The Roundup Centre was part of the Stampede Grounds, an area set aside for the city of Calgary to hold a sort of cowboy-themed Mardi Gras every summer. Most of the area was open and paved, to provide space for the midway and carnival booths, with the convention centre wedged at one end between the train station and a saddle-shaped sports arena. It was a sprawling red brick building with green metal accents, which had probably been intended to look Victorian early in the design process, but then a committee had gotten involved. The entire area was swarming with people of every possible age, size, and colour, some of them in very elaborate costumes. The lineup to enter was out the door and halfway around the building.
Three dimensionally-displaced superheroes, one overtired actor, and a dog got off the train, and then stood on the footbridge over the tracks, leaning on the concrete guard wall, and considered their next move.
"If the people at this convention are, uh, people who like superhero movies…" Steve began.
"Nerds," said Downey firmly. "The word you're looking for is nerds." He didn't mean it as an insult, though – in fact, he spoke the word with great affection.
"Right," said Steve. "Should we wear some kind of disguise?" That was another thing Steve had never been good at. He always stuck out in a crowd, no matter what he wore – although at least he wasn't quite as bad at it as Thor.
"Well, we'd be worried about them recognizing us as Captain America and the Black Widow," Natasha said thoughtfully, "and we already don't look much like Captain America and the Black Widow. Captain America doesn't have a beard, and the Black Widow isn't blonde."
"True," said Downey, "although there might be some set pictures from your current project floating around the internet. Nobody will recognize Hemsworth, though – not with that stuff all over his normally flawless face." Thor was still covered in welts from his close encounter with the jellyfish.
Nat put her hands on her hips. "We can't just wait in line. Somebody will definitely recognize us if they've got time to look, and we don't want anyone warning Loki we're coming. I think the roof is probably our best bet. The problem is getting up there without being seen…"
"I have a better idea," said Downey. "Follow me."
He led them indoors, down a flight of steps, and to the head of the line at the convention hall entrance. A set of security guards were checking people's badges and taking admission money and one of these, a woman with dusty-brown hair in a messy bun, held up a hand to stop them.
"No skipping the line," she said. "If you pre-paid you have to go around to…"
Downey took his sunglasses off. "I'm Robert Downey Junior," he said.
The security guard cut herself off in mid-sentence. She stared at Downey for a moment, then looked at his companions. Nat smiled and waved, Steve nodded, and Thor smiled. Then she looked back at Downey again, studying his face as if trying to figure out what the trick was.
"Let me call somebody," she said, taking out her phone.
She got a picture of the group and sent it to someone, and whoever it was apparently found I'm Robert Downey Junior to be a fairly compelling argument. The guard waved them through. The fans of superhero movies – the nerds – who'd been waiting for entry had started to realize there was something going on, and were trying to get a better look, but none of them were willing to give up their places in line to do so.
"Can I get a picture with you?" somebody shouted.
"I'll be inside, Honey-Bunnies!" Downey replied. He blew a kiss to the crowd in general, and then headed indoors with the others. "There you go," he said, pleased with himself. "We're in, no waiting!"
"They recognized us, though," Steve protested.
"They recognized me," Downey corrected him. "I'll hog the attention, and you guys can just slip by incognito."
Natasha shook her head. "Are you sure you're not Tony Stark?"
"Most days."
Inside, somebody gave them a program and a map of the convention hall. The main room was a vast open space with a high, metal-raftered ceiling and a concrete floor like a warehouse, but instead of crates and boxes there were several aisles of tables and booths offering everything imagineable. The guests included not just actors but artists, film-makers, writers, and everybody else involved in the production of media. A mini-studio had been set up so that people in costumes could have professional photos taken – when the group passed, several people in distressingly well-done Chi'Tauri armor were standing there while the flash bulbs popped. Further up the first aisle was a table selling crocheted Avengers dolls. In the next row, somebody was offering poster prints of a very detailed drawing in which Steve and Bucky were kissing in the rain like lovers. Steve had to stop short and stare at it, blinking several times to be sure he wasn't seeing things.
"Accurate?" asked Downey, poking Steve in the ribs.
Steve tried to imagine what Bucky would have thought about such a thing. His reaction would probably have been more embarrassing than the picture itself.
"He's blushing!" Downey laughed. "Wait until you see the ones where you're kissing me!"
Another stall was selling costumes. Several had boxes and boxes of comic books, all carefully wrapped in plastic. One big one was offering swords and knives that looked far too dangerous for some of the younger attendees. On a corner was a replica of Mjolnir on a styrofoam boulder, and people were having their pictures taken pretending they were straining to lift it. There were video games, a Japanese pastry shop, an actual tattoo studio… something for everybody except perhaps those who preferred peace and quiet all of it thronged with what Downey had described as nerds.
Steve and Thor stuck out in crowds, but Natasha slipped into this one as if she were just another nerd herself, and to Steve's surprise, Downey seemed quite comfortable. He would not have imagined Tony Stark being able to walk around unnoticed in any universe.
"What time is it?" Steve asked, as he flipped through the booklet. There were events and talks scheduled for each of the celebrity guests, some singly and others in groups. Hopefully they could catch Loki either going into or coming out of one of these.
Downey checked his watch. "Eleven twenty."
Steve ran his finger down a timetable. "It says photo ops with Tom Hiddleston begin at noon."
"Then we have time to be there ahead of him," Thor said. "This time, we shall have the element of surprise. Where will he be?"
"It says Palomino Room D." Steve turned the map upside-down in his hands, trying to match it up with the layout he could see. "That way, should be."
"As long as he's actually there," Nat said cynically.
"If he never actually showed up, there'll be an announcement," said Downey, walking fast to keep pace with Steve and Thor's longer legs. "They'll have a sign on the door something."
They left the massive main hall, on the way passing even more activities and exhibits. There was a very detailed, six-foot-tall model of Godzilla made entirely of lego bricks. An area had been roped off with tables and chairs for people to play card and board games. There was even a booth where a man was selling pet tarantulas – if that had anything to do with superheroes, Steve couldn't imagine what it was.
The noise level dropped sharply as they went through the doors into the carpeted hallway outside. Signs indicated what was going on in Palomino Rooms A, B, and C, and another directed them to D around the corner. Steve's eyes drifted past these and then, as if by a force beyond his control, they were wrenched back to Palomino Room B.
Q&A with the cast of Agent Carter.
Steve hesitated. The picture in the brochure had definitely been of Peggy – Peggy in a twenty-first century blouse and with her hair un-curled but absolutely recognizable as Peggy. The actress who'd portrayed her in this world's movies was in that room, talking to her fans. The desire to peek in was almost overwhelming. It wouldn't be the same, Steve told himself. Like Natasha reading a story to Mari, it could only end in disaster, and yet…
The others had gotten a bit ahead of him and were having some sort of conversation about the Godzilla statue. Steve heard Downey say, "but Gamera's source of strength is children, so if all of them believe he can win…"
"Why would these beasts need to fight each other at all?" Thor asked. "Surely both are protectors of this realm, at least according to Jane and Darcy. Is Gamera not the Guardian of the Universe?"
"Because they're kaiju," Downey insisted. "It's what they do!"
Steve looked back at the door to Palomino Room B. He knew he couldn't talk to her. Interaction with Mari and Darville had led to catastrophe, and talking to Downey had almost gone the same way… but maybe he could look. If he stood in the back and watched for a couple of minutes, and slipped out before anybody noticed him, that might work. He could satisfy his overriding curiosity and get back to what they were here to do.
His hand was shaking slightly as Steve opened the door.
The lights in the room had been dimmed except at the back, where they shone on a long table with four people sitting at it. At the left end was a tall woman with dark hair and blue eyes, wearing a floral blouse. Steve didn't recognize her. Next to her was a man in a black shirt and gray blazer – he did look vaguely familiar, but Steve couldn't put a name to him. Third was… it took Steve a moment, since the man looked older than he remembered and was clean-shaven, with his hair all over the place and dressed in a modern leather jacket. But good lord… that was Howard Stark!
He was in the middle of answering somebody's question, and listening to him talk was a bizarre experience. He had a British accent.
"I figured that a lot of things Tony would have gotten from his father were things he wasn't aware of," the man was saying. "I did take a lot of cues from Downey, but I focused on the things people do without thinking. Where they look, how they move their hands, stuff like that, because I thought that's where his legacy from Howard would show most strongly."
Hands went up throughout the audience. A girl with a microphone offered it to a young woman sitting in the fourth row.
"This question is for Hayley," the audience member said. "It may not be appropriate, but… you've said you think Peggy and Steve consummated their relationship?"
The last person at the table, on the far right, was a woman. She was wearing very little makeup, and her hair was long and tied back in a ponytail, and she was wearing a stripe t-shirt with three-quarter length sleeves – but the warm brown eyes were Peggy's and the smile she showed when she pulled her microphone closer to speak was all Peggy's. Seeing it made Steve's heart feel like it twisted up, like a pair of hands had reached inside him to wring his organs out like wet laundry. His legs wouldn't hold him up anymore, and he only just made it the few steps to the nearest row of folding metal audience chairs, where he sat down heavily.
"Yes," the actress said, "I do remember saying that." After hearing British Howard, Steve had been momentarily terrified she would be an American. To his relief, she was not. Her accent was a little less precise than Peggy's educated BBC radio pronunciation, but it was music to his ears.
"Well, Chris Evans has said he thinks Steve's a virgin," the questioner went on. "Does that change your mind?"
Steve's brain suddenly caught up with his heart. Had he just heard this? Was this woman asking, in front of an audience, whether Steve and Peggy had ever made love? And was Peggy actually going to answer her?
"You've got to remember that our interpretations aren't necessarily canonical…" she began.
Howard leaned forward to his own microphone. "Excuse me, if I may," he said. "There's no contradiction here. Steve and Peggy just never agreed on whether oral counts."
The audience laughed, while Steve lowered his head so nobody could see his face – if the heat in his cheeks were anything to go by, he must be bright pink. Sure enough, this was already a disaster, and he hadn't even needed to say anything! He should never have come. If he'd stayed with the others instead of sneaking off, he wouldn't be sitting here listening to Howard tell an entire audience about the time Peggy had…
The girl with the microphone moved on to another question. "Mr. D'Arcy," a balding man in a black t-shirt said, "can I ask you a question about Jupiter Ascending?"
Everybody looked at the slightly familiar man Steve had not yet identified. The man leaned forward and made a one-word reply.
"No," he said.
There was more laughter.
There were more questions. The next person asked the woman on the far end of the table a question about the Red Room, which Steve was glad Natasha wasn't there to hear. He kept his head down. He knew he should just leave, but what would happen when he stood up? These actors would know Chris Evans from the Captain America movies. What if one of them recognized him? If he waited, he could mix with the crowd when they left in a few minutes… and maybe somebody else would ask Peggy another question, a less-embarrassing one, and he could hear her voice one more time…
No, he had to go. When the lights came up, she would definitely see him. His knees were still trembling a little, but he got to his feet and paused for one last longing look at her face…
"I see you back there, Chris!" the actress called out. "Do you have a question?"
Steve froze. Oh shit.
The flight-or-fight response – 'punch everybody and run', Natasha had said – flared up, but it was too late. The woman with the microphone was already on her way, and people in the audience were whispering and turning to stare, curious if that were really Chris Evans in the back row. Somebody particularly sadistic even turned on the back row of lights so that everyone could see him more clearly. Then the mike was in his face, and people were waiting for him to speak.
It took him a moment to think of a question, and he immediately knew he'd hate the answer, but he couldn't come up with anything better. "Uh," he said, "if Steve came back. I mean, if they found him alive and woke him up while you were still… in the forties. What would… what would she say to him?"
Peggy… no, that wasn't Peggy. The name in the brochure, the name the woman with the inappropriate question had used, was Hayley. Hayley thought about it. "Do you want the funny answer, or the heartfelt answer, or what?" she asked.
Steve wanted Peggy's answer. Could Hayley Atwell give him that? "Whatever… whatever you think is most in-character."
She nodded and cleared her throat. "Well, it would probably be something like…" and then suddenly her voice changed, dropping half a note and adopting Peggy's more precise accent, in a way that made Steve feel as if all his insides had vanished and left him a hollow shell about to collapse in on itself. "You self-sacrificing bloody wanker! Do you have any idea how you frightened us all?"
The audience laughed again. Steve wanted to put his face in his hands and weep.
"All you had to do was give us your position and we could have been there within hours!" Hayley went on in Peggy's voice. "You missed our dance, Steve. You promised!" She stopped there, and smiled. "And then I'm sure she'd kiss him, because she loves him no matter what a plonker he's been."
There was applause. Steve shut his eyes. Yes, he'd missed their dance. He'd wanted to die. He'd thought he deserved to die as punishment for letting Bucky fall, so he'd said nothing and crashed somewhere in the arctic. SHIELD had never told him exactly where. Now here he was, in the wrong universe chasing a fugitive god and listening to what Peggy would have said.
He could have had that. He could have been found and gone home with Peggy and Howard and lived happily ever after instead of having to deal with this and with aliens and Ultron and Infinity Stones and all the rest of it. Maybe he would even have been able to save Bucky in that reality. Maybe he would even have been able to save Bucky. Maybe they would have heard about the Winter Soldier program and been able to do something about it.
"Does that answer your question, Chris?" Hayley asked.
Steve wiped his eyes on his sleeve. "Yeah," he said into the microphone. "That's perfect."
He sat down again. Dodger, sensing he was upset, put his head on Steve's knee, and Steve reached to pet the dog's neck.
There were more questions. Steve barely heard them. He caught the word Roswell and the names of a couple of the commandos. Somebody mentioned Maria Collins Carbonell, which Steve knew to have been Tony's mother's name. He didn't really pay attention to any of the answers but he did notice that the questions were mostly about what might have been.
There was a woman sitting a few seats away from him in the last row. She moved closer and tapped Steve on the shoulder. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"Uh." Steve looked at her and swallowed. "Allergies," he said.
She pulled a packet of Kleenex out of her purse. "Here," she offered.
"Thanks." Steve took one and blew his nose.
The Q&A session ended, mercifully, at five minutes to noon, so that everybody would have a little time to use the washroom and get to their next events. Steve stood up as soon as the lights came on, intending to vanish into the crowd and go straight to Palomino Room D, but the people who'd been in the room gathered around him, asking for pictures and offering him things to sign. He mumbled some apologies and said he had to go.
Before he reached the door, though, Hayley Atwell grabbed him by the arm. "Oh, no you don't!" she said, and pulled him in for a hug.
Steve almost froze stiff. It took everything him to make himself hug her back rather than just standing there like a post. Natasha had suggested he might meet Bucky here, but having to hug this woman who looked like Peggy might actually be worse. If he could have willed himself back to his own universe at that moment, Steve would have done it.
"It's been ages, Chris – it's good to see you!" Hayley said. "What are you doing here? Didn't I hear you got arrested the other day?"
"That was… that was a misunderstanding." Steve sniffled.
Hayley stepped back to look at him from arm's length, a worried frown on her face. "Are you all right?" she asked.
He showed her the wadded-up Kleenex. "Allergies."
She didn't look like she believed him, but was distracted by Dodger, who was pawing at her for some affection. Hayley bent down to scratch the dog's neck, then smiled at Steve again. "Well, now that you're here, you have to do a Dubsmash with me," she declared. "Those are the rules. In fact…" she pulled her phone out of her purse. "I've even got the perfect song! Let's find it here."
Steve blew his nose again. People around them were watching with no sign of shame, and pulling out phones and cameras to take pictures. That was no good. The police in California were going to find out that Steve and Natasha were violating the terms of their bail and that would cost Downey money…
"Here we are!" Peggy held up her phone and played a short music clip.
Oh, don't you dare look back, just keep your eyes on me, I said, 'you're holding back', she said 'shut up and dance with me'…
"We just need to find a place to film it," Hayley went on brightly. "Maybe they'll let us use the photo op stage before Tom gets started. Jim!" she called.
The tall man, the one Steve couldn't think of a name for, sauntered up smiling. Whoever he was in the real world, apparently here he was Jim. "Need me to stand there looking sad while he snogs you senseless again?" he asked.
"Oh, no, I…" Steve began. He couldn't possibly kiss this woman while she thought he was somebody else. That wouldn't be right, but a voice inside him told him he was already in too deep to go back, and might as well come as close to kissing Peggy as he ever would again…
"I knew it!" said Natasha's voice. "He's in here!"
The crowd parted, and she came marching through. For a moment there was murder in her eyes, but then she saw who Steve was talking to, and her face relaxed into a smile.
"Oh, Scarlett!" said Hayley. "Do I have something of yours?"
Nat took Steve's arm. "Yes, you do," she said, "and I'm afraid I need him back."
"Very well, but I'll want to borrow him again later," Hayley told her. "He owes me a Dubsmash."
"I won't let him miss it," Nat promised. "See you later!" With a grim like a vise, she led Steve out into the hall again. Thor was waiting by the door, but Nat marched her prisoner right past him and into a corner where they could partially hide behind a fake potted tree. There, she fixed him with her most penetrating glare.
"Really?" she asked.
"I wasn't going to talk to her! She talked to me!" said Steve. Which was, of course, beside the point – he shouldn't have been in there to begin with.
"You're lying," said Nat.
"No, I'm not!" Steve insisted.
"Yes, you are!" she said. "After you sat there lecturing me…"
"I know!" Steve said. "I know, but I had to see her, okay? I just had to know what she looked like…"
"You know what she looks like," Nat told him. "And you told me that wasn't an excuse."
"It's still not," Steve had to admit. "I'm sorry, okay? Believe me, I'm sorry." There weren't many things he'd ever regretted more.
Thor interrupted. "We must discuss this later," he said. "Right now, we have lost Downey."
"What?" Steve and Natasha asked in unison, raising their heads.
The hallway was crowded – people were going this way and that to their panels, their activities, and their screenings, and a long lineup had formed outside Palomino Room D for photos with Tom Hiddleston. Downey was nowhere to be seen, but he was fairly short. Maybe he was just hiding in the crowd. Then again, Thor was tall enough to see over almost everybody's heads. If Downey were there, surely he would have spotted him.
"Why did you guys leave him alone?" Steve asked, relieved that he wasn't the only one who'd done something stupid in the last twenty minutes.
"He said he'd hold our place in line," said Thor.
"He was surrounded by fans, we figured he'd stay there talking to them," Nat agreed. "He seems to enjoy the attention almost as much as Stark does." She glared at Steve again. "If we hadn't had to wander off and find you…"
"Hey, you can't blame me for him running off!" Steve protested.
"Excuse me!" said a new voice.
For the second time, everybody turned their heads to look. A group of nerds had gathered around, as if the argument were just another thing to see at the convention. The one who'd spoken was wearing a very crude Iron Man suit made out of cardboard boxes. The others were mostly in normal clothing, but with Avengers motifs – there was a girl in red and black with a red hourglass necklace, a boy in a blue polo shirt with Steve's shield on it, and so forth.
"Can we help you?" Thor asked them politely.
The girl in the boxes held up her phone. "Can we get some pictures of you guys pretending to fight the Chi'Tauri over there?" she asked eagerly.
The four people they'd noticed being photographed in the main hall were now standing awkwardly by a window, while more pictures were taken. They had clearly put great effort into their costumes, which Steve had already noticed were rather creepily realistic, but it seemed to have made them so popular they probably weren't able to enjoy any of the events.
Steve heard a faint grow, and looked down to see Dodger baring his teeth at the quartet. "Dodger, no," he said quietly.
"Sure," Nat told them, her voice pleasant even though she must have been impatient. "Can you do us a favour in return, though? We seem to have lost Bob. Did any of you see where he went?"
"Bob?" asked the boy in the shield shirt.
"Robert Downey Junior," Thor clarified.
"Oh!" said a girl in a short yellow dress and a black leather jacket. "I got a selfie with him, but then he spotted Jennifer Connelly and they went to go have coffee or something. He said he'd be back." She was hopefully clutching her own phone in its bright pink case.
Steve looked again at the people in the Chi'Tauri armor. One of them appeared to notice him, and gathered his or her friends close to say something.
Then the lineup outside Palomino Room D suddenly burst into applause. This announced the arrival of a very tall man with curly blond hair, wearing a black suit and tie with a green and gold scarf draped around his shoulders. He smiled and waved to the fans as three security men around him kept anyone from getting too close.
"Pictures are going to have to wait," Natasha told the kids.
A number of the people in the lineup had sat down to wait – now they stood again, and everyone arranged themselves into a more formal sort of order. Many of the waiting fans were themselves dressed as Loki, both men and women, some of the latter in rather revealing interpretations of the costume. They were all excited, some of them bouncing up and down. A voice screamed out, "I love you, Tom!"
Loki grinned. "Ah, my army!" he called out. The fans squealed and cheered, and then he was gone, as the bodyguards escorted him into the photo op room. He never seemed to have even noticed Steve, Natasha, and Thor.
"Popular, isn't he?" asked Natasha.
"Yeah," Steve said. It made no sense. Why would Loki have legions of screaming fans? He was the guy who'd brought an army of space creatures to try to conquer the world. What about that made him a rock star? Maybe they just liked the actor.
Natasha sighed. "Well, since certain people wouldn't let us meet him on the way in, we'll have to do it on the way out," she declared, glaring at Steve. They would be standing around in this hallway for an hour and she wanted him to know it was his fault.
"Does that mean pictures after all?" asked the girl in the cardboard Iron Man costume.