"After I woke up from the ice, I spent the next 10 years trying to come to terms with the fact that I now live in the 21st-century and there was no going back. But from the moment Scott mentioned time travel, from the moment Tony showed us those wrist devices that would act as time travel GPSs, I knew I would go back. Somehow. I mostly kept my plans to myself, and I know it seems to you that I had made the decision only the night before I left. But the truth was, I have been thinking about it for weeks. The means and opportunity to return to Peggy were right there in front of me? How could I not take them?"
"Wasn't the whole point of going back to return the stones about not creating diverging timelines?" asked Bucky. "I mean I wasn't there for the conversation, neither was Sam, and Bruce has tried to explain some of it to us, but honestly my mind doesn't wrap around that much. You knew Peggy had been married with kids. Going back in time, wouldn't that end them?"
"Only if they weren't mine," said Steve.
"But you couldn't have known that they were," said Bucky. "How did you know they were? How did you know you were even in the same timeline or a different one? God this is also confusing."
Steve held up his hand. "Until the moment I knew time travel was possible, I didn't know. But I started doing some deep thinking, putting pieces together. I realized that hardly anybody ever mentioned Peggy's husband. Anytime I asked Sharon about it, she would just shrug like it was no big deal and say she didn't feel comfortable talking about her uncle to me. So I let the matter drop. I met Peggy's grown kids and grandkids at her funeral, talked to them briefly, but they seem distracted and sad and not really in the mood to talk, so I only said a few words to them and walked away. I thought they acted a little strange, but I chalked it up to them simply missing their mother. I always assume their father had died some time ago. But then I started thinking about the pictures that had been in Peggy's room at the nursing home. How there were no pictures of her husband. And the only pictures of her children were when they were very young. Lily looks like Peggy of course. But Edwin, there was something familiar about him. I couldn't put my finger on it until I thought about the picture of him in her room again. And I realized that Edwin's picture looks a lot like me at that age. It's like everything was carefully crafted to keep me from knowing that I was possibly the father of those children. Pictures removed, the family being unwilling to talk to me, not a word about that mysterious man. Unless it was me, it didn't make a lot of sense. They must have known who I was and took steps to keep younger me from knowing until it was time for me to return."
"But that's all speculation, Steve," said Bucky. "You went back in time on the chance they might have been yours. What if they weren't? How could you possibly have had any proof if they had been so careful to keep it from you?"
"Because," said Steve slowly, "the night before I left to go back, after I finished talking with you, I called Sharon."
"You did?" asked Bucky in surprise. "I thought you guys were done at that point? At least that's what Sam said."
"We were," said Steve. "There was the safe house in Amsterdam that I and the rest of my side ran to after the split with the Avengers. It was Sharon's place, she left instructions on how to find it in the pocket of my suit when she returned our gear to me and Sam that time."
"And then kissed you," said Bucky.
"In her defense, I kissed her," said Steve. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. Two weeks later we all met up there, and a few weeks after that she and I started a relationship that never really got off the ground, at least from where I was standing. I couldn't understand it, I thought we were good together. She understood me, and on some crazy level I thought I understood her. But she kept pushing me away, we would call it quits and then take back up again, then call it quits again. It was usually her walking away, and I just couldn't figure it out. Then Wanda went off the radar and we decided to go look for her in Scotland. But Sharon said she wanted to go and visit her cousins in California. So we went our separate ways, and then the mess with Thanos happened. After the snap, I tried calling her to see if she had made it, but she never answered. I later went to go and locate her cousins, and found nothing but empty houses, so I didn't even have anyone to ask. I figured then that she was gone, and tried to go on with my life. That was the next five years."
"Why didn't you call her right after Bruce brought everyone back?" asked Bucky.
"Honestly, I was afraid to. We didn't exactly part on very good terms, and I knew she had to be reeling from waking up wherever she was and finding it was five years later."
"Ironically, a situation you were probably the best person, hell may be the only person on the planet, that could have helped her with that," said Bucky.
"Well if it makes you feel any better," said Steve, "I was going to call her to see how she was doing, but by then I had already decided to go back, so I figured what was the point."
"Maybe she could have talked you out of it?" ask Bucky. "But you did call her. You said so. What did she say?"
"After you left my room that night, I dialed the last number I had for her," said Steve. "It rang for a long time. I thought it was probably not her number anymore. But then she answered."
"And?" pressed Bucky.
Steve was quiet for a moment, then said, "She answered it 'Hello Uncle Steve,' and that's when I knew. It was like a cold first had punched me in the heart. I knew I was going to go back. I knew that her cousins were my children. And I knew that she had known the whole time. She had to have. She knew the whole time that I was her uncle, because she had known for years, and everything she had done had been to position me to want to go back to Peggy. And the only way she could have known any of this, was if I had told her, not recently, but sometime in the past. She knew about Thanos and the Decimation, about the battle that she couldn't have known about. She knew about the time travel, that only the Avengers knew about at that point. She knew it all, and she told me."
Bucky just stared at him and what had to be utter shock. "She was always your niece? And she knew it?"
"Yes," said Steve.
"Steve," said Bucky, "she kissed you. She *slept* with you."
"Several times actually," said Steve. "If it helps, we're not actually blood related. And at the time, I wasn't married to anyone. In my personal chronology, I wasn't her uncle then and wasn't married, so the morality was a little more fluid. At least for me."
"That's kind of beside the point," said Bucky.
"I'm not saying it was easy for her, at least that she's ever let on," said Steve. "But everything she has done she did under my instruction. And not without protest too. I assure you, I have gotten quite an earful over the years over all this. There were a lot of fights."
"Frankly," said Bucky, "I'm surprised she's still talking to you. I mean Steve, this is messed up. How could you do that to her? To anyone?"
"Because if I didn't," said Steve, "Thanos would win. And that's what she told me when I called her that night."
Steve began to recount the content of the phone call with Sharon that had lasted only a few minutes the night before he had time-travelled back to return the stones and stay with Peggy. The phone had rang for at least a minute and a half, and Steve wasn't entirely sure why he didn't simply hang up. Maybe it wasn't her number anymore. Maybe she didn't want to talk to him. But then the line had clicked and her voice had come over, answering the call.
"Hello Uncle Steve," she had said. "I wondered if you would be calling tonight. You said you would. I guess tomorrow's the big day?"
Steve found that his voice had completely fled from his body. He had more or less forgotten how to breathe. There was no way she would have said such a thing unless he would indeed go back in time, and later she would know him as her uncle, the man who had married her aunt, and he would tell her all this. Furthermore, she had always known.
"You knew?" he managed to choke out. "You knew all this time?"
"Yes," she said simply.
"Sharon," he had groaned, dropping his head into his hand and choking back a sob.
"Come on now," she had said soothingly, in a tone far more understanding than the last one she had used with him. "It's really not as bad as all that. Try not to think about it over the years, especially when you see me as a kid. It'll probably be pretty weird for you, but it'll help that you won't see me again for several decades. By then you'll have had plenty of time to process, even forget a little."
"Sharon," he groaned again.
"Please don't be too upset," she said. "I should probably stress that all of this was your idea. I merely helped."
"I want to see you," he said. "We should talk about this face-to-face."
"No," she said firmly. "The next time you see me, I'll be a newborn infant. You'll see me off and on over the years that follow, but you won't see me again in this time, as you are now. What you are going to do is get on that platform and push that button. Because if you don't, my cousins will never be born. And Thanos will win. There are over 14 million known timelines in which the Avengers with battle Thanos, and only in this one, timeline 616, does he lose. The only way that happened was because of a series of events in this timeline that played out exactly the way they had to, to position the Avengers, and you, exactly where you need to be at the right time. Peggy had something to do with it over the years, and so did I more recently. But mostly it has always been you. In the background, directing things, sometimes by telling us information, sometimes by withholding it. But if you don't go back, none of this will happen, and we'll all find ourselves in another timeline, one in which Thanos wins, and me and your children and your friends who you watched vanish will not come back."
Steve's mind head reeled. He had never been able to tell her any of this, she had not even known about Thanos, since she had been part of the Decimation, and those who had vanished had only been back for three weeks. She likely would have found out about Thanos in the last three weeks, but not the time travel and everything else that she had just said that only someone privy to the conversations with the Avengers would have known. He had not told her any of this, so she must have known it already, having been told some time before any of this happened.
"You knew all this, for years, and said nothing?" he said.
"Yes," she replied, "which is what you are going to have to do for decades. In order for the events of this timeline to play out the way they will, your life will be marked by what you don't do. You will not interfere with the assassination of President Kennedy, for example. You will say nothing when Apollo 13 launches, knowing there will be an explosion only three days later. You will not do anything to stop the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Olympics, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, or the Watergate scandal. And perhaps hardest of all, you will sit down and do nothing on September 11, 2001. Because if you interfere with any of that, you will then drift into another timeline, one other than 616, and you will have to watch your family vanish and never return. You'll tell me most of this when I am only 14 years old. Try to forgive me for the yelling I'll do. I didn't take it well."
Steve had found it difficult to swallow or make any kind of sound in his throat that resembled words. He had been in many battles where he had taken direct hits to the head, giving him a sensation that he associated with the term "poleaxed," and that was the best description he could come up with how he felt about this conversation. He felt as if he had been hit with a jackhammer. This was all too much. He wanted to run, wanted to hide in a hole. What Sharon was telling him was just too overwhelming. But then her voice came back over the line, oddly soothing.
"Are you ready to go home now?" she asked. "I've been keeping track of what day it is. It's tomorrow isn't it?"
"Yes," Steve had managed to whisper.
"Then I'll see you in a couple of years," she said, her voice sad but with what might have been a smile on her voice.
"Sharon, what we did, I mean if this is true, you're my niece, and..."
She cut him off. "It's in the past now. For both of us. And it had to be done. I had to push you away and in such a way that would make you want to leave. It won't be the worst thing I'll have to do in the line of duty. Some of that you will never know about."
She was putting on a brave front, but Steve could hear the hurt in her voice. "Sharon, I'm so sorry," he started.
"I know," she said simply. "But it's done. And really, it wasn't as hard as you'd think it would be. I vowed not to regret it. And…I don't regret any moment I've spent with you. No matter what we were doing. You can make it up to me by not being too hard on me when I accidentally set your toolshed on fire when I'm ten."
"You did what?" he asked.
"You'll see," she said with a smile in her voice. "Your son thought it was a good idea to give me a chemistry set for Christmas. Just try not to have too big of a conniption fit."
"I'll try," he said.
"Then goodbye for now," she said. "Safe travels. And I'll see you again sometime."
She had hung up before he could say anything else, and he contemplated calling her back, but decided against it. He had not slept at all that night, and the next morning, he had stood on the platform and pushed the button, forcing himself not to hesitate. Forcing himself not to think about the friends he was leaving behind, or Sharon. He push the button and returned to the time in which he had felt he belonged.
