Author's note: Thanks to MagicLia 16, Spanish girl, girliemom, Figuratively Dying, birdy, sofiarose613, Says-the-Slytherin, Nimrodel 101, jerseydanielgibson, hi, Guiltypleasure82, and Guests for your reviews! Thanks for your patience, this chapter wasn't quite ready to post last week.

6:14 p.m., December 16, 1991

When Sarah opened her eyes, she was looking at the ceiling.

Bram's worried face floated over her, and she realized he was carrying her up the stairs of their own home. She felt as weak as a baby in his arms. It was an unfamiliar feeling for her, one that was deeply unpleasant.

Bram eased her carefully through a door frame, and a few moments later laid her gently on her own bed.

Her hand brushed up against someone else's hand, and she turned to look. Tien was lying next to her on the bed, the bloody tatters of her shirt still pulled apart to show...

The gash in her chest. It was gone.

Tien's eyes were closed, and her hand felt cool to the touch — too cool — but she was breathing steadily. Dave was standing by the bedside, wrapping a blood pressure cuff around her arm.

"Is she...?" Sarah asked weakly.

"The injury's completely healed," Dave said promptly, in a cool and matter-of-fact way. "Pulse is normal. But it doesn't change the fact that she lost a lot of blood." He was pulling things out of his medical bag; the supplies from the lab that they used to draw blood from Dad for their research. "She could use a transfusion, and I'm the same type." He rolled up his sleeve and expertly strapped a blood pressure cuff onto his own arm. "Bram, you'll have to do this part." He held out a pair of medical gloves and a bottle of iodine, and Bram hurried over to perform the blood draw.

"Mike?" Sarah asked hoarsely.

"The ambulance we called took him to the hospital," Dave said, as Bram swabbed his vein. "They suspected a punctured lung. He was stable, though; I think he'll be okay. Harrison went with him."

She frowned. "But how did-?"

"-we explain the wrecked minivan parked in the middle of our backyard?" Dave finished. He looked over at their son expectantly, but Bram only shook his head a little as he inserted the needle into his dad's arm with a slight frown of concentration.

"He's too modest to say," Dave said. "He managed to make a portal. Moved the van to the street in front of our house, and Mike too. We told the responders it was a hit-and-run. I don't think they suspected anything." He studied Sarah closely. "You okay, honey?"

"Tired," Sarah said softly. Even giving birth hadn't wrung her out this thoroughly. She laced her fingers through Tien's, and closed her eyes wearily. "Just tired."

But almost immediately her eyes popped open again as she remembered something worrisome.

"That guy," she said urgently. "That guy Mike was fighting. He came through the portal with us. Where-?"

Dave and Bram exchanged uncomfortable glances.

"Well..." Dave said slowly. "He was unconscious. Harrison was keeping an eye on him while we were dealing with Tien. At some point the guy must have woken up, but Harrison didn't notice right away. He was pretty distraught by what was happening. Can't blame him for that."

"He got away?" Sarah asked in horror.

"No," Dave said quickly. "No, he didn't get away. Harrison chased him down and took him down again. But as soon as the guy saw that he couldn't escape us... well, we think he must have taken some kind of poison. He's dead. Nothing we could do. Harrison was pretty upset."

"I moved him into the lab," Bram said soberly, his voice quiet. "We'll have to... deal with that, I guess. Later."

Sarah laid her head back down on the pillow, forcing herself to relax, to rest, so that she could get back to her old self as quickly as possible. Her heart went out toward her other children, to Steven and Amanda and Joe. And to Mike and Tien's Sammy and Clint, who had been left in her care. They were all with Maggie still, and she was sure they were fine — Maggie had always been so steady with the younger ones — but the need to see them herself, to put her arms around them all, was almost overwhelming. She was used to worrying about her mother and her brother when they were out on a mission, but everything tonight had hit so close to home.

She had no regrets at all. Mike and Tien were going to be okay. They had slowed down the Winter Soldier enough that Natty could get Tony Stark to safety. That was what was most important.

And there was one other thing: the serum had worked.

A flush of joy warmed her to the very tips of her toes. The serum worked. All the time and effort she and Dave had spent over all these years — the sacrifices made by the whole family to make it possible — had paid off. They had the power now to heal all kinds of injuries and maladies. Limited only by the time it would take to extract new serum from Dad's blood. That was still a hitch to overcome, but tonight they had taken an enormous step forward. Suddenly anything seemed possible.

And the thing that had troubled her since she was a girl — since the first day she discovered she was not like other people — was fading away, leaving a rosy glow of hope in its place. No longer did she hold a blessing that the rest of humanity was denied.

Now they could share it with anyone.

Natty opened her eyes slowly as Tony pulled away, her lips still tingling from his kiss. There didn't seem to be room for thought in her head, and she had no idea if taking things this direction had been a good idea or not, but for some reason it didn't seem to matter right now. She was sick with worry over her parents and she didn't want to feel alone right now... and neither did he. For now, it was enough.

Which was why she didn't pull away when he started to lean toward her again.

Just then, a voice came in through her earpiece. "Natty? It's me. It's Harrison."

She pulled back slightly, eyes locked on Tony only inches away from her. Could he hear that? She really hoped he couldn't hear that.

"I know you might not be able to talk right now," her brother said softly in her ear, "but I wanted you to know that I'm with Dad. He's a little banged up, but he's gonna be okay. Mom is at Aunt Sarah's house. She's resting. She's okay, too. We thought you should know."

The relief she felt was so intense that she felt dizzy, and it took every particle of control she had not to respond to Harrison. But he seemed to understand that, and after a short wait — in which she heard the unmistakable sound of a hospital heart monitor beeping with reassuring regularity — there was a soft click in her ear, and silence.

Natty's heart pounded wildly in her chest, a drumbeat of life and hope and jubilation. Mom and Dad were alive. They were safe. They were going to be there for her. She wasn't alone. Her world was still intact.

And knowing that simple fact, she did the only thing she could do, which was let loose a single, audible sob as tears sprang to her eyes. Horrified, she tried to choke it in, but it was too late: Tony was staring at her aghast.

"Wow. That isn't the, uh, the usual, uh... response," he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably.

"Sorry," Natty gasped, hurriedly smearing a tear away and regretting it the moment she saw the black smudge of eye makeup all over the back of her hand. "Sorry, I'm just… I just… sorry. I'm sorry." She took in a deep, shaky breath and tried to regain some control.

"Was it that bad?" Tony asked, with a slight self-deprecating laugh. "Or was… Oh wow, that wasn't your first time, was it? Was it too much? Did I just scar you for life?"

"No!" she said quickly. "No! No to all of that. It was fine." His brow creased, and she quickly added: "It was better than fine. Really. I'm sorry, I'm just…" She exhaled noisily. "I'm really jet-lagged, Tony. I'm kind of a mess right now."

"Oh." He seemed to relax. "Okay. Well, you wanna chill out for a while? We have the place to ourselves. We can do whatever we want."

"Yeah," she said softly. "Whatever we want." She met his eyes meaningfully. "I didn't hear your dad's car leave yet," she pointed out.

"So?" Tony said blankly.

"There's still time," she said. "You could go out there. You could catch him before he goes."

Tony laughed shortly. "What for?"

She fixed her eyes on his intently. "To say something. Say what you really want to say to him-"

"I'm pretty sure I just did," he interrupted, a scowl creasing his brow.

"-because if you don't..." She took a deep breath. "You'll regret it."

"I'm a Stark. Regret is my middle name," he said dismissively. "I've got a better idea." He caught up her hand and pulled her toward the curved staircase. "Come on. Let's go upstairs."

"Upstairs?" She pulled her hand back, resisting. "What for?"

He laughed a little. "Why do you think? I mean, I feel lousy, you feel lousy... Let's go make each other feel better." When she didn't answer right away, a confused look crossed his face. "Isn't that why you came?"

"Tony, I… I care for you in ways that… I can't even begin to explain," she said confusedly. "But it isn't like that. It doesn't always have to be about that."

Tony gave her a look of utter mystification. "I don't know what else it could be about."

"Someday you will," she said softly.

Steve Rogers stepped into the detached garage on the Stark property and carefully closed the door behind him, conscious of the cavernous space inside that would amplify even the smallest of sounds; the structure was really more like an airplane hangar than a garage, large enough to house Howard's large collection of cars both classic and modern, as well as some projects he was tinkering with that were too big to be built in the workshops in the house.

It was warm in here, compared to the chilly night air outside, and Steve rubbed his hands together as he slowly scanned the cars in the garage until he spotted the one that was occupied: a brand-new Jaguar XJ6, undoubtedly an expensive luxury car that nevertheless looked hopelessly boxy and dated to Steve's eyes, accustomed to the sleek futuristic cars Tony had favored.

Howard was sitting in the driver's seat, head down, reading something that was propped up on the steering wheel.

Without hesitation, Steve coolly walked to the passenger door, opened it, and sat down. He looked over at Howard, who was concentrating fiercely on a magazine — a trade journal of some kind — and didn't bother to look up even when Steve shut the passenger door behind him. No doubt he was expecting his wife to be the one to join him in the car.

It was strange to see his old friend close-up at last. So different from the first time he'd ever seen Howard: on stage at the Stark Expo, looking dapper in his tuxedo with his glossy-black hair and devil-may-care smile, surrounded by beautiful women and the hovering car that for some reason never had ended up on the market. Now his hair was snow-white, his face lined with creases around his mouth, his expression serious as he concentrated on the words in front of him. His wedding ring gleamed faintly in the garage lights overhead.

"Did you get the passports?" Howard asked, not looking up from his magazine.

"No, I can't say that I did," Steve said.

Howard jerked his head up, took one wild-eyed look at Steve, and lurched away from him so dramatically that he jammed himself up against the driver's door, his seatbelt stretching and straining with the motion, one hand darting inside his suit jacket instinctively.

"What in the-?" he started, and then he abruptly fell silent, staring at Steve with wide eyes, his hand frozen in place over his heart.

Steve waited patiently, watching Howard's expression run the gamut from fear to suspicion, to faint recognition and then full recognition, lingering a good 30 seconds on utter disbelief, and finally settling on pure, unmitigated astonishment.

"You've got to be kidding me," Howard said at last.

"Hello, Howard," Steve said calmly. "It's been a long time."

Howard's shoulders were heaving as he fought to get his breath back. "Am I cracking up?" he muttered to himself in an incredulous tone.

"It kinda looks like it," Steve agreed. "Take a deep breath, Howard. I don't wanna be responsible for you having a heart attack."

"There's nothing wrong with my heart," Howard said a bit shortly, pulling his hand out from inside his jacket and dangling the hand-held laser he'd been clutching in front of Steve's face, face tight with irritation. "You're lucky I didn't put a hole through your chest." His scowl deepened. "Or worse, punch you in the face."

Steve made a slightly wounded expression. "I thought you'd be glad to see me."

"Glad?" Howard huffed out, shoving the laser back into his suit pocket. "I just spend the last-" he broke off for a moment, hands waving as he searching for the number.

"45 years," Steve supplied readily.

"-45 years believing you were dead! I trawled the Arctic for you, I threw money at ship's captains like it grew on trees, I made an idiot of myself over you! I... I drank, Steve!" His dark eyes were accusing.

"I know," Steve said seriously. "Peggy mourned for me, too. And all the Commandos. You think I wanted that? Nothin' I could do about it. I was stuck where I was. Believe me, I missed all of you as much as you missed me."

Howard scrubbed his face with both hands, releasing a sigh that was more like a growl. Suddenly his shoulders shook as he laughed shortly.

"Steve Rogers is alive," he said to no one in particular. "Sure, why not? Steve Rogers, back from the dead and hanging around in my garage. Makes perfect sense."

"It barely makes sense at all," Steve said. "The world is even stranger than you know. But yes... I'm here."

Howard looked him up and down, his amazement gradually turning to curiosity.

"You got old," he said at last.

Steve couldn't help but let a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. "So did you, pal."

"Well, yeah, but I'm just some guy. I sometimes wondered if the serum would have stopped you from aging. You know, if you hadn't died." Howard put a twist of sarcasm on the last word.

"Slowed it. Didn't stop it. But that's okay," Steve said matter-of-factly. "I never wanted to live forever."

Howard looked at him for a long moment, processing everything. "Does Peggy know?" he asked at last.

"Peggy knows." Steve shot a teasing look at Howard. "And here you thought there was no Mr. Carter."

Howard raised his eyebrows so high they practically disappeared into his receding hairline. "So... what? You faked your own death just so you could come running back to Peggy and play house with her?" Howard shook his head and chuckled dryly. "You always did like her better than the rest of us."

"I didn't fake anything," Steve automatically corrected. "I was dead, or as good as, for a long time. Technically, I still am. By the time I made it back home, after the war was over-" He shrugged. "Didn't see much point in correcting the record."

"What do you mean, you still are?" Howard asked with a frown.

The click of high heels drew their attention, and they both looked over to see Maria approaching, looking at Steve through the car window with some confusion. Howard quickly unbuckled himself and opened the driver's door, standing up with his foot resting on the running board, and looked at his wife over the roof of the car.

"Hi, honey," he said.

"Howard? Who is this?" Maria asked in confusion.

"Oh, nobody special, just some old guy from Brooklyn I used to know," Howard said. "Did you get the passports?"

"No, I thought you got them," she said, glancing at Steve again.

"Better go get them," Howard said. "They're in the safe. We need to leave in 30 minutes, hon, or we're going to miss our plane."

Maria gave Steve one last puzzled look before turning to leave the garage again.

Howard climbed back into the car and shut the door. Steve looked at him more seriously. "I've missed you, Howard."

Howard shook his head. "Why didn't you tell me the second you got back?" he asked. "I know you think I never shut up, but if you didn't want me to tell anyone, I wouldn't have told anyone."

"It wasn't a matter of trust," Steve reassured him. "There were… complications. I would have liked to see you, too."

"That wasn't really you, was it?" Howard suddenly asked, turning to face him more fully. "With the Tesseract?" His brows knit together. "Have you been Peggy's secret weapon all this time?"

"I'm retired, Howard," Steve said. "That was my son. Our son. Mine and Peggy's."

"Your son…" Howard looked at him in wonderment. "Well, well, well. Steve Rogers finally got himself a taste of fondue. How was it?"

Steve kept his face and voice carefully deadpan. "I never knew cheese and bread could taste so good."

Howard laughed, and then he laughed, and then they were both laughing like idiots, sitting there in a Jaguar with the cold winter wind blowing outside, and it felt so bizarrely normal that Steve knew in a flash that he had been right to come.

"Why now?" Howard asked then. "I mean, you've been pretending to be dead all this time. Why are you here now, sitting in my car?"

Steve's smile faded. "To tell you the truth, Howard, I'm a little worried about what's in your trunk right now."

Howard looked at him blankly. "You're worried about my golf clubs?"

"No, the other thing in your trunk," Steve said patiently.

Howard looked at him even more confused. "You're worried about a suitcase full of Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts?"

"The other other thing, Howard," Steve said with some exasperation. "The super-soldier serum."

Now it was Howard's turn to look exasperated. "First you, now Tony," he said with a sudden flare of irritation. "Why does everyone think I'm taking that stuff to the Pentagon tonight? I'm still negotiating with the Department of Defense over the price. I wasn't born yesterday. I'm not transferring the goods until I have the check in my hand."

"You don't have a case with five IV bags full of super-soldier serum in your trunk?" Steve asked, a challenge in his voice.

"No," Howard said vehemently.

Steve was quiet for a long moment. Was it possible Howard was actually telling the truth?

"Show me," he said.

They got out of the car. Howard opened the trunk and gestured inside with a flourish.

Steve made quick work assessing the contents. Two suitcases, the aforementioned golf clubs, and a spare tire. Nothing else.

"What?" he murmured to himself, standing stock-still in utter confusion.

"I don't know where you and Peggy get your information, but it's obviously unreliable," Howard said dryly. "And I didn't make five doses, by the way. I made six."

"Six?" Steve repeated, brow creasing. But there had definitely been just five Winter Soldiers besides Bucky. Suddenly he found himself questioning everything. Had they somehow changed the future, not tonight, but even sooner than that? Something that had changed the number of doses Howard had made? And changed the date when he intended to hand over the completed product?

There was too much that he didn't know. Much too much. He needed answers.

"Howard, how did you make your serum?" he asked abruptly. "Without my blood to extract it from?"

"I assume you want the Cliff's Notes," Howard said, "unless you managed to get a degree in biochemistry while you were busy being dead." He was being sarcastic, of course, but Steve quickly shook his head, eager for the explanation to continue.

"Well first, I figured out how to make the original formula from scratch," Howard said.

Steve felt a surge of jubilation; even Dave and Sarah had not been able to do that after all these years, relying instead on an endless supply of blood samples from him. "And how did you solve the stability problem?" he pressed on eagerly.

"It isn't impossible, it's just unbelievably expensive and time-consuming," Howard said. "Basically, you map out the entire DNA sequence of your candidates and identify all the gene combinations you want to alter. You've heard of the Human Genome Project?" Steve nodded. "That's what I did, only I picked out six human subjects, so you can imagine that step alone took quite a while... although I pioneered some techniques to speed things along. Then you tool each dose of serum to match each individual's genetic profile, and make adjustments for their unique physiology: blood type, PH levels, hormones, every fiddly little thing. Pretty touchy work. Enough to give even me a headache."

"Dr. Erskine didn't do it that way," Steve said.

"Oh, believe me, I know," Howard said with feeling. "He found some kind of shortcut, faster and cheaper, but damned if I could figure out what it was. But there's more than one way to skin a cat. I got there my own way. You think hard enough and throw enough handfuls of cash around, you can solve just about anything."

Except he hadn't, Steve knew. The Winter Soldiers had been wild, impossible to control even with Hydra's heavy-handed training tactics. Howard's stability fix had been a failure. Unless...

"You keyed each dose to a specific individual?" Steve said slowly. "What would happen if it was given to someone else instead?"

"I don't know," Howard said, shoving a fist into a pocket. "I wouldn't like to find out. Psychosis, probably. We did some animal testing first, and that was the general result until I got the formula perfected."

Steve passed a hand slowly over his face, amazed. So Howard's formula hadn't been flawed after all. It had just been administered by a bunch of clumsy Hydra thieves who hadn't had any clue what they were messing with. And suddenly he realized: between the three of them, Sarah, Dave and Howard had solved the mystery of Erskine's process from beginning to end. Howard had successfully duplicated the original serum formula. And Sarah and Dave had discovered the magical process for enacting the change in a quick, reliable way, no handfuls of cash or touchy, time-consuming lab work required.

Hindsight was 20/20. The three of them should have been working together all this time.

"I was real careful, Steve," Howard said, his tone unexpectedly serious. "Choosing the candidates. I picked them out myself. I looked for men who reminded me of you, to tell you the truth. I, uh... I wanted to make Peggy proud of me for a change."

"She is proud of you," Steve said firmly. "We both are. And I think maybe we owe you an apology, Howard. We underestimated you, and we should have known better. You've done good work here. On the serum, and on Tony too."

"Tony?" Howard snorted. "Don't make me laugh."

"Howard, look at me," Steve said seriously. When Howard met his eye, Steve put his hand on his shoulder and spoke slowly for emphasis:

"Tony's gonna figure out what's really important. He's gonna straighten himself out. He'll become a good man."

Howard laughed humorlessly. "You can't know that."

"I do know that," Steve said with certainty. "Howard, you know I never lie. Trust me: one day Tony is going to save far more lives than I ever did."

Howard stared at him, clearly torn between wanting to hope for such a future, and fearing to. "I'd give anything to make that true," he said gruffly.

"We both would," a voice said, and they both turned to see that Maria Stark standing there with the passports in her hand, looking at them both strangely.

"Howard, who is this?" she asked slowly.

Howard cleared his throat slightly. "Honey? This is Steve Rogers."

"Steve... Rogers...?" she repeated in disbelief, staring at him openly.

"Where are you getting your information?" Howard demanded of Steve. "How could you possibly know all this?"

Steve took a deep breath. Oh, well. In for a penny, in for a pound.

"Remember when I told you, just a minute ago, that I was still as good as dead?" he said.

Howard waited expectantly.

"Howard," Steve said gently, "I'm still lying in the wreckage of the Valkyrie. In the Arctic, buried under the ice and snow. Not dead. Just asleep."

Howard stared at him. "What?"

"I'm not gonna be rescued for another 20 years. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s gonna find me. They're gonna wake me up."

"What?"

"And that was when I met Tony. Here, I'll show you." He reached back and pulled his wallet out of his pocket. Flipping quickly through the photos of the grandkids, he found the sleeve holding Harrison and Nat's photos and carefully pulled out the third photo hidden in between them. He handed it to a very confused Howard Stark, who looked down at it as Maria leaned over his arm to see, too.

"You with... Senator Ellis?" Howard asked blankly.

"President Ellis," Steve corrected him. "That was taken July 4, 2012. The day Tony and I were awarded the Medal of Freedom."

"That's Tony with you?" Howard asked, startled, holding the photo closer to his face. Maria made a small impatient movement, and a few seconds later she pulled the photo out of Howard's hand and looked it over with hungry eyes.

"It is him," she said in a suddenly shaky voice. "And he looks older." She let out a soft breath, her expression full of wonderment. "Howard, look! He looks even more like you than he does now." Her eyes were welling up, and Steve felt a wave of relief. He had been afraid they wouldn't believe him.

"What's with the beard?" Howard muttered, but he looked distinctly unnerved, and his hand was trembling a little as he reached out and took the photo back from his wife to scrutinize it again.

"He had gotten out of the weapons business by the time I met him," Steve continued. "He was running the company, doing a nice job of it. He came up with some pretty clever inventions. Miniaturized the arc reactor. Learned how to synthesize that new element you theorized, and put it to good use."

"You mean he did it?" Howard said abruptly, looking up from the photo in shock. "He actually did it?"

"Well, he got your brains, didn't he?" Steve said with some amusement.

"Did he have a family?" Maria interjected, breathlessly eager.

Steve nodded. "He married a good woman. They had a little girl." He paused for a moment. "Wish I had a picture of her to show you, too. But she had your eyes, Howard. And the curve of your cheek," he added, shifting his gaze to Maria.

Howard was trying hard to stay gruff, while Maria was letting the tears run freely down her cheeks. "Her name?" she asked in a high voice.

"They named her Morgan," Steve said.

"A boy's name?" she blurted out in surprise.

"Everyone was doing that in those days," Steve was quick to explain, as a confused expression crossed her face. "Actually, it kinda suited her."

"I don't understand," Howard said. "If you ended up in the future, with Tony, how are you here now?"

Steve settled on the explanation that would be easiest for Howard to understand. "I got access to a device. Something like the Tesseract, only it controlled time instead of space. I used it to come home. Back to where I belonged."

"So that's how she did it," Howard muttered, almost to himself. "Peggy. She really did have a crystal ball. She had you."

"I have some foreknowledge," Steve admitted. "I don't always know the details, but I have a general idea of the shape of the future." He frowned. "That's why I don't understand. You were supposed to have the serum in your trunk tonight, Howard. Five IV bags in a case. That's one of the things I was sure about. But now-"

"You think something's changed?" Howard asked, frowning.

"That isn't supposed to be possible." He looked at Howard. "Where do you keep the serum? Can I see it for myself?"

Howard nodded curtly. "I think we better. This way."

TO BE CONTINUED

Author's note: Reviews are appreciated!