Author's note: My apologies for making you wait so long for this update. As seems to happen to me so often, a combination of pathological perfectionism and real life getting in the way meant that writing this story ended up being more of a journey than I first anticipated! But hopefully I have risen to the challenge, and I have quite a few chapters socked away now. I certainly enjoyed writing them, and I hope you like reading them!

The 1940s

Steve agreed to stay in Peggy's spare room for the time being. It wasn't exactly proper in this time for two unmarried people to be sleeping in the same house with no chaperone, which he belatedly remembered after he had already accepted Peggy's invitation. There was no question that he would stick to his best behavior, but he had long ago accepted the practice at Avengers Headquarters of everyone sleeping in bedrooms right next door to each other, and now he would have to get back into the 1940s mindset. But for now there didn't seem to be much choice, and anyway, he had more than one reason to stay out of sight of Peggy's neighbors. He could not go anywhere until he had forged his new identity and grown out his beard. The papers were still mentioning Steve Rogers' disappearance from time to time, and he didn't want to be recognized.

He smiled to himself to think how skeptical he had been all those years ago when Natasha had insisted that a beard would be enough to hide him while they were on the run, but she had been right. No one on the streets had looked twice at him during their exile. Hopefully that would hold true now, particularly since no one would be looking for him as a wanted man here. People had a tendency to see only what they expected to see, and Captain America was dead.

The next day, Peggy used her contacts at work to gather all the paperwork Steve needed, and that night he sat down at her kitchen table and began to coolly fill out his own birth certificate.

"Grant Edward Buchanan," Peggy read out loud, leaning over his shoulder to watch him write. She gave a short laugh. "Steve, do I really have to call you that?"

"The more often, the better," he answered. "So we can both get used to it." He filled in his new birth date, just a few months earlier than his real one. Of course, he was now 12 years older than that, but thankfully it didn't show much.

Peggy put her hand on the back of his neck, her fingers playing a little with his hair. "You'll always be Steve Rogers to me," she said softly.

He paused writing, and looked up at her. "Only when we're alone."

They locked eyes, and then Peggy bent down and kissed him, briefly but warmly. She pulled back and smiled at him, and then came around to sit beside him at the table.

"Are you sure you're comfortable with this?" he asked, glancing at the stack of false papers waiting to be filled out. "Helping me keep a secret this big? It isn't going to be easy."

"Steve, I work for an intelligence agency," Peggy said coolly. "My life is already full of secrets. What's one more?"

"This one... might be a little different," he said cautiously, but Peggy only shook her head.

"It's you I'm worried about," she said. "Are you sure you want to do this? Can you really be happy living this way? A life in the shadows? An ordinary life?"

He took a moment to answer.

"Peggy... I was nobody special before this happened to me," he said, gesturing meaningfully at his body. "And I never minded that. I didn't sign up for the war to get fame and glory. At the time, I'm not sure I really understood all the reasons I was doing it. But I've had time now to get some perspective." He took a deep breath and let it out. "I've spent the last 15 years of my life fighting in one way or another. And in all that time, I never lived for the fight. I fought for others' lives. And I put off my own to do it." He looked down for a moment, and then glanced up at her. "It isn't a war I need, Peggy. It's a purpose. The war gave me that for a while, but it turns out that even I can get enough of fighting."

She tilted her head at him in curiosity. "And what will your purpose be now?"

He looked up at her and smiled mysteriously. "I have a few ideas about that."

Being with Peggy again after so long of a separation left Steve feeling like a desert traveler who had stumbled upon an oasis and didn't fully dare to believe it was real. There were times over the next few days that he was tempted to pinch himself, just to make sure it wasn't a dream.

His transition to modern times after waking up from the ice had been a difficult one, month after month hazed over by his grief for everything and everyone he had lost and aggravated by an extreme case of culture shock. Steve had anticipated that this transition back into the past would be easier, not least of all because he had chosen it, but also because this time he would be back in familiar surroundings, and because he would have Peggy by his side. It wasn't seamless, though. There were of course all the little things he had expected, like the loss of the modern conveniences that he had come to take for granted - he was constantly patting his pants pocket out of habit before remembering that he no longer had a cell phone to put in there, or opening his mouth to ask F.R.I.D.A.Y. a question only to stop himself just in time - but that was nothing time wouldn't heal.

The bigger problem was that once again his heart was darkened by grief. He had already been grieving for Nat and Tony, and now all the rest of his friends were gone, too. He wouldn't see them for many long years, if he lived to see them again at all. He had no regrets about what he had done, but that didn't always make the choice easy to live with. Despite his hard work to get with the times, he'd never really felt completely at home in the future, but his friends... they were his home, and he missed them.

Worst of all, the horror of the final battle with Thanos had not completely faded from his mind. Only a week after his return, he was seized by a vivid dream in which he saw, all over again, the colors of the Infinity Stones washing over Tony's body as he held up his Iron Gauntlet in one final defiance of Thanos, and felt all over again the helplessness as he struggled to rise from where he had been thrown, wanting to stop what was happening, wanting to tear the gauntlet away from Tony before it was too late. But in his dream, as before, he just... couldn't... get there in time.

Tony Snapped.

With a strangled cry, Steve sat up bolt upright in bed, stretching out his hand to call Mjolnir to him. It was dark, he was confused, and it took endless seconds for him to remember where and when he really was. Gasping for breath, he dropped his hand, more than a little alarmed that for a moment, he had felt Mjolnir move from across a distance so vast that his human mind could barely comprehend it. Only a little bit, he consoled himself, as the sweat trickled down his neck. I only moved it a little bit.

There was a soft knock on the door, and then it opened. Peggy stood in the doorway, backlit by the hallway light, dressed in a nightgown.

"Steve?" she asked softly. "Are you all right?"

"Bad dream," he said briefly. "Sorry if I woke you up."

After a moment's hesitation, Peggy came in and sat on the edge of the bed. She put her hand on top of one of his, and he took it gratefully, glad she hadn't left right away. They sat there in silence for a while, holding hands, while Steve worked to slow his breathing back down.

"Who's Tony?" Peggy asked softly after a minute.

Steve closed his eyes for a moment. "Did I say Tony?"

"You did. You called it out."

He didn't answer right away. Peggy was destined to create S.H.I.E.L.D. She couldn't know too much, too soon. She couldn't know anything about Thanos, or the Infinity Stones, or the Avengers.

Or could she?

The Ancient One had specified what Steve couldn't do. He couldn't do anything he already knew he hadn't done. No saving Bucky. No stopping the Hydra infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. - or enlisting Peggy to do it. If Bruce's explanation of time travel had been correct, it was actually impossible for Steve to change things in the past, at least in his own reality. Maybe it was within his power to create a branch in time and start a new alternate reality by making different choices... but if he attempted something like that, the Ancient One stood ready with the Time Stone to reset any disastrous alternate realities he might create. And he understood the reasons why. How could he know whether any changes he made would make things better? Steve had learned enough about the world now to know that decisions and events were interconnected in intricate ways, and somehow over the years everything had happened the way it needed to for Thanos to be ultimately defeated. If Steve knocked down one brick, the whole tower might fall.

He had come back home with a half-formed idea that nothing about certain topics could ever pass his lips, not even to Peggy. But in a flash he understood the reality of the situation: he couldn't keep secrets that big from his own wife. Those events had shaped him and changed him. She couldn't know who he really was unless he shared them. And he wanted nothing less than complete unity with Peggy. He hadn't come all the way back to 1945 to share only half his soul with her.

More than anything, he ached to tell her about the Avengers. If there was one thing he regretted, it was that Peggy would never meet them. They would never meet Peggy. The two circles of his life would never touch; Peggy would die before he could be reunited with the Avengers. To tell her about them would be a way of bringing them together.

But if he told her about the good things, he'd have to tell her about all the bad things interlaced with them. How do you tell the woman you love that you had to tear down the very agency she worked all her life to build? How do you tell her of her own death? How do you tell her that one day half of all life will vanish with the snap of a finger? He knew that Peggy would die before that happened, and therefore be spared the horror... and yet a chill moved down his spine as he realized that if they had children, if their children had children... the Snap was going to decimate their own family. But Peggy could be spared the knowledge of any of those things. His silence would be a way for him to protect her, although she would never know of it.

And yet...

He'd tried to spare Tony that kind of pain by withholding information, and it had backfired. If he did the same thing to Peggy, she'd still discover things in real time as events unfolded. She would take it as a betrayal if Steve never warned her of what was to come. He would tear his own family apart, just as surely as the Avengers had been torn apart.

"Steve?" Peggy prompted again. She sounded worried.

He pushed the blankets off his legs. "I'm not gonna be able to go back to sleep," he said matter-of-factly. He'd been through the insomniac routine enough times to know that.

"I'll stay up with you," she said immediately.

"You have work in the morning."

"I don't care."

Steve didn't raise any more objections. They went down to the kitchen together, and Peggy flipped on the switch, flooding the room in warm yellow light. He asked her for some paper, and for a while they sat at the table in companionable silence while Peggy watched him sketch. He glanced up at her from time to time, glad that he wasn't alone for the insomniac routine for a change. It was the first time he had seen Peggy without makeup, he realized. She looked younger, somehow, and still very pretty, with untamed curls framing her face instead of the usual perfect waves.

As he sketched, he wrestled with his thoughts. His urge to protect Peggy from pain was warring with his desire to spill out everything that had happened to him over the last 12 years right down to the smallest detail. He realized he had no idea what was the right thing to do. What, if anything, should he tell Peggy about the future... and when should he do it? There was too much to give all at once.

What would he want to be told, if their positions were reversed?

Instantly, everything clicked into place. Because he understood: he wouldn't want Peggy to decide something like that on her own. Partly because he wouldn't want her to carry that kind of burden, and partly because she might not be able to correctly guess what he would or wouldn't want to know about in advance.

"Steven Rogers," Peggy said suddenly, a hint of alarm creeping into her voice. "For goodness sake, put down that pencil and tell me what you're thinking. You look like you're about to have a panic attack."

He took a deep breath and met her eyes. "I was trying to decide something, but I just realized that I don't need to. It's your choice, not mine. I'm going to give it to you."

"What do you mean?"

"I've been to the future," he told her quietly. "I know more than anyone should about what's to come. It's the price I paid for being a time traveler. I'm... cursed with knowledge." He closed his eyes for a moment, tasting for the first time the bitterness of Thanos' own words.

"I should think that would be a comfort," Peggy said slowly. "You'd never be blindsided by anything... and if something really bad was going to happen, you'd have a chance to stop it."

"That's just it," Steve said. "I can't. I can't change anything, because all of it has already happened."

She frowned at him, puzzled. "I don't understand."

"Here's how it was said by someone with a much bigger brain than mine," Steve said, and he couldn't help but smile a little at the memory of Bruce patiently explaining it to him in layman's terms. "No one can change the past. Now that I've traveled here, to 1945, this time is becoming my future. But everything that happened to me in those years after I woke up from the ice is already past. I can't change my past from here in my future. That's impossible."

Peggy thought about that for a long moment. "So, the future... my future... is your past."

Steve nodded. "And it's a done deal. Set in concrete." He sighed. "Both the good and the bad."

"You know everything that's going to happen?" Peggy said wonderingly.

"Not everything," he said. "But... a lot. Everything I read about in the history books. Everything I experienced personally. I know the future of S.H.I.E.L.D. I know things about people that you know, and people you haven't met yet but someday will. I even know a few things about your own life, Peggy."

"Do you think I haven't thought of that?" Peggy asked softly. "You went all the way to the year 2023. I can do the math. You must know when I'm going to die."

"You see the problem," Steve said. "I don't want to keep secrets from you, Peggy. But I also don't want to tell you things you're not ready to hear. That's why I'm putting the choice in your hands."

"It can't all be bad," Peggy said after a long silence. "Or you wouldn't have come back to live through it all."

"No," he agreed, and he reached out to touch her cheek briefly, smiling at her. "Not all bad."

"I'm not sure how to handle this," Peggy said after some thought. "I don't know the things I don't know. If you ask me if I want to know whether or not the sky is going to turn green tomorrow, well, that would be a bit of a giveaway, wouldn't it?"

"You have a point," Steve admitted. "But maybe, if I asked you very general questions..."

"Rhetorical ones," Peggy said.

"Rhetorical questions," he agreed, "and maybe even worked in some red herrings here and there-"

"-so that I could never be sure whether it was something that really happened or not, unless I agree to let you tell me more-"

"I think this could work," Steve said.

"Give me an example," Peggy said.

"Okay..." Steve thought rapidly. "If I had ever been to another planet, would you want to know?"

"Steve!" Peggy burst into sudden laughter. "Really? You have to make the red herrings at least plausible."

"I told you two days ago that I traveled through a time machine, and you believed that," he said mildly.

"Yes, but another planet?" Peggy laughed again, and then, catching his eye, slowly grew serious.

"Wait. Have you been to another planet?" she asked in surprise.

"Do you really want me to answer that?"

"I... don't know," Peggy said confusedly. "I'm going to need some time to think about that one. Give me another."

"Okay. If I had become good friends with the son of someone you know, would you want to know?"

Peggy thought for a while. "Yes," she said.

"If I tell you, you're going to know about someone before he's born," he warned. "And you can't tell your friend about what's coming. You're sure you want to know?"

"Yes," Peggy said positively. "It's... it's been eating me up," she suddenly confessed. "Thinking about you showing up in the future like that, lost and alone... I can't bear to think about it. I want to hear about the friends you made."

"Okay." He felt a wave of relief. It was one of the things he had most wanted to tell her. He slid over the notebook he'd been sketching in so that Peggy could see.

"You asked who Tony was? That's Tony," he told her.

He'd drawn Tony wearing one of his favorite band shirts, along with a pair of much-loved rumpled jeans. His hair was gelled and spiky on top, and he was wearing his tinted sunglasses.

"Is that what all the men wear in the future?" Peggy asked, fighting back a smile so that a dimple popped out in her cheek.

Steve knew what she meant. It had once looked ridiculous to his eyes, too, not least of all the oddly shaped beard.

"Tony was very fashionable," he told her. "Everyone copied him."

"Did you?"

He smiled, despite himself. "Not really, no."

"His hair... he looks like he just rolled out of bed," Peggy said, and a laugh popped out before she could stop it. "I'm sorry, Steve. I know he was a friend of yours. Or... he will be, I suppose. So, whose son is he?"

"Howard Stark's."

She stared at him. "Howard? You can't be serious."

"I couldn't be more. Look at him. The apple didn't fall far from the tree."

Peggy leaned over and studied the sketch more closely. "I didn't think Howard would ever settle down and start a family," she said at last in amazement, looking back up at Steve. "Let's face it, he just isn't the type."

"Well, people change," Steve said. "Sometimes they surprise you. Tony... he surprised me, too."

She looked over at him, expression softening. "Tell me about him."

"Well..." Steve scratched his head. There was so much to say about Tony. Where to start? With the snark and the genius? The forward thinking and the backward ideals? His unimaginable riches and his unbearable guilt? The many good intentions gone awry, and the equally unexpected redemptions?

He wanted to convey all of that to Peggy, and then some. But for some reason, he suddenly found himself blurting out something completely different: "He taught me how to swear."

"What?" Peggy looked at him strangely. "I've heard you swear before."

"Yeah, the little ones," Steve said. "He had me saying the big ones."

Peggy's eyes widened, although there was a definite undercurrent of amusement as she said in shocked tones: "Steven Rogers!"

Steve sighed heavily, but he couldn't help but smile a little, too, as he admitted sheepishly: "Tony was a really bad influence on me."

As soon as his new identity was complete and his beard had grown out, Steve got a job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where they were eager to hire veterans with strong arms and backs to help with the construction of new ships, and he found a cheap place nearby to live. Too cheap, Peggy said when she visited, wrinkling her nose as she looked over his cramped apartment and outdated furniture, but Steve didn't care. There were important things he needed to save for; he had come home with nothing but the clothes on his back. And he knew he wouldn't be doing this for long. He'd seen the date on the marriage license. He could bear the wait.

As much as he looked forward to marrying Peggy, he surprised himself by feeling no rush to propose. Now that the war was over and the world was at peace, it felt like they had all the time in the world. And although it took more than an hour for them to take the train to see each other during the months of their courtship, they made every moment together count. They needed the time to get to know each other again. Steve had changed during his long years away, and even Peggy, who had lived only six months apart from him, still contained mysteries he had never had a chance to explore. They'd been so focused on fighting a war that he'd never had the leisure to find out much about her childhood and youth, her family and friends back home, her dreams for the future.

There were long walks and talks. Trips to the cinema and meals shared. And every Saturday night, without fail, they went out dancing.

It wasn't as good as Steve had imagined it would be. It was even better.

By the time March rolled around, everything was ready. Steve had been accepted back into Auburndale. He'd saved enough for the ring. And after a long discussion about it, he and Peggy agreed to bring her parents in on the secret — or at least part of it. They saw no need to go into the time travel, by far the strangest aspect of the whole story. But it would be relatively easy to explain that Steve Rogers had survived the plane crash and chosen to live a life of quiet anonymity once the war was over. It was the truth, after all. And so Peggy's parents flew over from England for a visit at her request, and after the explanations were finished and the amazement had subsided, Steve asked Peggy's father for his blessing.

"Captain America wants to marry my daughter," Harrison Carter said, looking at Steve in both amusement and wonder. "Did you really think you needed to ask?"

Then his smile slowly faded. "You know, my daughter chose an unusual occupation for a woman. A difficult one. There was a time when her mother and I thought she could be dissuaded from it, at least once the war was over, but as you can see..." He gestured a little helplessly. "Well, she's a very determined young lady. I suppose you've figured that out by now. I don't think she's planning on giving it up, Captain."

"I don't want her to," Steve said. "I want her to do what she feels called to do."

"But she wants a family, too," Mr. Carter objected.

"So do I."

Mr. Carter looked at him a little skeptically. "How are you planning to make that work?"

"However we have to," Steve said matter-of-factly. Mr. Carter still didn't look satisfied, so he clarified. "I'm going to make Peggy happy. Whatever it takes. If that means I handle things at home while she goes to work, then so be it."

"You're really going to do it, aren't you?" Mr. Carter said a little wonderingly. "Retire. From all of it. You were on top of the world, and you're going to walk away, just like that?"

"I never wanted to be a professional soldier," Steve pointed out. "I did what I did because that's where I was needed. Now, I'm needed for something else." He paused, and then asked directly: "Do you think that's a waste of what I was given?"

Mr. Carter was silent for a long time. Then he said with a hint of gruffness coloring his British accent: "You know, from the moment my children were born, I've been... far prouder of them than anything I ever did at my company. And when we lost our son in the war-" He sighed quietly, and shifted his hat around in his hands for a few moments as he worked to maintain his composure. Finally, he cleared his throat roughly. "There's nothing like losing a child to remind you of what really matters. I would have given up my whole career if it could have brought Michael back to us."

"I'm so sorry," Steve said gently.

Mr. Carter nodded in quiet acknowledgement. "You're right," he said to Steve. "You're right. I wouldn't have called it a waste if Peggy had given up her work for a family, even with all her gifts. I suppose it's no different the other way around, is it?"

Steve blinked a little, pleasantly surprised. He hadn't been at all sure that Peggy's parents would understand; what he was proposing was not often done in this time period. But Peggy must have inherited her good sense and practicality from somewhere, he realized.

"Of course, you know I'm just being selfish," Mr. Carter said with a touch of wry humor. "Amanda's been longing for grandchildren since the moment our own birds flew the nest. I won't have any peace in the house until she gets what she wants. Consider yourself enlisted in the cause."

"I'll... do my best," Steve said, suppressing the urge to squirm uncomfortably, but he would not have offended his father-in-law for the world.

Mr. Carter caught his eye, and suddenly Steve realized his expression was plainly teasing. Mr. Carter was definitely enjoying his discomfort. Well, Peggy had warned him about that. Apparently her late brother, too, had had a streak of mischief and merriment in him. Steve was sorry he had never been able to meet Michael. He was about to get a father for the first time in his life, and regain a mother. It would have been nice to find out what it was like to have a brother, too.

"There's just one other thing," Mr. Carter said, suddenly growing serious. "With Peggy's work... well, she can't talk about everything that she does. But I have a feeling some of it is dangerous. Her mother and I, we worry a lot. You don't know how many times we wished that she didn't live alone like this. That she had someone we could trust, right there beside her, to protect her." He looked directly into Steve's eyes. "I don't want to outlive both of my children. Can you promise me that nothing will happen to my daughter?"

"She'll be safe with me," Steve promised without hesitation, regretting only that he couldn't tell Mr. Carter just how certain he was that Peggy would live a long and happy life.

It couldn't be the large wedding Mrs. Carter had once envisioned for her daughter, but she grudgingly accepted that fact after a few days, once Peggy had agreed to let her spend what seemed an outrageous sum for the wedding dress. Peggy surprised Steve by producing his original Army dress uniform out of her closet - apparently she had collected his effects after his disappearance, since he had no next of kin to send them to - and that was nearly all the preparation they needed to make. They planned to honeymoon right there in Peggy's little home. Someday he intended to take Peggy back to Europe to see all the places they had helped liberate, but for now a luxurious vacation was the last thing on their minds. The only thing they cared about was each other.

They were married a few days later at Holy Cross in Brooklyn - the same church where both his parents had been laid to rest in the churchyard outside - with only Peggy's parents and their understanding priest in attendance. Steve signed the paperwork as Grant Edward Buchanan, as he must, but he used his real name for the ceremony. He trusted his priest, who had been hearing his confessions since he was a boy and had faithfully promised his discretion about the situation. Steve was determined that despite his false identity, the marriage at least would be real in every possible sense.

Afterwards the four of them went to a nice restaurant for a wedding supper they were all too emotional to enjoy properly, and straight afterward Steve drove the Carters to the airport to catch their flight back to England. After more than a few tears on Mrs. Carter's part, he and Peggy said goodbye and got into the car, just the two of them, and went home. Not to her home or his home... to their home.

Steve went to bed that night, but he never went to sleep. Insomnia had chased him for so many years after he had been rescued from the ice: fueled by anxieties, by memories of bloody battles, by loss and grief. But this was the first time he laid awake all night with a smile spread across his face, his eyes filled with Peggy's beautiful sleeping face, his arms filled with her warm pliant body. The nightmare was over.

After the wedding, Peggy busied herself with her work at the newly-established S.H.I.E.L.D. offices at Camp Lehigh, and Steve quit his job at the shipyard to focus on his classes at Auburndale. In the meantime he found odd jobs here and there, creating illustrations for advertisements, for books, and best of all, for a comic book publishing company based in New York. He started at the bottom of the totem pole there, only sketching in backgrounds for the panels created by more experienced artists. But he learned a lot by watching, and an idea started to grow in his mind, an idea that excited him and filled him with a sense of the purpose he had been looking for.

The story of the Avengers had never been told. Not the real story. Innumerable words had been spilled about them in news reports and analyses, in criticisms and hagiographies, in gossip and rumors. Half of what the world thought they knew about the Avengers had been shaped by politicians, or by their enemies, or by people who had never even met them. Most of the Avengers had been uninterested or too occupied with more important matters to even attempt to shape their own public image. Only Tony had ever sought out the spotlight, with mixed results.

This was Steve's chance. He had all the time in the world to do it. His memories of the Avenger years were as fresh as the day they had happened, thanks to the improved memory the serum had granted him. And now that he was honing his artistic abilities, soon he would be able to do them justice. He knew comic books weren't exactly taken seriously as adult entertainment, at least not in this time, but somehow it seemed the most natural thing in the world to tell the Avengers' story that way. After all, it was how Captain America had been introduced to the world. Except this creation wouldn't be wartime propaganda, but the truth.

Of course, he wouldn't be able to publish anything he created; not yet, anyway. But by the time he aged back into the future, he could have everything ready to go. After the reversal of the Snap, there would be a hunger in the public to know what had happened, and why. He would be able to show the Avengers as they really were. If he could clear up even one misunderstanding, if he could persuade even some of the powers that be that they didn't need to fear Wanda and the others... it would be worth it.

It was an ambitious project, he knew, and it was going to take a long time to come to fruition. Years, at least. Maybe his whole life. That just meant that the sooner he started, the better.

"You really are the Star-Spangled Man with a plan," Peggy teased him the first day she came home to find him with a spread of rough sketches covering the desk: the outlines of the first phase of his project. She came up behind him, wrapped her arms around his chest and gave him a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek. Then she leaned over his shoulder and picked up one of the sketches. "Who is this?" she asked curiously.

"That's Thor," he said distractedly, not looking up from what he was doing.

Peggy knew a little about all of the original Avengers by now, and his first meeting with them. So far their arrangement had worked out well. She wanted to know as much as possible about everyone he had befriended. She wanted to know nothing of her own life or death, but she had chosen to be given a month's warning before the death of anyone close to her. She had also chosen not to know specifics about the future of S.H.I.E.L.D., although she had reserved the right to change her mind later. That meant that for now, she knew nothing of Hydra and the Winter Soldier... or of Hank Pym, for that matter, since she would one day be instrumental in mentoring him.

Even though it was Peggy's choice, Steve wondered sometimes whether he should encourage her to accept more information sooner. But there was plenty of time... and he remembered, too, what Thor had told him only a few days before he had left Earth with the Guardians of the Galaxy: that his mother had flatly refused to hear anything about her future, even though it must have been clear to her, from Thor's emotional state, that trouble was looming on the horizon. If the queen of Asgard was wise enough to refrain from too much foreknowledge, then maybe Peggy was wise to do the same.

"It's funny to think that Johann Schmidt was right after all," Peggy said thoughtfully, studying the sketch of Thor. "All his obsessions over Teutonic myth, thinking that the old gods were real? And here he is, large as life: the God of Thunder himself."

"There's only one..." Steve paused for a moment and then grinned. "You're right, Thor is a god. He's dressed like one, isn't he?"

Peggy studied the sketch again, tilting her head to the side. "He certainly has the muscles of a god."

Steve glanced up at her, and then did a double-take.

"Hey!" he said indignantly, snatching the paper out of her hands.

"Your muscles are very nice too, darling," Peggy said quickly.

"Don't look at his muscles," Steve said, putting Thor's sketch underneath several sheets of paper.

She laughed at him. "You're the one who drew him that way!"

"That's how he looks!" Steve defended himself. "Well... usually."

"Don't be jealous. You know there's only one man I would ever fondue with," Peggy comforted him, and then she deliberately swiveled his chair to the side and parked herself in his lap, putting her arms around his neck and smiling sweetly at him.

"I can't work like this," Steve pointed out with a small smile.

"Good," Peggy whispered, and kissed him on the lips. Willingly Steve wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her back.

Peggy settled herself in more comfortably on his lap, crossing her legs and smoothing out her skirt, showing a distracting amount of skin. Well, pantyhose, anyway. And she was wearing those red heels that he liked. Suddenly Steve felt himself losing interest in sketching anything more tonight. He'd pick it up again in the morning. That was all right, he could afford to take a break every once in a while.

Of course, he ended up taking an awful lot of "breaks" when Peggy came home from work in the evenings, which inevitably led directly to the biggest wrench thrown into his ambitious plan that he could have imagined: the day Peggy told him she was expecting.

Suddenly, nothing else seemed to matter. There were doctors to see, things to buy, changes to make to the house. One moment Peggy was practically glowing with happiness and health, and the next she came home from work feeling sick or achey or exhausted. Steve found himself doing more and more, both to care for her and for the house. In the meantime, he and Peggy played a delightful ongoing game in which she pretended to beg him to tell her whether the baby would be a boy or a girl, and he pretended to refuse to tell her. She didn't really want to know, of course, and he couldn't blame her. It was bad enough that he knew so much about what was to come; Peggy should have the pleasure of being surprised, if he couldn't.

He thought often of the photo he'd seen of Peggy with a son and a daughter... and the boy had definitely been the taller one. He tried not to be smug about the fact that he knew this baby would be a boy, but it was hard to keep a straight face when Peggy tried to coax information out of him.

But finally, the day came when she was taken into the maternity ward and he was forced to wait out in the hallway along with the other prospective fathers. It was ironic. Living in the future, he'd often been disappointed by the changes time had wrought, and the loss of traditions from his own time. Now that he was back in the '40s, he often found himself thinking with regret of the things from the future that had been an improvement. Like the policy of letting fathers into the delivery room. But if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was how to roll with the times, and so he paced the hallway impatiently until finally the nurses came to get him and told him he could go in now.

Smiling broadly, eager to see his son in person at last, Steve strode into the room. Peggy was lying back on the bed, looking tired but happy. Steve's eyes went down to the blanket-wrapped bundle she was holding.

To the blanket-wrapped bundles she was holding.

He froze, several steps away from the bed. Why was Peggy holding two babies?

"You with your smug smiles," Peggy said to him a little tartly. "I asked you so many times if it was going to be a boy or a girl, and you never once let on for a moment that it was to be one of each!"

Steve stared at her, stunned. "Are both of those ours?" he blurted out, louder than he meant to.

"Yes, as you very well know," Peggy said indignantly. "Oh, don't play ignorant now, Steve, it's much too late for that." She glanced down at the babies and a dimpled smile lit up her face. "And they're just perfect, aren't they? Two perfect little darlings. One of each." She looked up at Steve, accusing again. "We're going to have to go buy another bassinet, do you realize that? And twice as many clothes. Why didn't you just tell me in the first place? Ridiculous man."

Steve opened his mouth and then closed it again, completely speechless. He reached up to put an astonished hand on his head.

"Twins?" he finally managed to wheeze.

Peggy looked at him with suddenly narrowed eyes. "You mean you really didn't know?"

"No!" he said vehemently. "The boy was taller, in the photograph I saw. I thought... I thought..."

Peggy started to laugh. She winced with the pain, but she kept on laughing.

"Your face!" she said breathlessly. "Oh, I wish you could see your face!"

She laughed at him over that one for the rest of their lives.

TO BE CONTINUED