Author's note: I swore to myself I'd pick up the pace on this story now that the Howard Stark arc is over and get through a decade in a single chapter. The result was... a really, really long chapter that I ended up having to cut in half. *facepalm* So you get six years today instead of ten. :-D

A few chapters back I answered a request to say which actors I would cast for my various OCs. I didn't list any for the younger grandkids then because they hadn't fully entered the story yet, but you're about to see more of them. So, here's the rest:

In Sarah and Dave's family:

Steven: I've always thought of him as strongly resembling Steve, so a young Chris Evans seems appropriate.

Amanda: Jessica Chastain

Joe: John Krasinski

In Mike and Tien's family:

Sammy: Veronica Ngo

Clint: Le Thai Hoa

Also, there will be an updated family tree at the end of the chapter.

Finally, thanks to kingmanaena, Guests, jerseydanielgibson (yep, "Prevengers" is dorky. But that works well for its purposes, I think. :-D), SJS3000, shivanimishal (new reviewers always welcome! Next chapter will have more Steve and Peggy), Agent-Fangirl27, dissatisfieduser, RealityReflected, Nimrodel 101, Nzie, Screaming Dean, Magic Lia16, Guiltypleasure82, girliemom, SpanishGirl and conlonkeith (I love that wibbly-wobbley timey-wimey concept too! But this won't cross over with Doctor Who, as fun as that might be), for your reviews for Chapter 25, and all my other readers for your interest!

May 15, 1992

It was an hour from sunset, but the May air was growing cooler in Peggy's garden thanks to the cloud cover that had just rolled in, as it so often did here in Winchester. Steve was glad he'd put on a sweater before coming out; as much as he hated to admit it, he was starting to get chilled more easily than he used to, and the air here tended to be damp. Well, he couldn't run from old age forever. And he wouldn't want to; retirement had its advantages. After more than four months in the English countryside, he was already beginning to look back at the hustle and bustle of their years in Bethesda as a distant memory.

Holding a pair of scissors in his hands, he strolled toward the white picket fence where a showy bloom of pink peonies grew, and with a low groan, he bent down to snip off some of the stalks to make a bouquet for the kitchen table. The peonies wouldn't last long, and Peggy wanted to enjoy them while she could.

A feminine laugh pealed through the air from another part of the garden as he straightened up carefully; Maggie, it sounded like. She loved gardening as much as Peggy did, and was only too happy to do the tending that Peggy couldn't. Maggie rarely worked alone, though; the couple who owned the sprawling cottage just down the lane from them had a son named Henry who was in the grade above hers at school, and he had an uncanny knack for showing up at the exact time that Maggie usually went out to work. Steve had seen him out there after school many times, eagerly insisting that he could carry the sacks of garden soil for her, and he could run and get the shovel out of the shed for her, and shouldn't he do the pruning for her, too, so her hands didn't get blistered?

Of course, Maggie could have carried the heavy sacks more easily than Henry could, even if he didn't know it, but she always politely let him help and thanked him sweetly afterwards. Now that spring had arrived and there was no end of garden work to do, Dave had joked (out of earshot of Maggie, of course) that they might as well pitch a tent on the grass and let Henry live in the garden, since he was so determined to be helpful.

"Somehow I don't think his parents would approve," Sarah had said wryly.

"Are you kidding me?" Dave had shot back. "Did you see their eyes light up the moment they figured out your mom was that Peggy Carter? Visions of political alliances were fairly dancing in their heads."

Henry's parents were on the ambitious side, there was no doubt about it; Henry's father James had been an MP years ago, and his mother obviously wanted nothing more than to have an MP for a son as well. And Peggy had contacts in the royal family going all the way back to the war years, not to mention the various government officials she'd worked with during her years heading up S.H.I.E.L.D. She had never made a fuss of that kind of thing, but Henry's parents were eager to extract information from her about the various players whenever they had dinner together. They definitely didn't seem worried about the amount of time Henry was spending over here. The ladylike mannerisms that came so naturally to Maggie made her acceptable to them… and even if she had been raised American, she looked so quintessentially English that Steve had seen more than once the surprise in people's eyes when she opened her mouth and the accent gave her away. The truth was, Maggie had fit in here more readily than any of the rest of them had.

Steve strolled back toward the cottage, scissors in one hand and the bunch of flowers in the other, but when he came around the corner on his way to the back door, he came upon Maggie, not gardening after all but sitting on the stone bench by the budding rose bushes, with Henry sitting very close to her. His arm was around her shoulders and their heads were very close together, but both of them jumped visibly and pulled apart with alacrity, startled at Steve's abrupt appearance.

"Evening," Steve said them conversationally as he passed by, trying not to smile at the way they were both blushing furiously and looking anywhere but at him… or each other.

Inside the house it was fairly quiet; Joe and Amanda were both sitting at the kitchen table doing their homework, and Peggy was sitting with them, sipping at a cup of tea. Steve put the peonies in a vase and set it in the center of the table, and Peggy looked up at him, smiled warmly, and accepted a quick kiss from him. Joe and Amanda didn't even look up from their homework; they were used to that kind of thing from their grandma and grandpa.

Steve had hardly sat down at the table to join them when they all heard a familiar hissing sound, and moments later Bram walked into the room, sliding his sling ring off his hand and tucking it back into his pocket.

"You're home early," Peggy said, looking up from her tea with some surprise.

"It was a half day of school today," Bram explained, shrugging off his backpack and setting it in the corner. Usually he got home just as everyone was going to bed, thanks to the time zone differences. With only a few months left before graduation when they made the move to England, the family had decided not to complicate Bram's transition to college by transferring him to a foreign school at the last minute. Of course he couldn't keep going to school in Bethesda, since Hydra knew to look for them there, so he'd chosen practically at random a high school in Salt Lake City, Utah to finish out the year. The sling ring made everything simple and they were grateful for that, even if Bram was quietly disappointed to miss all the end-of-year celebrations with the friends he'd known all his life back in Bethesda.

Amanda glanced up from her homework and wrinkled her nose at Bram's school clothes disapprovingly. "You look like a Yankee tourist," she said. Steve and Peggy exchanged glances and fought to hide their smiles; for about a month after moving, Amanda had complained loudly and frequently about all the things the British did differently from Americans, and then one day had abruptly done a 180 and taken to lecturing everyone else in the family, including Peggy, about the proper way to be British.

"I am a Yankee tourist, sis," Bram said with good humor as he reached out and tugged teasingly on the lapels of her school uniform, getting an annoyed slap on his hands in return. He wasn't wrong, either. Since he was on a different schedule from the rest of them, he did his homework in the middle of the night, worked a graveyard shift as an aide at a nearby hospital, and then slept until past noon before getting up to portal himself to school again. England wasn't really home for him, it was just a place to sleep, particularly since he had already been accepted into the pre-med program at Baylor and intended to start for summer semester. In less than a month, he'd move out and be on his own.

"How's school, kiddo?" Bram asked Joe next, rumpling up his already-rumpled hair.

Joe didn't even bother to try smoothing his hair. "I won the Year 4 spelling bee today," he said, poking his chest out in visible pride.

"Serious?" Bram said over his shoulder, now on his way to the fridge. "For the whole school?"

Peggy nodded in confirmation; she and Steve had been there to see it. "He even remembered to spell things the British way."

"Nice job, bro," Bram said, sincere despite rummaging through the shelves, looking for something to eat. "Hey, where's Mom and Dad?"

"Downstairs in the lab," Steve answered. "They got a shipment today, so they're trying to get everything inventoried and rotated."

"Mmm. I'm gonna go help them," Bram said, sniffing at a Tupperware and then tucking it under his arm, grabbing a fork, and striding out of the room.

Silence fell once more, and Joe and Amanda both went back to their homework, only to be distracted 30 seconds later when another sparkling portal opened up, this time depositing Tien, Steven and Sammy into the kitchen.

"What is this, King's Cross Station?" Amanda asked impatiently, putting her pencil down a little too firmly on the table. "How am I supposed to get my math done?" Even the younger children in the family were accustomed to seeing portals now, although all the adults had agreed to wait until they were older, as they had with their siblings, to tell them about their super-soldier heritage and the Decimation that awaited them in the future. It was bad enough that they had been driven out of the homes without warning by Hydra; they deserved to have a childhood free of existential horrors, at least.

Joe, on the other hand, scrambled out of his seat and ran over to give his Aunt Tien an enthusiastic hug before she could even tuck her sling ring away — she had always been a favorite of his — and only as an afterthought did he think to hug his own brother.

"How was your lesson today?" Steve asked Steven.

"Good," he said quietly, giving Joe a quick squeeze back and then gently disentangling himself.

"He's downplaying," Tien said immediately, even as Steven strode out of the room, heading toward his bedroom. "Mike says he's starting to look like a pro. Harrison's having the time of his life fighting him. They'll be well-matched before long, we think. Is it all right if Sammy uses your piano while I'm here? Our keyboard doesn't have pedals, and her next recital has a few songs that really need them."

"Of course, darling," Peggy told Sammy, who had a folder of sheet music tucked under her arm. "Go ahead."

"I'll come hang out with you in a few minutes," Amanda called back as Sammy headed for the front room, which had come with the baby grand belonging to the previous owners for the simple reason that a wall would have to be knocked out to remove it. Luckily, Sammy had recently taken to music like a fish to water, and she put the piano to good use whenever she came over. Amanda would probably keep a steady stream of chatter going over Sammy's practicing, but unlike everyone else in the family, Sammy seemed to have an infinite capacity for listening to her. The two cousins had the oddest relationship; whenever they got together Amanda did practically all the talking, yet far from being annoyed by that, Sammy had always seemed well-satisfied with the dynamic. Given that she spent so much of her spare time alone tinkering around with computers, maybe it was a relief for her to have a social interaction that didn't require too much effort on her part.

Tien helped herself to a cup of tea and then sat down at the table, pulling a tape recorder and a small notebook out of her jacket pocket. "Ready to work on your memoirs?" she asked Peggy. From the other end of the house, they could hear Sammy starting up a song on the piano.

"It really should be our memoirs," Peggy said, glancing at Steve. "It's extremely difficult to talk about my life without talking about yours, darling."

"Well, we're going to have to figure out a way to make it work," Tien said. They had already decided to write two versions of Peggy's memoirs; one heavily redacted version to release as soon as it was ready, and the full story to be released at a time yet to be determined. It would have to be after the reversal of the Snap, at the very least, and Steve already had a half-formed idea that he didn't want it released until after his death. He was used to being a nobody in the eyes of the world, and he had no desire to go back to the public life he had before. Between her memoirs and his comic books, their story would be preserved for the sake of history and all their descendants, and as far as he was concerned, that was all that mattered.

Tien flipped through her notebook to find the place where they had left off the night before, but when she found it she just sat there for a long moment, holding her teacup in one hand and pinching the bridge of her nose with the other, eyes squeezed shut as if she had a headache.

"Everything all right?" Peggy asked with a touch of concern.

Tien shook her head a little as she roused herself. "Oh, Clint was pitching a fit just now as we were trying to leave. I'm sure Mike has it handled by now. He was just… a little out of control. We're not sure what's going on with him. He's too old to be having tantrums like that, and he's too young to blame it on teenage hormones."

"Throwing a fit about what?" Steve asked.

Tien sighed heavily. "About how much he hates Vietnam. Says he doesn't belong there, he only looks like he does."

"Hates Vietnam?" Amanda repeated blankly, looking up from her math. "Why, what's wrong with Vietnam?"

Tien shrugged. "The weather. The school. The language. You name it, he's complained about it. Tonight he told us he hates the food my dad makes for us. It doesn't make a lot of sense; he's been eating pho his entire life, and I learned how to make it from Dad. He used to like it just fine." She sighed again, looking frustrated, and Steve could hardly blame her. For years she had taken the kids for visits to Vietnam as often as she had been able to, and now that they lived there she obviously wanted them to know and love that part of their heritage. It had to be a disappointment to meet with resistance.

"Are the other kids adjusting okay?" Steve asked.

"Natty loves it there," Tien said frankly. "She learned the language so fast she almost sounds native now. She's working at the Vo Binh Dinh school in Qui Nhon, teaching the younger students, and she's started dating one of the other instructors. I've even been portaling her to a ballet school in Ho Chi Minh, even though she could take her lessons in America or anywhere else if she wanted to. As for Harrison, well, you know him. He's always rolled with the punches. He doesn't really care where he lives as long as he gets in his fighting lessons. Sammy's doing fine, too. She has her piano and her programming club. Even she doesn't understand what Clint's problem is. And they used to be so close."

"Strange," Peggy murmured, looking concerned. Steve felt the same way. Clint had always been the jokester in the family, the one who goofed around and made the rest of them laugh, even the ones like his cousin Steven who were inclined to be a little too serious. He must have taken the abrupt move badly. Well, he was bound to adjust eventually, like Amanda had. Soon enough he'd be cracking jokes like his old self, Steve had no doubt.

"Well, let's get started," Tien said, changing the subject with an effort. "You left off telling me about meeting Mary from MI6, I think."

Tien started the tape recorder, and Peggy started explaining how she'd been trained for espionage before being hired by the SSR to track down Dr. Erskine. Given that he didn't have much to contribute to this part of the story, since it was before his time, after a few minutes Steve got up and went searching for Steven.

He found his grandson in his bedroom, still dressed in his workout clothes, hunched over a sketch pad.

"Hey, Grandpa," Steven said, not even taking his pencil off the paper as he glanced up distractedly.

"What are you drawing?" Steve asked curiously.

Steven added several more lines in silence before answering. "The Triskelion."

He laid his pencil down long enough to choose another one that was sharper, and now Steve could see that he hadn't drawn the Triskelion as it existed today, he had drawn it as it appeared on the day of the Hydra Uprising, with massive damage to one of the towers from its collision with the helicarrier and a thick plume of smoke rising up into the sky. It wasn't a replication of the scene Steve himself had created for his comic books, though. It had been drawn from a completely different angle. All in all, not bad work for someone who was recreating an event he hadn't even seen. Even incomplete, the sketch succeeded in giving Steve an uncomfortable shudder down his spine, which was fitting for the subject matter.

He walked over to the neatly made bed and lowered himself down to it with a soft groan. "I hear from your Uncle Mike that you're working hard, learning fast," he told Steven.

"I'm trying my best," Steven said seriously.

"Sounds like it's paying off. So what do you like about fighting?" Steve asked him.

Steven looked up at him blankly for a long moment, and then said: "I like it when I get better at it."

"Why is that?"

A frown appeared between his eyes. "Isn't it obvious?"

"I want to know what you think."

Steven looked at him steadily, sketch forgotten. "You're worried about me. Why? I'm just doing the same thing Harrison is. The same thing you did."

Steve chose his next words carefully. "Your mother said Frank Rumlow said some things to you. About how boys need to be raised, how they're supposed to act. And Steven… Brock Rumlow once said something to me that made me think his father mistreated him as a matter of course when he was a boy. I don't want you taking notes on the right way to be a man from someone like that."

Steven stiffened noticeably. "I'm not doing this because of that."

Steve nodded, relieved. "Good. Because there's no one in this family that you need to impress. Not all of us are fighters, and there's nothing wrong with that."

"I'm not trying to impress anyone," Steven said impatiently.

"Then what is this about? Because your mother and I don't see you taking a lot of pleasure in what you're doing."

"You're worried because I don't take pleasure in learning how to hurt people?" Steven shot back.

"We're just trying to understand."

Steven's chest rose up as he took in several sharp breaths, growing visibly upset. "Mom didn't want to fight either. She didn't want to hurt people. And she had to do it… because of me! Because I didn't know how to fight for myself! I was strong enough, I was stronger than he was, but I just- I froze!"

"That's a common response," Steve said gently. "It has to be trained out of soldiers-"

"Exactly," Steven said forcefully. "So I'm getting it trained out of me. If something like that happens again, no one will have to fight for me. I'll be able to take care of myself. Maybe even help the people around me, so they don't have to fight. I'm doing this to help people!"

"Okay," Steve said in placating tones. "Okay. I think it's good for you to want to help others." He took a deep breath. "I hope you aren't worrying more than you need to about your mother. You're right that fighting has never been her first choice, but she told me she doesn't have any regrets about what she did back in December. The two of you kept some very dangerous information out of Hydra's hands. You both saved lives. And the men who attacked you forfeited their own lives when they chose to endanger the innocent. Your mother understands that."

"I know," Steven said with a touch of weariness. "I do, too. But this is something I need to do, Grandpa. Please don't try to talk me out of it. I can do this. I really can."

1992-1996

The next year passed by in a blur. Dave and Sarah's St. Raphael's Medical Services took off so quickly that they began making plans to open a second clinic, finding no shortage of former Kamar-Taj trainees who wanted to sign on to help. Steve and Peggy did what they could to help, handling some of the bookkeeping and administration tasks to keep Dave and Sarah free to focus on the medical side of things. Finding last-chance patients who were willing to try something unorthodox turned out to be less complicated than they had feared, especially once the patients discovered the treatment was far less expensive than any other experimental options out there. Their grateful patients were quietly spreading the word, and they were saving lives at a steadily increasing rate.

Bram had moved to Texas and quickly immersed himself in his pre-med studies at Baylor, although he portaled over to England as often as he could to keep up on the various innovations in magical healing that his parents and their employees were developing. It went without saying that he would take his place at the clinic, too, once his education was complete.

Meanwhile, Natty, whose balletic skills had taken a meteoric rise during her last year in high school, ended up deciding to move to Russia, where she had access to the best schools. Her boyfriend was also a student at the same ballet school, at least until she got a new boyfriend. And then a different one. And then another one. Mike and Tien took to quietly rolling their eyes whenever Natty told them she was bringing over someone to meet them. All the boys she brought were nice enough, and the breakups were never ugly or dramatic affairs, she just… changed her mind a lot.

And in the midst of all of it, Peggy got to meet Sharon Carter at last.

Sharon's parents, Richard and Anne, had been living in Ontario for many years, but somehow they had never made it down to the States to visit Peggy while she lived there. But Anne's parents still lived in England, and so they came overseas for a two-week visit every summer to see them. Now that Peggy was in England too, they made a point of spending time with her as well.

As Sharon had long ago explained to Steve after the funeral, her familial connection to the Carters was a little more complicated than the title "Great-Aunt" implied. Peggy's brother Michael, who had been killed in action during the war, had left behind a widow who had not even given birth to their first child yet when she got the news. Helen Carter had eventually remarried and moved to Canada with her new husband, where she had two more children: including Richard, Sharon's father. Peggy's parents Amanda and Harrison had nevertheless considered all three of Helen's children as their grandchildren, even if only one of them was related by blood.

And it would seem Helen had felt the same way. Her second marriage had ended in a messy divorce, and she ended up once again taking the name Carter as a surname and changing the surnames of all three children. And so Sharon and her brother Matthew had wound up with the Carter name, too, despite being related only by marriage.

Steve made himself scarce the day Richard and Anne brought Sharon and her brother Matthew to their cottage in Winchester to meet Peggy. There wasn't really much danger in letting Sharon see him — after all, the chances of her drawing any connection between the old man he was now and the young man she would meet 20 years in the future were slim — but he was curiously incurious to see what Sharon had been like as a child. Peggy seemed puzzled by his attitude; after all, he had been delighted to have that brief run-in with a 4-year-old Tony back in the 70s. But she knew that it was her own relationship with Sharon that needed to be cultivated, and so she dropped the subject and focused on getting to know Sharon and helping to awaken in her a desire for a career at S.H.I.E.L.D.

It didn't seem like it would be a difficult task. As Peggy told Steve afterward, Sharon had an irrepressible sense of adventure that clearly alarmed her more staid mother. And she was fearless. In the afternoon Peggy walked out to show Anne the garden only for them to find a 7-year-old Sharon perched at the very top of the maple tree, breathless with pride in her own accomplishment. Instantly her horrified mother dashed over to ransack the garden shed in a desperate search for a ladder to help coax her back down to the ground.

"Sharon got herself up," Peggy had told her coolly. "She can get herself down again, I'm sure." And just as she said, when Sharon saw her Aunt Sarah laying out a table of scones and tea in the shade of the maple tree half an hour later, she got herself down in a matter of minutes with nothing more than a few scrapes on her elbows and knees to show for it.

All of Steve and Peggy's grandchildren were older than Sharon — the youngest, Joe, had almost four years on her, while Bram and Natty had her beat by more than a decade — but even the ones who lived in other countries now managed to arrange to be around the day Sharon came, curious to meet her. By the time she left and Steve had emerged from the basement lab where he'd kept himself busy working on some sketches that had needed his attention anyway, they were already talking about Sharon like she was some sort of kid sister, to be petted and fussed over when she came again this time next year.

"It's kind of funny to think of her having the guts to try to fight Bucky one day," Harrison said musingly. "She looks like she just stepped out of Grandma's old copy of 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears,' for Pete's sake. And she doesn't even have a secret boost like the rest of us."

"She's gonna save your life one day, Grandpa," Bram said, looking modestly impressed.

"That's more than any of us can say," Natty added.

"That we know of," Steven added quietly.

Maggie was the next to leave home, moving to London and getting hired to help run a children's charity that Henry's mother had founded there. Dave and Sarah had tried to convince her to go to college first, but it was exactly the kind of thing she had always dreamed of doing and she felt that the opportunity was too good to pass up. And it didn't hurt that Henry was going to Oxford now, just a train ride away, which seemed to settle the question in Maggie's mind.

Clint became the second-to-last grandchild to be told the family secret… and the first to take the news badly. He had already harbored a long-simmering grudge over being uprooted from his life in America without warning, and finding out that it was the result of a long chain of events that had started well before he was born and continued on throughout his childhood without his knowledge sent him into a spiral of outbursts and defiance that made daily life miserable for the rest of his family.

Harrison escaped it soon enough when he graduated from high school and was promptly hired as a security guard for Stark Industries, but that left Sammy to bear the brunt of it, along with Mike and Tien, who were at a loss as to how to help him. There were days when Clint was his old self: cracking jokes and making everyone laugh like always. But other days, he seemed to be a different person. His grades were slipping, but he lacked the motivation to do anything about it. And unlike the other grandchildren, he didn't have any school subjects or even hobbies that he was passionate about.

They all worried about Clint, but it was worst for Sammy. Once the two of them had been so close that Tien had sometimes jokingly referred to them twins. Now she was being pushed out of his circle. Clint was spending as much time as he could outside the home with his friends, several of whom were not exactly the kind of people his parents wanted him to run around with. Mike and Tien didn't want to be overly controlling parents, and yet it was clear that Clint's friends were not a good influence on him, and their attempts at love and persuasion weren't having the effect they hoped for. Sammy did what she could, but her efforts were rebuffed as thoroughly as Mike and Tien's were.

Steve worried about Clint, too, but in some ways he worried about Steven more, for reasons he could not explain fully even to Peggy when she pressed him on it. And yet on the surface Steven was a model child. His grades at school were always outstanding. His artwork was genuinely good, sometimes startlingly so considering his age. And he threw himself into his training with his Uncle Mike with an enthusiasm that exceeded even Harrison's. Steve sometimes watched their sessions and found himself taken aback at times at the fluidity of Steven's movements, the speed of his attacks, the lightning-fast tactical calculations he made that could catch even Mike off-guard.

Maybe it wasn't fair of him to worry like that. Harrison had loved to fight from a very young age, and they had never worried about him. But Harrison had always taken a rough kind of joy in what he did, whereas Steven only seemed to feel a grim satisfaction at a job well done. Steve couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. As he approached the end of high school, Steven made up his mind that he was going to join the Marines. And not just the Marines… MARSOC. The best of the best. There was no doubt in Mike or Steve's mind that he'd be able to do it, either. He had the ability and the drive.

"I hear the weather's nice in Colorado Springs this time of year," Steve said to Steven mildly one day as he was poring over the fitness requirements for Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia and sketching out a workout plan for himself.

"I'm joining the Marines, Grandpa," Steven said flatly without looking up. "Not the Air Force."

"I think you'd do well in the Air Force."

"I know what you're thinking," Steven said.

"Do you?"

Steven met his eyes with a hint of accusation. "Sam Wilson started at the Academy this year. You think if I join too, I can meet him, and then we can be friends."

"You'd be a good influence on him. The way your Uncle Mike is influencing Clint Barton now."

Steven scoffed softly. "Come on, Grandpa. You want him to be a good influence on me. You want him to tell me to chill out, just like he used to tell you."

"Sometimes I needed to hear that."

"I'm chill, Grandpa," Steven said quietly. "I am very, very chill. And I will continue to be chill until I get commissioned into the Marines. I can't join the Air Force. I'm going to be at the top of the game, and what would happen if they chose me for their experimental Pararescue unit and I ended up taking Sam or Reilly's place? That would mess up everything, don't you think?"

Steve sighed. "I guess so."

1997

The summer sun beat down as the newest graduating class for the Officer Candidate School paraded across the asphalt at the Marine Corps Base Quantico, led by a color guard and a marching band, all of them marching in time to the music.

The columns of marching men were indistinguishable from one another at first glance, all neatly dressed in their uniforms, arms and legs swinging in perfect synchronization, but it didn't take long for Steve to spot Steven in their midst as they drew closer; some subtlety in the way he held himself that made him stand out to Steve's eyes. Steven's chin was up proudly, uniform immaculate, hair buzzed short under his cap and his blue eyes bright and intense as he marched crisply past.

Peggy was there by Steve's side, shading herself from the fierce morning sun with an umbrella, arm in arm with Amanda who had dyed her hair bright red to celebrate the end of her sophomore year in high school, much to her mother's displeasure. Sarah and Dave were watching the parade hand in hand, looking every bit as proud and tearful as the parents of a Marine had a right to be. Maggie was there too, with the sunlight sparkling off her engagement ring — Henry had finally popped the question, and the cottage in Winchester had recently become wedding central, with magazines of dresses and flowers and linen-draped receptions strewn on every surface — while Joe stood by her, scribbling in his notebook as fast as he could as the men went marching by. He was assigned to write several stories about interesting events over the summer for his school newspaper, a task he took very seriously.

The only one missing was Bram. He was sorry to miss his little brother's big day, but he had a final at Baylor scheduled for the exact time as the ceremony, and even with his sling ring he couldn't be in two places at once.

After the parade was completed, they all filed inside to watch the graduates take their oath of enlistment. Steven's voice rang out over the others as he swore in a firm voice to defend the Constitution of the United States and obey all lawful orders. Steve felt a pulse of nostalgic pride, remembering the day he had recited those same words. It seemed like that had been a lifetime ago, and yet even after he had left the Army he had felt the weight of that oath. He still felt it today.

After the formalities were over, Steve and Peggy stood with Maggie, Amanda and Joe as they watched Dave carefully pin the rank bar on Steven's uniform while Sarah, smiling through her tears, took a steady stream of pictures. Just then, Steve felt a buzzing in his pocket, and took out his cell phone to see that Mike was calling him.

The cell phones available in this time weren't particularly advanced or reliable, at least not by Steve's standards, but everyone in their family had them now, for safety reasons as much as anything. They had no reason to believe Hydra had been able to track down their locations again, but they had adopted a policy of strong caution, and the cell phones meant that if any of them got into trouble, they could contact someone with a sling ring who could extract them from a situation.

Steve stepped away from the others and answered the phone. "Hello?"

Mike's voice crackled over the line. "Dad. I'm not interrupting the ceremony, am I?"

"No, we're just taking pictures now. What's going on?"

"I have a feeling this is a futile question," Mike said, sounding strangely reluctant, "but is there any chance, any chance at all, that Clint is there with you?"

Steve frowned. "Clint? No, he isn't. He isn't home?"

"He never came home from school today. I've tried calling around to all the usual places. All his friends claim he isn't with them. I mean, I wouldn't put it past them to lie to me about that, but-" Mike sighed heavily into the receiver. "He's been missing for hours. Tien's getting frantic. Maybe he just wandered off somewhere with a friend, but if it's something else…" He didn't need to fill in the blanks. Ever since Steven's ordeal with Hydra, they all had fears that no length of time had been able to soothe.

Steve was quiet for a long moment, his mind racing. "We're almost done here," he said at last. "I could have Sarah portal some of us over there to Qui Nhon to help you look. Maybe we can get Bram to come, too. I'm not sure when his final was, but he might be done by now."

"I don't want to wreck Steven's big day, but…"

"No, he'll understand," Steve said quickly. "He'll be worried too. Let me call Bram right now. He might be able to come right away while I get everyone else rounded up here."

"Okay," Mike sounded intensely relieved. "Thanks, Dad."

"Yeah. Don't worry. We'll find him."

Steve hung up, and then immediately called Bram. To his relief, Bram answered right away, and when Steve asked he said he had just gotten back from taking his final. Steve started to explain to him what was happening, but before he'd gotten far, Bram stopped him.

"Clint?" he said with audible surprise. "But he's here."

Steve paused. "He's there? With you, in Waco?"

"Yeah," Bram said. "Well, not here here. He called me a couple hours ago and said his parents said it was okay for him to come visit, so I opened a portal for him. I told him I had to cram and then go take my test, but he said it was okay, he didn't mind. He just went out to walk around and explore the town for a while. I kinda figured he'd be here by the time I finished, and I left my door unlocked for him, but he still isn't back."

"His parents are looking for him on the wrong continent," Steve said, a surge of frustration and worry rushing over him. "Bram, I'm gonna call them now. Call me right away if Clint shows up. Or call your Uncle Mike. He didn't tell his parents where he was going."

"Oh, fantastic," Bram said grimly. "Okay, I'll let you know. Maybe some of my neighbors saw which way he walked."

The next hour was a chaotic muddle of Steve giving the news over the phone to Mike and Tien — who decided to portal themselves and Sammy over to Bram's apartment to start searching — and then explaining the situation to Sarah, who hurried over to give Steven an apologetic goodbye before portaling over to Bram's along with Maggie so they could help look. Steve and Peggy stayed with Dave and the younger kids to finish celebrating Steven's commissioning, although everyone including Steven was so worried that it was hard to give his accomplishment the attention it deserved.

It was another hour before Mike called back to say that Clint had finally shown up at Bram's apartment, safe and sound. He managed to sound both relieved and infuriated at the same time, and when Sarah and Maggie came back to the Marine base through a discreetly placed portal, Steve and Peggy glanced at each other and didn't even need to discuss it; Peggy immediately asked Sarah to send them both to Mike and Tien's home in Vietnam, which Sarah promptly did.

It was after sunset in Qui Nhon when Steve and Peggy arrived, and Clint was standing in the middle of the living room, scowling at nothing in particular outside the darkened window while Mike stood right in front of him, face flushed with anger and voice raised, while Tien stood a few steps back, hand pressed over her mouth and her eyes glistening with tears. Sammy was hovering at the back of the room, hunched in on herself in silent distress, and Peggy immediately reached out for her and put a comforting arm around her shoulder.

"-you got everyone worked up and you wrecked Steven's day!" Mike was barking at Clint. "And what's worse, you dragged Bram into this! He's a student, he has work to do, he doesn't have time to babysit you when you're acting like this! You are 16! That's plenty old enough to have a little sense by now. Your mother thought you'd been taken by Hydra!"

Clint unexpectedly laughed.

"Is that a joke to you?" Mike demanded angrily.

"Why would Hydra want me?" Clint asked with a hint of amusement, not taking his eyes off the window. "I'm nobody."

"That isn't true, and you know it. There's plenty of things they could do with you, and you wouldn't like any of it."

"Yeah, well, I didn't ask for that, did I?" Clint snapped, the smile suddenly fading from his face as he turned to face Mike for the first time. "I didn't ask for any of this. Normal kids don't have to worry about being kidnapped by terrorists. Maybe you should have thought of that before you chose your profession."

"You're blaming this on me?" Mike pressed his lips together and visibly restrained himself from speaking for a long moment. Finally, he took a deep breath and started again, a little more quietly. "Clint, I hold responsibility for everything I've done and for all the consequences that followed. But I am not responsible for your choices, and lately you've been making a lot of terrible ones. You want to explain to us just what you were doing today, while the whole family was in an uproar worrying about you?"

"You really don't want to know, Dad," Clint said wryly.

"No, I really think I do."

Clint laughed again. "You really don't."

"Do you seriously think I couldn't find out if I wanted to? You might as well make it easier on yourself, and tell me where you were." Mike voice went deeper. "Now."

Clint shrugged. "Okay. If you insist." He reached over and began rolling up his sleeve. When he had it up, he deftly unwound a bandage that was wrapped around his upper arm and, once it was off, flexed his bicep for them.

There was a scrawl of dark ink across it, in the shape of a coiling dragon. The skin around the design was bright red with irritation, the skin cracked and bleeding in places. Sammy and Peggy both gasped together, and even Steve was taken aback.

"Is that- is that real?" Tien blurted out.

"Oh, yeah," Clint said easily. "At least, it sure felt like it. Hurt like the devil. That's normal, right? But this is only phase one. I gotta go back in a while to get it worked on again."

"Like hell you are!" Mike shouted. "A tattoo? What did you go and do that for?"

Clint shrugged, winding the bandage around his arm again. "Wanted to."

"You're gonna have to do better than that."

"What's the big deal? I'm just doing what my dear old namesake did. Will do. Whatever. Seemed fitting."

Mike's face turned to stone. By now he knew Hawkeye well enough to care for him on a personal level, and he obviously found the comparison wildly out of bounds. "He lost his wife and all his children on the same day," Mike said icily. "What did you lose? A card game?"

Clint raised his eyebrows, but didn't bother answering.

"Who did this for you?" Mike demanded, finding a fresh line of attack. "You have to have permission-"

"-if you're a minor," Clint finished calmly. "Oh, don't blame the tattoo parlor, Dad. They asked for my birth certificate, and I showed it to them. That program you installed on your computer to help you make fake IDs? It really came in handy. I think that might be the first time I was actually glad that you're a spy."

Mike was so bewildered that his anger ebbed for a moment, and he looked at Tien uncertainly. "I had that password-protected-"

"Seriously, Dad? Your daughter's a literal computer hacker, she can break programs like that wide open with one hand behind her back."

Sammy started visibly as everyone turned around to look at her. "Dad, I didn't do that!" she objected vehemently. "I never hacked your stuff, I swear-"

"You leave your disks lying around where anyone could pick them up," Clint pointed out. "Remember that day you explained to me how you run them?"

"Dad, I didn't know that he would-" Sammy started to say, tears springing to her eyes.

"I know, Sammy," Mike said flatly. "I know. No one's blaming you."

"Oh, no, Sammy never does anything wrong," Clint said, his voice thick with sarcasm. "No one in this family does. Just me. I'm the lucky one."

"When you do things no one else in the family has ever done, you lose your right to complain about being treated differently from everyone else," Mike said grimly.

The next few months that followed weren't any easier than that night had been. Clint's tattoo faded within a few weeks — he was gifted with the same healing factor they all had, and his body recognized the tattoo as the damage that it was and repaired it — but somehow he managed to slip away from home to get a new one, unfortunately just two days before Maggie's wedding. Then he got everyone into an uproar again by refusing to wear a long-sleeved shirt to cover up the half-healed wound, unmoved by Henry's mother's horrified reaction and even Maggie's quiet pleas, until finally Steven of all people pulled him aside and had a conversation too quiet for any of the rest of them to hear, after which Clint by some miracle agreed to cover it up and even spent the wedding day cracking jokes like he was his old self again.

But the change didn't last long. Soon enough he was sneaking out again, and this time Mike and Tien strongly suspected he was drinking with some of his friends.

"Which is stupid, because he can't get drunk any more than the rest of us can," Mike said in frustration when he and Tien came over to the cottage to give Steve and Peggy the latest update.

"It makes about as much sense as him getting tattoos he knows are going to fade," Tien said.

"Can't you track him when he leaves the house?" Peggy asked with a frown.

"I can, and I have," Mike said. "But last night when he realized I was following him, he took off running. And when I say running, I mean at top speed."

"Did you run after him?" Steve asked, concerned.

"How could I?" Mike said helplessly. "The only thing that could possibly attract more attention than some kid running down the streets of Qui Nhon at Usain Bolt speeds would be a 50-year-old guy chasing after him just as fast. And I what would I have done when I caught up to him? He isn't a Hydra agent. I can't force him into behaving."

"Sammy's moving out in two weeks to start at MIT," Tien said quietly. "Maybe things will be better once we can give him our full attention."

It wasn't an unreasonable hope, and in the year that followed Clint did make some improvements. He managed to get his grades up somewhat, and when Natty finally found a boyfriend she was ready to stick with — a young Vietnamese man named Quyen who had just snagged a promising job at an engineering firm in Ho Chi Mihn City — Clint kept everyone laughing at the wedding reception with his good-natured jokes about Quyen's newfound fondness for the ballet that had mysteriously developed after he'd met Natty.

He even managed to coax the whole family, introverts and all, out onto the dance floor for Chumbawamba's "Tubthumping," although he had help with that. A vivacious young woman who had briefly trained at Kamar-Taj before joining Sarah and Dave's magical medical staff, Aliyah, had come to the wedding as Bram's date, and he seemed willing enough to be dragged out onto the dance floor by her as long as it meant he got to hold her hands and watch her gleefully rock out to the song, even if he was a lousy dancer himself. Natty and Quyen, in wedding dress and tuxedo, looked as comfortable bouncing around to this song as they had slow-dancing to "Truly Madly Deeply" just a few minutes before.

Meanwhile Clint was practically manhandling Steven onto the floor and Steven was letting him do it with a gentle resignation, especially once his little sister Amanda rescued him by grabbing his hands and jumping up and down enthusiastically, a straightforward enough dance move that even a too-dignified Marine could copy. Meanwhile Harrison was surrounded by laughing bridesmaids and didn't seem to mind a bit.

After a little more coaxing from Clint, Sammy and Joe pulled their parents out onto the floor and got them to dance, too. But Steve and Peggy exchanged glances and then kept themselves firmly in their seats when Clint beckoned at them imperiously.

"I need a slow dance for my sweetheart," Steve explained when Clint came closer to them with hands spread and brow scrunched up as if to say "Well?" Maggie and Henry seemed to have the same idea as him; they were slow-dancing on the grass some distance away, in complete defiance of the fast beat. Clint let out an exaggerated sigh, and then promised he'd have the DJ play something slower for them next, a promise he made good on. Of course, he had an all-too-innocent expression plastered on his face when Celine Dion began crooning "My Heart Will Go On" and audible groans could be heard across the dance floor. Not that Steve and Peggy let that stop them from enjoying their dance in the slightest.

Months later, Steve often thought of that day, and wondered what had gone so badly wrong after that.

TO BE CONTINUED

New family tree (spouses in parentheses) and cheat sheet on everyone's locations, since they've scattered to the four winds:

Sarah (Dave), running St. Raphael's Medical Services headquartered in Winchester, England. Their children:

Bram, 24, medical student at Baylor University in Texas

Maggie (Henry), 22, living in London and working at a children's nonprofit

Steven, 19, based at Marine Corps Base in Twentyninepalms, California

Amanda, 17, high school student in Winchester, England

Joe, 15, high school student in Winchester, England

Mike (Tien), living in Qui Nhon, Vietnam, training Clint Barton in Washington, D.C. Their children:

Natty (Quyen), 23, ballet dancer, living in Ho Chi Minh City

Harrison, 21, living in New York City, working for Stark Industries

Sammy, 19, student at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Clint, 17, high school student in Qui Nhon, Vietnam

Reviews are welcome!