Chapter Two: Somewhere, Skies are Blue

"You have only just begun." -Son Lux

"You want...five paninis?"

The waitress at the Brickhouse Deli was giving both Steve and Audrey quizzical looks. "That's right," Audrey confirmed.

"Are there other people joining you? We have bigger tables, um..." she trailed off, an arm extended towards a cluster of empty tables capable of holding four people.

"It's just the two of us, but, um, thanks." She smiled awkwardly, trying to be polite. It reminded Steve of himself, before the serum and even a little after. Steve wasn't sure if he should be happy about recognizing bits of himself in her, or sorry that he passed those traits on.

In the hour that Steve had known her-his daughter-he'd identified four things about Audrey. One: she definitely had the same nose as him. Two: she seemed to have inherited his social finesse. Three: her laugh sounded just like Peggy's. Four: she was impossibly optimistic.

The last one was the most interesting to him. Steve had always assumed that even though he was a ray of positivity or a sliver of hope for the American people during World War II, he'd either die in battle or grow up old and bitter. He'd lost too much to be the same. Audrey had spent sixty years on this earth and still grinned to herself whenever someone did something nice for her. When the man held the door open for her, when someone knocked out of the way and then paused to make sure she was okay. She still managed a small grin and a "thank you," said like she meant it.

"So uh," he started, but trailed off when he realized he didn't have an end to his sentence. Steve had a million and one questions for the girl, but they all seemed like the wrong ones.

As if reading his mind, she piped up, "Right! Okay. You must have a ton of questions, and I'm here to answer all of them." She frowned. "Actually, I don't remember much of the fifties or the early sixties but you can still ask me. I've got my phone, I can look them up."

"You can look things up on a phone?" he blurted without thinking. Great. Was she going to think he was stupid now?

If she did, Audrey didn't show it. "Yeah!" she exclaimed, reaching over to her bag and pulling a rectangular box out of it. "Okay, so phones were just...devices for calling people through, I think, 2000. Then they started to develop mobile phones, which were phones you could charge and take places with you, or phones with batteries that you could replace instead of needing to be hooked up to the wall. Then they invented smartphones." She pushed the block across the table, tapping it.

The block lit up and he jolted a little in surprise. She was too fixated on entering a passcode-8, 2, 8, 4, 5-to notice his reaction.

A series of small pictures filled the screen, as well as a logo lighting up on top-Stark Industries.

"Stark?" he asked. "Howard Stark?"

Audrey opened her mouth. "Uhhh…." she said, then cringed at herself. "No, um, Stark Industries is Tony Stark now. Howard died in a car crash in the nineties." She bit her lip. "I know you knew him. I'm sorry."

"It's...it's okay. I think most everyone I knew is dead by now." Steve's own cavalierness surprised him. She looked taken aback by it, too, and he wanted to swallow the words back into his mouth. This was uncomfortable. "Do you live in New York?" he asked quickly.

Audrey relaxed visibly. Steve wondered how Peggy, one of the best spies he knew, had raised a child who expressed what she felt so clearly. Maybe she just...trusted him. Already. In that case, how had Peggy, still one of the best spies he knew, raised a child who trusted so quickly?

"I live in Brooklyn, yeah." She nodded profusely.

"Do you have a family?"

Her jaw dropped a little, either in shock or amusement or a combination of both. Steve hadn't known if it was a dumb question or not, because in his day, she looked like she was at the age to be married with a kid or two. But Audrey shook her head no. "I mean, I've got mom and Daniel and Tony, and I used to have Anna and Jarvis but they've both passed away. But I don't have a husband or kids." She hesitated before adding quickly, "I've got a boyfriend though."

Oh. Okay. This was uncomfortable again, because he wasn't sure how to react. She had a boyfriend, which was good if he made her happy, but he remembered men being furiously protective of their daughters. Somehow, though, he figured that she had a good head on her shoulders. He didn't want to obstruct her personal life-that was hers, and he'd been absent too long to really have a place in it yet. Did he want a place in it? This was his daughter, but Steve had missed out on so much of her life. Still, this was one of the last things he had. When he'd gone into the ice, he'd lost everything, but now that he was out of it, he'd gained a kid. Was he supposed to bond with her? Did she want anything to do with him? Steve opened his mouth with the intention of asking her. "Huh," he said instead. "Uh, so you work for S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"Yeah," she answered, nodding. "I'm an investigative agent, because, I mean, even though I've got the strength and stuff, they didn't want to reveal a new superhero yet. Nobody knows that you have a kid, and if I were out punching people, questions would be asked...yeah. So I work on solving cases instead."

Neither said anything for a moment.

"I also don't think I'd make a very good superhero, in all honesty."

He sat up. "Why not?"

"Everything scares me. I don't like confrontation, and I'm pretty bad at thinking things through. I don't know how to work closely with others. I don't really have that many...friends."

"The best soldiers don't fight because they love the war," he said, thinking back to the men he'd fought with. "They fight to end it."

Steve wondered if it was too soon to be dealing out advice, but she seemed to consider it as she fiddled with the straw in her lemonade.

"I can tell you're beating yourself up about something," Audrey divulged abruptly. Her next words took on a sheepish tone. "That's how I look when I'm annoyed with myself. But um, you can trust me. I don't know how much good saying that will do, but you can. I'm required to tell SHIELD if you do anything to physically hurt yourself or others, but otherwise, all of this stays between us." She blew out a breath. "But, uh, anyways, after lunch-does this count as lunch? It's, like, two-thirty-wait. Let me start over. After eating, I was thinking we could walk around a little, and then we could stop at my apartment and grab some DVDs, and then we'd go back to your apartment and watch them because my DVD player kind of sucks, but your apartment has all the bells and whistles, thanks to Coulson and his fanboy crush."

"DVDs?" Steve didn't say anything in response to the Coulson and his fanboy crush part. Partly because he didn't know what it meant, but mostly because he didn't think he wanted to.

"Movies. Sorry. They're portable movies, I guess? You take the DVD and when you put it in the player you can watch it at home."

Steve nodded, trying not to give his reaction away. That was just weird to think about. Movies at home? Steve hadn't been able to afford to go often, maybe if he saved up for a month and split the cost with Bucky, the two of them would manage a ticket and the other would try to sneak in through a backdoor. The films weren't always interesting, and sometimes the theaters could only afford to play repeats, but it always felt special to see them. And then he'd been in the pictures, which was probably the last time he'd seen one. But now, people just watched them in their houses?

"I don't have plans, so that sounds fine," he said, just as the waitress swung by, holding a tray with five separate sandwiches on it. The words were more morbid than he'd intended—of course he didn't have plans. Almost everybody he'd known was dead, and he'd been rocketed seventy years into the future, and he had no damn clue what he was supposed to do with himself now.

Across the table, Audrey's face split into a grin, and she began shifting things on the table out of the way to make room. The waitress struggled to arrange five different meals on the wooden surface. Audrey took two in front of her, moving her glass all the way to the corner, and then tried to wedge two in between them, and then the woman set a sandwich in front of Steve. She smiled politely at them, but as she walked away, Steve caught something about better-get-a-big-tip. Audrey shook her head. "We'll tip her well, I promise. Okay." She pointed to the plate in front of Steve. "That's a BLT, it's really good, and I almost hope you don't like it so I can have it." Then she gestured to the two in between them. "That's a grilled cheese, simple but nice, good comfort food. And that one is a pulled pork sandwich, which is honestly the best thing ever, but it's heavy, so I recommend we split it." Finally, she gestured to the ones in front of her. "This one is pesto chicken, and this one is prosciutto, which Tony likes to call a lesser bacon, but it's just as good if it's toasted."

Steve eyed the plates, struggling to remember which ones had which name. Every plate looked good, and his stomach rumbled as a reminder that it had been more than half a century since he'd eaten anything. He'd been sipping water as they talked, but that wasn't enough. He wanted food. Things had grown more complex-everything was boiled in the forties. This was grilled, or whatever word the menu had used, and there were so many options to choose from.

"Alright. Which do you wanna try first?"

Glancing up from the piles of food, Steve made eye contact with Audrey. Things might've been more complicated now, but he wasn't alone.

He had that. At least he wasn't alone.

Steve did end up liking the BLT, to Audrey's simultaneous delight and dismay. The two managed to polish off every plate, to the waitress's bewilderment. Like she promised, Audrey tipped generously when she paid the bill, ignoring the hand from Steve that flew to his SHIELD issued wallet.

"I got it, don't worry," she insisted. This was a minor introduction to modern society. It wasn't always the man to pick up the check anymore. Also, Steve noticed, peering over at the receipt, inflation.

When they stepped outside the deli, Steve was once again startled by how populated the sidewalks were. People spilled over every direction, pushing and pulling, going somewhere else. Audrey watched him carefully as he struggled to make a way through the path, so she took his arm and started to tug him down the street, until they were in front of a bookstore. "We have to go in here," she said suddenly, yanking him to the side and through the glass doors. There was no bell that chimed, just two pronged, shelf-like objects made of gray plastic. "Those are for security," Audrey informed Steve when she caught him glancing at them in surprise. "They sense if a product is being taken out of the store without having been paid for."

"Huh." Steve wondered how they could do that, detect if something had been purchased or not, but before he could ask Audrey, she'd begun to wander off.

He surveyed the rest of the store, big, with shelves of books crowding up the walls. Audrey wasn't focused on the ones high up on the shelves, though, she was strolling over to the sections of notebooks. She pulled two from the shelves—one large enough to hold full-size sheets of paper, the other small enough to fit into his back pocket. "These are for you," she decided. "This one," she started, shaking the smaller one, "is for pop culture. Movies, music, books, sayings that you don't understand, write them in here and you can ask me. We'll make a list of things you wanna read or see or do. Or eat. That's important, too." She handed it to him. Clasping the bigger one in both hands, she said, "Mom said you used to draw a lot. Art can help with trauma, or if you just feel bored, or if you have a weird dream or whatever." She bit her lip, cheeks tinging pink when he didn't react. "You don't have to take it, if you want. Um, I can get you something else."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "This is great. Just, uh, paper used to be really expensive," he explained. "During the war. I couldn't afford it, usually, so I would just draw on butcher paper if I could get my hands on some." Audrey was nodding pensively. "Thank you," he finished.

"Of course," she assured him, nodding. She continued nodding. Letting out a breath, she turned to the shelf. "We should get you some pencils, too. Um, do you want color?"

Steve nodded yes, because he'd never had colored pencils as a kid. How odd it felt to squeeze into the mindset that he'd been a kid many years ago, when really he felt like everything had happened yesterday. The loss of Bucky burned deep into his heart, he could still hear Peggy's voice breaking over the radio (that, he thought, is something I'll never forget anyways), still felt like the Howling Commandos' absence. Steve wasn't sure if these feelings slashed at him because the memories felt fresh, or because they were forever embedded in his mind. Was one better than the other?

By the time they'd left the bookstore, Audrey had collected the two notebooks, pencils, a book on the history of the twentieth century, and a paperback for herself. ("Sorry," she'd apologized. "My friend Caroline—who you met, actually, um, she was the one pretending to be from the forties, anyways—she keeps bugging me about reading it.")

They took the train to Brooklyn, where Audrey shared with him her birthday (August twenty-eighth), her boyfriend's name (Joshua), her favorite ice cream flavor (chocolate), and where she was born (Los Angeles, a few months after Peggy had finished investigating something called Zero Matter). When they arrived at the stop in Williamsburg, she made her way through the crowd, leaving a trail of "excuse me"s in her wake.

As they strolled up the block, Audrey waved into a few store windows, pausing their conversation to point things out. "My aunt, Angie, she was an actress. After her first show on Broadway, she took mom and me out for dinner here," Audrey noted about an Italian restaurant. "It's been here forever, opened right after the war ended."

Steve had managed to remember a few of the names she mentioned. Daniel was Peggy's husband, Angie was her friend, Laura and Michael were her children, Jarvis was Howard's butler and Peggy's partner in crime, and Anna was Jarvis' wife. Steve noted Audrey's tendency to use the same British exclamations as Peggy had. "Bloody hell!" she'd yelped as she tripped over the platform on the subway. "For Lord's sake," she muttered as she rummaged through her bag in search of a ringing cell phone. It sounded almost comical in an American accent, but she hadn't seemed to notice how foreign the saying was. Maybe it was just foreign to Steve. It seemed everything was at this point.

"Okay," she said finally, pulling up in front of an apartment. "Here we are. You can, um, come inside."

As Steve strolled inside, hands in his pockets, he took in the small lobby and the security guard sleeping at the front desk. It worried him, until he remembered that Audrey inherited some of the serum's effects, and could likely hold her own. Thinking of her as someone with super strength was difficult—while Steve had gained muscles in bulk quantity, Audrey still looked normally sized.

After the short elevator ride to the sixth floor, Audrey pulled out a key and inserted it into the lock of the third door to the left. "This'll be quick," she promised. "I just need two minutes." And then she swung the door open.

The space was tiny, first of all. The bedroom wasn't separate from the rest of the apartment, and various books were scattered everywhere, all of which seemed to focus on the war, and himself. File folders littered every available surface, with the exception of the counters in the kitchen. Tacked up on the walls were a few photos of her and Peggy, her and a few other older men and women. One of her and a red and gold robot, who was making an obscene gesture at the camera. Steve hoped that wasn't Joshua.

It didn't seem like a space he or Peggy could've kept. This was entirely her.

"Okay," Audrey said, closing the trunk she'd been kneeling by. "All this history stuff is important, I know, but I think the real key to catching up with the times is with these."

Steve stared at the pile of boxes Audrey had deposited on the desk. "What are these?" he asked, lifting one up for examination.

"These are DVDs. Movies. Picture shows? I forget what they called them in the 40s. But anyways, if we start with Forrest Gump and then jump around from there, I don't think it'll be too bad."

Steve didn't know what Forrest Gump was, but he figured he would find out sometime soon. Before he could stop himself, he blurted, "Do you have pictures of Joshua?"

"Um, yeah. I do. Do you want...to see them?"

Steve nodded.

"Okay."

Instead of going over to the wall, Audrey pulled the box—the phone, he corrected himself—from her purse and unlocked it again. The passcode was her birthday, Steve realized.

She tapped the screen for a bit before thrusting it back in his face. The photo was of a group of people—Audrey on the left, the woman Steve met earlier (Caroline, he thought, but wasn't certain; she might've said Catherine) kissing a blonde woman on the cheek, a dark-haired man, and two other ladies with their arms looped together. "He's the one in the middle," Audrey supplied after a beat of silence. She pulled the phone back. "Um, anyways, your apartment isn't too far. A few blocks east. The walk shouldn't be bad."

Hurriedly, Audrey began to shovel the plastic cases into her purse. With a sharp tug on the zipper, she sealed the bag shut.

"Whew," she breathed comically. She scowled. "I regret doing that, ignore me."

Steve couldn't help the laugh that bubbled up in his throat. When Audrey's bewildered eyes flew over to him, he explained, "You sound like me."

In a second, her gaze went from confused to soft. The corners of her lips quirked up into a gentle grin. "There are worse things to be compared to," she said. Steve felt warm, for the first time since he'd woken up. "Now come on, Captain. We've got movies to watch."

Steve's apartment was huge.

Maybe not huge as the modern definition applied, but it was definitely huge for him. A full bedroom, a living area and a kitchen that was shiny and sleek, a separate bedroom with a closet, and a bathroom. He probably could've fit three of his old apartments into the bedroom alone. "Unpacking" consisted of putting his duffle bags onto the bed in the bedroom, and then glancing around, and then wondering—again—what he was supposed to do with himself. SHIELD had given him enough clothes to last a week without needing to do laundry, some basic toiletries, and a lot of cash.

Audrey, though reluctant at first, eventually relaxed on the couch. Steve mimicked her slouching position as they watched the movie, since sitting straight grew uncomfortable as time passed.

Forrest Gump did help as a brief overview of the time between the fifties and the eighties. As Steve observed the fashion changes each decade underwent, he found some positives to missing out on everything. Not much, but Audrey's positive outlook was almost infectious. Before he noticed it, Steve was clinging to anything uplifting he could find.

After Forrest Gump came Lilo and Stitch, which Audrey described as being "not historically relevant, but it'll make you feel happy." Steve had found it cute, but hadn't realized that Hawaii was annexed until Audrey explained it to him.

Then came a brief introduction to smartphones. "There are, like, three buttons you really need to know how to use. This one," she started, pointing to something with the outline of a phone, "is for calling people. If you tap on it, it brings up a keypad. Now. Um, I'm going to add myself on speed dial. If you call 1, it'll go directly to my phone. And I'll add myself to your contacts list too. You can call me for everything. I mean it. Anything you need, you can call me."

As she typed her name in, he noticed that she didn't have "Rogers" as any part of it. Just Audrey Carter.

He tried not to think too hard about it.

"This is for texting. Texts are like...little letters that you write to people. But they arrive instantly." She pulled out her own phone to demonstrate. "I'll send you a text that says, 'Hello, Steve' now," she started, typing out the message. Steve's own device buzzed a second later. "And you'll get it immediately." Then, grinning as if she hadn't known this technology for the duration of its existence, Audrey said, "It's cool, right? You can text me if you don't feel like talking, and I think next time I'll introduce you to emojis." Steve didn't know what that meant, but he was okay with that for now.

"What's the last one I need to know?"

"Right! The last one is this." She pointed to a red button on the screen. "This is a help button. If there's ever an emergency, if you get hurt, you press the button and it'll tell SHIELD your location so they can come get you."

That he wasn't so okay with. SHIELD was founded by Peggy, yes, and employed Audrey. They'd revived him from the ice, but they'd also lied to him. Undoubtedly, they were powerful, and Steve hadn't known about them long enough to ensure that they were using that power correctly.

As if she could see what he was thinking, Audrey said, "I know you don't trust SHIELD yet. But you can count on them to save you if you're in danger. That's important."

Steve held his breath. "Okay," he answered. The solution was easy—don't become endangered. Then he wouldn't have to deal with SHIELD. Or he could just call Audrey if he needed help. She'd said to call him for everything.

Fine. Then that was that. SHIELD need not intervene.

Audrey had dropped both phones back on the table and moved back over to the DVDs. "You want something educational or something fun?" She gasped. "No wait, we have to watch Ferris Bueller. That one has both."

Steve nodded. "Whatever you say, kid."

That night, Audrey left with a promise that the two of them could meet up tomorrow morning, and just to text her when he felt ready to do something. "There are running shoes in one of the duffles," she added. "Same design they use on me, so they won't fall apart when you use them." On her way out, she'd thrown her arms around him, but Steve, too stunned by the action, hadn't done anything to reply. "Okay, well, um. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye."

And then she'd scampered down the hallway and into the elevator.

Before she'd left, she'd advised him to at least try sleeping. Steve started in on one of the movies, but without Audrey to explain what they meant by this or that, he was lost a half hour in. He switched off the TV—manually, because he was still iffy with all the buttons on the remote—and glanced over at the kitchen table. Audrey had left her file and Peggy's with him.

Sitting down in the chair, he pulled out Audrey's. Born in 1945, raised quietly. Peggy was pregnant with her during the bout with Leviathan in New York and with Whitney Frost in LA. She still managed to avert both possibly-world-ending crises. There weren't any photos from Audrey's birth, but there were measurements. She was bigger than he'd been, probably because his sickly disposition had gone away after the experiment. On her birth certificate, Steve saw that Peggy had hastily scrawled S. ROGERS in the father's spot.

There were a selection of notes from Howard about her aging. Audrey only celebrated her birthday every three years, according to the sheet, because it lined up better with her true aging. Anna spent a lot of time mothering her while Peggy continued her missions, since apparently the woman had been shot and rendered unable to have her own children.

Audrey went to college beginning in the seventies and had collected six degrees from four different universities, none of which seemed entirely relevant to the work she did as an agent, but she'd passed multiple exams from SHIELD. Steve guessed that she'd been taught a lot from the people she grew up with.

There were photos of Audrey in the 80s, sporting wild curls. One from 1971 of her on her first day posing in front of the SHIELD logo in the base's lobby. There was a note under that—Agent Carter insisted on this photo. This is the only copy, for privacy reasons.

Steve read through the rest word-for-word. The mission reports, the basic training progress. She'd worked in the archives, at first. Then moved onto assistant to a man named Nick Fury. Then taken over a team—Tactical Team Q—specializing in stopping human trafficking. The reports were long, and often dull, but it was the closest he would get to watching his daughter grow up.

Peggy's file was thicker, depicting at least a dozen incidents where she covertly saved the world, notes on Howard's never ending search for him, her marriage license to Daniel Sousa, and at the bottom, a phone number to the center where she lived. Steve glanced at his own phone, resting on the table. It would be easy to call her, just to hear her voice again. Saturday night, at the Stork club. Eight o'clock on the dot. Don't you dare be late.

Steve winced. He was late. Very, very late.

Flipping the file shut, he resigned himself to at least trying to sleep.

"Steve?"

Through the laughter and the music filling the dance hall, Steve could make out the sound of someone calling his name. He turned around at the sound to find Peggy standing before him, hands resting on her hips. She was dolled up in a blue dress, hair up in victory rolls. She smiled at him and the whole room glowed.

"I thought I lost you for a second," she swore teasingly. "Ask me to dance, already. C'mon, Steve."

"What about the baby?" he asked, words slipping from his tongue before he could stop them. Wouldn't want to hurt the baby.

Peggy's laugh filled his ears, warm and forgiving. "She's at home, remember? It's just us. Ask me to dance, Steve."

Smiling hesitantly, Steve leaned forward. "May I have this dance, Peggy?"

She pretended to consider, scrunching her face up and tilting her head back and forth. "Well, alright. Do you promise you won't step on my toes?"

He shook his head, answered with a solemn, "No." But then, grinning, he added, "But I promise I'll try."

Peggy took his hand and led him out through the crowd. The dance floor was crowded. People laughed. Cameras flashed. But all the bodies were packed too tightly to dance. Steve looked down and realized he wasn't moving anymore. They pressed too tightly against him.

His gaze chased the path of his arm, only to find that his hand wasn't holding Peggy anymore. Instead, his fist gripped tightly onto….

"Bucky?"

"Steve." Panic lit up his best friend's eyes. "Steve!" he shouted, and then the crowd began to move, yanking him away. "Steve!" he called again.

From behind him, he heard Peggy's voice. "Steve? Steve. Come back to me."

Too many people. This wasn't a dance hall. When did Bucky come back? Where had he gone? And Peggy. Why did she leave him? Or was it the other way around? Steve shut his eyes tightly, opened them, found himself in a nursery. In the corner, from within a crib, a baby wailed.

He looked over his shoulder. Nobody was coming.

He'd never been good with kids, even though he and Bucky had spent hours trying to care for Rebecca when they were children. He took a heavy step towards the crib. The infant had bright blue eyes, like his own. Steve held her tightly, but she wouldn't stop crying. Stop crying. Stop crying. Stop crying. "Shh," he tried to sooth, but she only wailed louder. "Don't cry," he said, but the baby went on with the screaming. He took a step forward, but there was no ground, and he slipped, letting go of the child in surprise.

Steve was in freefall. His heart raced. He began to call out for help., groping around in the darkness for something to hold onto, before the darkness opened up, and he was hovering over a metropolis. A building came into view, taller than all the others, and he was fast approaching. His calls for help went unheard, Steve tucked his chin into his chest, tried to find his shield, but it was gone. He was gone.

Blue eyes snapped open in the darkness. Steve couldn't move. His muscles refused to cooperate as he attempted to reach out to figure out where he was. A beat passed, and suddenly he was standing up in a hurry, tangled in the sheet from the bed. His eyes made out the outline of a lamp in the corner. Reaching over, he flicked the thing on. "A dream," he muttered to himself. Even as he realized, his pulse didn't slow. He didn't want to go to sleep. But he didn't want to be awake all that much either. He just didn't want to be alone.

Steve's eyes went to the phone charging on the nightstand. Audrey had said to call her for everything, right?

But this was too much. The clock by his table read three in the morning. He didn't want to ask for that much. He could do this by himself.

So he grabbed his running shoes and brushed his teeth and headed out the door. If he could just escape, he'd probably be okay.

a/n: GUYS. I'm absolutely floored by the response this fic has gotten. Seriously. Thank you all so much.

We got a little of Steve's perspective this chapter. I've never written in his voice before, so this was really fun to do! My poor son just needs a break, honestly. Let him rest. We also got Steve and Audrey bonding and forming trust right here, which is exciting. Things really pick up with the next few chapters. I wanna say that the Avengers plot is going to be chapter 4, maybe chapter 3 if that's how the timeline works out, but definitely by chapter 5.

EDIT 5/19/20: Fixed typos, clarified plotpoints, added a few lines.