April 1991

The Starks lived in the Old Westbury village situated on the north shore of Long Island, a richly wooded area that was frequently referred to as "America's Millionaire Capitol" due to the concentration of fabulously wealthy families who lived within its borders.

It was home to only 4,000 people; most of the founding residents were old-money families like the Vanderbilts, although over the last 50 years more and more businessmen, industrialists and entertainers had began to set up their new-money mansions there.

"A fox hunting park?" Tien said in disbelief as she looked out the window at the scenery passing by. "In New York?"

"If you really want to be amazed, try counting the number of country clubs we pass," Peggy said, pulling to a stop at a red light. "There seem to be enough on Long Island for each family to have their own."

Expression sinking, Tien reached up and fiddled uncomfortably with the pearl necklace she was wearing. "I won't fit in here."

"Of course you will," Peggy said briskly. "You've been just as rich as them, for just as long."

Tien laughed with an obvious ring of skepticism.

"Well, if you don't believe it, they won't," Peggy said. "You can do this, Tien. I'm really hoping Maria will respond to you the way she never would for me. I think perhaps I was just too thoroughly middle class for her tastes. I've always been a working woman, after all."

"And when I was young, back in Vietnam, so was I," Tien said. "I don't know rich-people manners."

"You look the part, and you're going to be making a generous donation to the cause," Peggy said with a confidence Tien didn't feel. " And you have one other advantage: Any eccentricities in your manners will be attributed to your foreignness, not your social class. Just… play up your accent."

"You're foreign, too," Tien pointed out.

"A boring old Englishwoman?" Peggy said, shooting Tien an amused smile. "Not nearly foreign enough. And the Starks know English eccentricities like the back of their hands. Their butler, Edwin Jarvis, was with them for many years."

"He isn't there any more?"

"He's older than I am," Peggy said. "Late seventies, now. He's retired to England." She could not quite conceal a longing expression on her face, one Tien understood all too well. They both loved their lives in America, but there was always a hunger for home.

They stopped at a gate that blocked a tree-lined lane curving up through the trees, and Peggy handed her identification to the man in the little booth.

"Peggy Carter, director of S.H.I.E.L.D.," she said.

After a short wait, he handed her card back and opened the gate. Peggy drove around the bend, and as they emerged from the stand of trees, the Stark mansion came into view.

"Oh," Tien breathed, craning her neck to get a proper look at it. It was located at the crest of a hill, providing it with an excellent view of the golf courses and the greenery of the neighboring mansions. Tall white columns framed the heavy wooden double doors at the entrance, and the fan-shaped stained glass above sparkled in the afternoon sun. Turrets and gables topped the two-story stone structure, and the landscaping around the house was artfully arranged and immaculately trimmed.

There were quite a few other cars already parked there as they pulled into the gravel loop in front of the home; they had aimed to be fashionably late.

"I'll let you go in first," Peggy said as she turned off the engine. "Remember, we don't know each other. And don't worry, Tien. You're going to do great."

Tien got out of the car, moving carefully in her heels and her fine silk skirt, and swished up to the front door.

Her knock was answered promptly, and an assistant welcomed her warmly, took down her name and accepted her donation, and then poured her a drink before showing her into the next room, which was lit by beautiful chandeliers and filled with laughing, chatting people dressed in finery. Tien was relieved to see that the clothing Peggy had gotten her did not look out of place here, but for an uncomfortably long moment she stood there awkwardly, not sure what to do next, painfully aware that she was at a party where she knew literally no one.

But almost immediately there was a man in a suit at her elbow, an older man with white hair and a mustache who nevertheless moved with a surprising spryness. "Welcome to our home," he said to her. "Thank you for your generous donation, and believe me, the foundation will make good use of it. We're glad you could come."

"Mr. Stark?" she said, easily recognizing him and hoping she sounded more cool than she felt. "Tien Nguyen. This is a beautiful party, as nice as the one you threw in Malibu, back in… what was it? 1973 perhaps?" She frowned a little, as if unsure. "You remember me, I hope? I certainly remember you." She played up her accent like Peggy had suggested, although she felt strangely stilted, trying to speak more formally than she ever had back home.

"Yeah, sure," Howard said, shaking Tien's hand, although he could not possibly remember her. "The San Francisco Nguyens, right? All that real estate around the bay? Nice to see you again." Luckily for them, he met a lot of people in his line of work, far too many to be able to remember every face or name. "How's business?"

"Business is booming," Tien said. "And for you, too, I think? We cannot open a trade magazine without seeing your name."

"Oh, I'm doing all right for myself," Howard said, and then he stretched out his arm, beckoning to someone behind her. "Ms. Nguyen, I'd like you to meet my wife, Maria. She's done all the work for this little bash. The foundation is her baby."

Maria Stark joined them, dressed in a mint green blouse and white silk blazer with a matching skirt, her pale blonde hair pulled back into a low bun, with a few uncurled tendrils escaping to brush her cheeks. She looked carelessly elegant, moving with a slow deliberateness as she reached out to shake Tien's hand.

"Tien Nguyen," Howard told her. "The real estate folks in old San Fran."

"Oh yes," Maria said warmly. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for coming, and thank you for your donation."

"My family has always been very concerned about educational matters," Tien said.

"So has mine," Maria said, smiling. "And this is one cause very near and dear to my heart. As a child I had dyslexia myself, but I was lucky enough to have parents who could afford private tutors for me. Not every child has that. I started the foundation to help those who didn't."

"It is a wonderful cause. And you have a wonderful home. Very beautiful."

"Excuse me, ladies," Howard said, and they both glanced at him as he left them and moved toward the foyer, where Peggy had just entered the room and was scanning the crowd with a practiced eye. Tien glanced away quickly, feigning indifference. Maria held eye contact with Peggy for just a moment, nodding coolly, and then she deliberately turned her back on them and resumed talking to Tien.

"Would you like a tour of my home?" she asked.

"Yes, very much, thank you."

"Peggy Carter." Howard's eyes moved up and down, pausing on the slight bulge under the left side of her blazer. "Only you would bring a gun to a party."

"I'm not here for the party, Howard," she said crisply. "I'm here to see you."

He laughed, a single bark. "And why is the gun here?"

"It's here to see anyone who has less than friendly plans for me or for you. As always."

"Well, thank goodness you're here," he said with a hint of sarcasm. "All my security teams with all their guns… they just aren't adequate for my needs. I feel so much safer with your gun in the room."

"As well you should," she said, and she smiled pertly as she met Howard's eyes. He smiled back despite a half-hearted attempt to resist, showing a flash of teeth beneath his mustache. Despite their frequent differences of opinion and occasional bouts of open hostility to each other, they never could manage to stay genuinely angry with each other for long.

"I suppose you're here for business purposes," he said then, with weary inevitability. "You always want to talk business at parties."

"You don't give me much choice, Howard, considering you're nearly always at a party."

Howard gestured toward a doorway into a nearby unoccupied room, a smaller one dominated by a baby grand piano and lit with sunlight diffused through white curtains hanging over the tall windows. "Fine. Let's talk. Unless you'd rather drink. I know which one I'd prefer."

Peggy smiled a little knowingly. "Let's talk."

"And that's the master suite," Maria said, closing the door as they came out of it. "Down this hall here are the guest bedrooms."

Tien paused in the hallway, looking at the framed photographs on the wall. One of them showed Maria standing next to a young girl wearing a jockey helmet, perched on a horse. Another showed Maria with her arm around a blonde boy who was about 10 years old, both of them smiling and posing in front of the Meadow Brook Polo Club.

"Are these your children?" Tien asked politely.

Maria hesitated for a moment. "I'm never sure how to answer that," she admitted. "They were my first husband's children, from his first marriage. Their mother moved to the Riviera after the divorce and didn't visit often. The children were small enough that they didn't remember her much. So for as long as the marriage lasted, I was their mother."

She pointed at the girl. "This is Tiffany. She loved riding horses. She would have ridden them all day, every day, I think, if she could have gotten away with it." She smiled fondly, remembering. "And that's Jack. He was a charmer, that one. Always getting into little scrapes — nothing too bad, really — and then smiling at me so innocently that it was hard to punish him." She sighed a little. "Of course, they're both all grown up now."

"Are they here?" Tien asked curiously, glancing back over the balcony at the party below.

"No." Maria's eyes suddenly moistened. "They... don't keep in contact anymore, I'm sorry to say." She blinked rapidly a few times and then cleared her throat swiftly. "And this is a workshop," she pressed on with the tour in a rush, gesturing at the next door down. "Or one of them, anyway. We have quite a few. That's the price I paid for marrying a tinkerer… and then giving birth to one." She didn't sound like she minded in the slightest. The door to the workshop was ajar, and they paused in the hallway to look in.

The room wasn't unoccupied. A young man with dark hair was sitting with his back to the door, hunched over a bank of electronic controls, making delicate adjustments to the row of sliders. He didn't turn around; there were headphones covering his ears and he seemed to be unaware of their presence.

"My son, Tony," Maria said with obvious pride.

Tien looked at him with interest bordering on fascination. So this was the man destined to defeat Thanos. It seemed unbelievable; he was so young, for one thing, only 19 or 20. But more importantly, there was nothing about Tien's life of peace and plenty with the Carters here in America that had ever primed her to fear a disaster as world-altering as the Decimation... although she knew her father-in-law well enough by now to trust in everything he said.

She knew she should be frightened of it, knew she should be aching inside to find a way to thank Tony for the sacrifice he would one day make, but it all seemed so distant, so unreal. And anytime Tien thought about what might happen to her children on that day, she felt a curious sense of blankness inside. Her own mind protecting her from the horror. It was a blessing she wasn't ready to give up yet.

"This is just how Howard looked the first time I saw him," Maria said softly, looking at Tony's back with a smile touching her pink-painted lips. "The day I fell in love with him. I was invited to the private opening reception for one of his World Expos. He started to welcome me, and then he noticed that one of the animatronic displays at the entrance had broken down. Howard didn't even hesitate. Just dove right in with both hands to fix it. I don't think it occurred to him to call on one of his people to do it. He got grease on his Armani suit, but I don't think he even noticed. I've never seen anyone concentrate so hard on something. He was completely absorbed. Like there was nothing in the world but him and that machine." She smiled deeply, remembering. "Tony comes by his obsessions honestly."

She walked into the room and reached out, lifting one of the earphones off Tony's ear. He turned toward her, startled for a moment, and then smiled widely when he saw who it was. "Hi, Mom."

"Hi, sweetheart. What are you listening to?"

"Static," Tony answered promptly, pushing the headphones down around his neck and giving an incurious glance at Tien still standing at the doorway. "Nothing but a whole lot of static."

Maria ran her eyes over the bank of controls, which had wires of all colors crisscrossing something that Tien thought looked like the motherboard Mike had once pulled out of their malfunctioning computer in an attempt to see if anything had shaken loose. There were tools scattered all over the worktable, and the smell of hot solder lingered in the air.

"What are you building?" Maria asked him curiously.

Tony smiled briefly. "Don't want to say. At least not until I can get it to work. I kinda want to surprise Dad."

"All right." Maria stroked his hair affectionately. "Can I bring you something? A drink or some food? There's plenty downstairs."

"No thanks, Mom. I just need to focus on this for a while. I think I've almost got it."

"Okay. Good luck, sweetie." Maria put the headphones back on his ears for him and then leaned over to kiss the top of his head before turning to leave. He leaned forward to flip a switch, already focused on his work again.

"Bingo!" they heard Tony burst out triumphantly just as Maria closed the door behind her, and the two women were once again alone in the hallway.

"He looks like a hard worker," Tien said.

"He is," Maria agreed readily. "Oh, but he isn't all hard work, though. He makes friends very easily. You should see him when he's at a party!"

"I'll cut straight to the point," Peggy said once Howard had closed the double doors behind them, shutting out the music and the chatter of the party, and they had settled onto the couch by the piano. "I want to talk to you about the new project you're working on. The super-soldier serum. And please don't waste your breath trying to deny it."

Howard raised his graying eyebrows and then abruptly stood up again, shoving one fist into his pocket and turning slightly away from her.

"Does it ever gall you, Peggy?" he asked then, in a voice that was a little too casual. "Constantly spying on your own friends?"

"Believe it or not, this wasn't information I went looking for," Peggy said calmly. "It quite literally fell into my lap. Have you considered the possibility that your security is not as good as you think it is?"

"Don't insult my intelligence," Howard said, turning back toward her. "I learned my lesson after that little incident with the Tesseract. It's early days on this project. I only have a few assistants, and none of them even know what the goal is; I'm doing the heavy lifting by myself. Carson Mitchell's people can sniff around all they want. They're not taking this from me." His determination was fierce. "How did you hear about it?"

"I looked into a crystal ball."

He scoffed. "That's cute."

Peggy regarded him soberly. "Why the serum, Howard? Why now?"

Howard shrugged one shoulder and turned away from her.

"What else am I supposed to do with my time?" he asked, brushing an imaginary speck of dust off the piano. "You took the Tesseract away from me."

"You don't need the Tesseract, or the serum," Peggy said. "There are a thousand other inventions you could be working on. I've seen your working files, remember? It isn't as though you have a shortage of ideas."

"This is the only one that matters."

"Why? Biochemistry isn't even your strong suit."

"Yeah, I know. All I'm good for is building weapons."

"That is not what I-" Peggy began vehemently.

"Think about it, Peggy!" Howard suddenly barked, a flush rising in his face. "Project Rebirth is the only project I ever worked on that saved more lives than it destroyed! Instead of prolonging a war, he actually succeeded in ending it!"

"Howard, you've done more of worth in your life than just Project Rebirth, and not all of it was weapons," Peggy said firmly. "What about your Jitterbug? Your repulsors, your lasers? Not to mention your expo and everything that's come out of that. And what about your son, Tony? He has your genius. He could do great things one day. That's hardly nothing."

"Yeah, he's going to turn out just like his old man," Howard said bitterly. "Chasing women, drinking booze, and creating weapons of mass destruction. Did you see the senior project he came up with at MIT? He wants to incorporate my repulsor technology into MIRV missiles." Howard laughed bitterly. "What a waste."

"Is that all you see when you look at him?" Peggy asked, frowning. "He's very clever. He's a hard worker. He-"

"Yeah, I know that's all you see when you look at him," Howard said pointedly. "But you haven't seen Tony at his best. You haven't seen the strings of beautiful girls he goes through like tissues. You haven't been with me when I've come home to find the floor covered in red Solo cups and Tony and all his friends passed out on the couches. The last time I blew my top about that, he finally wised up and started doing it at other people's houses instead of mine. But word gets around." He fixed Peggy with an accusing glare. "And don't you dare say hypocrite."

"I wasn't going to say that," Peggy said.

"Even when I was doing all that, I was just-" Howard's usual verbosity seemed to fail him, and he searched for the words for a long time before he finally gave up with a deep sigh that was almost a growl.

"You don't owe me an explanation," Peggy said gently. Whether Howard remembered or not, he had already explained it to her many years ago, in a rare moment of naked candor. He'd been drunk, of course. At that stage when his tongue had been set loose and all kinds of things came tumbling out without his usual ego-cushioning filter. How his brain subjected him to a continual torrent of ideas, theories, and worries; a tormenting, never-ending stream of consciousness that could only be brought to order through long, intense work sessions… unless he shut it off entirely with alcohol, that is.

But even then, he had confessed to her that night with reddened, exhausted eyes, the relief never lasted long.

"Perhaps Tony is doing those things for the same reason you did," Peggy pointed out. "Have you ever given him an explanation?"

"I tried." Howard gestured helplessly. "But it just turns into a shouting match. He doesn't want to hear anything from the old man. And now he's turning into the one thing I didn't want him to turn into: me."

"He's young," Peggy said. "He could change. You did."

"Fat lot of good it did me." Howard shook his head wearily. "No, Tony's a lost cause, along with most of the other things I wasted my life on." Then he looked up, his expression clearing. "But the serum, now… that's different."

"Is that what this is about?" Peggy asked, trying to follow his train of thought. "You think that if you succeed with the serum, it will somehow make up for-"

"Look, I'm just trying to finish the job the SSR hired me to do 50 years ago," Howard interrupted. "Remember Colonel Phillips' dream? How he wanted a whole army of super soldiers to fight the battles that ordinary men couldn't? How disappointed he was when all he got was one?" Howard threw his arms out expansively, a flash of his old boyish enthusiasm sparking in his eyes. "And look what Steve Rogers managed to do anyway, just by himself! Imagine what a handful of men like him could do!"

Peggy looked at him in disbelief. "So instead of making mechanical weapons, you're going to make human ones?"

"Is that how you thought of Steve?" Howard shot back.

She straightened up indignantly. "You know it isn't."

"Then don't insult me by suggesting it about my project."

Peggy sighed deeply. She held out a hand. "Come sit down, Howard."

He didn't budge, standing there stiffly, while the music of the party outside played faintly in the background.

"Please, Howard," she said. "Come and sit down with me."

Finally, he relented, and looked at her expectantly with his eyebrows raised as if to say, "Well?"

"If you care about your family, and I know you do," Peggy said gently, "then you won't endanger your son or your wife by continuing this project. Dr. Erskine was killed for his research, remember?"

Howard didn't answer.

A flush touched Peggy's cheeks. "For God's sake, Howard!" she burst out. "You are putting yourself and your family's lives at risk! Just drop it. Please."

Howard was scrutinizing her with a cynical smile she didn't like. "While I appreciate your concern for my family, are you sure that's the only reason you're here?"

Peggy was taken aback. "Why else would I be?"

Howard smirked. "Don't play innocent with me, Peggy. The masked man who was leading your little band of adventurers when they rescued the Tesseract? The one pulling off Steve Rogers-style maneuvers?" Howard emphasized the last few words heavily. "You sure you didn't come here just to scare off your competition?"

Peggy stared at him blankly. "What?"

"You're gotten even farther along than I have. A human subject already? Not bad, Peggy. Not bad at all. He didn't seem quite as strong as Cap, but still… close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades, right?" Howard pushed up the cuff of his suit and casually checked the time on his gold watch. "My formula, on the other hand, is going to be more potent than Erskine's, not less. You should have waited and worked with me. I've already got interested parties at the Pentagon. I doubt they'll be interested in your variant once they've seen mine in action."

Peggy's face had slowly settled into a seething fury. "How dare you?" she asked through clenched teeth. "When have I ever done anything that I did for my own glory?"

"I guess there's a first time for everything."

"Whatever it is you thought you saw, it wasn't that," she said tightly. "I haven't developed a super-soldier serum. And even if I could, I wouldn't. There's a reason why there's only ever been one Captain America, Howard: there was only ever one Steve Rogers. We can't recreate him, nor should we try. Just…" Her voice turned pleading. "Let him go."

Howard smiled humorlessly. "Says the woman who still keeps his picture on her desk."

"I got married, Howard," Peggy said more quietly, having regained her control. "I had children. I'm happy. You have a family too. Maybe it doesn't feel like you're saving the world, not in the sort of way we did during the war, but it's no less valid. Be content with it."

"Speaking of which," Howard said, "when are you going to come clean about your family?"

She frowned. "My family?"

"How is it that after all these years I've never met your husband?" There was a challenge in Howard's eye. "I mean, I know you're a spy and all, and keeping secrets comes as naturally to you as breathing, but this is really taking it to the extreme, Peggy."

A frown touched her brow. "It's for my family's protection. You know that."

"Protection from what? Me?" Howard scoffed. "Peggy, I have to admit, there are days when I wonder if there even is a Mr. Carter."

Peggy's eyes flashed with indignation. "Don't be crude, Howard. Do I really strike you as the sort of woman who would raise her children fatherless on purpose?"

"No," Howard admitted, "but you also didn't seem like the kind of woman who would go merrily off to work every day and leave her children to be raised by a man-" he chuckled humorlessly "-given how singularly unsuited for the job we are."

"You give your sex too little credit," Peggy said. "My husband is a good father… and so are you, no matter what you may think. I know you have regrets, Howard, and I'm no prophet, but I dare say that one day, Tony will remember the good times more than anything else."

"We were talking about your family, not mine," he said with a hint of frost.

"My family thinks of your family as family."

"They don't even know us."

"You're wrong," Peggy said softly.

"Yeah," Howard agreed with a heavy dose of sarcasm. "I'm always wrong. About everything. Just ask my son."

"I can't physically stop Howard from doing this," Peggy told Steve after she got home that night and recounted the conversation to him over dinner. Now she grabbed a couple of containers and started moving the leftovers into them. "And I don't think I can dissuade him, either. He's decided that this project is going to make up for all his earlier missteps. It's personal for him now."

"The money and the glory wouldn't hurt, either," Steve said, putting the lids on the leftovers and taking them to the refrigerator.

"No," Peggy admitted, looking troubled. "I'm sure he's thought of that, too. This is Howard we're talking about. But I think…" She slowed her words, thinking carefully. "I think he's trying to do it for the right reason. I have to give him credit for that. I wish I could have seen this version of Howard 20 years ago, to be honest. He's getting better all the time. It infuriates me to think that now, of all times-" She cut herself off before she could sink into despair again. It wouldn't help the situation. She sighed deeply and then started gathering the dirty dishes from the table.

"If we can't or won't stop him from making the serum," Steve said, opening the dishwasher and taking the dirty plates from her to load, "we may be able to change how he does it."

Peggy nodded, looking grateful for the new direction of the conversation. "I've been thinking about his security. He might let me give him advice in that way. I think he's on the right track with compartmentalization. If I can persuade him not to let any of his assistants know the entire process from beginning to end… maybe even tell him to completely replace his teams from time to time, so that even if a Hydra agent does make their way inside, they won't be able to get much..."

"I think that's a good idea," Steve said.

"But I have a severe shortage of personnel I can offer for the cause," Peggy said, looking worried. "There are so few people left at S.H.I.E.L.D. that I'm certain can be trusted. There are people around me starting to put on the pressure. They want me to retire. They want me out. Even some of the Council members now."

"Well, Hydra may not know exactly what you've been doing all these years to fight them," Steve said, grabbing a washcloth to wipe the table, "but they definitely know you're not on their side. Replacing you with just about anyone would help them sleep better at night."

"I'm doing what I can to advance Robert Keller," Peggy said. "He isn't the ideal replacement for me, but he's the best I can come up with. At least, the best replacement that I think the Council will accept. I'm confident he isn't Hydra, but he's so… corporate-minded. He never saw a length of red tape he didn't like. It's a shame I couldn't hand the reins directly to Fury."

"He isn't ready for that."

"I know," Peggy said softly. "I feel bad for him. Caught in a tug-of-war between us and Alexander Pierce, whether he knows it or not. He'll probably rue the day he left the CIA for S.H.I.E.L.D." They'd been doing everything in their power to surround Fury with people they hoped would be a good influence on him — not only Phil Coulson, but others as well. They both knew the results would be mixed; by the time Fury rescued Steve from the ice, he would already be living in a morally gray universe. But that was better than letting Pierce have Fury all to himself. At least their growing friendship would result in Fury's elevation to director in the years to come… and Fury was not going to be as amenable to Pierce's plans as the undersecretary hoped.

"At least Mike will be around after I leave, to keep that up," Peggy added as she grabbed the tablecloth to spread on the now-clean table. After a lot of soul-searching, Mike was on the cusp of asking to be reassigned as a trainer rather than an active-duty agent. Partly it was because there were people at S.H.I.E.L.D. who had realized by now that whoever Agent 45 was, he was a reliable lackey for Director Carter, and he was bound to be pushed out of the prime assignments the moment she retired.

But it was more than that. Both Steve and Peggy knew what was really on his mind: soon Clint Barton would be applying as an agent. And after that, Maria Hill. As a trainer, Mike would be well-placed to influence them before anyone else at S.H.I.E.L.D. got ahold of them. He'd take the competence and idealism and good-heartedness that they brought with them, and he'd polish it to a high shine.

They had the advantage of knowing that the future of S.H.I.E.L.D. did not lie in the hands of Robert Keller or Alexander Pierce.

"Are you ready for this?" Steve asked Peggy, and she paused in the act of putting the floral centerpiece back on the table. "Are you ready to leave?"

Peggy took a long moment to answer, adjusting one of the roses in the vase even though it was already perfectly placed. "You know," she said slowly, "for a long time I couldn't quite understand it when you retired. You just… walked away from it all. Got in a time machine and came back home to me without a backward glance. You've been a fighter your whole life; I'd have thought that you would have be dragged away from the fight, kicking and screaming."

"There was a time when I probably would have," he admitted.

Peggy nodded. "But I understand now. You didn't really give up the fight at all. You just started fighting it in a different way. And you did it in a way that… made you more whole than how you were fighting before. Until you came back home to me, I had never seen a Steve Rogers that gave any consideration to his own happiness. And do you know, I actually prefer you this way. You never smiled much during the war. You smile now. And I like seeing you smile."

"You give me all my reasons to smile."

"As much as I hate to admit it," Peggy continued, "I'm beginning to feel my age. I... get tired so easily now."

"I know. I'm feeling it, too." The serum might keep him stronger and healthier than other men his age, but it wasn't stopping him from aging. He had just as many wrinkles as Peggy did… and he no longer had to look closely to spot the gray hairs in the mirror.

"There are days when I have this suspicion," Peggy went on, "that staying home and giving advice to Mike or Sarah about their work, or having long talks with the grandkids about what they want to do and who they want to be when they grow up, or writing my memoirs the way Tien keeps telling me to do, might do the world just as much good as going to work and putting out yet another bureaucratic brushfire."

"It would probably make you smile more, too," Steve quipped.

"I certainly hope so." She smiled at him then, and the dimple popped out; she was just as beautiful to him now as she had ever been, no matter how many wrinkles she had. "And I miss home, to be honest. I've been over here far longer than I ever lived in England, but… it's in my veins. I miss it. I want my cottage and my rose garden. I want to see my parents for as long as I still have them. I can't get overseas for many visits, and they're getting so frail." She sighed deeply, and her shoulders sagged at the thought.

"You'll have all of that. Soon. I promise."

He didn't have to say it, but she knew what he meant. Not until after December 16th.

TO BE CONTINUED

Author's note: In the Marvel movies, the character of Maria Stark is a bit of a blank spot in Tony's back story. Tony obviously loved her deeply and was hit pretty hard by her death, judging by his reaction to learning the truth about the way she died: he seems to be even angrier about her death than his dad's. He also doesn't seem to have the same kind of conflicted feelings about her that he does about Howard.

But we really know almost nothing about her, and given her importance to Tony I wish we had gotten at least a few hints that could have answered questions such as: What kind of woman would inspire Howard to commit to a marriage after so many years of womanizing? Why did Howard choose to have a child with her when he apparently feels out of his element as a father? And why was she in the car the night the Winter Soldier attacked? Did she know the serum was in the car? Or did she die simply because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and the Winter Soldier was told "no witnesses?"

For this chapter and the upcoming ones, I've taken what little information there is about Maria and tried to expand it in a way that makes sense and is emotionally compelling. Let me know what you think as it unfolds.