mrs. Reagan." So definitely not Jane Wyman. He wondered how old this woman was. Howard had said Maria had been four in 1945. There must be people, Steve realized with a slightly sick feeling, who'd lived short but complete lives in the last forty years. People who'd been born, grown up, married, had children, and died young. Thousands and thousands of them, all while Steve slept in the arctic ice.

"An honour," the president said. "A real honour to meet you in person at last, Captain Rogers. You know, back in the day I always wanted to try playing a bad guy in one of your movies! My agent said nobody would buy me as a villain."

That made Steve smile honestly. "Too bad nobody told me," he said. "Bucky – Lieutenant Barnes – and I, we were big fans of Brass Bancroft. If we'd known he wanted to be in a movie with us, I'm sure we could have worked something out."

"Too bad it's been so long since either of us were in any movies," Reagan said. "Maybe you'd do me the honour of coming to an American production 1980's style, though." He pulled an envelope out of his jacket. "The space shuttle Odyssey will be blasting off in Florida in a couple of weeks, and Nancy and I are planning on attending. There's two tickets, so you can bring a friend."

That was the launch Tony wanted to see, wasn't it? Steve briefly entertained the thought of taking the kid himself if Howard refused to, but it was entirely possible that Tony wouldn't want to go with Steve. More likely he would end up just taking Peggy, if either of them had the time. It wasn' as if he really knew anybody else.

"Thank you, Mr. President, I'd be delighted," said Steve.

"Wonderful!" Reagan shook his hand again. "I know Dr. Williams, the administrator of NASA, has always been a fan of yours, and I'm sure Commander Shipley will be thrilled, as well!" He turned to address the audience. "On behalf of the American people, Captain Rogers," he said formally, "welcome to 1986! This country is very grateful for your services in the past, and we're happy you can join us in looking forward to the future!"

He looked at Steve, waiting, and Steve stepped up to the microphone. He'd been in situations like this before, and knew exactly what kind of platitudes were required. "Thank you, Mr. President," he repeated. "It's good to be back."

Once all the hands had been shaken and the last camera had run out of film, Steve climbed back into the car with Peggy and put a hand on the shield box – he was able to depress the cardboard a little, but then he met resistance. That was good. It was still in there.

He'd hoped Peggy wouldn't notice him checking, but she did. "I promise you," she sighed. "We've got a veritable army of lawyers working on it, but lawyers don't do anything quickly. That's why they're paid by the day."

Steve nodded and looked out the window as the car pulled away. People were still trying to get closer and peer through the tinted windows, and the police escort had to move the crowd back so that the car could get onto Broadway. If it might have been unsafe for him to go to the library that morning, Steve thought dismally, it would definitely be after today. Millions of people were going to see his face on the news that night and in the papers tomorrow. If he went out in public again, he might be mobbed.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay at SHIELD?" Peggy asked. "We can provide proper security."

"I'm sure," said Steve. The tighter the security was going to be, the less Steve wanted to subject himself to it. "Howard's place is fine. Can I make one request, though?" he asked.

"Certainly," Peggy said. "Anything."

He chose his excuse carefully. "This space shuttle thing seems to be a big deal. Tony mentioned working on it, and he said there's an exhibit at some museum in Queen's that includes it. May I have Madame Director's permission for a field trip?" Tony had said there'd be information about the Manhattan Project there, too – and Steve doubted he'd be welcome back at the library after those agents had dragged him out of it.

Peggy looked startled – it made him wonder what she'd been expecting him to ask for. "Of course," she said. "I'll assign you a bodyguard. When would you like to go?"

Steve blinked. "Really?"

"Of course!" She stared at him a moment, then shook her head. "Steve, for heaven's sake, you are not a prisoner. It's a precaution, nothing more. Do you really think we'd bring you back only to keep you locked up?"

"No. I don't think so." At least, the Peggy and Howard Steve had known wouldn't have done any such thing. But this Peggy and Howard – these older, more jaded, more secretive people – he really couldn't say.