The 1950s

The next few years that followed were happy, busy years, in which their lives revolved around the twins. They named the girl Sarah, after Steve's mother, and they named the boy Michael, after Peggy's late brother. Mikey had Peggy's dark hair and eyes, while Sarah was blond and blue-eyed. They grew up strong and healthy, learning to walk and talk early, rarely getting sick. Still, caring for them was a more-than-full-time task, and Steve had his hands full just keeping them fed, rested, clean and happy during the day. The neighbors thought they were strange — there were very few women who were the breadwinners while the husband stayed home with the children — but it worked for their family, and that was all that mattered.

The best times were the evenings and the weekends, when Peggy came home and they would take little Mikey and Sarah to the park or the swimming pool or for walks in the neighborhood, where both Peggy and Steve beamed with pride every time someone stopped them to exclaim over the twins, which was often - and yet they never got tired of it. They also frequently made themselves into fools trying to coax new words or smiles or laughs out of the babies.

Despite the difficult work of caring for twins, those early years were precious to Steve, and he made the most of them. He bought a camera and took copious pictures and created innumerable sketches of his family doing all the little tasks of daily life that suddenly seemed profound rather than mundane. There were endless hours spent on the floor playing with them, and there were countless nights when he and Peggy each rocked a baby in the stillness of the nursery and felt the warmth of their bodies and their slow breathing as they drifted off to sleep. Not a day went by that Steve didn't look at his children's faces and feel a profound gratitude that he'd been blessed with them. It was strange now to think of all the years he had spent as a single man; his little family of four seemed to be as large as a world, filling up his past, present and future.

Peggy now had her hands in a number of important operations at S.H.I.E.L.D. Steve quickly learned to give his advice when she asked for it, and to bite his tongue when she did not. It was clear from her steadily increasing security level that she was doing well with the responsibilities she was being given. Every now and then she would leave on trips for days at a time, sometimes on undercover assignments meeting with other intelligence operatives or military scientists, and sometimes on diplomatic trips where she met quietly with ambassadors and politicians, not only from their own two countries but from others as well. Most of the world knew nothing of S.H.I.E.L.D. yet, and that was the way S.H.I.E.L.D. preferred it.

When the twins were 3, Peggy went on her longest overseas trip yet. Steve missed her terribly while she was gone, although he didn't allow himself to complain, not even to himself, much less to her when she called long-distance to check in with him. What Peggy was doing was important, and he couldn't begrudge her for it. After all, no one could have everything, and he knew with more certainty than most people exactly how fortunate he was to have what he did have.

One night, Steve was pulled out of the thick fog of sleep to the awareness that Mikey's sleeping little body was slipping out of his arms. Startled, he instinctively grabbed on tighter, but then he felt a soft hand touch his arm, and he knew it was Peggy standing there in their darkened bedroom. He hadn't expected her back for days, and in confusion he blinked up at her shadowy shape silhouetted against the hall light. She bent down and picked up Mikey carefully, being sure not to wake him as she cradled his heavy drooping body against her chest, and carried him across the hall into the twins' bedroom. Steve roused himself and carefully picked up Sarah, who had been sleeping on the other side of him curled up against his back, and carried her across the hall, too.

Once they had tucked the children into their beds, they tiptoed back into their own bedroom and quietly shut the door.

"Back so soon?" Steve asked softly, and he reached out to switch on a bedside lamp, flooding the room with warm light. He glanced over at Peggy and froze in surprise.

"Don't overreact," Peggy said quickly, seeing his expression. "It's only a black eye."

"I thought this was a diplomatic mission," Steve after a short pause, doing his best to obey her request and almost, but not quite, succeeding.

"Yes, that's what I thought as well," Peggy said wearily. "Apparently a third party had a different idea." It was a big, dark bruise, spreading all the way around her eye, and it looked awful. Steve thought he'd been prepared for that - hadn't he already seen her in combat by his side during the war, and didn't he already know she could handle it? - but it turned out that seeing his wife and the mother of his children injured was something else entirely.

"Can I get you some ice?" he asked, careful to keep his voice level.

"I've been icing it," Peggy said, sitting down on their bed and taking off her shoes with a sigh. "There's really nothing to do but wait for it to heal."

He sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned over and kissed him firmly. "I missed you," she said with feeling. "Did the kids do all right?"

"I missed you, too. The kids are fine." He carefully brushed her hair away from the bruised eye, trying not to grimace with empathetic pain. "Then your mission-"

"It was going very well, until it wasn't."

"I'm sorry. I know you worked a long time on it."

Peggy explained to him what had happened, and when she was finished, she sighed heavily.

"And you don't know who was behind the attack?" Steve asked.

"Not yet," Peggy said. "Walden is assigning me a team so I can look into it." She looked uneasy. "It's probably the Ten Rings. There were indications in that direction. But there's a part of me that fears it may have been Arnim Zola. I've been as careful as I know how, but if he's realized how closely I've been watching him, or the things I've been doing to hamstring him..."

A few years into their marriage, Peggy had asked Steve for more information on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s future, spurred by some strange and disturbing things she had noticed happening in the margins of several of the agency's operations. After a little cautious testing of the waters, he'd ended up telling her everything about Hydra's infiltration led by Zola. She'd been understandably upset, not least of all to find out what was going to happen to Bucky, and it had taken a while before she accepted the simple fact that Bucky himself had asked Steve not to try to undo his past. As much pain as Bucky had endured, he knew as well as anyone that they couldn't do anything to endanger the timeline in which Thanos had been defeated. He had even told Steve quietly, their last day together, that it was a relief that his suffering had gained a new purpose in that way.

"I doubt Zola knows what you're doing, but even if he does, it's to his benefit to leave you alone," Steve told Peggy with certainty. "Secrecy is more important to him than it is to you. If he tips his hand to anyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. by doing something as dramatic as getting rid of an agent, he loses everything. You're forcing him to be more careful about his recruiting. You're slowing him down. That's all you can do right now, but that's plenty."

"Contain the threat, but don't kill it," Peggy repeated their mantra. "Maintain the status quo. The parasite isn't strong enough to destroy the host yet."

They both knew how crucial it was to allow Operation Paperclip to move forward. For one thing, it was far better for Zola and the other German scientists to be working under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s supervision than drive them out into the world, where they could do all kinds of mischief without those prying eyes. For another, the information Zola's computerized brain would provide to Steve and Natasha in the future was absolutely essential, as devastating as his revelations had been to them at the time. In the end, all would be well: Project Insight would be stopped before the slaughter began. Peggy and Steve just had to have faith that the scenario would play out as it should. As it already had.

But most importantly, the two of them had realized together that while Steve already knew that Hydra's takeover of S.H.I.E.L.D. would eventually succeed, the one thing he didn't know was whether Zola had encountered a quiet resistance to his activities in the early years. And so they had taken a risk and given it a try. So far, no one else seemed to be aware of Peggy's "extracurricular" activities, although it had been a challenge to hide what she was doing not only from Arnim Zola's people, but from her own supervisors as well.

"With Zola... it's hard to know whether I'm doing too much, or not enough," Peggy murmured. "It's such delicate work."

"That's why it requires a woman's touch," Steve said.

Peggy smiled a little, but then sighed again, and laid her head on his shoulder, looking discouraged. Steve understood why. While Peggy was capable in a physical fight, it had never been her first choice for resolving a conflict. She much preferred finding diplomatic or scientific solutions, and whenever that failed she tended to take it personally.

"I wish I could help you," Steve said.

"You are helping, darling," Peggy answered without hesitation, lifting her head up and speaking emphatically. "You don't know what a comfort it is to me to know that you're here, that the children are cared for and safe, even if - God forbid - my work should ever follow me home.

"But it's more than that," she added more softly. "You are my support. You're the only one I can trust to tell everything to, even if I just need to vent. And even when I just need to be held."

"That's the easy part," he said, giving her a little squeeze.

Peggy smiled a little sadly. "Just because it's easy doesn't mean it isn't important. You and the children, you help me remember what I'm doing all this for. You help me remember what's really important. Sometimes-" She trailed off. "This isn't exactly an easy job," she admitted at last. "The nature of this work... sometimes it's hard for us to keep our moral compasses straight, so to speak." She rested her forehead against his and dropped her voice to a whisper. "But you, Steve Rogers, you keep me on the path. You keep me sane. I could never do all this without you."

"I bet you could," he said loyally, even as he gave her a kiss to thank her for her kind words.

She kissed him back with feeling. "Let's hope we never have to find out."

"Still... sometimes I wish I could go with you."

"No you don't," Peggy said quietly but confidently. "Your heart is here."

"No, I don't," Steve admitted. "I don't miss the fighting, but I do wish I could protect you." He'd toyed with the idea many times - if he could only disguise himself somehow, and act as Peggy's bodyguard for the more dangerous missions - but his abilities were so notable that even with his face covered he would give away the game. In the end the attention he would draw would make Peggy more of a target, not less. Diplomacy and covert operations suited her needs better.

"You do protect me," Peggy said firmly. "Where do you think I learned the skills I used on this mission that let me be the one to walk away after the fight?"

"Mary from MI6," Steve said promptly.

Peggy smiled slightly. "Well, yes, of course. She gave me a good start before I came to the SSR. But I used some of Natasha's moves that you taught me, too." Her eyes went a little distant. "Do you know, I think she might have saved my life on this mission. You and her both."

"Saving people is what Avengers do best," Steve said, trying to keep his tone light although his heart had just been seized by an odd mixture of pride in Nat and grief that he'd never be able to thank her for what she'd done for Peggy, however indirectly.

Peggy took a deep breath, looking as unnerved as he suddenly felt. "Talk to me about something more pleasant," she said quickly. "I need a good dose of normality."

"There's nothing normal about the night I just had with the kids," Steve said flatly.

"Yes, I was going to ask you," Peggy said curiously. "Why are there piles of wet towels heaped all over the house, and why on earth were the children asleep in our bed dressed in nothing but their underthings?"

"I just want you to know," Steve said after a carefully considered pause, "that at one point today I had everything under control."

"Oh, this is going to be good," Peggy said, sitting up a little straighter in anticipation.

"This afternoon Tom asked me if he could leave Bobby with me while he got some things done around the house."

Peggy exhaled loudly. "Again? Steve, at this point you are practically raising that boy for him."

"Well, I feel bad for him," Steve said a little defensively. "Unlike me, he doesn't have a wife coming home at the end of the day to help out. And if I don't help him, he's going to bring that awful woman back to keep house for him, and that's the last thing he and Bobby need."

"Yes," Peggy admitted reluctantly, "but honestly, Steve, you have your hands full enough with our own."

"There isn't that big a difference between two toddlers and three," Steve pointed out. "Actually, I think it might be easier with three. The twins don't get so bored when Bobby's over. Anyway, they all played together pretty well, once I hid that stupid jack-in-the-box they're always fighting over, and I even managed to get dinner made in the meantime."

"Mmmm, I had some of the leftovers before I came upstairs," Peggy said. "It was really good. What do you call it?"

"Croque monsieur. From that French cookbook I bought last month." He had remembered hearing good things about a cookbook by Julia Childs and had gone looking for it shortly after their marriage, but sadly it didn't seem to exist yet.

"French cookbook-!" Peggy said, laughing suddenly but choking it back so she wouldn't wake Mikey and Sarah across the hall. "Steve, you make the cooking ten times harder than you need to. If casseroles and boiled vegetables were good enough for my mother and yours..."

"Darling, I wish I could still eat that way, I really do," Steve said. "But I can't do canned meat and gelatin and boiled food anymore. My palate got permanently ruined by the 21st century."

"Yes, with eating all that gourmet food cooked by the servants Tony Stark hired in that fancy mansion you called headquarters-"

"It wasn't just that," Steve objected. "Even the normal food was better. Even the food carts in the city. Everything was fresher. They could ship almost any food from anywhere in the world, anytime of the year, and they put more spices in everything. And there was no war rationing, even the poor people ate like kings, and-"

Peggy had to cover her mouth to muffle a giggle. "You are adorable when you rave about the future," she said.

"Well, I'm glad you enjoy it," Steve said a little crossly, sensing that he was being mocked, but it was good to hear Peggy laugh. "Everyone in the future rolled their eyes anytime I tried to tell them about the good old days."

"Poor Steve," Peggy said sympathetically. "Always out of step, no matter when you are."

"It seems to be my fate," he said in resignation. "Anyway. Where was I?"

"Explaining the mess in the house."

"Right. So we had dinner, and I washed the dishes, and then there was still some time left before bedtime, so I thought I'd go above and beyond and make a treat for the kids." He sighed. "In hindsight, maybe I got a little too ambitious."

"Those cookies on the counter? I had one of those before I came upstairs, too," Peggy admitted. "Actually, I think you've about got the hang of it now."

"It's like my mother always said. You work hard enough, you can learn anything." Steve scratched his head. "So I gave all the kids a cookie, and I packed some up for Tom and took Bobby back over to his house. I figured I'd only be gone a minute, so I just left the twins playing in the living room while I ran across the street."

"Oh, no," Peggy said.

"Oh, yes," Steve said. "Of course, it wasn't just a minute, because Tom had to tell me a long story about his leaky pipes, and I didn't have the heart to cut him off. By the time I got away and got back home to the kids..." He trailed off.

"What did they do?" Peggy asked with some trepidation.

"One of our dear, sweet, beautiful children - and I don't know which one, because if I did, the culprit would still be standing in the corner with their nose to the wall, and probably dosed with cod-liver oil for good measure - got their grubby little hands on the big flour canister sitting on the kitchen counter, and knocked it onto the floor."

Peggy put a hand over her mouth.

"And when it hit the floor," Steve said grimly, "five pounds of flour exploded up into the air and coated every single surface in the kitchen with an inch of flour, like some kind of freak blizzard struck inside of the house."

"Oh, Steve!"

"I was gone for five minutes," he emphasized, "and I come back in to find them both sitting in the middle of it all, white as ghosts, swirling their hands around in it like they're finger painting. No, that's fine, go ahead and laugh. I think in a few more years I might find it funny, too."

"What did you do?" Peggy gasped, struggling to wipe the smile off her face.

"Only thing I could do," Steve said. "I picked them both up, one under each arm, and hauled them upstairs and put them straight into the bathtub, clothes and all."

"Better you than me," Peggy said with feeling. "I can't hardly pick them both up at the same time anymore. I think their bones are made out of cement, like yours."

"And their clothes were full of flour," Steve continued, "so we left a trail of it all the way up the stairs and down the hall and into the bathroom. It took me forever to rinse it off their skin and out of their hair - I had to change the water twice - so then I just put clean underthings on them and parked them on our bed and made them stay there while I went downstairs and cleaned up the whole mess."

"It must have taken so long," Peggy said sympathetically.

"The little monsters kept trying to come down the stairs, but I wasn't about to let them get floured all over again, so finally I bribed them to stay up there by letting them eat cookies on our bed."

"That explains the crumbs in the sheets." She made a futile effort to flick them onto the floor.

"By the time I got the kitchen and the floors all clean and came back up here, they'd fallen asleep on our bed, looking like the little angels they're not-"

"Oh Steve!"

"-and I was grumpy and I didn't want to move them and wake them up all over again, so I just washed all the flour off myself and then laid down next to them and went to sleep."

"And you still don't know which one started it all?"

Steve lifted his hands helplessly. "Well, when I caught them, Mikey was the one with a huge grin on his face and that little mischievous glint in his eyes..."

"He always looks like that," Peggy said. "He's pure Carter."

"I know. And Sarah had more flour on her, but I don't know if that means she was the one standing at ground zero when the thing came down, or if Mikey was throwing flour at her. I kept asking her, but she just looked up at me so seriously from under those eyebrows and wouldn't say much."

"She always does that."

"I know."

"She might have my face, but she has all your expressions," Peggy said. "All your personality."

"Don't pin this on me," Steve said. "For the next three days they're both your children."

With all the demands on his time, Steve didn't make much headway on his Avengers project until the twins started school, and even then it was slow going. He didn't mind; it could wait. Their children would only be small once. In the meantime, he settled for telling them bedtime stories about some of the events he was planning to illustrate. It was good practice for him, learning which parts of the stories confused or bored them, and which got the most interest. Mikey always wanted to hear about the hand fights, stopping the narrative to beg for a blow by blow description right down to the smallest detail. Sarah, on the other hand, could not get enough of hearing about Asgardian magic and the Masters of the Mystic Arts.

Steve found that he loved the '50s every bit as much as he had always suspected he would. The music appealed to him; he had discovered Buddy Holly's recordings on Clint Barton's recommendation back when he worked for S.H.I.E.L.D., and it never failed to put a smile on his face when he turned on the car radio and heard those old songs... which weren't old songs at all now, but new ones. He always got a good reaction out of Peggy when he'd blast "Peggy Sue" and sing along with it as they drove along in their station wagon, the kids complaining loudly from the back seat.

Dwight D. Eisenhower became president, which couldn't have made Steve prouder. He had never forgotten the speech General Eisenhower had given to the troops on the eve of D-Day... a speech he had often unconsciously modeled each time he felt he needed to give his own team members a pep talk prior to the mission.

He made friends with many of their neighbors and the people they attended church with, and could now answer to "Grant" as easily as he once had his real name. Sometimes, though, he lowered his guard enough talking to his friends that he slipped up and made references to movies or music that hadn't been created yet. He learned to recognize the blank looks he got, and to find ways to cover his confusing comments. It gave him a kind of secret delight to finally be the one who understood the references that others did not.

The twins grew up quickly. They had their First Communion, and they did well in school, making friends and discovering their own interests and talents. Sarah was a tender-hearted girl who kept the peace among her circle of friends with all the skill of a seasoned diplomat. Michael fell in love with baseball, and the whole family went to as many Dodgers games as they could, as Steve knew there were only a few more years left before the team would move to Los Angeles.

Sometimes Steve surprised himself with the ease in which he settled into a lifestyle so markedly different from the one he had lived in the future. Time moved differently now; there were weeks or months at a time when nothing really seemed to happen - nothing that would merit a mention in any history book, anyway - and yet every day was full from beginning to end: a happy blur of driving Sarah to her gymnastics lessons after school, and coaching Mike's Little League games, and the whole family gathering in the living room after dinner to laugh over "I Love Lucy"... and every night he drifted off to sleep with the sound of Peggy's soft breathing beside him.

From time to time, watching his children grow up at what seemed like an alarming rate, Steve would feel a stab of regret. Nothing ever stayed the same. Each time he got used to things as they were, they changed. But he had the comfort of knowing that this time, he would change with the times. He finally had... the time.

TO BE CONTINUED

Author's note: Let me know what you think! I love getting reviews, it helps me see if I'm on the right track!