I'm still not Marvel (that I know of).

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Peggy always got many visitors, but ever since Steve had stopped coming around - he was still as honourable (and obedient) as ever; it was not like she could have actually stopped him, now could she - it was usually family members, and she had never even heard of a "Miss Thomas" before.

She knew who the girl was as soon as she entered the room. Steve had described her, and beyond that, Peggy really just knew. This was Steve's Claire. He had never mentioned her last name.

Peggy watched the girl as she crossed the sitting-room, coming over to the side where she herself was sitting on the couch. The girl had both grace and confidence, and also a sort of inherent shyness which wasn't too easy to spot. She looked lightly vulnerable, at the same time as she was one of the easiest people in their own skin who Peggy had ever met. She could understand Steve's fascination. And affection, as it had seemed to become over the months. She might even be the lady for him, the one who Peggy had wanted to be - once upon a time - but couldn't; time, in the end, having come in the way.

A part of Peggy whispered that if she had waited... but she knew it was foolish. She would still have been an old woman; with too many things between herself and Steve, even if she hadn't tried to move on (at the time, she had thought successfully so - until she saw Steve again) and had finally married somebody else.

"Hello, Mrs Jones," the girl smiled softly, interrupting Peggy's thoughts. "I am Claire Thomas - I'm a friend of Steve's. I came here hoping we could have a chat." She looked friendly, Peggy noted. There was not an ounce, not even a speck, of threat in her voice, face or body language. Even her eyes were glimmering kindly - but there was still a hint of steel present there, if one knew what to look for, and Peggy sure did. This girl would not take no for an answer. Then again, Peggy didn't really want to say it, anyway. She nodded.

The girl sat down, still looking very sweet. "Steve is upset that you don't want to see him anymore." The girl didn't gloss over the fact, but she didn't press it, either. It was just a fact, a footnote - context, for whatever she had actually come here to say. Peggy found herself growing increasingly curious about what that was.

"I guess, still, that's fair. If you don't want to see him again you don't - not much to do about it." The girl's eyes bore into Peggy's with a presence she hadn't met the like of in some time - since the war, maybe - a calm confidence, and the urge to be heard.

"The problem, I guess," the girl - Claire - continued, "is that I don't believe that. You loved him once, didn't you? You got over it, with lots and lots of time, or at least you thought you did, until he stood before you again, like a day hadn't passed. Are you angry at him for being back?"

Peggy blinked, startled and surprised, and then she told the truth. "No, not at all. I am very happy I was still here. So lucky, I got to see him again before my time is up. Which it will be soon, I think - I am a very old woman, dear - but not soon enough, still, for him."

Those intelligent eyes had lit with understanding, quite suddenly. "You worry you're holding him back."

"I don't want to keep him in the past," the former war-hero agreed. "I've lived my life, but I am old now, and back to remembering those times. Especially with him here. With my life behind me, that is not a bad thing - in fact, I love having him with me again, while I still have some time left - but he should not stay there, in the times we left behind. He needs to move on, to get to take his own chance at life." Mentally, Peggy added, "With a nice girl, like yourself," but she didn't speak that part out loud.

The girl looked thoughtful anyway, and her voice reflected this as she replied, slowly. "I think I know where you're coming from - as much as I can, I guess, at my age."

"Insightful," Peggy added mentally, but she didn't speak. She didn't really have time to, even if she'd wanted to add something, because her visitor spoke again without pausing for more than a breath.

"But you're forgetting a few things. He is a super soldier - he will live a very long life, even now, and excuse me for saying it, but there's no way you'll be with us for more than another decade." Peggy didn't take offence, in fact, she thought the estimate was rather generous.

"Steve needs to finish with the past before he moves on. But not in the way you think. So many people from back then were dead before he woke up. He never got the chance to say goodbye, to any of them. To the time, to anything. It is just gone." Claire's voice had taken on a distinctly distressed tone, as if empathising deeply.

"But the two most important people for him, that's you and Bucky. It meant the world to him, I know it, that you were here when he returned. He's gotten Bucky back now, the hard, long, painful way, and the two of them will be fine. But - and excuse me for guessing here, I know very well I don't know you - I think you draw comfort from him being here, from Steve being with you, at the end of your life. You've been through a lot, and it must feel like closure, doesn't it? The circle meeting up at the end, and all that." Claire paused, letting Peggy nod, but she cut her off as she tried to respond.

"You think, though, as far as I can tell - and again, I'm guessing, but I'd think like that - that you're holding Steve back, too. But, you're not." The girl spoke with passion, now, and Peggy couldn't help but heed her. "Steve needs to get to be there, this one time, get to say his goodbyes, just this once. Five, ten years is nothing in the scope of his life, he only just began it. Let him have that one link to the past, and that one goodbye!"

Peggy had to swallow, before she replied. "He has Bucky," she tried, but she could plainly see that Claire was unimpressed. "He could be missing the girl he's meant to be with while he waits with me," she tried instead. "Someone young, from this time, who can match him. Maybe you, even!"

Claire looked stunned, first, then she blinked. Finally, she laughed. "Firstly, me?! No way." She had clearly not even considered it. Why, Peggy, wondered. Steve was a catch. Her next words cleared it up: cleared a lot of things up, actually.

"He really never told you?" The girl laughed again, shaking her head. "He must think you a mind-reader! There will not be any girl for Steve - not since you, anyway... I thought he and Bucky were already together when I first met them, but they only made it official recently. I think after everything they went through together, and in this age when they can actually look at each other that way, it was quite natural that their friendship turned beyond just friendship. We have so many blocks in our minds, don't we... But it fits, doesn't it?"

Peggy was stunned, but mostly so by her own lack of surprise. Steve had loved her, she knew that much and did not doubt it - not even for a second - but theirs had also been a time when some kinds of love were simply not allowed. And even if the seed was there back then, it was possible to love more than one other human being at a time. Besides, the girl from this time was right: it fitted.

Peggy smiled back at the girl who was so fiercely protective of Steve: that fit, too, she must admit, and she nodded. "Yes," she said, "it does. You must tell him to bring his man the next time he comes to see me. I've missed him, too."

It would be the first only, of many visits from all three of them, not to mention that Peggy spent quite a few afternoons in the tower herself eventually. She found Tony Stark funny, and like his father in his brilliance, but not in his pride. That was probably for the best, too. And when she met her old friend's granddaughter for the first time, she felt many things, but regret was not actually one of them.