DISCLAIMER: No, I do not own any part of the MCU, or the title, which comes from "Some Other Me" from If/Then.
A/N: Do I fully understand time travel in the MCU? No. Have I seen all of the final season of AOS? Also no. Did I write this fic in a day anyway? Yes I did.
The following is true in every timeline:
"We'll have the band play something slow. I'd hate to step on your-"
Peggy sits in a control room alone, helplessly calling his name, crying. There is no dance, no chance of anyone ever stepping on her toes.
The Bernese mountain dog slobbers everywhere, including on his periwinkle tie and her brown cardigan and the pages of the newspaper that list out the horoscopes. Edwin finds it doesn't even matter; Ana is all that matters.
Sure, he takes the promotion. But the first thing he does is call in Peggy and tell her about the three hour long shouting match he had with the higher ups about giving it to her, but with Philips retired, no one but him is in a position to vouch for her, and they all think he's sleeping with her. He leaves out that part when he tells her, but she merely says "I know. It's alright."
It's not, at all, and he does as much as he can until they tell him to stop. He gives her all the best assignments. They still think he's sleeping with her, because God forbid Jack Thompson do something to benefit something other than his ambition.
When Nixon suggests sending Americans to Indochina regardless of Allied support, Daniel doesn't understand why. He knows that two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents met with Eisenhower, Nixon, and Wilson last week on the subject, after that "domino theory" rhetoric, and the current rumblings from them go against everything he's heard from Peggy, Howard, and Phillips, so where did Nixon get the idea?
He follows the trail, and they find out, and they make a plan.
Howard had heard the rumors. Agents had reported it in mission logs. His contacts in Wakanda had long ago bemoaned illegal vibranium poaching that they'd later connected to a Levithan cell. He just never expected the Winter Soldier to kill him.
It's a brilliant idea. It's a horrible name, but a brilliant idea.
"Colonel, I assume you'll be our director?" she says, looking up from the paper to find Phillips and Howard both staring at her like she's grown a new head. "What?"
"Awaiting your orders. Director," Phillips says to her, a proud smile on his face, and she can't deny that she preens.
It's everything else that can go a little sideways.
Peggy stands on his bridge and pours a vial of his blood into the East River. It's been a year. She's ready. It hurts, but she's ready.
Steve carries her over the threshold, and she laughs. He sets her down in the living room, their living room. He puts on music and they dance. It's been a year. He's her husband. She thought she'd lost him, but now he's her husband.
The car phone rings and Edwin reaches for it with practiced ease, the "Jarvis speaking" rolling off his tongue as easily as he brakes for the SHIELD trucks.
"Hello, love," his wife answers, and Edwin frowns.
"Ana? Is something wrong?"
"No, nothing's wrong," she replies, "It's a boy."
"What?" he asks, his voice shaking a little. Why had she not called him to collect Howard earlier? Maria wasn't even due for a few more weeks. Did something go wrong?
"Maria had the baby. We've been at the hospital all day. Did Howard not say anything?"
"Of course," he says, but he knows that Ana can tell he's lying. But he doesn't have time to dwell on Howard right now. Why had he not been told sooner? "We're on our way," he adds, his voice choking and his eyes watering, because as angry as he might be at his boss, Howard, a man who's been like a brother to him for all these years, has a son. (A son Jarvis was denied, but that's not why he's crying. Probably.)
"We'll see you soon, love." And she hangs up.
"Ana's okay?" Howard calls from the backseat. Edwin watches him in the mirror, staring at the tesseract schematics again, eyes glued to it.
"Yes. Maria and the baby are, too."
That, at least, brings Howard back to life.
"Did she-"
"It's a boy," Jarvis confirms.
"Christ," Howard says. The last truck finishes its cross and Edwin drives ahead, trying to ignore the knots forming in his stomach. He knows how much Howard already loves his son, he does. Just... something feels not quite right.
Howard's eerily silent in the backseat. Jarvis sneaks glances at him in the rearview mirror, and just sees him sitting there, twisting his wedding ring around his finger. Howard's never still, or quiet; even when he's working you can hear grunts or muttering or at the very least the rustle of paper. Today there's nothing.
"What did the man say his name was? Maybe that will help me remember," Edwin says.
"Howard Potts."
The name means nothing to Edwin, so he simply hums, turning out of the facility and out onto the main road.
"Am I home enough?" Howard asks, and Edwin blinks, quickly reorienting himself.
"I don't know, sir," he says, but they both know that's a lie; Edwin's the one who wakes up at four to have him out the door before six and who drops him off at seven or later every night.
"I don't want my kid to hate me. I want to be there. For their graduations and their science fairs, yeah, but for their first heartbreak and their first solid foods. For the day the color on the wall and the day they skin their knee in the backyard and just- all of it. But I don't know how. And I need to figure out this tesseract, and how to work around this goddamn inflation-"
"You've got people to help you do all of those things. Your child is only going to have one father," Edwin said. He'd spent too many nights since that day in 1947 dreaming of the type of father he wanted to be. He and Peggy have whispered fears about Howard and Maria behind their backs, terrified that something isn't quite right, but seeing Howard nod through the rearview mirror, he thinks that something might just be correcting itself.
The past several years have been quite the whirlwind for Daniel. Between the war, his leg, the fall of the SSR, and the founding of SHIELD, he thinks he can be forgiven for not settling down.
Not that he hasn't tried. Violet was sweet, and he thought he might be happy with her, but he knows, deep down, that wouldn't happen. Then there was Peggy, the girl he thought he'd wanted for years, and after six weeks they didn't know what to do around each other anymore.
Watching her marry Jack isn't as hard as he thought it might be. They're much better as friends, and she and Jack just fit in a way that they didn't. It does make him wonder, though, if maybe he should keep trying, if it's worth it.
He never finds out.
The past year has been quite the whirlwind for Daniel. He's traveled through space and time, met superpowered people and encountered robotos with the personality of dead people. He's still not quite clear on that one, to be honest.
But there's been Daisy, tracking down typewriters for him, teaching him about Google, and fitting so seamlessly with him, the way he'd been searching for forever, in all the wrong places; in all the wrong times, apparently. He wonders if soulmates are a real thing, if his whole life was meant to bring him here, to Daisy, to Kora, staring out into space.
He can't wait to find out.
Peggy's memory might slip sometimes, forgetting things like her niece's phone number or her son's address, but she's certain that Nicholas Fury has never personally paid her a visit. Jack eyes him from across the dining room table with eyes narrowed, which helps her remember just how abnormal all this is.
He waits until she's brought them all tea to ask Fury why he's here.
"We found him, Director Carter."
She pales, shaking her head. It's been sixty-five years; why now? She'd let him go years ago. She'd lived a long, good life, with a husband and children she loved. She thinks Jack says her name, but she can't really hear, jush pushes back from the table and walks into the kitchen, her hands shaking. She braces herself against the counter.
Jack comes up behind her, she can smell him before he touches her, wrapping one arm around her and placing the other hand next to hers on the counter, holding them both up. He's lost about an inch or so since their younger days, so his chin easily presses against her shoulder, their faces just inches apart.
"You should see him," he whispers, and she closes her eyes and weeps.
Tony calls them to tell them. Peggy doesn't follow it and hands the phone to Steve. It breaks his heart to see her like this again, and prays she can hang on. It's so subtle right now that only he seems to be aware of it.
"They found him. You? What do we do about it?"
"Nothing. He's Steve Rogers; I'm not."
That part's true. He's been "William Burnside" to everyone but immediate family since he came back. They filed papers to pretend he's Steve's cousin, people won't be completely blindsided when they look at the photos of Steve post-serum.
"You're sure?" Tony asks, skeptical and ready to fight him. Some things never change.
"Yeah. Let Natasha or Sharon take point on him. He'll be okay."
Sharon may be his niece, but she's not Steve Rogers' niece, and back in 2014, he'd liked her long before he'd known she was the daughter of Peggy's baby brother. Sure, it's weird for him, gray-haired, Mr. Carter him, but if they did it right, the Steve Rogers coming out of the ice right now will never know that there were two of him, and it'll be up to Sharon to decide if he's worth it.
The following is true in every timeline:
Steve Rogers saves the world too many times to count.
Edwin Jarvis lives on in Tony Stark's work.
Jack Thompson wouldn't make it without Peggy Carter.
Daniel Sousa is more important than anyone will ever know.
Howard Stark loves his son.
And Peggy Carter can do anything her peers can do, but better, and in high heels.