"I need a drink, first," said Peggy. "Then I'll tell you."

"I'm not letting you out of my sight until I get some answers."

God, he is being so demanding. Is this sort of thing normal for him, now? It's as if he's completely spun on a dial. He's very moody.

She turned around and walked toward the kitchen, where she proceeded to open the liquor cabinet.

She took down a bottle of scotch.

"I can't believe this is actually happening," said Steve, sitting down at the breakfast table. "I can't believe I am here, right now, and this is happening."

Peggy came in and sat across with him, her scotch in her hand.

"Believe," she said. "It."

"I need a drink."

Peggy raised her glass and saluted him, laughing. "Aye, aye, Captain."

He opened the bottle of scotch, and poured a small glass.

"I'm surprised at you," said Peggy. "You never used to drink with me."

"Well, now I'm drinking because of you."

She laughed again.

"What is so damn funny?"

"You're just so perplexed," she said. "It's hilarious."

Her willingness to be so ruthlessly obnoxious made him very angry, she'd notice. She was still very mad at him and very irritated in general. But she didn't want him to know.

He came back over, and sat down again. He finished his drink in one gulp, and then slammed the glass down on the table. He wiped his mouth.

"Tell," he said. "The truth."

"Where should I start?"

God, she was so..he could just—

"The beginning," he said. "Start from the beginning, and make me understand. Make me understand why you did this to me and why you continued to do this to me, and why, suddenly, you've had a change of heart and don't want to do this to me."

She laughed. "All right."

When he'd first laid eyes on her this night, he had immediately seen his Peggy. The Peggy he'd known for so long. He knew her movements, her gestures, her voice. The way it cracked when she had something difficult to say, and the way she sniffled when she cried. He felt like he'd known her for all of his life, and all the lives before that. But now, as he looked at her, sitting across from him, her eyebrows raised, glass full of scotch, smug expression..he didn't see Peggy. His Peggy.

It was like an entirely new Peggy had emerged from the ice. There was one during the war, the one he knew, and there was one now, this one.

Who are you? Steve wanted to say. What made you this way?

But he knew that if he didn't calm down, and listen to her, he'd never get the answers he was looking for.

"In the years after the war, Howard had begun giving samples of your blood to the government for research—"

"Why?"

"He, and they, thought the serum, if extracted from the blood, could be used to create another Super Soldier. They were paying him a lot of money for vials of it. The idea of a second Captain America made them fight like children.

"He gave me what I thought was the last vial," she sniffed. "I kept it for a long time, because I didn't know what to do with it, and I didn't want Stark's grubby hands on it. Eventually, I poured it into the river over the Brooklyn Bridge, because I knew you'd want to be in Brooklyn. But Stark had lied to me, again.

"Turns out, he had kept 8 bottles of blood for himself, that he had never touched. He told me it was just in case he would ever need them. He never told the government about them. They were promised and given 20, and they were told there had been 20 in all. Turns out, there were 31 in all, 20 given to the government, 8 for himself, 2 that had met untimely demises in a lab beaker, and 1 that I managed to get for myself."

She sighed.

"Howard was ecstatic because the government had used up all 20 vials of blood, trying to figure out how to extract the Super Soldier Serum. No one could figure it out, and their idea of creating another Super Soldier was tossed.

"However, because of the 8 vials he had saved 'just in case', Howard was ultimately convinced he could do it again, the procedure that is, and it would be successful. He told me he'd found a way to create a third Super Soldier, and that the procedure itself would be quite easy to perform. But he needed a willing victim, excuse me, participant."

Steve almost smiled. "You."

"Yes, me." Peggy did smile. "I was lucky, or should I say unlucky enough to go through the procedure."

"What happened? Obviously, it worked."

Peggy took a swig of her drink. "Yes, it did. But it was not without its obstacles."

"Is that why you were cryogenically frozen?"

"I'm getting there," she said. "It was supposed to be like the second coming of Project Rebirth. We had done so well with you the first time, there was probable cause that it would work a second time. After you died, the war was over, but the world still needed hope. A new kind of hope. Stark figured that was something I could provide.

"The procedure took place in September 1946. Just as you were, I was injected with the serum, and put into that oven. During the process, the machine started to smoke, after we had hit 100% Vita-Rays, and it caught on fire. The serum had taken effect, and everyone was all right, but we had to evacuate immediately afterward."

She took another drink. "Howard carried me out, and just as soon as everyone had exited the building, it blew up."

"That must have been upsetting."

"Yes, Howard was very upset. I mean, the lab had exploded last time, but it was because of that bloody bomb. And it didn't do hardly as much damage as this. He lost all of his equipment, all of his notes."

She sighed.

"I had started working for the SSR as an agent right after the war, and I had begun work for Howard as an undercover operative. He was being framed for selling deadly weapons to a bidder, and the SSR was trying to implicate him in the crime. My job was to find and dispose of the weapons. I worked alongside Edwin Jarvis, Howard's butler. Because of my work, Howard thanked me greatly by allowing me to co-found S.H.I.E.L.D. with him."

"Okay, so you repay Howard in a big way, and he does you a solid by making you the third Super Soldier?"

"Yes, that's correct," she said. "As I said before, we had founded S.H.I.E.L.D., with the hopes of restoring order in the world. I had my procedure, we would work together, employ other agents and create a logistics division that was supposed to help protect the people of the world. They needed to know that they would be safe."

"I can't imagine a world without a war."

She blinked, swallowed, and nodded. "It is unlike anything you could ever imagine. And I thank God every day you didn't have to go through it."

"Do you?"

"Being in the world without a war, was like everyone trying to convince themselves that we would be okay and that we could go on about our daily lives, like we used to. We could eat well again, we could go back to our jobs. We could see our families. We could have sit down dinners, and listen to radio programs. Without fear that we'd have to go to our bomb shelters in the basement."

"It was worse than the actual war," said Steve. "Is that what you're saying?"

Peggy nodded, and her eyes filled with tears. "In all my life, I've experienced so much fear. We were supposed to feel safe, you know? It was over. It was done. We were liberated, the world had been liberated. But it was awful, Steve, just awful."

He frowned.

"I'm not being ungrateful. Trust me, I was grateful to come home and sleep in my bed and eat real food and bathe regularly." She smiled. "But it was so..scary. I took a job at the SSR because it was quiet, it was seclusive, and I didn't have to worry about being killed. But that was exactly what had made the war the war. And I wanted to go back to that."

"I know the feeling."

"Once work for Howard began, I started getting excited again, I started feeling alive. Being in danger, being shot at, being a spy, an agent, it was what made me live during the war. I felt like I had a reason to live again. I realized, I feed off the danger. Happy is boring. Safe is an illusion."

She started to cry.

"At that point in my life, I had lost many people.."

Steve frowned.

"..and I'd be damned if I lost myself."