A/N: Qweb... yep, that's where Pancakes were mentioned before. (The Asset wanted Flapjacks!) Doing my best to clear up the confusion.

MelliaBee: I'm limiting myself with the OC's for that very reason. Too many and it's confusing. Thank you. :)

For Fierce_Queen, because the question about the Gaelic Explosion sponsored Plot Bunnies...

A month after the fall of SHIELD...

In the kitchen, Rebecca paused in the doorway and simply took stock of the situation. Steve was sitting at the kitchen table with a banana and two other pieces of fruit, staring at the banana in his hand with an expression of dislike. "So... was the explosion about the crop changeover, or what you heard Jill say about grad students and your medical records?"

Steve blinked, shook his head. "Ma liked bananas... and I signed my medical rights away for Project Rebirth. But... to hear it put that way. I'd forgotten. Maybe Jill-"

"Steve," Rebecca interrupted as she pulled a chair out and sat down with a sigh. "Stop."

"What?"

"Deflection doesn't work on me, either, and it's okay to mourn. To let yourself have a moment or ten of whatever."

He put the banana down and stared at her. "It was seventy years ago for you."

"But not for you. And really, it's more like seventy-five or eighty." Rebecca made a face. "And to say it like that, makes me feel old."

"You're not."

Rebecca smiled. "Are you trying to flatter me, Steven Grant Rogers?"

"Would you like me to?"

"No, and it doesn't get you out of this conversation, either. And I miss her, too, Steve." She looked away, blinked several times, and then looked at him again. "And if someone were here like they're supposed to be, he would tell you the same thing."

Miriam leaned into the kitchen from the living room. "All clear?"

Rebecca motioned to the fruit. "He forgot about the changeover. Again."

"Ah. Stop forgetting, Steve. Eventually, there could be impressionable children around, to learn bad words in Irish from you."

Steve threw the banana at her.

At a diner in Catonsville, Maryland, a waitress is pouring coffee for one of her infrequent regulars, a doctor on his way home from Austin, when he asks her a question. "Sally? Does he look overly thin to you?"

She paused and followed his line of sight to look at the guy sitting at the next table over. He was staring at his bowl of fruit with an expression of mild confusion. "Oh, him? Veteran if I ever saw one, with that posture. Why, Doc?"

They both watched as he picked up a piece of banana out of the bowl with his fork, stared at it, and then put it in his mouth, only for his eyes to widen in surprise and shock and had to spit it out into his napkin amid foreign-language obscenities. He repeated the action several more times with the same result, each time with the same result. Then he pushed the bowl away in disgust and massaged his temples. Then Doctor Mackenzie sighed. "Sally, get him a bowl of soup. Something bland. And... maybe scrambled eggs?"

"Huh?"

"Looks like he's been in the ICU recently. Which means fruit is probably a bad idea right now."

She pursed her lips in thought. "We've got cream of mushroom today."

"That'll work."

Doctor Mackenzie watched while rushed off to fill the order of soup and eggs. "Hey... you all right?" A soft moan was his only immediate answer as the young man continued to massage his temples with both gloved hands.

A couple minutes went by like that in silence until Sally returned with the bowl of soup, a plate of toast, scrambled eggs and hash browns, and a chocolate shake. "Rodney said that if he's that thin, a shake with protein powder in it couldn't hurt. Did the VA center let you go too soon, hon?" She set the tray down on the table to unload, and blinked when a knife came out, pointed at her with a fear-laced glare. "Okay... definitely veteran. Afghanistan?"

"Huh?" the man asked, blinking up at her with startled blue eyes, then he realized she'd set a food-laden tray down on the table. "Where'd that come from? I only ordered fruit! And it doesn't taste right!"

Not taking her eyes off him, she nodded to the doctor. "He ordered for you. Probably thinks you're recovering from a Whipple or something. Are you?"

He shook his head. "Liquids."

"Ah. Can I have the knife, sir?"

"Sergeant."

"Can I have the knife, Sergeant?" He blinked again, stared at his hand with the knife in it, then handed it to her wordlessly. "Thank you. Eat what you can, don't try the fruit again if it doesn't taste right."

"What's a Whipple?" the Sergeant asked as he looked over at the doctor in confusion.

Doctor Mackenzie smiled. "It's a surgical procedure where, among other things, part of the pancreas is removed. And I was just thinking ICU, Sally. Go on, Sergeant. Eat. It'll make me feel better if you do."

"And no coffee for you," Sally told him with a stern glare while she handed the knife to Doctor Mackenzie. "Not if you're fresh out of a VA center or returned from combat and pulling knives on people when surprised."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. My brother Bill did the same thing three times before Dad took his knives away and had him talk to a therapist."

"Have two more."

"Going to pull those?"

"No."

"All right, then. You can keep them." She waited while he started to hesitantly eat the soup first, then turned to Doctor Mackenzie. "Watch him. I'll be back."

"Go on. We'll be here." And as Sally walked off again, Doctor Mackenzie had time to study him. His clothes weren't much to look at, between the red t-shirt and the jacket, and the jeans, but they were clean, if slightly drab. And the baseball cap held his long hair out of his face... that, for some reason, seemed familiar, but he couldn't place why. He was on the young side, maybe twenty-five or thirty. Presently, he finished the soup and moved on to the eggs and the hash browns hungrily.

Sally returned again, and showed him a book with the title 'Clinical Nutrition for Dummies.' "What do you think? Give it to him? I can get another copy if I need to. And the Dietetic Manual is too technical."

Doctor Mackenzie gestured for it, paged through the book to look at the contents, and handed it back to her. "Good idea."

She smiled, then turned and handed the book to the Sergeant. "Here."

He frowned at the title. "I'm not a dummy."

"No, but it's simple and easy to read. And very good."

"I can't pay you back."

"And I am not asking you to. It's a gift, Sergeant." A tap on her arm, and she glanced back to find that Doctor Mackenzie was holding out a business card. "Oh, and the doctor, here, wants you to have this." She gave him the card, and he stared at it.

"How... huh?"

"Good question. Doc?"

Doctor Mackenzie smiled. "I want you to call, update me on how you are, Sergeant. If you want. Or come by if you're ever in the New York area. Either is fine."

The Sergeant nodded and accepted both the book and the card. Then he tried the chocolate shake and frowned at it. "What is this? Reminds me of D-Rations... only better-tasting."

The meal continued without incident, save for Doctor Mackenzie wondering what D-Rations were and the Sergeant suddenly wondering if Croissants were good.

4 July, 2016

Seated in a chair next to the card table and watching the party with a satisfied smile on her face, Rebecca couldn't help but notice that Pepper hadn't yet stopped introducing Tony to the relatives. Right then, she was introducing them to Jill's brother, Rob, and Kristy, who looked less than enthused, even from this distance.

"Grandma?"

Rebecca blinked and turned toward the voice to find Andrea standing there with a puzzled expression on her face. "Yes, Andi?"

Andrea pulled up a chair, sat down, and pulled a folded up piece of paper out of her pocket. "You wouldn't happen to know why Mom would send me a telegram for you, all the way from the C.A.R. and put it in code, to tell you that you're doing a horrible job getting Steve caught up with pop culture, would you?"

Rebecca paused, sorting through that question, then shook her head. "No. You have it?" Andrea handed it over, and Rebecca unfolded the paper to find an official telegram with a message of scrambled letters, and the translation... "What kind of coding is that?"

"5-cipher. You know... basic cryptography."

The message:
Rebecca and Miriam,
You left out the funny monologues and didn't tell SGR about Cosby!
Bad! Very bad!
Everything fine here.
Waiting for the Turkey born in March to Defrost.
Don't want to wait until November. This annoying.
-Jill

Rebecca frowned again. "Andi, how long have you had this?"

"A couple weeks. I knew I was going to see you here, so I didn't drive in from Stony Brook." Andrea sighed. "It seemed really trivial, and she'd been complaining about the lack of Pizza, before, not turkey. Was that wrong?"

Miriam passed by right then, on her way to check the card table, and Rebecca snagged her hand. "What?"

"Read," Rebecca told her, and handed her the translation. "And no, Andi. You were right to wait to give it to me."

Miriam chuckled suddenly. "Well, he is a Turkey!"

Andrea blinked. "Huh? Steve's a March Turkey?"

"No, Andi. Who in this family was born in March? Famous? Got killed, then not killed, then went missing? Framed recently?" She watched the comprehension dawn in Andrea's eyes. "And Jill... We have to add one, if she's with them!"

Rebecca stood up, looked over to where Rob and Kristy were still talking to Pepper and Tony. She smirked, then marched straight to them after swiping the telegram back from Miriam.

Andrea watched her go, then looked at Miriam. "So... how are things at home?"

Miriam rolled her eyes. "Let's just say, that if she's going over there toward that man willingly, that it's a good thing her cane is in the car."

"That bad?"

"Could be worse. Is it possible to send a return telegram?"

Andrea shook her head. "No, I checked. You can send a telegram from the Central African Republic, but you can't receive one."

Kristy saw her grandmother coming, purpose in her stride, and stepped aside gratefully to intercept her. "Thank you!"

Rebecca smiled. "Boring?

"Not entirely, but Rob talks endlessly about robotic surgical procedures given half a chance," Kristy told her with a shrug. "And I hear about it at dinner, sometimes. What's up?"

Rebecca handed her the telegram. "Still have those Cosby albums?"

Kristy frowned at the message. "So... we're calling him a March Turkey, now?"

"Miriam loved it. Well?"

Kristy nodded. "Still have the Cosby albums, yes. Why?"

"Think you could make copies, to send to her?"

"Is this for the Get Well Project?"

"It is."

"Then yes. I can do that. Think she'll want Foxworthy and Engvall?"

Rebecca paused. "Which were they, again?"

"Right. I'll bring them to your house and we'll have fun deciding." Rob glanced over at them, questions in his eyes. "Jill wants comedy routines in Ituri!"

Tony frowned. "Who wants what where?"

"My sister," Rob explained with a smile. "On a medical mission in central Africa. So, Mr. Stark: you were saying, about improvements for MRI machines...?"

And as Tony launched into a technical explanation, with lots of technical jargon, Rebecca smiled at Rob's efforts of distraction. Even if it was about an MRI machine.

Three days ago...

Stepping out onto the busy sidewalk outside the grocery store, carrying one small bag to the two bigger ones her grandmother was holding, she started to walk away when she noticed that her grandmother was standing still, a puzzled expression on her face as she looked across the street. Frowning, the young girl followed her gaze to find a man in shabby, torn clothing with long hair and stubble looking back at them. Were it not for the stubble and the hair... no. Even she knew that was impossible. "Grandma?"

Her grandmother jumped, startled, and looked down at her. "Miriam?"

She nodded to the man, who hadn't moved and was watching them with a blank expression. "See him, too."

Her grandmother frowned, then shook her head. "Let's go home, child."

Miriam followed her, glancing back one more time at the man...

...and woke in the dark with a yell on her lips that woke Daniel next to her and brought Rebecca to their bedside with wide eyes. She panted for long moments as Rebecca turned the light on and Daniel rolled over to look at her funny. "What?"

Daniel shook his head. "Should be asking you that. What's going on?"

"It's nothing. Just a dream about shopping with Grandma, and seeing a homeless man..." She paused. "Wait a minute! That actually happened!"

Rebecca sat down on the side of the bed. "What did?"

"We both saw a guy with long, uneven hair, at least a day's worth of beard growth, torn and shabby clothing, that sort of looked like old pictures I'd seen of Uncle James." Miriam frowned. "When was that? I couldn't have been more than ten or eleven. And that makes no sense! If that actually was Uncle James, what was he doing in Brooklyn, staring at us from across the street!"

Rebecca studied her with a frown, looked behind her at Daniel who had by now sat up and was watching his wife with wide eyes, then nodded to herself and left the room.

Miriam frowned. "Where is she going? What-"

"Miri. We have a near-complete record on what happened to him. If you were ten or eleven, then it was the seventies," Daniel explained calmly. "And we know he got away from them at least once, only to be captured again. So maybe..."

"Maybe seeing him the way we did via Pepper's tablet sparked some memory?"

"Could be."

Rebecca returned just then with the thick binder, pulled the chair over from the corner of the room, sat down, and laid open the binder on the bed. She turned pages until she got to a particular page and read the entry. Then she looked at Miriam. "You... the spring of '73, he somehow got away from them on a mission and went off the radar. They tracked him to New York, where they caught him again. Probably not long after you two saw him."

"So we... we just walked away-"

"Stop," Rebecca told her sternly. "Twenty-eight years removed from '45, and he basically hadn't aged. Long hair. Scruffy. Ratty clothes. If I know my sister, her priority was you and not the scruffy guy on the street corner who reminded her of someone close that died in action. Think about it, Miriam. What's your first priority if you see a threat and have a child along?"

"The child," Miriam said immediately, then frowned. "Oh."

Rebecca nodded, pain clearly in her face. "Exactly. Hazel had no way of knowing that the scruffy guy, the potential threat, was actually who he looked like, with traumatic amnesia and in need of someone, anyone to help him. So she did the smart thing, the parental thing, and walked away. No one is at fault, here. She couldn't have known and you were eleven, and had only ever seen photos of him in black and white."

"But still-"

"But nothing, Miriam. It's over and done."

Miriam stared at her, at the way she was holding herself together in the face of this revelation. "You said the same thing to Steve."

"Still true." Rebecca stared down at the open binder, tears welling in her eyes behind her heading glasses. Then she took a deep breath and looked at her again. "And you know what this means, don't you?"

"Huh?"

"He remembered. Not enough, but he did. He ended up here, in Brooklyn. Hazel never went into Manhattan to shop for groceries."

"She didn't, did she?"

"No." Rebecca sat back and looked at them, Daniel watching her over Miriam's shoulder, and Miriam still in that state of 'is this real?' that would probably last a while. "And it's times like this that I miss her more, you know? Usually, I don't allow myself to think about it. It's just..." She blinked when Miriam scooped the binder up, handed it to Daniel, and wordlessly hugged her. Over Miriam's shoulder, she watched as Daniel looked down at the binder in his hands, then shrugged and set it aside. He joined them in the hug. "So, so glad you two wear pajamas..."

Miriam laughed, but did not let go. "I miss her, too. I miss Grandma Winifred, and I barely remember her!"

"Dan?"

"Hmmm?"

"You going to let go anytime soon?"

"No."

"Okay..."

A/N: I was trying to get back to Wakanda sooner, but then Bucky wanted to try having fruit for the first time in 70 years... (And it's true. There is no telegram service in the Central African Republic, but if you've got internet service you can send one from there to somewhere else that does have it.)