The first question Steve asked when Fury came to see him in the Sokovian hospital was, "where are Darlene and the kids?"

Fury sat down in the faded plastic chair next to the bed. "They're on their way home," he promised. "Reverend Wilson's going to meet them at LaGuardia. They're fine. You'll be on your way tomorrow, as soon as the doctors here are satisfied that there's no infection."

"There won't be," sighed Steve. He wasn't capable of getting septicemia. Not anymore.

"Yeah, but they don't know that, and SHIELD's proof of it is classified," said Fury.

Steve nodded. So much of his life was still a secret. He'd always kind of expected that would stop when the war was over, but apparently World War II had been nothing but the first act in The War, the 'good fight' he was supposed to be fighting. Whatever that was anymore.

"What about Tony?" he wanted to know.

"Isn't he one of the kids?" Fury asked.

Steve supposed so. "Fine. What about Connie and Viper?"

Fury hesitated a moment, as if unsure whether to tell the truth. "They're here in the hospital," he said, "but they're under constant guard. Madame Director is negotiating with the local government, but the mayor wants them left here to stand trial. Based on the area's history of dealing with anything they consider seditious or terroristic... I think they're both gonna hang."

Steve sat up a little. His arm twinged sharply under a layer of bandages. So, when he furrowed his brow, did his face where Viper had touched him with her poisoned glove. "Connie shot Viper," he said. "She nearly died defending the tesseract. She..."

"She's the one who put it in the machine," said Fury. He put his hands on Steve's shoulders, trying to make him lie down again. "She admits it, and she doesn't excuse herself. She's said she'll stay if they want her to."

She didn't have to, Steve thought angrily. Connie Fyodorova had gotten out of SHIELD lockup last year without leaving a trace – she could sure as hell escape from any prison a little Balkan country could lock her up in. She was staying because she thought she deserved to be punished, and part of him wanted to leave her to it while another wanted to sling her over his shoulder and carry her home like a misbehaving child. Was this how Peggy felt when he did something she thought was unnecessary?

"I want to talk to her," said Steve.

"Are you ready to get up?" Nick asked warily.

"I'm Captain America!" Steve said impatiently. "Hell, yes, I am ready to get up." He'd been in worse pain than this before, and he'd not only gotten up, but gotten up and fought Nazis. The last thing he wanted to do was lie here uselessly while doctors clucked over him. Steve had done enough of that in his childhood. Why had he taken the serum, if he were just going to do the same thing now?

"All right. Well..." Fury moved to help as Steve got to his feet, then paused and backed up a bit when Steve shook his head. "The doctors say you're gonna have some scars," he said. "At least, that's what I think they said. I speak a little Gorani, badly, but the dialect here's a bit different."

"Scars?" asked Steve.

The idea startled him. Steve had healed without scars for years now – the serum had even erased the old one where he'd had his appendix removed as a child. Hearing that he might have them now made him want to get up even more. He wanted to see what Viper's poison had done to him. Steve got to his feet, perhaps a little too fast There was a moment of dizziness, but it passed quickly, and he shrugged off Fury's attempts to help and staggered into the tiny bathroom to look in the mirror.

There was a bandage over half his face, and when Steve pulled it off, he found the results rather disappointing. The damage beneath was almost healed. There was a bit of puckered skin around his eyebrow and a trail of it down his temple, but that was all. He rolled up his sleeve and checked his arm where the sword had nicked him. That place, where the skin had actually been broken and the poison had entered his blood, was worse. It looked as if there were a twisted string under the skin. Would that last, he wondered? Or would it eventually fade away, as all his other scars had?

Fury was standing in the doorway, watching him. "I guess you don't have too many of those, huh?" he asked.

Steve rolled his sleeve back down. "Where's Connie?" he asked.

"Put some pants on," Fury told him.

Steve found a pair of sweat pants, and Fury showed him the way downstairs to an isolation ward. There were guards outside the door, military men with guns. They weren't taking any chances of their prisoners getting away. Steve suspected Connie and Viper could both get out regardless, but as both were recovering from bullet wounds, maybe they'd stay put voluntarily... at least for a while.

Fury showed the guards his SHIELD badge. "Agent Fury and Captain Rogers," he said. "We want to see the prisoners."

The men moved aside.

The ward was meant for treatment of highly contagious diseases. There were thick plastic curtains and complicated equipment everywhere, but none of it was being used. Instead, Connie was propped there alone in the bed, face pale and eyes focused on infinity. Steve approached, still unsteady on his feet, and looked down at her, trying to determine if she were awake.

She looked at his face, then closed her eyes. "I'm sorry, Steve," she whispered.

Steve wasn't sure what to say to that. He couldn't tell her it was okay, because it wasn't. He couldn't tell her that it wasn't her fault, because it was. Yet at the same time... he wasn't angry with her.

"We're spayed," said Connie. "The girls from the Red Room. Like pet dogs. They don't want us ever having children," she explained, "because they're afraid it's the one thing that might be more important to us than our mission. And they were right." She laughed bitterly, then forced herself to stop as she began to cough, which clearly caused her a lot of pain. A nurse handed her a cup of water, and Connie sipped at it, her hand shaking.

"They were right," she repeated, when she could breathe again. "I had to choose between Natalia and the world, and I did."

"I'm not angry," Steve said, and he understood now why he wasn't. Connie had been willing to throw away everything else she'd ever worked for, in order to save somebody she loved. So had Steve.

"I'm sorry I hit you," she added, her throat still raspy from coughing. "I just... I knew you were the guy who would choose the world."

"No," said a voice from the door, "Steve is the man who would force them to give him both."

Steve looked up and saw Peggy there, and quickly lowered his eyes again. Peggy Carter, however, was not a woman anyone could hide from. When he risked a glance up, she was still there, looking right at him.

"If you'll excuse us, please, Agent Fyodorova," she said, in a voice that was only barely restraining some kind of emotion – Steve couldn't tell what, just yet, but suspected it was bad. "I need to have a word with Captain Rogers."

"Go ahead," said Connie.

Peggy turned and walked back out into the hallway. Steve followed, because he had a pretty good idea that if he didn't, he would be made to.

"Peggy," he said, as the guards shut the door again. "I'm sorry..."

"I should hope you are!" she said, turning to face him again. "What were you thinking, Steve?" she demanded. "Do you have the slightest idea what you almost did?"

He'd brought the tesseract to Sokovia. He'd all but put it into HYDRA's hands himself, because he'd hoped to get Bucky back from the dead. Steve knew very well he'd done that, and yet with Peggy there lecturing him like he was a misbehaving schoolboy, he no longer felt like he needed to admit it. "What about you?" he asked, accusing. "You sent Fury to help me."

He should have known better. "I sent Nick because I believed in you!" Peggy informed him. "I've always believed in you, Steve. Not in Captain America," she added, "but in you. I believed that when all the chips were down you would do the right thing. Steve is pretending to forgive me because he has a plan! Steve wants to know where the tesseract is because he has a plan! He's going to do something bloody foolish and save the world again!"

"I did save it!" Steve protested. HYDRA did not have the tesseract and the city of Sokovia looked exactly like it had before the time machine turned on. As long as he ignored the hundreds of people who'd lost their memories, and the thousands more whose loved ones had forgotten them.

"You saved it from yourself!" said Peggy. "If it weren't for you, it wouldn't have been in danger to begin with! Don't try to deflect the blame onto Fyodorova," she added. "She played her part, to be sure, but you're the one who brought both her and the tesseract to this country. Stark and Fury were following my orders. I told them to do as you said. But you... what were you thinking?" she repeated.

Steve was getting mad now. Everything Peggy was saying was true, and he was both disappointed and yet unsurprised to learn she'd been using him the whole time he thought he was using her. He'd seen her deliver verbal eviscerations to other people in the past, tearing their arguments limb from limb before they could even voice them, and it had always made him proud. Having it directed at him was infuriating, and knowing she was right only made it even worse.

"I was trying to save my friend!" said Steve.

"Your friend died forty years ago!" Peggy snapped back. "You know what, Steve? I'm glad I never told you what I suspected about the Winter Soldier, if this is what you were going to do about it! You're just like her, aren't you?" She pointed at the door to Connie's room. "You were asked to choose between the world and a dead man! And you did!"

Steve opened his mouth, but he had nothing to say. She hadn't told him anything he didn't already know. She'd covered all his counter-arguments. If he said he'd had no idea HYDRA was planning to take hostages, she would tell him that they wouldn't have been able to if he hadn't left town. He was left standing there, full of rage he had no outlet for because as usual, the only person he was angry with was himself.

"Do you really want to come back to SHIELD?" asked Peggy.

"No," said Steve immediately. He could not do that. Not after what she'd hidden from him, not after what he'd done about it, and his pride could not take another remonstrance like this.

Peggy nodded curtly, and then without another word, she turned and walked away. Two agents who'd been waiting in the hall joined her on either side, and Steve saw her lower her head and hunch her shoulders. With her face invisible, it was impossible to tell what she was thinking, but Steve's gut told him she was crying.

The effect on his mood was dramatic: he had never seen Peggy cry anything but happy tears before, and all the anger immediately drained from him, leaving... nothing. He didn't know how to react or even what to feel. Especially when it was his own selfishness that had broken her.

He felt a hand on his shoulder – Fury was there.

"Janet's leaving, too," Fury said, as if that were supposed to offer some comfort. "She's going back to San Francisco to take over running Pym Technologies. Says it'll give her a more regular schedule and she can spend more time with Hope."

"That's nice," said Steve, without enthusiasm.

Fury gently steered him back to his hospital bed.

It was another two days before Steve was allowed to get on a plane back to the United States. He kind of wondered if he'd be going back only to face trial for treason, but surely somebody would have said something to him if he were. There was nobody to see him off – Peggy had already left, Fury was coming with him, and Connie and Viper would be staying in Sokovia for trial and, most likely, execution.

"They flew in a couple of experts from Rome to look at the amnesiacs," Fury said conversationally, as they did up their seat belts in the otherwise empty airplane. "Their theory is that all the electrical activity in the victims' brains stopped and then had to re-start when the time machine put them back together, and since memory is dynamic anything that wasn't wired right into the structures of their brains, like languages they learned as children, is gone."

"So nobody died, but we still lost them all," sighed Steve.

"Could have been worse," said Nick.

"Not much," Steve replied glumly. "Are you angry with me?" Fury didn't seem to be, but Steve wanted to be sure.

"I don't have time to be angry," Nick said. "I've got a report to write."

"I mean it," said Steve. "I need to know exactly which bridges I've burned, okay?"

"I'm a little ticked off that you didn't tell me what you were doing and give me an opportunity to talk you out of it," said Fury. "But last time I tried to talk you out of doing something ridiculously stupid I lost, and we managed to save five astronauts and fight the Red Skull in space, so even if I'd known I probably would have just gone along with it eventually."

"Well, like Peggy says, we never find out what would have happened," Steve said. "Even with a time machine."

"We did get Barnum," Fury went on. "Viper's in custody, we kept the tesseract, and we now know that Zola's alive, so we can find him and figure out what he's up to. All things considered, I'd say we broke even."

"Yeah, well, you don't have any relatives who don't remember you," Steve pointed out, and turned to stare moodily out the little window at the rain pounding the tarmac. It was late afternoon, and between that and the cloud cover, outside was dark enough that Steve's reflection in the window was clearly visible. The scars were still there. They already seemed smaller, but maybe that was just his imagination. Steve kind of hoped they never healed completely. He felt like he needed some kind of permanent mark from his whole fiasco, something to remind him. Even if it would ruin his budding career in television commercials.

That reminded him – SHIELD was one bridge he had most definitely burned, so he was going to have to find real, regular work somewhere else. Maybe Janet could offer him something at Pym. He could do grunt work, moving heavy stuff in a warehouse. He could be a security guard. There had to be something, and he was going to have to figure it out because he needed to support both himself and Natalia. There was no way he was leaving that little girl to Peggy's tender mercies... and that in turn twisted his stomach inside-out as he realized somebody was going to have to tell Natalia what had happened to Connie.

"How about you?" Fury asked. "You mad?"

"I don't even know anymore," Steve said.

Three weeks later, Steve moved out of his apartment on the edge of Harlem. He didn't have much to pack, but Tony still stopped by to help him pack it. Steve wasn't sure what to say to him when he arrived, so Tony himself got the awkward part out of the way immediately.

"I saw the announcement," he said, not even bothering with hello.

It had been in the supermarket tabloids that morning, when Steve had grabbed a cup of coffee and a bagel from a place up the street: Stark Widow Remarries. Maria and Stane had gotten married in a 'private ceremony' with only 'close friends' attending. Steve had spotted Zeke Stane in the background of the accompanying photograph, but no sign of Tony Stark.

"She called and invited me," Tony added. He put the briefcase he was carrying down on top of a stack of cardboard boxes full of Steve's kitchen utensils – the ones he'd bought so that Connie could cook for him. "I told her I was busy."

"Are you sure you're not gonna regret that?" asked Steve. It did seem to make the split between Tony and what was left of his family something very final.

"Maybe," said Tony. "Right now I don't give a shit." He paused, realized what he'd just said, and put a hand over his mouth. "Sorry. Where's Tiny Tali?" That was the nickname he'd given Natalia.

"She's napping, lucky for you," Steve said.

Tony was relieved. "Anyway," he added, "she said Stane still wants me to come back. Remember that model I built when I was working on my spacesuit design? He's trying to turn it into a new kind of battle armor." Tony scowled. "It was supposed to be for space, but he's gonna armor it up and patent it and make a weapon out of it."

Of course, Tony himself had done the same thing with it – Steve suspected the armor he'd been wearing in Sokovia was based on similar ideas. He didn't say so, though, because that wasn't the point. Everything I ever built became a weapon, Howard had said sadly. Steve was willing to bet he'd never said it to his son.

"I'm gonna miss you," Tony added.

"I'm gonna miss you, too," Steve told him. "Look, if you need something and you don't think you can trust anybody here, you can call me, okay? I'll fly you out to San Francisco if I have to, and we'll catch a ball game or something." He wanted Tony to know that he wasn't abandoning him. Not only was Tony one of the few friends Steve still had, but Steve was the closest thing Tony currently had to a parental figure. Steve wanted to reassure the kid that he wouldn't die on him with nothing resolved, as Howard had, or choose another relationship to prioritize, like Maria.

"Thanks," said Tony. He looked awkwardly at the floor for a moment, then picked up the briefcase he'd brought in. "Madame Director told me to give you this," he said, and opened it to pull out a folder full of papers.

"What is it?" Steve asked, flipping through it. It seemed to be sort of an informal scrapbook. There were photocopied documents, some of them with lines blacked out, newspaper clippings, typed reports, and even a photograph or two. The pages were stamped with security classifications, and almost all of them had the same file number in the upper corner, along with the words Winter Soldier.

"She said she wanted you to know exactly what evidence she had for who Zima actually was," Tony explained, "and where they were keeping him."

"Did she?" Steve asked. If this were an attempt at an apology, it was too little, too late... but there was also a real possibility it was something else. It was possible that Peggy was still using him, trying to manipulate him into going and doing something about a problem she could not tackle herself without political consequences.

What would have happened if she'd shown him this last year, he wondered. What would he have thought? Would he have gone immediately to the Soviet Union, regardless of the risk, to find out if it were really Bucky or not? Would he have tried to save him? Would he have been able to? It was useless to wonder, because he would never know, but Steve was sure he'd be playing the possibilities out in his mind for the rest of his life.

Paperclipped to the back of the folder were a couple of extra pages. One was a Yugoslavian newspaper article with an attached translation, describing how the two women responsible for the 'dimensional rift' in Sokovia had been executed by firing squad. There was a blurry photograph of two soldiers, carrying away a body with long dark hair. Steve's insides twisted. Connie was dead, then, without any chance to absolve herself.

The second page, however, was from SHIELD's report on the incident. Although a few words here and there had been blacked out, the gist was clear: Soviet agent Konstantina Fyodorova had vanished from prison a week before the execution date, and the unidentified woman who called herself Viper had been shot and killed by a Russian assassin who'd broken into the prison compound. The phrase Russian assassin made Steve wonder at first whether Connie had decided to finish what she'd started after all, but then his eye caught the word winter.

That was impossible. Viper couldn't have been killed by the Winter Soldier. Bucky was dead, and Steve knew that for damned certain, as much as the knowledge hurt. That must mean...

"There are other winter soldiers?" he asked.

"Apparently," said Tony. "Or else this new one is a fraud. Either way, she wanted to warn you, just in case."

Steve nodded. "I'll keep an eye out," he promised. A half-dozen ideas had already occurred to him. Clones, perhaps. Or maybe the reason the Winter Soldier was an empty shell to begin with was because he'd already been duplicated by HYDRA's time machine like all those poor people in Sokovia. Maybe the real Bucky was still out there somewhere. Steve didn't want to let himself feel that hope, not when he remembered what it had already made him do, but there it was, and he knew that it, too, was never going to go away.

Three days after that, Steve's plane touched down at San Francisco International Airport, and Janet was there to meet him. She was wearing a black motorcycle jacket and a yellow skirt, and smiling even though her eyes were still sad.

"Welcome to California, Captain Rogers," she said. "Don't worry, we'll tan up that pasty Irish backside of yours in no time!"

"I don't tan, Mrs. Pym," Steve said. "I burn." His enhanced body would heal it overnight – the next morning the burned layer would peel in sheets, leaving him as pale as ever.

"It's Janet, Captain," she said.

He nodded. "Steve."

Janet squatted a bit to talk to Natalia, who was holding Steve's hand and clutching her Rainbow Brite doll. "Hi, Natalia," she said. "Do you remember me?"

Natalia nodded.

"Hope's looking forward to seeing you again," Janet told her. "She's made a few friends here, but she'll be happy to see a familiar face." She straightened up again. "I've been in touch with a realtor, looking for a rental for a single dad with a young daughter," she told Steve. "She's got a couple of places lined up to show you."

"Can't wait to see them," said Steve. "Are you looking forward to picking out a new home, Natalia?"

"Yeah," the little girl said. "Will it have swings?" Her English had been improving by leaps and bounds, at least partially because she could no longer fall back on Russian as she had with Connie.

"Definitely," Steve said. "If it doesn't, I'll build some."

They stayed in a hotel that night. Janet helped them check in, and Steve thanked her and said goodnight before trundling their luggage – most of it Natalia's – into the elevator. She stood on her tiptoes to push the button for the third floor, then stood back and announced quite casually, "Konyshka is going to meet us here."

"What?" asked Steve. "Who told you that?" He didn't want Natalia getting her hopes up. Connie had seemed so determined to be punished for her lapse in judgment that even her disappearance from the Sokovian prison didn't convince him she was coming back. She'd seemed to love Natalia so much that he suspected separating herself from this child was part of her self-imposed sentence.

"Konyshka did,"said Natalia. "She came into my room and told me she was coming."

She'd been dreaming, Steve thought. There didn't seem to be any other explanation. Even if Connie wanted to come back, why would she? She'd never seemed to believe Steve wasn't mad at her, and even if she did, Peggy had never liked her and no longer needed her help. If she resurfaced she would probably be thrown back in prison.

"Are you sure?" he asked gently.

"Very sure," she replied firmly.

The elevator doors opened, and Steve went to unlock the door of their room. He probably had a few days to talk to Natalia about it and let her down gently. The worst part was, he was now going to be disappointed, himself, if a few days went by and Connie didn't show. Steve missed Connie. The extended game of make-believe he'd played with her through January and February was the closest he was ever likely to come to the happy ending he'd dreamed of during the war. It had been a lie, but it had been a comfortable lie.

He opened the door. Connie was sitting cross-legged on the end of the bed, looking at the room service menu. She was wearing jeans and a denim jacket over a black t-shirt with a brightly coloured paint splatter pattern on it, and her hair had grown out a little and was now in a voluminous spiral perm, but Steve had recognized her through her last change of appearance, and he recognized her now. And while he was standing there staring, wondering how on earth she'd known what room he was going to be in, Natalia pushed past him with a happy cry.

"Konyshka!" she squealed.

Connie stood and scooped Natalia up in her arms. "I missed you, Solnyshka!" she said, and kissed Natalia on both cheeks. "I missed you so much!"

Steve stepped into the room and shut the door. Connie turned to him and smiled sheepishly.

"I couldn't leave her," she said. "It's not that I don't think you'll look after her. I know you will. I just... couldn't."

Steve nodded, and set down the luggage so he could come closer. "I'm happy to see you," he said.

"You are?" she asked. She held Natalia a little closer, keeping her eyes warily on Steve the whole time. She was nervous, half-afraid Steve would immediately call Peggy, or the police, and if he did she intended to escape with the girl.

Steve came up and ruffled Natalia's hair. "Yeah, I am," he said. "So how many countries are you a wanted criminal in now? The US, the USSR, Yugoslavia..."

"Those are under my real name," said Connie. "There are outstanding warrants for pseudonyms of mine in France, Belgium, South Africa, New Zealand, China, Chile, Guatemala, and Israel." Her smile got wider and less sheepish. "That's eleven."

"Go rob a bank in Mexico," Steve said. "Might as well make it an even dozen."

Connie set Natalia back down on the floor. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry for everything."

"So am I," said Steve. "If I hadn't gone running off and taken you with me, HYDRA wouldn't have been able to touch her."

"You wanted to save your friend," said Connie.

"You wanted to save your daughter," said Steve.

Her smile had warmed before her eyes, but they were friendlier now, too. "So you're going to be working for Pym's?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'll be doing art for their advertising campaigns," said Steve. He reached up to touch the bit of rough skin around his eye. It didn't look as bad as it had in the hospital, but he was oddly relieved to know it wasn't going to go away. "I'm not as photogenic as I once was."

"Asshole," said Connie. "You know damned well you're gorgeous."

That was the first time he'd ever heard Connie compliment anyone on their appearance, and it started him. Had she always thought that? Or did she think it at all? Was she just saying it because it was a thing people said? He would never know, any more than he would know what would have happened to Bucky, but this at least was a less hurtful kind of not knowing.

"I'm gonna be doing some other work, too," Steve added. "Janet and Peggy had this idea for a team of extraordinary people, but now Janet and I think these people shouldn't work for SHIELD. Fury's promised to drop us hints about where we'll be needed, but we'll be under our own leadership." He suspected Peggy would be watching them, and that anything Fury told them would have passed through her first, but Steve had every intention of watching her right back. He would not be SHIELD's tool in any capacity.

"Do you need a cook?" asked Connie.

"We need a Black Widow," said Steve.

Her smile grew brighter. "Well, you're not going to get very many applications."

"It's invite-only," Steve told her.

"Oh, so you're inviting me, and I get to decide?" asked Connie.

"No, we talk to you and we come to an agreement that we can all live with," said Steve. "It's a democracy of sorts."

Connie shrugged. "I'm not so good at democracy, but I'll give it a shot," she teased. "What do you call this group?"

"Janet named it," Steve said. "She calls it the Avengers."