Author's note: Thanks to girliemom, gaa and the many Guests who left reviews!

March 1991

"You're so quiet tonight," Peggy said softly to Steve one night as they were getting ready for bed. "You're thinking about them, aren't you?"

She didn't have to say anything further; Steve knew what she was referring to. At this point in their marriage their minds had a tendency to run together on the same track; there were times when he didn't know if he had any truly original ideas anymore, the way his and Peggy's thoughts tended to merge and flow and weave together, sometimes with hardly even a need for words.

"Yeah," he said with a sigh, sitting down on the bed. It had been weighing on him, the approaching deaths of Howard and Maria, and not just lately, either. Really, it had been weighing on him since the first moment he had been given reason to suspect their deaths were not an accident after all — that terrible day when Peggy's S.H.I.E.L.D. had turned against him and the artificial mind of Arnim Zola had hinted that Hydra had been involved somehow. It had been a blow, to think that his old friend Howard might have died that way, at an age when he should have been getting ready for a well-deserved retirement to live out the rest of his years in peace and luxury. And then he had met the Winter Soldier on the bridge, and recognized Bucky, and not long afterward it had occurred to him that it might have been Bucky himself who had been sent to do the dirty work.

It had been hard to think of it. Bucky and Howard, who had met each other through their mutual friendship with him, who had drank together and sang together and given Steve a hard time about Peggy together… in a cruel twist of fate, could they have ended up pitted against each other?

The worst part was that he didn't know for sure. Couldn't know for sure. Zola's mind had been destroyed before he and Nat could confirm the disturbing insinuation one way or the other, and despite their best efforts he and Sam had failed to find Bucky fast enough to get the truth from him. One thing Steve knew for certain: if it had been Bucky, he would never have done something like that willingly. And so Steve had allowed two years to pass by as he clung to the faintest of hopes that he would somehow rescue Bucky and find a way to see that justice was done, to prove that Bucky was not responsible for his actions, to protect an innocent man from both Hydra and the law...

And then there was the most painful regret of all: that Steve hadn't kept Tony in the loop about any of it.

He'd told himself countless times that he didn't know for sure that Bucky had done it. That he was sparing Tony unnecessary pain by not dredging up an already painful memory and making it even worse. That even if it had been Bucky, it had ultimately been Hydra that was responsible, and that justice was served with the deaths of Alexander Pierce and Baron von Strucker and Brock Rumlow and every other Hydra agent the Avengers brought down. Steve had told himself all these things, and he had believed them. After all, he had always been honest to a fault, even to himself.

Never mind the quiet but persistent uncomfortable feeling he kept buried down deep inside during those years: that it was really himself he was protecting.

Finally, when Zemo had thrown his evidence into their faces and Steve had been confronted with Tony's disbelieving eyes — and yes, his justifiable anger — Steve had been forced to face the full truth: that he simply hadn't been able to bear the thought of losing one more thing. Not one more.

His whole life, he had given of himself. Given until it hurt. No complaints, no regrets, no holding back. It was how he'd been raised. He'd volunteered for a war and seen unimaginable death and despair — dealt out plenty of it himself, and carried the burden of that — had delayed pursuing Peggy in favor of pursuing Hydra, and in the end had chosen to lay down his own life to save countless others.

Only that hadn't been the end of it. He'd come back to life only to find out that he'd lost more than he had ever dreamed it was possible to lose: his own place in time, and everything and everyone that went along with that. He had lost the woman of his dreams, first to time and then to death itself.

And then he had crossed paths with Bucky against all reason or hope, and it had felt like the universe was finally offering something to Steve in return for everything he had sacrificed. And even though he knew that Bucky was not the same man he had been, that rehabilitating him might not even be possible... during those years that he and Sam had searched for Bucky, Steve hadn't been able to stop himself from dreaming about what the reunion could be like. To no longer be the only man out of time, alone in a world that he didn't belong to. To have someone who had suffered the same losses he had, and understood them in a way no one else could. Someone to remember the old times with. Someone to talk about Peggy with. And not just anyone — his best buddy. The only person besides his mother who had seen a young Steve Rogers for who he truly was, long before the world knew him as Captain America.

Finally, he would have a chance to repay Bucky for all the times he had sailed in with both fists to protect Steve. For his staunch friendship. For the way he and his family had practically taken Steve in after his mother's death. And Steve could absolve himself of the guilt he had felt the day he failed to prevent Bucky's fall from the train. Everything that had gone wrong could be made right again.

With that gift nearly in his grasp, he hadn't been about to stand the thought of having it taken away from him... and Steve had reason to fear that Tony's tendency to think with his heart instead of his head would endanger it all. And so he had permitted himself one moment of selfishness. Just one. And the price he'd paid for for his silence had been incalculably heavy: it had destroyed his friendship with Tony and torn the Avengers apart at a time when they could least afford it.

He had no one to blame but himself. But it was hard not to think that none of these things would have happened in the first place if Hydra had not chosen to assassinate the Starks.

"Steve…" Peggy said slowly as she sat down next to him on the bed. "Are you sure, absolutely sure, that we can't change this?"

"We've been through this before," Steve said wearily. "With Janet Van Dyne."

"I know," Peggy said, looking troubled. "But this… this feels different. Janet chose her fate. She sacrificed herself to save others. Howard and Maria… they're going to die for nothing, and they're not even going to see it coming, much less choose it. It just… it feels very wrong."

"I know," Steve said softly. "But even if we managed to change it, you know what will happen."

"A branch in the timeline," Peggy answered reluctantly. "An alternate future."

"And the Ancient One won't permit that to happen," Steve finished. "She'll clip the branch."

"But why?" Peggy demanded with a sudden passion. "Why must she? How could saving Howard and Maria make the future worse rather than better?"

"Easy. If you change their fates, you change Tony's. And his life is the one thing we can't meddle with. Everything depends on it."

Peggy was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Explain that."

"Peggy, if there's one thing you've made clear over the years," Steve said gently, "it's that this is the one thing about the future you don't want explained to you."

She reached up to fiddle with a strand of hair, a rare expression of uncertainty. "How much is there left that I don't know?" she asked after a beat. "Because I feel like I must know almost everything you do by now."

"You probably do," he admitted.

"I know something bad happened," Peggy said. "Something so bad that you and the Avengers were willing to do something as drastic as travelling through time to fix it. Something that was worth Tony and Natasha dying for."

"Yes."

"I assume it was a disaster of some kind. Something that killed a lot of people."

"Yes."

"And you haven't told me the nature of the disaster because-" Peggy slowed her words, sounding reluctant to let them move past her lips "-because I've told you I don't want to know about anything bad that's going to happen to our family."

"If there's one thing you've been consistent about, it's that."

"That's the part that doesn't make sense," Peggy said, growing suddenly fierce. "In that time you didn't know we had a family. So how could you possibly know whether any of our family were among the victims?"

"I can't really answer that, honey. Not without telling you-"

"Then tell me."

Steve paused for a long moment, looking her over carefully. "What, all of it?"

"Yes," Peggy said positively. "All of it. I don't want to be in the dark anymore. I want to know everything you know. If I'm expected to just sit back and let my friends die a meaningless death, I have to know exactly what I'm doing it for."

"It'll be hard for you to hear."

"I know. I've been thinking about this for a long time. I'm ready for it."

Steve took a deep breath, collecting his thoughts. He'd had many years to think through how he would explain this when the time came. "It wasn't a small disaster, what we faced in the future," he told Peggy. "Not like the war you and I fought in."

Peggy's eyes widened. "World War II, a small disaster?"

"Yeah. Only 75 million people died."

"Only?"

"I told you. It was bad."

Peggy visibly braced herself. "How bad are we talking? How many people died?"

Steve knew it was right that Peggy should know this at last, knew that it was time and maybe past time, and yet he couldn't stop himself from asking one last time: "Are you sure you want to hear this?"

Peggy spoke with a clenched jaw. "How many?"

Steve took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Four billion."

"Billion?" she whispered. Disbelief filled her eyes. "Four billion? How… how is that possible? What weapon could possibly-"

"And that was just our planet."

Peggy's chest heaved with suppressed emotion. "Other planets, too?"

"Every planet. Every place in every corner of the galaxy. Exactly half of all life was eliminated. It was…" He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering. "It was unimaginable. It was unreal. We couldn't really understand for the longest time that it had really happened, that we had failed that badly..."

As clearly and succinctly as he could, he explained to her Thanos' twisted mission, and the gauntlet he had made with the Infinity Stones, and the Decimation he had unleashed the fateful day he had snapped his fingers and transformed his dark vision into reality. Then he had to sit back and wait as Peggy, finally understanding the magnitude of what had happened, put her face in her hands and cried sharp, bitter tears.

"So that's how you know it happened to our family, too," Peggy choked out when she could speak again at last. Her eyes were distant, almost as if she was speaking to herself. "So many lives… We couldn't possibly have gone unscathed."

"There wasn't a man, woman or child who wasn't affected," Steve confirmed grimly. "For every person there was a 50-50 chance. And anyone who didn't vanish in the Snap still lost someone. A parent, a spouse, a child…"

"Oh, God," she whispered, looking sick. "Our children, Steve… we had two babies. Two. If the Decimation took every other person…" She took several shaky breaths. "We're going to lose one of them, aren't we? Maybe even both."

His only answer was to clench his jaw; this was something he had tried very hard not to think about over the years.

"All our grandchildren," Peggy continued, horror in her eyes, "they'll be married by then. They'll have children of their own. And half of them…"

"I know," Steve said, giving her shoulders a squeeze.

"And you," Peggy said in a choked voice. "I know I won't be around by then, but if you are…"

"I managed to beat the odds once," Steve said matter-of-factly. "If I were a gambling man..." He didn't bother finishing.

"But you fixed it," Peggy said, with the air of a woman grasping at straws. "You undid it. You and the Avengers. Didn't you? Isn't that what the time machine was for?"

"Yes. We brought everyone back. But it took years. Five years. Years that no one could ever really get back."

He opened his dresser drawer and pulled out one of his comic books, the last one he had drawn of the Avenger years. The only one Peggy had never seen. He gave it to her to read, and answered all of her questions to the best of his ability, as midnight came and went and the rain fell steadily on their roof outside.

"Now you see why we can't save the Starks," he said at last. "Of all the scenarios that Dr. Strange saw, the only one that ended with a victory depended on a Tony Stark who had lost his parents, who had learned to carry responsibility on his shoulders. A Tony Stark who became Iron Man and developed the convictions he needed to lay down on the wire and let everyone else crawl over him."

"I hear you, and I understand," Peggy said. Her voice was rough with emotion. "But I don't like it."

"I don't like it either," Steve agreed. "But it isn't really about following some arbitrary rule about time travel, or trying to avoid having the Ancient One come sailing in with the Time Stone to undo whatever alternate futures you and I might accidentally create if we changed the past. Even if I was wrong about how all of that worked, consider the fact that all the other Avengers had access to the same Quantum Tunnel I did. None of them suggested, or tried, to use it to undo anything except the Snap. Natasha could have gone back to stop the KGB from training her as an assassin. Bruce could have used it to prevent his own gamma accident. Even Tony himself could have warned his father, when the two of them met in 1970, and tried to save his parents that way.

"But he didn't. None of them did. They all understood the same thing: that whatever the personal cost, bringing back everyone Thanos Decimated was more important than trying to undo our own pain. That's why, as much as I wish we could save Howard and Maria..."

"We can't," Peggy whispered.

They laid down in bed together, and held each other until Peggy finally drifted off to sleep, puffy-eyed and exhausted from her grief. But Steve could not sleep. He laid there wide awake, with his hand over Peggy's, and let his thoughts run their natural course as the hours slipped by. And when the morning sun began to stream through the window, Peggy stirred in bed, and then slowly opened her eyes and saw that he was already awake and sitting up in bed, leaning against the headboard.

"Have you been up all night?" she asked, brow furrowing. She still had dark circles under her eyes; whatever sleep she had gotten had not been restful.

"Peggy…" Steve said. "We already know we didn't save Howard and Maria's lives."

"Yes," she said, looking defeated. Resigned.

"But do we know that we didn't try?" Steve asked slowly.

She sat up in bed and thought about that for a long moment. "I… suppose not."

"Then-" Steve met her eyes firmly. "I think we should try."

"Try to save them?" Peggy repeated, looking surprised, and no wonder. "But you said last night-"

"-that we can't save them. I know. But I thought of something while you were sleeping: there's really nothing to stop us from trying."

Peggy gave him an incredulous look. "Knowing that we're going to fail?"

"Yeah."

Peggy let that sink in. "So that you can feel better about it?" she asked, a deep concern for him growing in her eyes. "Unburden yourself of the guilt?"

"No," Steve said firmly. "Because it's the right thing to do."

"Steve, that's-" Peggy shook her head in wonderment. "That's insane, and completely hopeless, and I think... maybe the bravest thing you've ever said."

"Think about it," Steve said, growing more animated as his conviction set in. "Isn't that what we would do if we didn't know the future? If you had found out in a natural way that Howard was making super-soldier serum, even if you didn't know how it would all end, wouldn't you try to convince him to give up the project? Or at the very least be more careful about how he did it?"

"The thing that's bothered us about this all along," Peggy said slowly, "is that Howard and Maria didn't seem to have a choice about their fates. But do we know that's true?"

"If there's one thing this whole trip to the past has taught me," Steve said, "it's that I don't know as much about what happened during this time as I thought. I never knew that I knew the Pyms, that I taught Hope how to fight. I never even knew about the existence of my own family. I have a lot more space to work with than I thought I would when I decided to come back to you.

"You're saying that perhaps their deaths had more meaning than we realized?"

"The only thing I know for certain about Howard and Maria's deaths is the camera footage Zemo showed us," Steve pointed out. "Only two minutes' worth of information. We know that the news coverage of their deaths was wrong."

"And you have the last conversation Tony had with them before they died," Peggy reminded him.

"I don't even have that," Steve said.

"But that machine he invented, the retro-framing device," Peggy said, frowning thoughtfully. "You saw the video of the presentation he made to MIT about it, didn't you? I thought you said it transferred his memory into visual form."

"That's just it," Steve said. "The reason Tony invented the device was so that he could alter his memory of that day for therapeutic reasons. The memory I saw was a lie. I can tell you exactly how Tony wishes that last conversation with his parents went. But I have no way of knowing what was really said." He took a deep breath, looking unhappy. "I assume it was a fight. Something ugly between Tony and Howard. Otherwise, he wouldn't have felt the need to change it."

They sat together on the bed thinking for a while, as the sunlight streamed through the blinds and warmed them both.

"Let's do this," Peggy said, breaking the silence with a firm determination in her voice. "Let's try to save them."

"Let's do it," he agreed, and neither one of them could help but smile at each other, feeling a sudden surge of hope despite the hopelessness of this mission. It felt right, and that meant there was nothing left to consider.

"We'll need Mike's help, at the very least," Peggy said in a business-like way.

"We should get the whole family in on this," Steve said.

"Are we going to explain everything to them?" Peggy asked. "Everything about… Thanos?"

"I didn't want to tell any of them unless and until you knew," Steve said. "But we should tell Mike and Tien, and Sarah and Dave, at least. They're going to live through it, and I think they have a right to know."

"What about the children? The ones who are already inducted into the Captain America Club?"

Steve sighed. He hated to think of burdening the grandchildren with knowledge that terrible, but on the other hand, it might be a kindness for them to know sooner rather than later. And a few of them, like Bram and Natty, were nearly adults anyway. "I think we should leave that decision up to their parents."

They immediately put their plan in motion, and about a week after Steve and Peggy had told their children and their spouses everything, they reached out to both Sarah and Mike again and were informed that they had decided to tell the four oldest children — Mike and Tien's Natty and Harrison, and Sarah and Dave's Bram and Maggie — everything as well, their parents having decided that it would be for the best.

Steve and Peggy were the first to arrive at Sarah's house for the family meeting, and Dave let them in and led them down to the basement, where the half-windows had been covered with black-out curtains so that Sarah could practice her newfound skills down there without fear of the neighbors seeing. When Steve and Peggy came down the stairs behind Dave, they saw Sarah hunched over a musty old book in a pool of bright light cast by a lamp, reading the tiny handwritten lines with an intent expression. Bram was leaning over her shoulder, reading just as intently.

"Is that from the Sanctum?" Peggy asked curiously, coming over by them.

"From their library, yes," Sarah said distractedly.

"Making any progress?" Steve asked.

"Well, if establishing how Dr. Erskine didn't enchant the serum is progress," Sarah said, straightening up wearily, "then yes, I'm making progress."

"How didn't he do it?" Steve asked.

Sarah rubbed her bleary eyes. "Here's the thing. Master Mahika started me off learning how to gather extra-dimensional energies to cast spells. That's how the Masters of the Mystic Arts make portals, and how they get in and out of the Mirror Dimension. There's just one problem. Extra-dimensional energy runs really... hot, for lack of a better word. That's good when you're conjuring weapons and shields, because you want them to be as powerful as possible. But I need to be able to cast spells over a person, not to destroy but to heal, and the human body is a delicate thing. Using dimensional energy for a cellular-level medical treatment is like using a sledgehammer for a job that requires a scalpel."

Peggy frowned. "Isn't there another tool you can use?"

Sarah nodded toward the ancient book. "That's what I've been researching. It's also possible to pull energy from my own body and channel it elsewhere. If I use that technique, I would be transferring our own dimension's power from one human to another, which means the energies involved are much more compatible."

"It's the magical equivalent of donating blood," Dave put in. "It weakens the donor, but it can save the patient's life."

"And once I've injected the serum into a patient and loosened their genetic structures," Sarah continued, "theoretically I could pour a portion of my personal energies inside them to direct them into triggering whatever physical changes they desire: repairing an organ defect or fighting a disease or whatever it is that needs treating."

"You'll direct them? You mean, with telepathy?" Peggy asked, sounding startled.

Sarah shook her head in a quick negation. "I'm no Wanda Maximoff, and I don't think there's a spell in existence that could make me a telepath. This technique I'm studying, it's less of a mental exercise and more of a spiritual one. Spirit, or chi, or astral forms, whatever you want to call it. You know, the kinds of words that give most scientists the willies." She smiled briefly.

"What does Master Mahika think of this?" Steve asked.

"She was pretty concerned," Sarah admitted. "The Masters don't mess around with this technique very much. The danger with using personal energy is that if you accidentally transfer too much out of your own body-"

"-you run out of energy to sustain your own life," Steve finished, feeling a sudden surge of concern.

"Right. Although being what I am... I have more strength to give than most," Sarah said with characteristic understatement.

"But not an infinite amount."

"I'm being careful, Dad, I promise. Right now I'm just throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. Do you want to see what I've got so far?"

Peggy and Steve exchanged glances, and then nodded.

Sarah stood up and moved away from the desk and settled into a relaxed stance, feet shoulder width apart and arms hanging loosely at her sides. Instinctively they all backed up and left a circle of space around her. Slowly, she lifted her hands up, keeping the palms down, and bent her knees slightly as she lowered her palms again. She took a smooth step to the side with one foot, and both arms came up again, this time in a graceful beckoning gesture. One motion flowed into the next in a long unbroken sequence, as she slowly turned, and stepped, and moved her arms through the air in gentle arcs with a relaxed expression on her face.

"Is that…?" Peggy began, tilting her head curiously.

"Tai chi," Bram confirmed quietly. "The philosophies are so similar… and we figured the Chinese wouldn't have been doing this for so many hundreds of years if there weren't something to it."

The longer Sarah continued her slow graceful motions, the deeper the serenity settled in her eyes… and her eyes seemed to be an even brighter shade of blue than usual despite the dim light down here, until suddenly Steve realized that her eyes were, in fact, glowing blue, and that there were faint wisps of blue light beginning to curl up smoke-like from her fingertips. He took in a deep breath, fascinated, as her entire outline began to emit a faint glow. He'd seen this before, helping Wanda work to develop her powers, and yet in a way this was almost nothing like that. There was no fire and vim, no crackle of power on the cusp of exploding into action, only a silent serene light that seemed to be more than do.

Slipping back into her original simple stance, Sarah then tipped her head back slowly, her arms fully extending outward as if in preparation for an embrace, and as abruptly as if it had been focused through a crystal, every particle of blue light surrounding her body coalesced into a pair of light beams shooting out of her shoulder blades, fanning upward and outward like two enormous wings. For one breathless moment it held, and then Sarah's hands swirled down into a new position in front of her belly, capturing the light and forming it into a brightly glowing ball of blue energy hovering inside her cupped hands, one on top, one below.

Sarah took a deep breath, holding it there for one long trembling moment, and then she began to move again, keeping her hands in cupping shape, holding the pulsing ball of energy, gently pushing it and pulling it and rolling it between her hands until, finally, she deliberately pushed it into her belly with a deep sigh of relief. The light faded as it was absorbed back into her body, and suddenly Sarah was her ordinary self again, breathing deeply, head bowed and eyes cast down. Dave hesitantly reached out and gripped her elbow, and she wobbled on her feet just a little before recovering her balance with Dave's support.

"I'm okay," she murmured, lifting her head up again and looking more alert. "It gets a little easier every time I try. I'm getting a better feel for my limits." She gazed at her parents, judging their reactions. "Are you two okay with this?" she asked them, a little hesitantly.

"I've seen magic before, honey," Steve said promptly, although seeing his own daughter lit up with energy from within was somehow stranger than seeing Wanda or the Masters of the Mystic Arts wield their powers. "And I'm so proud of you. I know you've been working hard."

"It's beautiful," Peggy said softly. "But I never saw Dr. Erskine doing anything like that to you," she added, glancing at Steve. "Did you?"

"No, I didn't," Steve admitted.

"He may have had ways to make you forget," Sarah said.

"Maybe he worked on you while you slept," Bram put in.

Sarah nodded. "Or maybe he enchanted the serum directly, before you were ever injected with it. Transferring personal energy into inanimate materials is much trickier, but he may have had no choice. It's not like he could have let anyone at the SSR see what he was really doing."

Dave shook his head. "No wonder Dr. Erskine didn't put any of this in his notes. It wasn't just paranoia about the misuse of his research; he never would have gotten approval for a project like this if they'd known what it involved."

"That's true," Peggy admitted.

"The world wasn't ready for it," Sarah said.

"The world still isn't ready for it," Peggy pointed out. "Even if you can get this to work, darling, you can't exactly get FDA approval to cast spells over sick people."

"One problem at a time," Dave said. "We still haven't figured out how to make the serum from scratch. Poor Dad here must be sick of getting poked with needles." He slapped Steve's back sympathetically.

"I don't mind," Steve said quickly, as he always did, but he knew Dave and Sarah worried about that anyway. Just then, the doorbell rang.

"That'll be Mike's family," Dave said, and he jogged back up the basement stairs to let them in.

"Meanwhile, we can't work out how to safely test any of this," Sarah continued. "Since the serum only works on someone with free will, animal testing is out. We haven't come up with anything yet."

"Is Dave learning how to do magic, too?" Steve asked.

Sarah shook her head, looking sober. "I've cut back on my hours so much while I figure all this out, Dave's almost supporting our family on his own now. He says that between his research at work and his research at home, he doesn't have time to tackle this, too."

"Is everything all right?" Peggy asked, brow knitted with concern.

"It's been a bit of an upheaval, but we'll adjust," Sarah said quietly. "We're both in agreement on how important this is, and that it's worth our family making some sacrifices to make it happen. Bram's taken a job now too, and that's been a help." Bram put his arm around his mother's shoulders and squeezed in a silent gesture of support. "And Maggie's been helping with the younger kids. Ever since she got her license she's even been able to drive them to lessons and things when my hands are too full." She blew out a long sigh. "I don't know what I'd do without her, to be honest."

"Honey!" Dave called from upstairs. "Everyone's here!"

"We'll be right up!" Sarah called back.

The four of them went up the stairs and joined the new arrivals... and there were enough of the family in the "Captain America Club" now that even Sarah's spacious and pleasant living room was in danger of overcrowding, although the five younger grandchildren had each been sent to a friend's house for the day. Steve offered the rocking chair to Peggy and then stood next to her, hand resting on the back of her chair, as everyone got settled in.

Mike and Tien sat on one couch, hands entwined, and their daughter Natty gracefully sank down next to her mother. Harrison started to move over to sit by his sister, but before he could Maggie darted in and squeezed in next to her cousin, the two girls linking arms and exchanging friendly smiles as they got comfortable.

Harrison shrugged and went over to sit by his cousin Bram instead, seated on the other couch with Dave and Sarah. The two boys were both so broad-shouldered that it was a tight fit, and Dave grimaced slightly and tried to move over to make a little more room for them. He had his arm around Sarah's shoulders; she still looked a little pale from her demonstration, or maybe it was just apprehension over the difficult conversation they were about to have with the children. Steve caught Peggy's eyes, and he knew she was apprehensive, too.

He took a deep breath, and began.

When everything had been explained to the four grandchildren, both about the fates of the Starks and the Decimation to come, and the shock had subsided and the questions had all been answered, there was a long silence.

It was Maggie who stirred first, and broke the silence.

"We should do something," she said quietly. "Something to help."

"Like we did with the Pyms," Natty agreed readily. "The way my family helped Hank and Hope when Janet disappeared. Maybe with Tony-"

Maggie frowned. "I was talking about the Decimation," she said.

Natty paused. "Oh."

"But yes, we should help the Starks too," Maggie quickly agreed.

"Well, what were you thinking?" Natty asked her curiously.

"That's there's going to be far more than just one family broken when the Decimation comes," Maggie said. "A lot of kids are only going to have one parent left. Probably a lot of them won't have any parents at all. And if they don't have any extended family to take them in…" She trailed off, heartbreak in her eyes. "Our family is everything to me. I can't even imagine being alone in the world like that."

"It was a big problem," Steve agreed. "Nat… I mean, Natasha, Natasha Romanoff-" He'd learned to clarify that whenever his granddaughter Natty was in the room. "-she spent a lot of time and effort during the Decimation running the Orphan Relief Foundation. It was personal for her, and not just because she blamed herself for not being able to stop Thanos, although I think she did. Like the rest of us." He took a deep steadying breath. "Partly it was because she'd been an orphan herself, and partly because she couldn't have any children of her own, and I think… I think she thought of those kids as hers."

"I would want to help with something like that," Maggie said immediately.

"She had liaisons all over the world helping her," Steve said. He had often been in the room with Nat at New Avengers Headquarters when she had met with them remotely, training them and coordinating fundraising efforts, and had even spoken to a few of them himself when Nat had asked him to establish a program for psychological therapy services for the children. There had been a man overseeing the branches in Southeast Asia, a very young man to serve in a role like that, only in his 20s, but surprisingly self-assured. And there had been a woman heading up the European branches, a middle-aged woman who had impressed him with a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the broken families under her jurisdiction. She had had difficulty holding back her tears as she had spoken of them.

Suddenly Steve stilled, remembering the woman's face on the screen, and not just the heartbreak in her eyes. Pale blue eyes, the color of the morning sky. Skin as fair as porcelain. Dark hair, with a gentle wave to it. Pretty, in a classic English-rose type of way. Yet she had spoken with an American accent, which had puzzled him a little at the time since she was based in London.

His eyes flicked back over to Maggie, and he had to fight to conceal his astonishment.

It was her.

The feeling that swept over him was indescribable. Maggie had looked different back then, of course — several decades older and not quite so willowy, and with her hair and clothing in the modern style — but the resemblance was undeniable. It was her. He had spoken to her. For all the years of the Decimation she had been a support to Nat. Maybe even going so far as to be a friend to her, despite the ocean between them. And the whole time he had never known who and what she really was. He had spent very little time thinking of her at all, except during the few brief conversations they had shared, sticking to the business at hand. His enhanced memory had catalogued her face but failed to recognize its significance.

And the young man who headed the Southeast Asia branches of the Orphan Relief Foundation… hadn't he been Vietnamese? Was that only a coincidence? He had been the wrong age to be any of Steve's grandchildren. Maybe a great-grandchild, yet to be born?

What more had he missed? How much of this future life of his had intersected with his past? How many more of his descendants had he met and never known it?

"There's lots of time to get ready," Maggie was saying, and with an effort Steve forced himself to focus on the present day. "I bet there are lots of things we can do to help. At least... those of us who will be left." Her voice went a little fainter at the end.

"It won't just be the broken families," Bram agreed with his sister readily. "The economy would be a mess. Just the medical field alone… there would only be half as many doctors." He was planning on a medical career like his parents once he graduated from high school, and Steve wasn't surprised that his mind went there first.

"But only half as many patients," Harrison pointed out.

Bram shook his head. "It wouldn't work out evenly," he said. "There are relatively few doctors who specialize in any one thing. If you lose just a few specialists in any given area, there wouldn't be anyone available who could treat a particular condition. And considering how long it would take to train replacements… I mean, the Decimation would practically be over by the time they figured out how to adjust. But a lot of sick people would go untreated in the meantime." He frowned. "I'm not sure how we could fix that."

"We should focus on the more pressing problem," Harrison said with barely-concealed impatience. "That's all decades away. What about the Starks? Hydra has their number. What are we going to do for them?"

"And what can we do for Tony?" Natty added. "He shouldn't have to face this alone."

The four of them started batting ideas back and forth, and Steve looked down at Peggy to see her reaction. She was watching the grandchildren with a proud smile beginning to curve her lips, an expression that was mirrored perfectly by Sarah across the room. Mike caught Steve's eye and grinned openly in a way that clearly said: We didn't even have to ask them to help.

They were still young, it was true, but they were good people, all of them, and as Steve looked from face to face, it dawned on him that for the first time in more years than he cared to count, he had more than just a family assembled in this room.

He had a team again.

TO BE CONTINUED

Author's note: One of my reviewers asked me a while ago which actors I pictured portraying my original characters. It was a pretty intriguing question, and just for fun I worked up a list!

Sarah: Hayley Atwell as a blonde (see: Cinderella's mother in the 2015 live-action movie), although I imagined her hair not so long, and her body type as less willowy and more muscular

Her husband Dave: Sean Astin as he looked in "Rudy" (when I introduced him, anyway, although at this point in the story this character is approaching middle age)

Their son Bram: whoever plays the pallbearer standing behind Steve at Peggy's funeral in "Winter Soldier." I don't know the actor's name, but he sure resembles Chris Evans!

Their daughter Maggie: Anna Popplewell, who plays Susan in the Narnia movies

Mike: I'm so tempted to say Johnny Storm (i.e. Chris Evans in "Fantastic Four"). :-D But seriously, I've been picturing him as James Marsden, actually.

His wife Tien: Hong Chau

Their daughter Natty: Pham Huong, Miss Vietnam 2015. (I hesitate to admit I'm picturing her as a beauty queen for fear people will think I'm making a Mary Sue. But her looks are relevant to the plot, as you will shortly see.)

Their son Harrison: Johnny Tri Nguyen (a Vietnamese actor/martial arts expert. Fun fact: he was a stuntman for Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 2!)

I haven't done much character development for the younger grandkids yet. Maybe once I get to that point I'll think up actors for them, too.

I'm curious to know how my readers have been picturing my OCs. Let me know in the comments, and/or leave a review for this chapter!