Author's note: I'd like to thank everyone who has recently left a review: LaneFlames2014, Guest, dissatisfieduser, TortoisetheStoryteller, GreeKnight, ColdOnePaul, Aryaan, Lattelady, browneyedgenius, SpeedReader, Sophia the Scribe and Cepheus Noir. Your feedback is both encouraging and helpful!

Also, I have begun posting another story called "Waking Up" that takes place after Steve Rogers wakes up from the ice and before the events of "The Avengers." It fits like a puzzle piece to this story and includes appearances from his family, so if you like this one, you may want to give it a try.

1959

As the twins grew older, they began making yearly visits to England, so Sarah and Mikey could get to know their grandparents and their cousins. Peggy's brother Michael had left behind a wife and an infant daughter after his death, and now his widow had remarried and had more children, including a son named Richard - Sharon's future father. Of course, that branch of Peggy's family didn't know the truth of his identity, and it would have to stay that way. He and Peggy had agreed not to tell even their own children just yet.

At first they waited because they felt it was too much to expect young children to remember not to tell their friends that their father was a famous war hero... who was supposed to be dead. Or to leave Sarah and Mikey feeling that they had some impossible standard to live up to. It was better to leave them free to enjoy a normal childhood.

And yet they knew all about Steve Rogers. Peggy saw to that, often telling the children of their friendship that had developed when he was selected as the Project Rebirth candidate, letting them read the letters Steve had exchanged with her during the months he spent performing across the country as Captain America, and showing them the old newsreels of his service in the war. They also had the collection of Captain America comics - not the ones the propagandists had created about him during the war, but Steve's own creations. By now he had illustrated not only the true events of the first phase of his life in World War II, but some of the adventures he'd had with the Avengers too.

Peggy and Steve knew from the beginning that it was a question of when, not if, they would tell the children the whole story, since it wasn't only Steve's secret, it was Mikey and Sarah's too. Dr. Erskine had made it clear that the procedure would change every cell in Steve's body… which meant any children he had would benefit from at least some of the enhancements. To what degree, it wasn't immediately clear. The twins were healthy from birth and sturdily built, not much resembling Steve's childhood physique that had so often spurred doctors, neighbors and strangers to pronounce on him the humiliating judgement: "he's delicate." But there also weren't any obvious distinctions between the twins and the neighborhood children they ran around with all day, riding their bikes and skipping rope and playing ball.

At least not at first. But as they approached adolescence - about the time Sarah stopped letting Peggy put her blond hair into pigtails, and Mikey matter-of-factly informed them that he would no longer answer to anything but "Mike" - that started to change.

Sarah threw herself into her gymnastics lessons, and almost overnight it seemed, she became so strong, flexible and graceful that they found themselves in the odd position of hoping she didn't perform too well, so as to draw too much attention to herself. They eventually realized their worry for her was misplaced. She took great joy in performing and continually improving herself, but she was far more interested in supporting the other girls than showing off in front of them. There was a gentleness in her personality that had been there since she was small. She had made up her mind at a young age to become a nurse or a doctor, and Steve and Peggy couldn't think of an occupation that would suit her personality better.

But it was worse for Mike. He loved playing — and winning — sports of all kinds, especially the rough-and-tumble ones. Unlike the other parents, Steve and Peggy didn't fear that he might get hurt... but that he might hurt others. That he might fail to respect his own power, which seemed to be growing disproportionate to the other boys'.

One day Mike went out to the backyard to play in the treehouse with his friend Bobby after school. The boys had hardly been out there ten minutes before Steve heard a terrific crash, and one of the boy shouted something at the top of his lungs. They were always shouting when they played, but this time it sounded different, and some instinct spurred Steve to go to the window.

At a glance, he saw that there was a gaping hole in one wall of the treehouse, with Bobby's scared face peeking out. The railing that encircled the structure had been snapped, too… and there was Mike, lying flat on his back on the ground far below, surrounded by splintered wood. Steve felt his heart stop.

He bolted outside and was by Mike's side in three strides, leaning over to see if he was conscious. Mike's eyes were open, but he just laid there looking stunned. Only moments later Sarah came running over from the front yard where she had been playing with one of her friends and knelt by his other side.

"Mikey!" she cried, her face pale.

Bobby had scrambled down the ladder and dashed over, panting for breath. "Are you okay?" he gasped to Mike. "Are you-?"

Blinking rapidly, Mike grimaced and began to slowly sit up.

"No, don't try to get up," Steve said quickly, but it was too late; with a drawn-out groan Mike pushed himself up into a sitting position and gingerly reached back to rub the back of his head.

"Did you hit your head?" Steve asked breathlessly. "Don't move, son. Don't move. Just... let me check." He carefully felt all over Mike's head, but he didn't find any wound. He slid his hand down and gently felt the bones of his neck, his back, his ribs. But nothing felt amiss, and Mike made no sharp cries of pain.

"How many fingers?" Steve asked, holding them up.

"Three," Mike said.

"What's your full name?"

"Michael Steven Carter."

"Dizzy at all? Feel sick?"

"No." Mike took a deep, shaky breath and pulled away from Steve's touch then, getting back onto his feet and brushing the splinters from his clothing. Incredibly, he looked steady on his feet, no longer even grimacing in pain.

"I'm okay," he said in a normal voice, looking embarrassed at all the attention focused on him. Sarah's friend Jenny, hovering several steps back, was quietly crying, while Sarah herself had impulsively reached out to clasp Mike's hand, looking silently stricken. "Just got the wind knocked outta me for a second."

"I thought you were dead," Bobby burst out. "You fell so far..."

"What happened?" Steve asked, trying his best to slow down his racing heart, now that it seemed Mike was all right.

"We were just... just horsing around," Mike said.

"It was my fault," Bobby blurted out. "I pushed him... I didn't think I pushed him that hard, but he just went right through the wall." He was desperately trying not to cry in front of the girls, and only partially succeeding.

"It wasn't your fault," Mike said quickly.

It took some time to get all the children somewhat calmed down, but when they had finally gone back inside the house, Steve sank down onto the back porch and rested his elbows on his knees, lost in thought.

He and Peggy had worked so hard, so long, to keep this secret. Not only so that Steve could live a quiet life of anonymity, although that was important to him, but also to keep the twins safe. There were undoubtedly people in the world who could find use for a pair of quasi-super soldiers, especially if they could be taken when they were too young to effectively resist. And now Mike had just inadvertently displayed an unusual quality, to say the least, in front of two other kids in the neighborhood. Who knew what Bobby and Jenny would say to their parents tonight? Would suspicions be raised?

Most of their neighbors knew Peggy worked at the Army base but assumed she did some kind of secretarial work, which Peggy was happy to let them believe. But her connection to Project Rebirth wasn't a deep dark secret; it was all there in the Smithsonian for anyone who cared to look, and it was conceivable that someone could put two and two together, and conclude that the twins were part of some new iteration of the experiment.

He knew he would do whatever it took to keep the twins safe, and so would Peggy. But there were concerns beyond their immediate safety. As Dr. Erskine had once pointed out, Steve had learned to respect strength because of his physical weaknesses. His many illnesses, his frequent mistreatment at the hands of others: they had taught him patience. Compassion. Determination to do what was right even in the face of failure. How would his children learn these things? They had been strong and healthy all their lives. They had not even known poverty as he had, or the fear of an existential war hanging over their heads. And he had read a lot about the '60s, about the hedonism and ingratitude that would become rampant in his children's generation, in large part because of the comfort and security their parents had won for them.

How were Mike and Sarah going to handle this new truth about themselves? Their power came to them without price, without sacrifice. They were good children, he knew that, but this knowledge would change them. How could he advise them? His own transformation had come as an adult, long after his character had been established. But they would be in uncharted waters. Was he really qualified to guide them through an experience so different from his own?

And if he wasn't... who was?

"Dad?" a small voice said from behind him.

Steve took a deep breath, coming back to himself, and looked over at his son. Mike was standing a few steps away, twisting his hands together, looking nervous. His dark hair, normally parted and neatly combed to the side, was still in disarray, falling down over his forehead. He had recently hit a growth spurt, and while he was now noticeably taller than Sarah, he hadn't filled out yet, leaving him with a gangly and slightly awkward appearance.

"I'm really sorry about the treehouse," he said anxiously.

"I'm not mad," Steve reassured him quickly, regretting that he had let Mike see him brooding like that. "It was just an accident. You can help me fix it next week, okay? I'll teach you how."

"Okay," Mike said, although he still looked very unsure.

"Did Bobby go home?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," Steve said.

"He really didn't push me that hard." Mike seemed eager to explain. "I was kinda already falling in that direction. I didn't think we were being that rough..." He trailed off.

"I know. It's okay," Steve repeated.

"Do you want me to... go do my chores or something?"

"No," Steve said. "Only if you want. I just... I need to think for a while."

"Okay," Mike said in a small voice, and left.

Steve was still sitting on the back step when he heard the engine of their Ford Consul pull into the driveway, and a few minutes later Peggy came through the back door and looked down at him questioningly.

"The kids are okay," he told her quickly.

"I know they are, I just saw them in the house," Peggy said, "although they were both holed up in their rooms and being suspiciously quiet." She surveyed the damage to the treehouse with some concern. "What happened here?"

She came to sit down beside him, smoothing her full skirt and folding her hands on her lap as she gave him her full attention. He explained briefly but thoroughly.

"Are you telling me he just picked himself up and dusted himself off, Steve-Rogers-style, from something that should have shattered half the bones in his body?" Peggy asked slowly, keeping her voice low in case any of the neighbors were out in their yards.

"That's about it," Steve agreed.

"Well, why are you looking so worried?" Peggy asked with a hint of tartness. "I'm glad. If he'd been any other boy, he could have really been hurt, a long fall like that."

"If he'd been any other boy, he wouldn't have gone through the wall and the railing in the first place," Steve said with a touch of weariness. "He's heavier than he should be, and apparently his body's harder than good cedar lumber."

"Steve... we knew something like this might happen some day," Peggy said gently.

"I know."

"We have a plan for exactly this scenario. We should stick to it."

"I know." Steve met her eyes, and gamely tried to shake off his gloom. "You're right. We'll tell them. I'm just... sorry to see it end. Being a normal family. I really enjoyed it while it lasted."

Peggy smiled a little. "We still are normal. Normal for us. Since when have we ever cared how we compare to everyone else?"

He knew she was right. She laced her arm through his and they sat there side by side on the stoop in silence for a minute, lost in their own thoughts.

"How did Mike contrive to break the gate as well?" Peggy suddenly asked.

"The gate?" Steve said blankly. "He wasn't anywhere near it."

Peggy pointed. The gate was hanging at a crazy angle from the lower hinge, the upper hinge a useless twist of metal. The latch on the other side of the gate had snapped off the thick metal frame completely and was lying in the grass. It looked like a rhino had burst through the gate... without bothering to unlatch it first.

"Sarah came through that gate," he said slowly, "running to see what had happened."

"Well," Peggy said after a long pause, staring at the gate, "I suppose that answers that question as well."

That night after dinner, they called Mike and Sarah into the living room for a family meeting. Steve brought out several copies of a comic book he had created in anticipation of this day and explained to the children simply and clearly that the events he'd depicted in it were real. They were both already familiar with the comic books he'd created over the years about Captain America's battles in World War II and his adventures in the future. Sarah and Mike had naturally assumed that the latter stories were fictional, although Steve had been very careful never to tell them that. But tonight, they both seemed to pick up on the seriousness of the moment from his demeanor and Peggy's quiet confirmation that everything they were about to discuss was true.

And so the four of them took turns reading from the comic book: a story unlike the others that were packed full of battles and tech and noise and conflicts. This one was a simple love story, starting from the day Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter had met at Camp Lehigh up until they moment they had said their last goodbyes over the radio as the Valkyrie went down. But the story didn't end there.

At the center of the comic book he had created a pair of illustrations with no words: On one side, Peggy as a lone figure dressed in mourning, walking away from The Stork Club; on the other side, Steve on the Brooklyn Bridge with the modern New York City skyline behind him, gazing longingly at Peggy's picture in his compass.

Then came the turn: a full-page spread depicting the quantum tunnel in Avengers Headquarters, with its delicate mirrors suspended overhead and a single suited figure standing on the platform clutching a case in one hand and Thor's hammer in the other, with the caption: "The impossible became possible."

The second half of the story showed Steve reuniting with Peggy back in 1945. His decision to take the name of Grant Buchanan and live a life of anonymity. Their wedding. The birth of the twins. And finally, a succession of images showing all the little moments in their lives up until the present day that had formed their own family's version of a happily ever after.

It took a long time for the four of them to get through the story, with each new revelation bringing a fresh round of amazement from the twins, and sometimes a few tears. They stayed up late into the night, answering a thousand questions from Mike and Sarah. When the children finally understood everything and the shock had subsided somewhat, the four of them got up stiffly from their seats and agreed to go to bed. No doubt there would be more questions later, but for now they were all exhausted, wrung out from the emotion and the lateness of the hour.

Mike was completely thrilled with the revelations of the night, and didn't bother hiding it. Already he was asking Steve for lessons in hand to hand fighting, eager to test the limits of his strength. Sarah, however, had flatly refused to entertain any talk of fighting herself, no matter whether it was Peggy or Steve doing the teaching.

"Well, we just found out in the course of one night that Dad is a superhero, that monsters and aliens are real, and so is magic and time travel," Mike said. "I can't wait to find out what's in store for us tomorrow. Night, Mom. Night, Dad. Night, Sarah." He hugged everyone swiftly and then jogged up the stairs to bed, whistling a jaunty tune as he went.

Sarah was being even quieter than usual, though, and a few minutes after she went into her bedroom, Steve knocked softly on her door. She called him in, and when he opened the door, he found her sitting on the edge of her bed, dressed in her pajamas yet not looking like she was ready for sleep. Her blond hair tumbled around her shoulders in waves, and she somehow looked younger than she really was.

"You okay?" he asked her softly. "I know this is a lot to deal with. I'm sorry if we upset you."

"Upset? Not exactly," Sarah said slowly. "The more I think about it... I really shouldn't have been surprised. The way Mom always talked about Captain America... I kinda figured she must have had a little bit of a crush on him."

In the middle of moving aside a stack of Sinatra and Elvis albums so that he could sit down, Steve couldn't help but let a hint of a smile touch his lips, and seeing it, Sarah grudgingly smiled a little too. "I guess it was a little more serious than that," she said wryly.

Then she shook her head slowly. "And what's even weirder is, I always thought you looked a little bit like him, underneath that beard of yours, but I just figured Mom must have looked for someone like him to marry. I mean, you even act like him." She exhaled loudly. "But I never thought for a second that you actually were..." She trailed off.

"Are you sorry?" he asked.

"Sorry?" She gave him a genuinely startled look. "Daddy... you were one of my heroes, as far back as I can remember. Both of you. The real you, and Captain America, too." She met his eyes as he sat down on the bed beside her. "And I'm proud, really proud, to be your daughter. But I'm flipping my lid a little bit, too. I'm... I'm not what I thought I was."

"You're exactly who you've always been," he said quietly. "You're a good person. That's all I've ever wanted for you. I don't want you to feel like you have to live up to any expectations."

"It isn't about that," Sarah said. "I never wanted to be anything special. I didn't think I was." She stared into the distance, looking unhappy. "Mike's not going to be able to try out for the football team like he wanted to, is he? And I'm going to have to give up gymnastics. My team was supposed to start competing this year."

"Honey..."

"We'd be cheating, Dad," she said flatly. "It wouldn't exactly be fair, would it? Everything comes to us too easily. Not like everyone else."

"You've always worked just as hard as any of the other girls," he said firmly.

"The other girls weren't super-soldiers," she whispered.

"Sarah, you don't have to think of yourself as a soldier," Steve said, emphasizing the words very clearly. "I know you're not interested in fighting. That was what I agreed to do with my gift, but you're free to do whatever you want with yours. You don't have to fight."

"But that's what this was designed for," Sarah said, pressing her hand against her heart and looking almost angry. "Isn't it?"

Steve sighed. "This may not have been true of everyone at the SSR, but Dr. Erskine made it very clear to your mother when she recruited him that he had no intention of creating a human killing machine. He was trying to save lives, not destroy them, and I did my best to fulfill his wishes."

"Well, what else am I supposed to do with this?" she demanded.

Steve thought carefully before answering. "My childhood wasn't always easy. I was almost constantly sick. How many times have you been sick or hurt, growing up?"

"Practically never," she admitted, sniffling.

"The serum did much more than make a person fit for winning wars... or gymnastics competitions." He stroked her hair gently. "It made us healthy. You want to be a doctor. You know what a gift that alone can be."

"But it's something I wanted to help others with," Sarah said. "I didn't expect anything... extraordinary for myself. I mean... you're really in your 50s now, aren't you? But you look like you're mom's age. Is that going to happen to me, too?"

"I don't know," he said honestly. "You may only have some of my enhancements. The effect might not be so dramatic for you. But yes, I think you can expect to have better health than most people have. Your life may be extended, too."

Sarah let out a shaky breath. "But that was what I wanted to do for everyone else," she repeated softly, her eyes going distant.

There were, as they had anticipated, many more questions from the children to come. Within days it had occurred to Mike to ask, with a mischievous glint in his eye, for a prediction of the future.

"What kind of a prediction do you want?" Steve asked.

"Next president," Mike said promptly.

"Don't you want to know who's going to win the World Series this year?" Steve asked, surprised.

Mike gave him a strange look. "Are you kidding me, Dad? That would spoil all the fun of watching it. But I don't actually care about the president."

Shaking his head a little, but smiling, Steve glanced over at Peggy. "You want to get the picture?"

She promptly stepped into the guest bedroom that doubled as their home office, and came back a few moments later with a small framed picture.

"Remember when I went to Washington, D.C. last fall?" Peggy asked Mike. She handed the picture to him. "Here he is. I had my picture taken with him. The senator from Massachusetts, Jack Kennedy."

"Him?" Mike said in surprise, looking at the photo, and Sarah leaned to look over his shoulder curiously. "He looks way too young to be president."

"Youngest president ever elected," Steve confirmed.

"Wait." Mike frowned. "Mom, didn't you say he was Catholic?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"We're actually going to vote in a Catholic?" Mike was amazed.

"So your father claims." Peggy met Steve's eyes and smiled, adding: "He hasn't been wrong yet."

Steve nudged Sarah, who was sitting next to him. "You want a prediction of your own?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "I believe you, Daddy. You don't have to prove it."

"Oh, I believe him too," Mike interjected swiftly. "I just want the fun of being in the know!" He laughed with delight at the thought. "Hey Mom - what was he like? Our future president?"

Peggy grew thoughtful. "He asked me what I thought about President Eisenhower's new NASA program. He said he saw the use of the ARPA because of its military applications, but he worried that trying to chase Russia into space might turn out to be a boondoggle."

"What do you say?" Mike asked curiously.

Peggy shrugged nonchalantly. "I told him that a lot of hopeful talk about American exceptionalism and the grandeur of science could win him the hearts of every man, woman and child in the country." She paused. "Do you know, I think I may have convinced him."

Mike suddenly shot a suspicious look at Steve. "Is NASA going to be a boondoggle?" he asked.

Steve raised his eyebrows at Mike. "I'm not going to tell you everything. Wait and see for yourself."

Later that night, when Mike and Peggy had gone out on an errand, Sarah unexpectedly turned off the radio program that was playing and came to sit by Steve on the couch, looking at him with a silent question in her eyes. He put down the sketchpad he was holding so he could put his arm around her shoulders instead, and willingly she snuggled up against him.

"Dad?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"I've been thinking about the Asgardians," she said. "And the Masters of the Mystic Arts."

"What about them?" he asked.

She shrugged a little, trying to look nonchalant and not quite succeeding. "Now that I know that they're real... I was just wondering how they did their magic," she said.

"How?" Steve repeated. He thought for a moment. "I'm not really sure, to be honest."

"I've been reading through all your comics again," she said. "And I can't figure it out. The Asgardians... it's like everything they made had magic worked into it somehow. Like the Soul Forge that Jane Foster saw. How did they build that? I mean, could any of them learn how to do something like that, or were some of them just born with magic, and only they could do it?"

Steve thought for a moment. "I'm not sure about the Asgardians. With the Masters of the Mystic Arts, I think it was just a skill they learned, like anything else. I remember Wong told us at Tony's wedding about a man who had stayed with them long enough to learn how to walk again - he had some kind of paralysis - but he decided not to stick around and join their cause. He just went back home and lived a normal life."

Sarah suddenly sat up straight. "He used magic to make himself walk again?" she demanded.

"That's what Wong said. It wasn't permanent, though. He had to use magic continually to make it work. When Rhodey found that out, he wasn't interested in pursuing it any further for himself. He said Tony's braces worked well enough for what he needed."

Sarah deflated somewhat. "So unless we teach every sick and injured person on Earth to use magic on themselves..."

Steve frowned a little, seeing now where she was going with this.

"If magic could be used to heal someone permanently, I think Dr. Strange would have known," he said. "And as a doctor, I don't think he would have held something like that back from the world." He thought for a moment. "Actually, Strange himself had some kind of injury - nerve damage to his hands, I think - and Wong said his hands would still shake unless he was actively focused on channeling magic through them."

Sarah's shoulders sagged and, as so often happened, she seemed to retreat into her own private world of thought where no one could follow her.

At other times throughout the next few weeks, both the twins were somber. While they were determined not to compete in their chosen sports as they had originally planned, feeling that it wouldn't be fair to the other kids, they couldn't always hide their disappointment about it. But a couple of weeks later, they came to Peggy and Steve, suddenly excited about an idea they had cooked up between them.

"We were tired of feeling sorry for ourselves," Mike explained, "and then we realized, we're not the only kids who want to play sports but can't. What if we found all the boys in our school - and maybe some of the other schools around here, too - who wanted to play football but didn't make the team for whatever reason, and made a kind of practice team? Or actually, two practice teams, so we could play each other? Maybe some of the boys could get good enough to play on a real team the next year. And you could help, Dad! You could be one of the coaches."

"I don't know how to play football," Steve said.

Mike creased his brow. "But-"

"I weighed 100 pounds soaking wet in high school," Steve reminded him. "No one would let me on the field, not even to carry water."

"Oh, yeah. I forgot." Mike looked crestfallen for a moment, but then he perked up. "Well, we can find a couple of dads to help, anyway."

"You're talking about working not only with boys who weren't big enough or good enough to make the cut, but also the boys who didn't make the team because of their grades or their behavior," Steve pointed out. "That's going to be a pretty challenging group to pull together and make into a team."

"I know," Mike said. "It's going to be a lot of work. We know that." He and Sarah exchanged glances. "But Dad, if Mom can make all those different people at S.H.I.E.L.D. work together and play nice, and if you could pull together a bunch of soldiers from different countries and turn them into the Howling Commandos..." He shrugged. "Why can't we do this?"

"And I had an idea too," Sarah put in, although as usual she had been hanging back and letting Mike do most of the talking. "What if we found all the girls who wanted to be on the cheer team and didn't make the tryouts? Maybe I can't compete in gymnastics, but I could teach them what I know, and we could make a cheer squad for when the practice teams play each other. It would help it feel like a real game, make it something special."

Peggy smiled at them both. "I think it's a great idea."

TO BE CONTINUED

Author's note: What do you think so far? Is everything making sense, and what has captured your interest? Take a moment and leave a review!