It was ten days after the dinner at Edwards that Steve, having declined Mayor Koch's offer of a tickertape parade, moved into his own apartment in Manhattan. He'd found a place uptown, nice for the neighbourhood it was in and still a bit bigger than Steve really needed despite being far more modest than the Starks' penthouse. Peggy complained that Steve didn't belong in a hole on the edge of Harlem, but she didn't insist. Steve could take anything New York City could dish out, and she might not have a lot of faith in humanity in general but she did have faith in him.

"I'm glad you'll be continuing at SHIELD," Peggy said, as they maneuvered a bookshelf through the door. She and Tony had, once again, come along to help him move. "We need you, Steve."

"No problem," Steve replied. He wasn't sure he believed that SHIELD needed him – but he felt like what she'd said to him the day he woke up was true: the world of 1986 needed Captain America. SHIELD was probably a good judge of when and where it would need him, but Steve didn't intend to follow their orders blindly. He and Peggy would have to talk about that properly sooner or later – hopefully sooner – but Steve wasn't in the mood for that conversation right now.

Behind Peggy, the elevator doors opened to reveal Tony, who had brought over the TV from the house on Long Island to donate to Steve's new place. When he saw them struggling with the bookcase, he put the TV down in the hall and went to help.

"You know," Peggy said. "There was an idea Janet and I had – you met Janet Van Dyne, right? She was at Howard's funeral. It was inspired partially by remembering you and the commandos. What the world needs in any war," she said, "even a war of secrets, is somebody to fight the battles that can't be fought in public. Janet called it the Avenger Initiative. She's got a flair for the dramatic."

They set down the shelf, and Steve opened a box to start putting books on it. "And you want me to head that up?" Who else would be on such a team? The first person he thought of was Indira Bhavana, but she'd been put in charge of revamping the shuttle program and was going to be very busy in the coming months.

"I'm thinking about it," said Peggy. "I'll want you to talk to a few other people... Janet particularly, but there's also..."

There was a thump from the hallway, as somebody tried to open a door and found the television blocking their way. Tony hurried to retrieve it. "Sorry!" he said.

"That's all right, that's all right," a woman's voice replied. Tony carried the tv into the apartment, and behind him came a heavily pregnant black woman in her late twenties, carrying a casserole dish with tinfoil over the top. "Hello!" she called out.

"Hi, there." Steve brushed of his hands on his jeans. "What can I do for you?"

The woman stepped around Tony as he found a place for the television. "I'm Darlene Wilson from next door," she said, offering Steve the casserole dish. "I saw you guys moving in, and I thought you might like some lasagna. It's leftovers, but nobody likes to cook on the day they move, and the Chinese place downstairs is awful."

"Thanks." Steve accepted the dish and peeled back the foil for a look. It might be a big enough helping for him, but he'd probably want a couple of peanut butter sandwiches as well, just to make sure his stomach was full before he went to bed.

Darlene saw his doubtful expression. "There should be plenty enough for three," she said.

"Oh, no, we're not staying," Peggy told her. "Tony and I are just helping Steve with his things."

"It's just me," Steve agreed.

"I'll eat some," Tony raised a hand.

Somebody laughed. Steve looked up, and found another man, standing in the doorway shaking his head at Darlene. "Now you've done it!" this fellow said. "What have I told you about feeding bachelors, Darlene? They're like pigeons – once they know you've got food, you'll never get rid of them!"

Darlene sighed. "This is my husband, Paul," she said.

"That's me," the man agreed, and stepped in to shake Steve's hand.

"Steve Rogers," Steve replied. He wasn't sure if Paul and Darlene would recognize the name, but they didn't seem to – they only nodded. How long, he wondered, could he put off telling them his other name? He liked the idea of somebody knowing him as just Steve Rogers. The only people he felt he could just be Steve Rogers with were Peggy and Tony themselves, and they still knew him first as Captain America.

Paul grinned and patted his wife's bulging abdomen. "And this is going to be baby Sam," he said. "Although we don't know yet whether Samuel or Samara."

"We'll be finding out sometime in the next two weeks, the sooner the better," Darlene said.

"I'll look forward to meeting baby Sam, too, then," said Steve. "This is Tony, he's the son of a friend of mine." If the Wilsons hadn't recognized Steve's name, he wasn't going to tell them Tony's, either – anonymity was something Tony didn't have very much of. "And Peggy Carter. She's..." what should he call her? His friend? His boss?

"Madame Director!" a breathless voice shouted.

The Wilsons, startled, moved out of the way to let a sixth person enter Steve's new living room – and Steve's heart sank when he saw that it was Peggy's chauffeur. If somebody needed Captain America, Paul and Darlene were probably about to find out who Steve was before they had a chance to get to know him as anybody else.

But the man wasn't here for Steve. Having apparently just run up six flights of stairs, he panted in the doorway for a moment before addressing Peggy.

"Madame Director," he repeated, "sorry to interrupt, but you've got a phone call. It's the hospital, about your husband..."

Peggy had been smiling at the Wilsons, but now her face fell sharply. "Oh, I see," she said, and swallowed. "Well, I..."

"No, no," the man said. "It's good news! He's awake!"

Her eyes went wide, and to Steve's amazement Peggy actually wobbled on her feet a bit and grabbed his arm for support, as if afraid of falling over. "He's awake?" she asked, and Steve realized she literally could not believe her ears.

The chauffeur nodded. "The people at the hospital said he's awake and asking for you. They've already called your children and they're on their way."

"Oh... oh, my god..." Peggy put a hand over her mouth, then turned to Steve. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, Steve, I... I have to go. I'm sure you two can..." she gestured vaguely at the half-empty room, then turned to slip past the Wilsons on her way out. "Excuse me, I do apologize," she murmured on the way past.

Steve hesitated, then handed the pan of lasagna to Tony. "Do you think you can bring up the rest of the stuff and lock up for me?" he asked.

"Sure," Tony replied. Steve didn't doubt he would eat the lasagna, too.

"I can help if you need," Paul offered.

"Thanks." Steve was already grabbing his coat as he left the room. "I'll make it up to you, I promise!" he called, and hurried down the steps after Peggy.

When they arrived at the hospital, Deb the nurse was waiting for them in the lobby. She went up and grabbed Peggy's hands as soon as they entered the room, then pulled her in for a bear hug, not even bothering with a greeting.

"I'm so glad you came, Mrs. Dugan!" she said. "He's been asking for you. And you!" She turned to Steve to hug him next. "He'll be thrilled to see you. The first thing he asked for was his family."

"I'm surprised the first thing he asked for wasn't a drink," Steve said.

"Well... the first thing he asked for that he had a chance of getting," Deb corrected herself. "Come with me, quickly!"

Steve followed the women up to Dum-Dum's room, but Deb's greeting had given him pause. Would his old friend be happy to see him? Dum-Dum had, after all, married the woman who'd once been Steve's own fiancee. Would he expect Steve to begrudge him that? Would he worry that Peggy would leave him, despite the forty-year age gap that now existed between herself and her former lover? Dum-Dum had never been the jealous type, but if time could turn Peggy into a hands-off bureaucrat and Howard Stark into a cold and standoffish father, there was no telling what else it might do.

When Deb opened the door of the room, they found Dum-Dum propped up in bed with a doctor listening to his chest. He still looked pale, tired, and feeble – old – but he was awake and his eyes were bright. His face lit up in a smile when Steve and Peggy entered the room.

"Hello, Tim," Peggy said, with tears in her voice.

Dum-Dum's eyes, however, went right past her. "Would you look at that!" he exclaimed, his voice hoarse from long disuse. "They weren't joking! Here I thought I would give everybody a good shock with my coming-back-from-the-dead trick. Now they'll all just think I got the idea from you!"

"Don't worry," Steve promised him. "I'll do my best to stay out of your spotlight."

Dum-Dum snorted. "Yeah, we both know how well that always works." Only then did he look at his wife. "Did you bring it?" he asked eagerly.

"Bring what?" Peggy frowned, then realized what he meant and threw her hands in the air. "Timothy Dugan!" she said. "You can't really have expected me to bring you Bourbon when you're in hospital!"

"I could hope," he said.

"Oh, no." Peggy shook a finger at him. "Have they told you they weren't expecting you to recover?"

"Yes. Several times."

Peggy nodded firmly. "Then you ought to know that this is little short of a miracle, and you are not going to be putting any more poisons into your body. You are going to take care of yourself and get well, or so help me! Do you understand?"

"Yes, Ma'am," said Dum-Dum meekly.

Satisfied, Peggy sat down by the bed and took his hands in both of hers, and he raised her knuckles to his lips and kissed them. It struck Steve as a very sweet, intimate gesture, and it made his heart ache for his own lost opportunities at the same time as he was glad to see Peggy get this moment. When she'd first told him about her life, it had sounded as if she'd been dogged by tragedy for much of it. She deserved a happy ending, even one Steve himself couldn't be a part of.

Dum-Dum looked up at Steve again. "Sorry, Cap," he said, dropping his hand to his side again – Peggy, however, did not let go of it. "I swear, it was her idea..."

"It was not. It was mutually agreed upon," said Peggy.

"She asked me," Dum-Dum insisted. "And you know that a wise man will always do as Peggy says."

"I'm not angry," said Steve. He'd said that to Howard, when he'd apologized for not finding Steve sooner, and he'd meant it then, too – but even if he hadn't been angry with Howard, he'd definitely been hurt and disappointed. He wasn't anymore. After all, Steve had been dead as far as any of them knew. He'd told them all that he wanted to die, and by the time he'd changed his mind he'd been in no position to let anybody know about it. Steve could have gotten angry about it, but doing so wouldn't change anything now.

"You sure?" asked Dum-Dum.

"Of course I'm sure," said Steve. "She's taken good care of you. I mean, I'm a little disappointed," he added, theatrically wistful, "but I guess you and I were just never meant to be!"

Dum-Dum needed a moment to realize what Steve had just said, but then he laughed so hard he began to wheeze. Two nurses rushed into the room to make sure he wasn't dying, while Peggy just rolled her eyes and thumped him on the back.

Angela Dugan arrived around suppertime. She was taller than Steve had expected her to be, nearly as tall as her father, with Peggy's intelligent brown eyes and dazzling smile. She greeted Steve politely, but it was her father she really wanted to see – Dum-Dum hugged her tightly, kissed the top of her head and called her his little scholar.

An hour and a half later, Stephen Dugan came in with his wife and daughter. Carol was pregnant again, though not nearly so obviously as Darlene Wilson, and Amanda was now two and a half. The little girl ran to scramble into Peggy's lap and give her a hug, then climbed onto the bed to do the same for her grandfather. Then the entire Dugan family had dinner together in Dum-Dum's hospital room, while Steve said a quiet good night and slipped out to return to his new apartment. It would be a lonely place to spend the night, but he could handle that.

In fact, despite knowing nobody was waiting for him at home, Steve boarded the subway feeling more at peace with the world than he had in a very long time, indeed. He could see now that Peggy's life hadn't been a tragedy at all. Surrounded by her husband and children, she'd looked happier than he'd ever seen her, and Steve was finally able to be glad for her without grieving for himself.

Peggy really had moved on, and Steve knew now that he could, too – just as soon as he figured out what he'd be moving on to.

Even if he did have a lot of regrets, by the time the year was almost over Steve had decided that 1986 had left him with a lot to be grateful for, too. So perhaps it was fitting that in November he got no less than three thanksgiving dinners. On Thursday he had his first with the Dugan family: Peggy and Dum-Dum, Angela and her boyfriend, and Stephen and his family. The younger generations were absolutely astonished by how much Steve could eat, and afterwards Dum-Dum pulled out a hidden bottle of his favourite brew and he and Steve told war stories long into the night.

On Saturday he would be joining the Wilsons at the dinner they were hosting for the congregation at Paul's church, some of whom wouldn't get a thanksgiving dinner at all otherwise. As well as eating, Steve was looking forward to helping serve the meal and to entertaining baby Sam – who had turned out to be Samuel rather than Samara. At six months old he was an active and curious kid, already able to roll over and to wiggle along the floor even if he couldn't actually crawl. His parents adored him, and Steve took every opportunity to babysit.

In between, on Friday, Steve was due at the Starks'. When he rang the bell, it was answered not by Jarvis or Maria, as he'd expected, but by Obadiah Stane.

"Rogers!" the man said cheerfully. "Come in, come in! We're expecting you!"

"Thanks," said Steve. "I brought a pie." Peggy had given him an extra one.

"Wonderful!" Stane ushered him inside with a hand on his back. "Zeke! Take this to Maria in the kitchen, would, you?"

The little boy came to grab the pie and whisked it off, while Stane escorted Steve down the hall to the study. On the way by Steve took a peek into the kitchen, and found Jarvis and Anna busy finishing the meal preparations with Maria's help. Maria took the pie from Zeke and set it on the counter, then patted the boy on the head and said something to him in Italian. Steve would have gone in to help, but Stane took him into the study and got a decanter down from the shelf.

"Drink?" he asked.

"No, thank you," Steve replied. "Not before dinner." He looked over his shoulder. "Where's Tony?" He'd been told Tony would be there, but hadn't seen him in the kitchen.

"Spare bedroom," Stane replied, pouring a drink for himself. "His cardboard rockets have outgrown his own."

"I'm just gonna go talk to him for a moment," Steve said.

Sure enough, Tony was sitting in the room that had been Steve's own for those few weeks. It was half-full of parts for a complex cardboard and matchstick model of something that looked almost like a suit of armor, but Tony wasn't working on that. Instead, he was sitting at the end of the bed, his shoulders hunched in a sulk.

"Tony?" Steve asked, rapping on the door frame.

Tony jumped and turned around as if ready to shout, but relaxed when he saw Steve. "Oh. It's just you."

"What, did you mistake me for somebody important?" Steve came and sat down next to him. "Is something wrong?"

Tony sighed. "They didn't tell you?"

"I just got here," said Steve. "The only thing anybody's told me is where to put the pie." A dozen awful possibilities flickered through his head. Somebody else had died, or was dying. Tony was being threatened with expulsion again. It was amazing how many things he could imagine having happened in the month since he'd seen the boy last – and even then, he was still surprised by Tony's answer.

"Mom and Obi are getting married," Tony said. "He asked her yesterday, and she said yes. Him and Zeke are moving in after Christmas."

Steve sat silent for a moment, then said, "I see." He could tell that Tony was upset, but for his own part Steve wasn't entirely convinced this was a bad thing. Steve didn't really like Obadiah Stane. There was something about the man that put him off, but in the past few months Stane had been nothing but attentive and kind towards Maria and Tony both. He would probably fill the roles of husband and father better than Howard had, even if Steve did suspect – as Tony doubtless did, too – that he was mostly after the Stark family's money.

"It's barely been six months," Tony complained. "I feel like Hamlet."

"Hamlet's mother only waited one month," Steve said – and the play implied that Hamlet and his father had a better relationship than Howard and Tony had. Then again, maybe that was part of what Tony was upset about. Maybe he was afraid that a stepfather would be another Howard.

"Whatever, you get the idea," said Tony.

Steve nodded, but he knew he couldn't help Tony with this. It would be something that was between Tony, Maria, and Stane, and the latter two wouldn't like Steve interfering. So for the time being, he changed the subject instead. "What is this?" he asked, pointing to the half-finished model. "I thought you were working on the space shuttle still."

"I got bored," said Tony. He seemed glad to have something else to talk about, too. "This is related, though – it's a self-contained spacesuit. It's got all the cooling and propulsion units built in so you don't have to put it on in layers, and should give the astronauts much better control over their own movement. There's an onboard computer, too," he pulled a piece off the back and turned it over. "That always keeps track of where the astronaut and the shuttle are, so if a tether breaks the thrusters will automatically take you back to the airlock. I just have to figure out how to power it." He put the piece down on his desk. "I got my reactor working, you might've read about that."

"I did," Steve agreed. It had been in the news – MIT's Boy Astronaut and the Future of Energy.

"If I could make it smaller..." Tony bit his lip, then shrugged. "If you want to see the stuff I'm doing for the shuttle, that's in my room. Come on."

Steve followed him. While Tony was away at school, his model collection was carefully stored in padded boxes. Now it was out and arranged only every surface. There were vehicles, rockets, buildings, and things Steve couldn't begin to identify, all carefully made out of white card and glue.

"The new shuttle they're gonna be building to replace Odyssey is called Endurance," said Tony. "Dr. Williams doesn't want to use my suggestions because he says they can't have a shuttle whose parts aren't interchangeable with the others, so I've been coming up with a five-year plan to upgrade the whole fleet." He opened a drawer and started shuffling through notebooks.

"Doesn't it take forever to build all this?" Steve asked.

"I work better in three dimensions," Tony replied. He chose a particular book and flipped through the pages to one marked with a post-it note. ""Translating from an idea for something that exists in space to a drawing and then having somebody else translate it back again wastes time and can make you miss things. Gotta build models."

"Isn't there a better way to do it?" Steve asked. This seemed like an awful lot of paper.

"Probably," Tony said. Having found what he was looking for, he turned around to face Steve again – then shouted in surprise at something behind him. Steve turned to look, and nearly cried out, himself. Behind Tony's bedroom door, whether neither of them had noticed her when they walked in, was a woman holding a toddler.

Not just any woman, either – she was wearing a long black wig, and a pair of cats-eye glassed, but it was definitely Konstantina Fyodorova.

"Is everything okay down there?" Maria's voice called.

"Everything's fine! Tony just stubbed his toe." Steve shut the door and planted himself in front of Fyodorova, not sure if he wanted to threaten her or not. She must have a reason for being here, but it wouldn't necessarily be a reason he approved of. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"Waiting for you," she replied, as if this were obvious.

"Who is that?" Tony wanted to know, edging closer for a better look.

Fyodorova assumed he meant the child, and went and put the little girl down on Tony's bed. "This is Natalia. I have reason to believe she's the last surviving descendant of the last Tsar." She turned away from the child to face Steve. "I need your help."

"Why?" he asked immediately. "When you disappeared from lockup, we assumed you went back to the Soviet Union."

"I did," Fyodorova said, "but thanks to Madame Director, I'm the FBI's most wanted. My face is up in every post office in North America. When I arrived, my employers told me that I was of no further use to the Red Room." She raised a hand to her temple with the index finger extended, and mimed firing a gun.

"So you escaped," said Steve.

Fyodorova nodded once. "Anybody who thinks it's difficult to get into the Iron Curtain has never had to try to get out," she told him.

"Hey!" Tony took one of his model parts away from the little girl. "Don't put that in your mouth!"

"How did you do it?" asked Steve.

"I walked," she replied, as if it were the most obvious possible solution. "I waited for the sea ice to freeze, and then I walked from Lavrentiya to Tin City."

Steve tried to picture the geography of the Bering Strait. "That's got to be a hundred miles," he protested. "In the arctic? With a toddler?"

"Yes," said Fyodorova. "Now I need your help. There's something going on under the ice up there that is potentially very destabilizing."

Steve did not like the word destabilizing, but nor was he just going to trust her blindly. "And why should I help you rather than just turning you over to Peggy?"

Fyodorova smiled. "Two reasons." She held up two fingers. "One – because you and I both agree that we need to keep the balance. Nobody wins if the world dissolves in a nuclear holocaust. And two," she smiled. "Because I have information you want." She looked at Tony, who was tossing his things into boxes where Natalia's greedy fingers couldn't get them. "Both of you?"

"Yeah?" Tony wrapped a bunch of shuttle parts up in a towel and tossed them in a drawer. "like what?"

"Zimy," said Fyodorova. "You boys help me save the world, and I can put a face behind the gun that killed Howard Stark."

The model parts fell out of Tony's hands onto the floor. Steve bit his lip. He didn't trust Fyodorova, of course... not after she'd lied to and used him... but when he considered what she'd already helped him to do, he certainly couldn't afford to dismiss her, either. And there was no way he could turn down a chance to find his friend's murderer.

"I have some questions," said Steve, holding up a finger.

"Captain Rogers!" Jarvis' voice called from down the hall. "Dinner is served!"

"I'm coming!" Steve replied, and turned back to Fyodorova. "If you're still here after we eat, we'll talk about this."

"I'll wait," she said.

"Don't let the kid eat my models!" Tony told her.

As they headed back down the hall to join the rest of the family in the dining room, Tony said, "you know, if I could get my new spacesuit to work... it could be a one-man submersible, too. I mean, there's some modifications I'd have to make, but..."

"Wait, who said you're coming?" asked Steve. This would be one for Peggy and Janet's Avengers Initiative, most likely.

Tony grinned. "She did. Let's eat, and then we can get on with it!"

At least Tony was smiling now – and as Steve sat down at the table for dinner, he realized that he was, too. Was this his place in the world? Working behind the scenes with an ex-spy and a child genius to prevent World War Three? If it were... well, then Peggy had been right the whole time, as usual. The world still needed Steve Rogers.

It was a good thing he was still around.