A/N. Hey guys! It's only a day after, yet it's late in the day (one hour before tomorrow xP). So this one is somewhat longer (hope that means I'm out of my slump...) but it's kind of filler. But I kind of want Tania and Steve to LIVE in the forties, get used to it, learn to live in it so that it's THAT much harder to choose. Don't worry, Peggy comes soon. She'll be here probably next chapter. Enjoy :D

Chapter 21

The next day, Howard was off to work bright and early. Without the use of an alarm clock, Tania slept in until noon. She had been so riddled with dreams that consumed her mind that she didn't get up until well after one.

When they'd arrived at Howard's beach house, he had offered them the choice of two separate rooms or sharing one. The two of them blushed profusely and meekly accepted the offer of NOT sleeping together. They didn't want their host to think that they were at that stage of their relationship yet… not to mention it was distasteful in their current era. So they opted to take two bedrooms right across from each other.

However, without Steve to chase away the nightmares or his protective embrace to make her feel safe, she took forever to fall asleep AND when she did, she saw the future. She wouldn't consider them nightmares, as they weren't scary, however when she woke up, she found she had slept in a puddle of her own tears.

Tony sat on the couch, head in his hands, leaning forward. Pepper stood behind him, rubbing his shoulders. Mascara ran down her face. Bruce was curled up in a ball, between the ottoman and the loveseat across from Tony, his fists pressed into his eyes. Clint sat on one side of the loveseat, frozen and staring into space. Natasha sat beside him, head thrown back on the chair and squeezed her eyes together really really hard. Thor stood next to the couch with his arms crossed and his head down, looking solemn.

No one said a word. It was silent. Because it was a dream, Tania didn't need to see it or be there to know that even JARVIS was in a similar mood to the others. There was only one thing that could have made them that… sad. They knew she was gone. They knew Steve was gone. They knew where they'd gone. And Tony felt responsible.

Not only was it his idea to come to Malibu, but it was technically his time machine. It was in his possession and he hadn't been careful enough with it, never believing that it worked.

There was a time skip, and suddenly there was Tony, working in the lab nonstop. It was like a montage you'd see in a movie – none of the cut scenes revealed anything but Tony working mercilessly as he aged. Pepper came down occasionally, but he refused to come up. There was a wedge between them. It was resolved about a year after "the disappearance", but nothing was the same.

Thor had returned to Asgard, the feeling of failure and unreliableness when he was needed was heavy upon his shoulders. He only came to Earth to see Jane, and sometimes save the world. Being in the Tower hurt too much.

Bruce ran off again. He was travelling the world being a doctor and saving people. He hulked out more often than usual, but he didn't kill anyone – at least, that he knew of. He came back to the Tower for holidays, but other than, not even SHIELD could track him.

Clint and Natasha died on a tag team mission a few years later trying to track down someone to replace their fallen leader – a mission they'd absolutely refused to go on… until Fury threatened to use the big guns: choosing his own new leader for them. The assassins had grudgingly left, planning on taking their time. But things went haywire when they were tracked by an old enemy of Clint's from the circus. They seemingly fell off the Earth and after six months, were presumed dead. They were never seen again.

Graham was depressed. He never smiled. He broke up with his girlfriend. He never went out. He dropped out of school. He got a minimum wage job. He just… stopped. He died at age seventy-two, next to his sister's empty coffin.

Tania sobbed. The dreams had torn her heart to shreds and she clutched at it, willing the pain to stop. She knew that they weren't actually visions of the future and there was a very large chance that none of those things would actually happen. But that didn't make it hurt any less. She wanted to go back. That much was clear now. She didn't want to stay. She wanted to go back. The question was whether or not she would. Could she withstand this pain to be with the one she loved should he decide to stay? She had no idea.

Bruce's questions suddenly came rearing back. It felt like so long ago… when really it hadn't happened yet. Oh how her head hurt… If you had to choose between your happiness and his… which would you choose? She remembered saying something about it depending on the context… Well now she had one. Whatever she chose would dominate the rest of her life.

In true Tania fashion, she decided to make a list of Pros vs. Cons. She wiped away her tears and sat up, ignoring the fact that JARVIS wasn't there to greet her with the usual weather and Michael Bublé music. She reached over to her bedside table and grabbed the pad of paper and the pencil.

Gosh, even the friggin' PAPER was different! Grasping the writing utensil tighter than she probably should, Tania shakily began to scribble out her list.

Pros and Cons of Staying in the 40s w Steve

Pro: Stay with Steve
I kind of semi like it here…

Con: Lose family/friends
Lose Job
Lose life
Family/friends' lives are affected
Could change course of history
Might lose Steve to Peggy if we ever accidentally run into her, or if Howard spills the beans
Not used to slang
Probably have to change name/identity
Steve would have to change name/identity too
If stay close to Howard, will watch Tony grow up…

There was a tear stain next to that sentence.

Pros and Cons of going back without Steve

Pro: See friends/family
Keep Job
Keep life

Con: No Steve
History might be changed anyway
Might run into Steve as old man (depending on how the serum works… with have to think about that later)
Might have to move on from Steve (aka get new boyfrie

She couldn't bring herself to finish the word as the pencil in her hand snapped in two and clattered to the ground. Who was she kidding? No man could ever measure up to Steve. He was too perfect. He had ruined her for everyone else on the planet. Not that she would ever fall for Thor (or God forbid, Loki) or probably any other Asgardian. No one was like Steve. No one could love her like he did.

But if he loved her so much… wouldn't he want to come with her? Then again, if she loved him so much, wouldn't she want to stay? It was all so complicated. Were there non-written social rules to a relationship that considered this kind of situation? Had a story like this ever been told? Surely there were romance tales with time travel in it. Then again, their situation was specific to them only. No one else had ever been through what they were going through, real or fictional.

"UGHHHHHHH!" She threw the pad at the wall adjacent to the bed in frustration. It slammed against the wall before landing on the floor in a messy pile. She knew now why Steve had spent the majority of his time at the gym after waking up. She wanted to hit something.

She wished she was in the Tower with Natasha and training. She would give anything to be there. Tony and Bruce would be in one of the labs upstairs no doubt. Thor would be off who knows where, probably eating something, somewhere in the building. Steve would be in his art gallery, Clint would probably be in the gym with the girls and Pepper would be working. Even though Tania wouldn't be able to see all of them, she knew that they would be there. That alone was better than where she was right now.

Clenching her fists, she whirled and punched the bed, knowing it was the one thing in the room that wouldn't break or break her. She punched it again. And again. And again.

It was a torrent of emotions that she couldn't control and she hated it. She missed being happy and laughing for more than two seconds. She missed breakfast with the Avengers and phone calls with her brother. She missed cell phones and computers and the internet and her library and her office and she even missed the way people talked! She missed her own clothes and the aura of two thousand and twelve and she missed the currency she was used to, she missed doing her job, she missed computerized artificial intelligences (specifically JARVIS) and she missed that damn helicarrier with Fury and Hill and all those other SHIELD agents. It was all gone. None of it existed.

With another cry, she threw one of her pillows at the bathroom door. It whacked it almost silently before falling uselessly to the carpeted floor.

Breathing hard, Tania sank to the ground and rested her back against the bed.

If she was feeling this way, then how was Steve feeling? His decision was probably even harder than for her. Her only tie to the forties was Steve, whereas Steve had grown up here. He had ties to both times and the one thing stopping him from staying absolutely was probably her.

Before she could continue her depressing thoughts, someone knocked on the door. "Tania?" Steve called.

She took in a hesitant deep breath. "I'm up, I'm up. I'll be out in five minutes." She stood up and threw open Howard's guest room closet. It was filled with female clothes. How considerate.

Fifteen minutes later, she exited the room groomed and ready in forties-style clothing, feeling like she blended in but didn't fit in – if that made sense. She didn't like these clothes. They were nice to play dress up in, but after a couple days she wanted to dress like normal again.

… oh boy, this was turning out to be a truly upsetting day.

Steve stood in the kitchen… cooking. He was cooking because he knew how to use the stove and things like that when in Tania's time, technology was too convenient for him. She looked around and realized that she wouldn't be able to cook squat – mostly because she couldn't cook to start with.

She sat down at the kitchen table. "Good morning."

"Good afternoon."

She rolled her eyes. "I was tired."

"I can see that." He turned around and handed her a bowl of oatmeal. She nodded in thanks and began to eat it. It had no flavour, unlike those packets you could buy at the grocery store in her time. It was just oats and water. How did people eat this every day?

After a little while, Steve joined her at the table with a foot-long sandwich. She raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything. He was a super soldier after all; his metabolism was four times faster than the average humans.

They ate in relative silence, that is, until Tania broke it. "So… what are we going to do today?"

"Well since Howard has so graciously offered to let us stay here until he can fix the time machine as well as pay any fees like food, we don't need to get jobs or anything."

"Right. We don't need to."

"However… if we wanted to…"

"Why would we if we were just going to leave in a few weeks?"

"Are we going to leave?"

It was the first time either of them had addressed it directly. She answered honestly. "I have no friggin' clue."

He sighed. "Maybe we could help Howard? It might make the time go by faster."

"… Is that what you want?" She looked up at him from staring at her abandoned and unfinished oatmeal. She wasn't even that hungry.

He knew the implications of her question. Did he want time to blur by, aka get to the future faster? "I don't know. But what else are we going to do all day?"

She shrugged. "Go out and do things that we wouldn't be able to do in twenty-twelve. Like… I don't know…"

"Swing dancing," Steve answered immediately. "On second thought, let's not."

"Why? That sounds like fun?" More fun than she's had in what seems like forever.

"Have you forgotten who I am? I can't dance."

"Neither can I, but it sounds like fun. In the ten years of dance lessons I've had, there was a brief period on swing dancing. I know the moves and I'm sure you do too, whether or not you can do them is irrelevant."

"Tania, I… I don't think it's a good idea."

After staring at him long and hard, she sighed and gave in. "Fine. What else did you do for fun when you were a teenager?"

"Mm… mostly listened to the radio, went to bars, played sports like baseball, went to sports games, read comics, watch movies, draw, paint, fight in wars."

She smiled slightly. "Well, most of that you can do in twenty-twelve, but I suppose we can do those here too. I'm sure they're different."

"They are."

"So what do you want to do today?"

"Let's watch a movie."

"Alright, what do you want to see?"

"I… don't know what's playing."

"Can't we go check?"

"Of course."

"Then let's go."

They polished off their meals and walked off to the theater while sharing an umbrella under the pouring rain. It was a little ways away, but it was no farther than the coffee shop from the Tower. When they arrived, they look around at all the movie posters on the walls, deciding which one they wanted to see.

There were quite a few movies out that Tania sort-of didn't mind seeing. They eventually decided on seeing The Woman In Green, a Sherlock Holmes movie. Seeing as Steve was the only one of them to have money, he paid and they walked arm in arm into the theater where a projector stood at the top of the stairs and pointed at the wall in front of the few rows of chairs. It was tiny, compared to the ones Tania was used to, the screen too, but she didn't mention it and the two of them sat down to wait. The next showing wasn't for a little while and they were the first ones there.

While waiting, the two of them got to talking, and Steve reminisced on the last time he had been in a theater like this. It was this exact one, actually. He'd been sat near the back and he was still skinny back then. He told her of how when a commercial to enlist and/or buy war bonds was displayed, some brute had been acting out and Steve had tried to put him in his place. Needless to say, without the serum, it failed miserably and he got beaten up in an alley after the movie.

This then led to talking about how Bucky rescued him and then how he saw Howard for the first time at the convention and what not, but when people started filling up the seats, Steve snapped his mouth shut. Tania talked instead, talking to him about something she'd seen in the newspaper the day they'd arrived when she'd checked the date so that any eaves droppers wouldn't think anything suspicious.

She told him about how she noticed that one of the headlines on the newspaper she'd read on one of the train rides they'd taken had said that from the fourteenth to the seventeenth, all baseball games had been postponed because of too much rain. Despite it being the twentieth, (having spent nearly three or four days total on a train) they still discussed it as if it had just happened.

When the movie started, they settled in to watch. It was in black and white and the sound was obviously not that great, but Tania didn't mind. She did enjoy the classics like Casa Blanca and It's A Wonderful Life. Although she had to admit, The Wizard of Oz was THAT much because it was in colour.

The movie was short, only about an hour, and then they left. When they were alone, Tania proceeded to tell him that movies she was used to could be up to three hours long, sometimes longer. He stared at her in disbelief and she started talking about the Lord of the Rings.

Of course, they hadn't even been published yet in nineteen forty-five, so he had never had the chance to read the books. This however, lead to talking the books he had read. He had read the Count of Monte Cristo (published in eighteen forty-four), which then led to them debating between movie vs. book. Except Tania was talking about the two-thousand and two movie, whereas Steve was talking about the nineteen thirty-four movie. However, having read the book as well, Tania was able to relate.

It turned out the two of them had also read the Three Musketeers (also published in eighteen forty-four). Also Tania had seen the two-thousand and eleven version of the movie and Steve had seen the one in nineteen thirty-five. They talked and they talked until at last it was dinner time. They ate chicken and rice (Howard appeared to be rich even during this time) and then decided to read some books aloud to each other.

They found Les Misérables on the bookshelf in the living room and took turns reading aloud. They spent the night that way until they fell asleep cuddled up together on the couch. That's how Howard found them well into the night when he came home. He leaned against the doorframe and smiled sadly.

Peggy was one of his closest friends, especially since Steve's, "death". And now he's moved on barely two weeks later… sort of. He shut off the light and walked away.

A/N. I couldn't resist putting the other Avengers back in, I love them all too much XD Also! I have written several oneshots about the Avengers on paper that I haven't typed up yet, so look out for those. I have one for each couple and their thoughts on children. They'll be published before the end of the summer so you have that to look for :D until next time!