Steve shuffles his old photographs. Somehow, S.H.I.E.L.D. recovered these and gave them to him. He hasn't seen them in years. There's one of his father, in full military attire he died on his way home from the war, of Spanish influenza. He looks like him, he thinks; his mother always said so. He never met him. He was born not quite two months after his father died. The next is a small portrait of him as a newborn, with downy hair and big eyes.

The next is a portrait of him sitting on his mother's lap, both of them in their best clothes. He's about five. He vaguely remembers sitting for this portrait, his mother's whisper to please sit still, Steven. She rarely called him Steve. That was what the boys and his teachers and nearly everyone he knew then did, but not her; when she was feeling particularly affectionate, she might call him Stevie. With a pang, he wonders how long she saved for this photograph in his hands. They were poor; Steve knew that from his very earliest conception of the word. Not destitute poor- the military paid them enough compensation to prevent that- but no luxaries poor. He never minded. He had a baseball glove and a perfectly good mother- what else could he want? He told her that a thousand times, and she always said back, her voice cracking, "I just want to give you more than I can, Steven." He would hug her, her chin resting on his shoulder. Even as a shrimp, he was substantially taller than her.

There's a newspaper clipping, a tiny column with a picture of him, that his mother must have clipped and saved, announcing that Steven Rogers had won George Washington High School's art scholarship in the spring of 1936. It was a small sum- they were in the midst of a depression- but it was enough. He had gotten into Auburndale, and he could pay for it. He didn't have to see the lines tighten around his mother's eyes as she tried to make his dream possible. She didn't approve, really, of him studying art- where could he work, how would he survive?- but she told him she didn't want him to forget how to hope for something.

The next makes his breath catch. It's his mother's obituary. He wrote it and felt like a failure. He rereads it now and shakes his head. He never could convey her quiet determination, her strength. She raised him alone. He was sick a lot. He was in and out of the hospital when they could afford it and half the time when they couldn't, and she never complained about the extra hours she had to work. They didn't have much money. And somehow she made it so he never cared that he had no father. She was coughing at his high school graduation and dead less than six months later, and he hopes to God that somewhere she is proud of him.

There's not another picture until over five years later, the day he was accepted to enlist. He's so tiny, it seems the photograph's frame is too large. Suddenly he is looking at himself post-serum, smiling, in 1942, in his uniform. Another of him in his suit, another he never saw of him and Peggy and Howard bent over his shield. They all look so earnest, so young. They are ready to fight the Nazis and Fascists. They are ignorant and so very wise. They are still innocent. God, Howard looks like Tony. He shakes his head. This is the past, he reminds himself. Tony Stark is not his father, and he cannot make him into him to make the world easier to process.

The luscious quality of Peggy's hair is captured perfectly in this picture. Her face is turned towards him, saying something, and he's nodding back. It must have been so obvious, how he felt. He can see it in his own face, his eyes, the way he's standing curved towards her.

There's only one left, one of him and his men all together, grinning. Bucky is beside him. Bucky was his best friend from childhood, when he was the sick little boy who had to leave the ball game early. He was liked, certainly, by most kids, picked out on by a quite few others. He lacked close pals, and he was lonely until he loaned Bucky a nickel to buy ice cream one hot day. That was cement to a six-year-old's friendship. Bucky had been the one to talk Steve into their first double-date (went well for Bucky, not as well for Steve), the one to convince him to take the scholarship, the one who got him the job at the newspaper for a few years, which kept him alive and breathing until he could enlist. They snuck into baseball games together. He threatened anyone who ever bullied Steve. They worked through being orphans together.

Steve swallows. He blames himself for Bucky and that train; he knows he always will. He misses him so much sometimes. Everyone is great, really. But Bucky understood things he could never voice. He was a rare guy. He shuffles the photos back in order carefully.

"Hey, man. You okay?"

He turns to see Tony, looking surprisingly casual in a white t-shirt and jeans. "Yeah."

Tony sits next to him. "Is it weird, looking back?"

"Unbelievably weird," Steve admits. He glances at Tony again and decides, oh, what the hell. He pulls out the picture of the three of them and hands it to Tony. "That's me, your dad, and Peggy."

"Ewwww, my dad is young," Tony groans. "I've never even thought of him that way. Jesus, I'm going to look like him when I'm old. Do not let me get a haircut like that."

Steve shrugs. "You look really alike anyway."

Tony whistles. "So, that's the mysterious Peggy. You go, Capsicle. She's h- beautiful," he amends.

Steve grins. Somehow, he wanted Tony to say that.

Tony picks up the other pictures. "I see the family resemblance between you and your papa too. He fought in World War 1?"

Steve nods. "Fought and died."

"Is that why you wanted to be a soldier so bad?" Tony asks, his face genuinely interested.

Steve nods. "That was part of it. I grew up hearing about how my dad died for his country like a hero. And it just seemed like the right thing to do. Men with wives and babies and parents were going off and dying. I had nothing like that to lose. It was what I knew I had to do."

He looks at the next. "Your mom and you?"

Steve nods. "You have her eyes," Tony says unexpectedly, and picks up the newspaper clipping. "Art school? You never told any of us that."

"I went for a year. I had to drop out- I had the scholarship, but once my mom died, I went through my savings pretty fast, had to get a job."

"Do you draw much now?" Tony asks. Steve nods.

"You know, you could go back."

"To school?"

"Why not?"

"I..." the truth is, he's never even considered it. "Maybe," he says. Tony read the obit quietly. "This is really beautiful. She must have been special."

"She was," Steve answers, a little awkwardly.

Tony's response to the next is more vocal. "Whoa! You're tiny!" Steve rolls his eyes. "I know."

"It's weird!" He flips to the next photo, post-serum, and nods. "That's normal." He picks up the last. "This the Howling Commandos?"

Steve nods. "In all their glory." He leans over and points. "That's my best friend Bucky." Present tense for a past tense person. Was. "And that's..." he finds himself naming them all, telling little stories about them and the fights they fought together. When he finally runs out of words, Tony says in trademark style, "Fabulous history lesson," but he's smiling.

"Thanks for listening, Tony," Steve says.

"Sure, Steve." Tony taps the photos. "Do you want me to make some copies of these?"

"That'd be great," Steve says. He picks up the shot with Howard and Peggy. "Make yourself a copy of this one."

Tony studies the photo for a second before picking the rest up. "Dinner's almost ready," he tells Steve, moving to the door. "It'll be entertaining watching Thor eat his tacos."

Steve grinned and got up. "Wait for me."