If there was one moment when you were guaranteed to catch 3490 Tony sitting still, it was while she drank her morning coffee. Tony always found that funny since he never bothered to sit still for coffee. 3490 Tony seemed to find it—at least the first coffee of the day—a sacred ritual. Usually, though, her husband was up and drinking coffee with her, which is why Tony was surprised to find her in the kitchen alone at five in the morning, fully dressed for work. Tony ignored her initially, pouring himself a cup of coffee for himself first. It wasn't until after his first sip that he spoke.

"I'm surprised to see you alone," Tony commented. "Where's triple B?"

"Triple B?" 3490 Tony asked with a raised eyebrow as Tony took a seat across from her.

"Big Blonde and Buff," Tony clarified. 3490 Tony snorted. "Triple B. The man that sticks to you more insistently than a shadow."

"I left him passed out in bed. He's still exhausted, poor man," 3490 Tony said, a very suggestive grin on her face. She sipped her coffee. "And not actually a morning person."

"Well now that I don't believe," Tony said.

"He's very good at hiding his humanity, but it's true: Steve Rogers is not a morning person. He wakes up with half his hair sticking up and all bleary eyed, and if you try talking to him before he's really woken up it's kind of hilarious—the stuff he'll babble, I tell you," she said chuckling. "But I'm sure he'll get up soon and rub his eyes and go for a run and look for all the world like getting out of bed looking and acting perfect is the most natural thing in the world for him."

"Hm," Tony said. "And what about you? Are you a morning person? What are you doing up right now, anyway?"

"Tony Stark is a 'whatever time of day' person she needs to be," 3490 Tony said. "And today, I need to be the kind of person who gets up early and goes into work promptly. The Director of SHIELD really can't take many days off." 3490 Tony sipped at her coffee. A clear tablet lay flat on the table, and occasionally she scrolled through it with her finger, but Tony wondered if that was just habit—he'd seen her make computers scroll with nothing but a thought before.

"Yeah, about that—'Tony Stark'—don't tell me your parents named you Anthony anyway?" Tony asked wryly. 3490 Tony smirked.

"No, but given how much my old man wanted a son that wouldn't surprise me. 'Tony' is short for—"

"Antonia?"

"Ugh, no, that's even worse. Antonella," 3490 Tony, Antonella, said. She looked at him pointedly over her coffee cup. "But there is exactly one person who is allowed to call me that and keep his testicles, and you are not him."

"Noted," Tony said, gulping his own coffee. There was silence for a few moments. Tony just watched his double. It was strange, looking at her. She looked like his mother. She had her curly hair, her delicate, feminine features. Tony, despite the evidence staring him in the face, could not imagine himself as her. She was more like a twin sister than another version of himself. She was just…she was too different. Not just female, but also more responsible. More reliable. A parent, and decently successfully so. Married. And to Steve Rogers of all people, the most judgmental person on the planet with the world's most impossible moral standards. Tony had no idea how she managed that, or why she wanted that, and no idea how they got along they way they did. It didn't compute in his head.

"I still can't believe you married Rogers," Tony confessed aloud. Antonella grinned.

"Yeah I noticed you and yours don't get along all that well," she said. "Is it because he's so…old fashioned?"

"No, it's because he always thinks he's right," Tony said. And obnoxiously often is. "And because he has moral standards so high I have no idea how he doesn't fall off them and break his neck. He's judgmental and annoying and stubborn as hell, I have no idea how you stand him." Antonella sipped her coffee.

"I don't know your Steve all that well. But he seems to be very like my Steve, when we first met. Only I had the advantage of meeting him when we were both young. We had a lot to learn from each other, and I'm glad we did. I'm not half as good at anything as I am when I'm doing it with him," she said. "I can't speak to your Steve necessarily but, I know that I thought the guy was judging everything I was doing until I found out that a lot of that was in my head. He's really much more open and understanding than you'd guess for a guy raised in the 20s and 30s. And he's sharp as a tack too, learns very quickly—eidetic memory. He's—you're right about the moral thing, he does have high standards. But they're the right standards. I promise, he's not judging you because you sleep around. If he judges you at all it's probably on how you act in the field, or how he perceives you spend your money—he was eleven when the Great Depression hits, he's not a fan of big business or spending wastefully. Sometimes it's still something we argue about." Antonella shrugged.

"Really I can't get past the whole 'grew up in the 20s and 30s thing'," Tony mused. "Very strange."

"Stranger for him," Antonella pointed out. "You should really cut the guy some slack. Literally everyone he knows is dead. Or like, a year or two from death. His whole way of life—gone. Not even hamburgers taste the same."

"How do you know I'm not cutting him slack?" Tony demanded, offended.

"Because I've seen you look at him," Antonella said simply. "He's not as judgmental as you think. He is certainly as bossy as you think, but he's usually got a good reason to be. He's not stupid, either, just ignorant, which is to be expected given his background. And he's not as innocent and apple pie as he looks either." Antonella threw in a smirk with that last comment. Tony just raised an eyebrow.

"Maybe yours isn't, but have you seen the way our Steve blushes when you bring up anything even vaguely referencing sex?" Tony asked her. Antonella laughed.

"Well, your Steve might indeed be a little white bread and vanilla," Antonella conceded. Tony wondered if he shouldn't think of her like that. If he thought the name, he might use the name, and then she would have his balls for it. He thought of her that way anyway. Antonella sipped her coffee. "He does seem to be the biggest virgin to ever virgin. My Steve had…I won't say extensive, but he certainly had enough experience with men, anyway, that even if he blushed a bit around women he wasn't totally ignorant about sex. I can't tell with your Steve."

"Not my Steve," Tony said pointedly. Antonella rolled her eyes.

"I am far too lazy to say 'your universe's Steve', that's four extra syllables, no thank you," she said. "Anyway. Yours might be all apple pie, but mine wasn't too terribly different, even with his experience. And not to say that yours isn't actually innocent and everything but, man, let me tell you, with Steve? He might've started vanilla but once you get him going…" She trailed off, grinning like the cat who caught the canary. But the grin vanished quickly and Antonella gave Tony an appraising look. She sipped her coffee. Tony eyed her suspiciously.

"What?" he asked.

"Is that something that would interest you?" Antonella asked. She grinned again. "Getting him going?" Tony Stark did not blush. He would never admit such a fact to anyone or even to himself. So Tony Stark was decidedly not turning red at that comment.

"No! No, absolutely not," he said. Antonella just laughed.

"Oh, honey," she said.

"I mean—all right—fine—I'm not blind," Tony relented. "He's been sculpted by angels or something, he's unreal. But he's—he's Rogers."

"Yes, that is his name," Antonella agreed, amused. "I just think that you don't know 'Rogers' very well." She gulped down the remainder of her coffee and put the mug on the table with a dull thunk. Tony felt like disagreeing with her. He'd known the guy for nearly two years. He had a stick permanently lodged up his ass, and he'd never seen anything to indicate otherwise. Antonella stood. "Well, this has been a lovely chat but I have a international security organization to run, so." She picked her tablet up.

"Why did you marry him?" Tony asked abruptly. Antonella just laughed.

"Oh, because he has the best abs I've ever seen. Why do you think? I married him because I love him. Is that really so hard to believe?" Antonella asked. Her last words were soft, laced with concern, and Tony felt his gut twist. He knew pity when he heard it. Antonella left the room before Tony could think of anything else to say.